That old story.

It's amazing what a cat nap can do for the heart.

After work today, that old feeling of exhaustion that always manifests itself in me as weighty pointlessness, lead me to my bed where I'm sure I fell into a deep slumber mid fall - somewhere between vertical and horizontal. I had a wonderful dream. Nothing fantastical or other worldly. Just a dream where I saw my father's face.

I used to have a lot of dreams about my father after he ran away from home over four years ago and disappeared into the manic streets of HaNoi. Transparent dreams of desperate pursuits down unfamiliar streets calling his name and following his back as he bounced through crowds and dissolved into them. Such obvious messages that would leave me hollow mouthed in the dark counting out ways to reach him until the sun cracked over night.

During his solo journey in Vietnam, he fell out of touch with us for long periods and then he would occasionally rise on a wave of contact, telephoning for a few brief delicious moments before he got swept under the currents of his own ego pursuits.

My mother, brothers and I spent a lot of time worried. We would flop into the comforts of each other's interpretation and talk rationally and hopefully, gathered in our family house where his prints were all over the walls. I would open a book and a little note pencilled in his hand would flutter to the floor like a dead moth disturbed from its dusty place of rest.

I adored my father. I was devastated that he had slipped through my near adult hands because I had spent my childhood using his presence as a guiding compass. The first Christmas that he was away, very early on in his disconnection from us, he telephoned and I told him that I wanted to come and visit him. He agreed. I think partly to remedy the fragile balance of family that he knew he had already ruptured and perhaps partly in good faith. Not seeing him for three months was misery for me, so I booked a ticket to Vietnam and off I went with a naïve skip and a hop, thinking I would make him come home.

I arrived in HaNoi in complete stoned tension, averting my bleary eyes from the armed soldiers and searching for my father amongst the chaos of people landing and people greeting. The usual divide of the dishevelled and the well scrubbed that can be found in airports. I found my father pacing restlessly. I was shocked to see how the humid climate of Vietnam had sucked the bulk out of him. He looked small.

It was the journey on the mini-bus from airport to city that I clearly remember. My father sitting next to me, chatting with all the weary passengers, engaging them, re-animating them despite their jetlagged states.

He mostly chatted with the people around us, asking me some vague questions about the family as though they were people he had once been intimate with a life time ago. In laughing tones he told me, “I’m not going to tell anyone you’re my daughter. If someone asks me, I’ll tell them you’re a friend of a friend from Australia. Okay? We’ll just say friend-of-a-friend.”

So, that’s how I became my father’s friend-of-a-friend and it was with those words that he tried to sever a lifetime of connection with me. But it was an easy line to play. My dark skin and his blonde features reflected little of the significance of our relationship and at this stage he had already reclaimed his Hungarian identity and renounced his ties with Australia.

Initially, this joke amused my strange sense of humour. We were allies in a great prank against the company we kept. Of course they suspected us. I mean, what was a young woman and an old man doing following each other about in that feel-familiar way?

I was friend-of-a-friend to the hotel owners where he lived, to his ex-pat friends, friend-of-a-friend to his work colleagues.

Eventually the significance of that little string of words struck, and that I had collaborated with him to deny that part of his life which I belonged to. I felt sullen and dumb. We spent a few days out of communication.

It’s funny what circumstance hands to you. Sitting in a roadside café after a three day hiking trip in the far North of Vietnam, a new found friend and I were waiting for our overnight trains back to HaNoi. We ordered pancakes to share and sat there eager to fill our hungry bellies. The food did not come quickly and my friend left me to catch her earlier train, pancakes arrived, I ate them and boarded my train.

The railway station resembled a cattle farm and getting on the train seemed more determined by luck that a paid fare. I was designated a top bunker with about five inches of breathing space between my face and the precarious plastic ceiling above me. As the train rattled on into the night I woke in a sweat, my guts in an angry knot of disgust, knowing that I was not going to burst. I ran to the filthy train squat toilet, opened the door to find the tiny room drenched in urine and vomited in homage of the acrid stench and the lackadaisical food standards of Vietnam. I spent the night cramped over feeling wretched, cursing those damn pancakes, until the train rattled into a dark HaNoi at 4 o’clock in the morning.

