Happy Buddha
Without Prejudice
The first day of warm weather arrives after cold more bitter as it leaves in a last wintry blast that nips at my barefeet as I run from Unit to house. The sky brittle bright with the clouded moon that winks at me and says it will be alright, they are all alright. And they are. I count head on school holiday pillows of night tiredness and eyes strained from too many games.
Happy Buddha, Cruz and blonde haired Acer are worn out by the first day at Day Care and smeared butter and Nutella clings to their sweet mouths as the lie open mouthed, sprawled on the bunks. We are still stripping room by room of clutter and Yvette, so poor, for so long hates giving up her "stuff". We do it when she is not around as it's easier.
She follows me back to my unit where all is peace and content and candles and lamps. Tidy as only I can be, with anal Virgo fastidiousness. We watch the Emmys and Brownlows and laugh and giggle at some of the outfits and admire hair and makeup and fake tan so bad it makes your eyes water. Brynn Edelston is dressed in a Mirror ball swan dress and I tell Yvette her Aunt went to a function where The Edelstons were and they were sat by themselves. The Hoi Poloi of Melbourne, not wanting to know the "Upstarts". Melbourne is very Downton Abbey like that.
There's old money and new money as and as we are all more affluent these days and some more affluent than others. It's all happened so fast with the internet making instant millionaires out of just about anyone and suddenly there is "new" money. Not "old" money passed on from generation to generation with the holiday houses at Cape Schank or Portsea.
Old money of Toorak cowboys with their Toorak tractors, sharply slicked hair and a career in Finance for the men. And for the naughty charity wives with their lush drinking societies and absent husbands. Hubbies gone to the world of "The City" to wear an Asser and TurnBull french cuff blue striped shirt and freshly ironed tie.
Snapping at the "troops" at work and demanding fresh coffee in a caffetiere from his receptionist. Only the best will do. And his wife pulls into the car park at Haileybury and the staff have to call her a cab as she is so drunk with her purple feathered fascinator askew over one eye. Her Son standing silent watching her with one eye of resignation and another of loathing, not just for her but for the pair of them.
Yvette and I talk and talk of kids and babies and all things of life and happiness, podgy warm babies buried into our necks in remembrance. I have seen all her babies born except for Brock, who came so quickly, half an hour. I could have delivered the laughing Buddha myself, there on the massive bed in her room with a hurried towel shoved under her buttocks. Her toes curling, in the agony and ecstasy of giving birth.
The man Paramedic was a little hesitant and I looked at his face and hers and said,
"Hospital",
we raced through the dark raining night, the drops streaming at windows and down as she Yvette's face as she labours. When the mind disappears and all is sensation and animal like grunting, like a sow in a field or the old cow in the shed, trying to deliver a breech calf.
Cruz, our bubble of delight burts forth into the world in one minute and 36 seconds of slamming through the doors of the labour ward. There is hardly any blood, just a quick delivery and Mother just about hops up from the gurney, zips up her jeans and walks away. I marvel at this baby making machine of mine. Her body as at ease at giving birth to number 7 as number one.
Number one was a struggle a little being the first and paving the way for all his brothers. I look at him now, six feet tall and polite as he goes out for the night in his flash Audi. Darkly good looking like Mum and Dad, slight in frame, (he didn't have a hope of being anything else, with his parents. ) They don't make one normal human being between them and thats physically and in every other way.
Except for their sons. They don't follow in Daddy's image. No drugs, no booze, no criminality, just healthy good looking boys that are quiet and reserved and roll their eyes a lot at their zany Mother and Nanny. I'm Nanny and I am 2 nd in line of things they are most afraid of. Yvette rules in that regard. They are all scared shitless of her.
She can scrap and fight, yell like the whole world wants to hear her, swear like a trooper, boots them up the bum if she feels like they need it and Mothers them with a tender ferocity that would take your breath away. She thought she wasn't much as a kid. Had a bad attitude, was a REBEL of major pain and terror. If I locked her in her room she was out the window. At 4.
She spat and defied and glowered, every day, every single day. She was a cat all claws, could scream Parkmore Shopping Centre down with tantrums and I would either just abandon her or grab her elbow in a vice like grip, pulling it higher and higher as she went Ow Ow Ow. I could have killed her then, it's a wonder I didn't. She was never happy, always angry, wouldn't look at people ot talk to them when they greeted her.
I began to think she was really retarded when she kicked a teacher in maths class and stalked home at 10. So they made us take her to a child psychologist, who was fantastic and she loved him. Little miss unfriendly liked the kindly thin almost ascetic asian psychiatrist. He sat, hands steepled in front of him and after a while she liked and trusted him and after about a year we began to get somewhere.
He was all the way over in Blackburn from Keysborough and the trip was tedious and she would fret all the way. Then she would bounce out after a while. He told me she was a pessimist (No shit, Sherlock) and thought that her Father and I liked Deb her older sister by one year, better as she was a "Good Girl".
I had to relearn how to connect to her as she had become so spiky and we began with stuffed toys and books and went from there. We still both adore Garfield from those days as I started to buy them for her and a hand puppet called Delilah. She continued to have a blanket and suck her thumb till she was about 15. But she's now 40 and the Mother of 7 boys and I just look at her and I think thank You God that she's here and she's OK xxxxxx
The first day of warm weather arrives after cold more bitter as it leaves in a last wintry blast that nips at my barefeet as I run from Unit to house. The sky brittle bright with the clouded moon that winks at me and says it will be alright, they are all alright. And they are. I count head on school holiday pillows of night tiredness and eyes strained from too many games.