At the station I negotiated a motorbike-taxi in between indiscreet bursts of retching and ended up on the silent street outside my father’s hotel. I had never seen HaNoi so quiet, empty of cyclist and touters, even the scrawny cats had disappeared. I leant against the hotel door, knowing that the whole Vietnamese hotel family slept on the ground floor, and abandoning all politeness I knocked and knocked, moaning “Please let me in, I’m very sick”. In a dignified fashion someone opened the door and I said “I have to see my father” pointed up and stumbled towards the stairs. There I stayed for three days, sleeping next to the bathroom sink dehydrated, exhausted and feeling totally glum. Unaware of my father’s movements about the room.

When I emerged from my food poisoning misery and took the stairs down to hotel reception, I was greeted with much humour, nudging, and charades “He father – you daughter – I knew, I knew.”

For me, one of the most valuable human capabilities is the ability to forget things that no longer support the narrative trajectory of present circumstance.

These days memories of my father are divided into two versions: the father who briefly visited Australia late last year from Vietnam where he now lives – thin and leathery but on fire with ideas and restless energy, and the father who I measured my changing height against, only ever scraping the underbelly of his chin with the top of my head. Who walked me across kitchen floors while I balanced on the arch of his foot, clutching his wide chest. Who swam across rivers with me hooked onto his back. Who took me on long night walks in the middle of a bleak winter, telling me stories about men who swam with sharks while I consumed his words and pieces of deliciously rich milk chocolate that he would break and share with me.

In a way I have traded my friend-of-a-friend story in as just another ridiculous travel anecdote, a marker that I passed on my way to discovering a different version of myself that did not need to set my latitude according to my father’s presence.

PS. Thanks to Old Ma Wilson for your input! You've got some gall, girl.

The Lovely Lady returns.

I’m a very happy lady today, twirling in anticipation’s good arms. Tomorrow night I’ll be out at the airport eagerly looking for my mother’s face amongst the crowd. She’ll emerge, like magic, with the others who have been transported through the air from Mumbai to Melbourne.

Her face is the easiest face for me to find, her movements second nature to me. The way her skinny little legs jerk at the knee as she walks, how her child-sized hands unthinkingly pat where her handbag should be and mostly the way her white teeth dance and her bright eyes flash on her dark skin. Her eyes are always in motion, scanning each scene. On neighbourhood walks she will often stop mid sentence and launch a thin arm into the thick of a suburban garden and pull a sweetly scented flower to my nose. A hidden flower that would never call for my attention.

She’s bringing me duty-free perfume. I asked for Happy by Clinique and she rings me a few days later to confirm the name after visiting the department stores of Mumbai asking for ‘Happy clinic’ perfume. I giggle stupidly at the other end of the line at a life time of hilarious miscommunication.

I used to hate my mother when I was a teenager. Even now those words, ‘hate’ and ‘my mother’ in the very same sentence terrify me. I want to lessen that feeling I held against her as a teen; I want to use the word ‘resent’ or ‘dislike’ instead, but I would be lying. Back then as a teenage girl so pumped full of a confusion that rode the wave of rage, I had such a strong desire to completely sever the connection between her and I and I tried everything I could. I stopped talking to her, I stopped eating the food she cooked, I stopped wanting to know about her culture. I hated the saris she gave me to wear, I hated the history that was woven into the silk. I reacted against everything I thought she liked. I cut my long dark hair off like a boys one night in my room with a pair of blunt scissors. I pierced my nose but she thought it looked pretty, so I took it out and had my tongue pierced instead. She did not think this was pretty, this made me happy.

Earlier this year, my mother reminded me of what she considers to be one of the most awful moments of her life. One school afternoon she walked past my 15 year-old friends and I in the shopping centre in the town where I grew up. She saw me with this group of school kids and proudly came over and said ‘hello’. I with my summer school dress hitched up my soft girl-thighs, took a drag of a cigarette, blew smoke in her face and muttered ‘bitch’ under my breath as she turned away realising that I was not going to publicly acknowledge her.

This story actually makes me feel shame right down to the pit of my stomach, even now as I write this.