Happy Buddha, Cruz and blonde haired Acer are worn out by the first day at Day Care and smeared butter and Nutella clings to their sweet mouths as the lie open mouthed, sprawled on the bunks. We are still stripping room by room of clutter and Yvette, so poor, for so long hates giving up her "stuff". We do it when she is not around as it's easier.
She follows me back to my unit where all is peace and content and candles and lamps. Tidy as only I can be, with anal Virgo fastidiousness. We watch the Emmys and Brownlows and laugh and giggle at some of the outfits and admire hair and makeup and fake tan so bad it makes your eyes water. Brynn Edelston is dressed in a Mirror ball swan dress and I tell Yvette her Aunt went to a function where The Edelstons were and they were sat by themselves. The Hoi Poloi of Melbourne, not wanting to know the "Upstarts". Melbourne is very Downton Abbey like that.
There's old money and new money as and as we are all more affluent these days and some more affluent than others. It's all happened so fast with the internet making instant millionaires out of just about anyone and suddenly there is "new" money. Not "old" money passed on from generation to generation with the holiday houses at Cape Schank or Portsea.
Old money of Toorak cowboys with their Toorak tractors, sharply slicked hair and a career in Finance for the men. And for the naughty charity wives with their lush drinking societies and absent husbands. Hubbies gone to the world of "The City" to wear an Asser and TurnBull french cuff blue striped shirt and freshly ironed tie.
Snapping at the "troops" at work and demanding fresh coffee in a caffetiere from his receptionist. Only the best will do. And his wife pulls into the car park at Haileybury and the staff have to call her a cab as she is so drunk with her purple feathered fascinator askew over one eye. Her Son standing silent watching her with one eye of resignation and another of loathing, not just for her but for the pair of them.
Yvette and I talk and talk of kids and babies and all things of life and happiness, podgy warm babies buried into our necks in remembrance. I have seen all her babies born except for Brock, who came so quickly, half an hour. I could have delivered the laughing Buddha myself, there on the massive bed in her room with a hurried towel shoved under her buttocks. Her toes curling, in the agony and ecstasy of giving birth.
The man Paramedic was a little hesitant and I looked at his face and hers and said,
"Hospital",
we raced through the dark raining night, the drops streaming at windows and down as she Yvette's face as she labours. When the mind disappears and all is sensation and animal like grunting, like a sow in a field or the old cow in the shed, trying to deliver a breech calf.
Cruz, our bubble of delight burts forth into the world in one minute and 36 seconds of slamming through the doors of the labour ward. There is hardly any blood, just a quick delivery and Mother just about hops up from the gurney, zips up her jeans and walks away. I marvel at this baby making machine of mine. Her body as at ease at giving birth to number 7 as number one.
Number one was a struggle a little being the first and paving the way for all his brothers. I look at him now, six feet tall and polite as he goes out for the night in his flash Audi. Darkly good looking like Mum and Dad, slight in frame, (he didn't have a hope of being anything else, with his parents. ) They don't make one normal human being between them and thats physically and in every other way.
Except for their sons. They don't follow in Daddy's image. No drugs, no booze, no criminality, just healthy good looking boys that are quiet and reserved and roll their eyes a lot at their zany Mother and Nanny. I'm Nanny and I am 2 nd in line of things they are most afraid of. Yvette rules in that regard. They are all scared shitless of her.
She can scrap and fight, yell like the whole world wants to hear her, swear like a trooper, boots them up the bum if she feels like they need it and Mothers them with a tender ferocity that would take your breath away. She thought she wasn't much as a kid. Had a bad attitude, was a REBEL of major pain and terror. If I locked her in her room she was out the window. At 4.
She spat and defied and glowered, every day, every single day. She was a cat all claws, could scream Parkmore Shopping Centre down with tantrums and I would either just abandon her or grab her elbow in a vice like grip, pulling it higher and higher as she went Ow Ow Ow. I could have killed her then, it's a wonder I didn't. She was never happy, always angry, wouldn't look at people ot talk to them when they greeted her.
I began to think she was really retarded when she kicked a teacher in maths class and stalked home at 10. So they made us take her to a child psychologist, who was fantastic and she loved him. Little miss unfriendly liked the kindly thin almost ascetic asian psychiatrist. He sat, hands steepled in front of him and after a while she liked and trusted him and after about a year we began to get somewhere.
He was all the way over in Blackburn from Keysborough and the trip was tedious and she would fret all the way. Then she would bounce out after a while. He told me she was a pessimist (No shit, Sherlock) and thought that her Father and I liked Deb her older sister by one year, better as she was a "Good Girl".
I had to relearn how to connect to her as she had become so spiky and we began with stuffed toys and books and went from there. We still both adore Garfield from those days as I started to buy them for her and a hand puppet called Delilah. She continued to have a blanket and suck her thumb till she was about 15. But she's now 40 and the Mother of 7 boys and I just look at her and I think thank You God that she's here and she's OK xxxxxx