I never budged an inch in my anger towards her. And perhaps the really terrible part of this memory is that I have no recollection of this moment that had so obviously devastated her identity as a mother. I don’t remember this moment, it has wasted beneath my other teenage near-misses and disasters. I don’t remember because I never considered her at this time in my life.

My mother used to tell me this story when I was growing up about how she had wanted a little girl so much that every Tuesday she would go to church and look at the stained glass window of Mother Mary and pray for a daughter. Like a good Hindu and a product of the world’s most secular nation, she decided it was not enough to stick to one god or one religion. She tried everything, she asked Mary, Jesus, God, Vishnu, Shiva and all the goddesses to help her to conceive a girl. She already had two boys but she wanted a girl as well. She took a risk, she was three months short of her 43^rd birthday when she had me.

This story used to make me uncomfortable when she would tell it in my teenage years, at birthdays or on my ‘good’ days when I was behaving myself for some overseas and unsuspecting visitor. There was the part of me that resented her sense of want and what this story represented. It made the stakes of my existence bigger than anything I thought I was capable of giving to her, so it was easier for me to destroy it all than to live within the parameters of what I thought I was supposed to fulfil. But there was also a part of me that always loved to hear that story. It made my rash teenage flirtations with danger safe because I knew there was a place that had been created just for me, which I could return to no matter how fragile or tiny or jagged my ego became.

I have puzzled over why I had this fraught relationship with my mother because she offered me nothing but the most stable love I have ever known in my life. Only questions arise, moments of insight. I grew up in a fairly racially conservative part of Victoria, did I hate her for the skin colour she gave me? Or for marrying a European and blurring the boundaries of cultural identity? Or was I playing power games with her and my father, setting them off against each other? Siding with the one who struggled to adapt to the power dynamics of the family? I don’t know. Maybe I just had enough teenage self-loathing to hate the one person that reminded me most of myself. Maybe it was all of these things, like lost threads rolled together to create one ball of useless, unconnected snippets to entertain my frantic teenage hands. But I sigh now and think so much wasted energy fighting. I want to go back as my wiser-older self and shake me, the teenager, until all the rage that was in me falls on the ground, powdered and sweet, like icing sugar.

But instead I’ll drive out to the airport tomorrow, humbled by a mother’s love. I’ll be thankful that there were those events and family crises that shook me out of my self-indulgent reverie. I’ll find her amongst the crowd and she’ll take my hand and I will feel so little, yet so changed, so grown up.In the morning I’ll spray myself happy with the ‘Happy clinic’ perfume as I laugh and settle her back home.

P.S. Anyone who had a similar mother-daughter experience may be interested in The Birth of Pleasure, by Carol Gilligan. It shed a lot of light on my teenage years.

P.P.S. Thanks for all your comments on my last blog. There was no lunch, just a week full of sighs and messages from the universe like 'it's okay to fuck - and it's okay to fuck up'. Thanks Audrey apple of my heart!

A mermaid moment, Jennifer Love Hewitt and the official “Fat Whore” stamp.

There’s nothing quite like a little domestic cleansing to get that man out of your mind. I just made cumquat marmalade and swept the floor singing “I’m gonna wash that man right outta my hair” into the broom handle. Simple satisfaction.

The reason for all this washing, singing and cleaning goes something like this:

Last Saturday saw me at the lake with the new man. (I shall call him Gayef, in honour of his Russian connection and in fitting reference to Chekhov’s character in The Cherry Orchard.) Gayef is that particular kind of man that every good lady has stored away like a pair of broken down knickers, gracelessly thrown to the back of the lingerie draw. Loose elastic at the waist, faded, moth eaten holes in the crotch, saved for those special times of the month, or for a particularly sad day at the office when the all the dirty pretty undies are eyeing you off from a heaped pile in the corner your bedroom.

In times of great physical need Gayef waltzes right back into my life, on cue, with the same great haircut and his desperate woman radar completely tuned to perfection. How does he know? I’m sure his daddy taught him, just like his daddy’s daddy taught his pa before him.

Gayef is rather a sad chap in that he is constantly bored with his own existence, gets his thrills out of pushing people’s buttons and the boundaries of social conventions, and basically staggers through life making enemies and womanising. Just the kind of a-hole I seem to have a well developed palate for.

So into the water we go. Gayef is not a particularly generous character, in any sense of the word, so we have a few awkward moments clambering down some slippery rocks holding hands out of necessity and not affection. We spend a good hour in the water enjoying each other’s velvety limbs and some rather nice kisses. Gayef tells me the water is very becoming to me and I look like a beautiful mermaid. I, like an idiot, get suckered into his one grand moment of creative kindness and convince myself that I have finally melted a little hole onto his thawing heart. We leave the lake, looking slightly less like hitch-hiking buddies and more like Brad and Angelina baby shopping in Cambodia.

You can feel the love, right?

Anyway, to the credit of my eager stupidity, I got a week long kick out of the weekend romancing with the Russian, which continued long into the balmy summer night. This very cheap thrill (did I mention he was tight around the purse strings as well?) gets me through to Tuesday when two news worthy incidents thankfully re-directed my interest back to the world.

Firstly, the release of Mission Australia’s National Youth Survey revealing that out of the 29,000 young people surveyed between the ages of 11-24, their top concern was body image. And secondly, I will admit the headline ‘Jenifer Love Hewitt hits back’ did grab my attention, after images of her holidaying in a bikini were ridiculed on the internet with comments such as, “We know what you ate this summer, Love – everything!”.

Now I’m no Jennifer fan, but I am a well trained tabloid monkey whose eyes are immediately directed to this kind of misogynistic headline. The article infuriated me, Love Hewitt is quoted as saying,

"I've sat by in silence for a long time now about the way women's bodies are constantly scrutinised. To set the record straight, I'm not upset for me, but for all the girls out there that are struggling with their body image. To all girls with butts, boobs, hips and a waist put on a bikini - put it on and stay strong."

Hewitt also wrote on her web site that she is a size 2, is not fat and that a size 0 doesn’t make you beautiful.

Yes, I was riled...

Of course Hewitt has “sat by in silence”. Very few women actually have the strength to stand up for the rest of our sex out of fear that they themselves will come under the watchful eye that scrutinises women’s bodies and women’s actions. It’s easier to just sit there, smile pretty and be thankful that some other less fortunate lady is taking your share of female abuse. And why are we still justifying our bodies according to numerics? Size 2 means you’re safe, but size 14 or 16 throws you into the dangerous territory that makes you susceptible to female ridicule? Have I got the equation right? As for the comment “put on a bikini and stay strong”, I think it speaks for itself really. Didn’t the feminist sisterhood used to call for a hammer to bring the patriarch down, not a bikini?

Well, I must say I was a little cross but perhaps it’s easy to feel this way until it happens to you.

Yes, this is the part where the anti-hero Gayef re-enters this happy scene.

Some mid week romancing takes place, in which after a rather intimate moment, I voice my concerns that “little old me is just gonna end up sad and lonely.” To which the reply comes “Little? You?”, then he grabs my bare buttock, gives it a good shake the way a butcher handles a fine cut of pork and laughs merrily, “how much do you weigh?” And continues with “are you worried that you’re going to be alone because you are such a whore?”

Yep, it’s been approved. I now have the official stamp of “Fat Whore” branded on my brain, stored away for a rainy day of self loathing.

But what I want to know is where do they get these lines? Is there a secret male book entitled “Standard insults to knock ‘em down: how to use female insecurity to get what you want”? I don’t want to group all men together by any means, there are definitely some great men out there that I have had the pleasure of knowing, but then there are those whose only means of interaction with a woman is through humiliation. When are we as a progressive and privileged society going to move away from this negative male-female dynamic?

So, the Russian succeeded in making me feel awful, right down to my curves and bones. To combat this feeling of shit-house-ness I adorned myself in my finest wares, hit the town for some serious eating with a lovely lady friend and took Jen’s advice to heart.

I put on that mini skirt and STAYED STRONG!

Now all that's left to consider is how to behave at the next lunch date with the Russian, scheduled for this week. Perhaps I should order the lobster?