An epic story of family, fun, and frivolity

So much has happened over the week; so many distractions, so many dramas. So I apologise for no posts over the last week-and-a-bit. I’ll be writing a long post now to make up for it. Since there is so much to say, I’ll split it up a bit with sub-headings.

Sisterly relations

The most important development of late has been with Sister. Since her return, nothing has been said about “it”. As with Mum and Dad, nothing has changed. And that worries me. I expected, at the very least, a few cautiously curious questions along the lines of “how do you know?” or “are you sure?” (and at worst “you know it’s a sin, right?”) but there has been nothing.

However, and it is a big however, something even more shocking transpired one night last week. Mum, Dad and Sister were watching TV in the lounge room and I was sitting in bed watching TV and knitting. My room is next to the TV room, so my door was open and we were watching the same channel, making comments to one another across the room. At the conclusion of the show, Mum muted her TV and asked me to do the same.
“What’s happening?” Dad asked, apparently annoyed at the disruption to his television watching experience.
“Sister has something to tell us, something life changing.” Mum explained. My first thought at this point was that this situation bore a remarkable resemblance to my coming out. I wondered if Mum and Dad were thinking the same, at the same time confronted with the incredulity of my sister being a lesbian, when Mum added cautiously, as if a light bulb had appeared above her head, “Wait a minute. You’re not becoming a nun are you?”
“Well don’t say it like that!” Sister said, annoyed.

I cannot recall the specific sequence of conversation beyond this point; but suffice it to say that it was not what my parents had been expecting. It turns out that Sister met a priest at the course who wanted to start a new religious order and she, along with some others from the course, were interested in becoming postulants—ones who were discerning if life in a religious order was for them. Sister feels called to a life in a religious order, somewhere where she can help the less fortunate (I believe this particular order will be helping disadvantaged kids in the city) and devote her lie to God in this way. She stressed that she wasn’t asking permission, nor was she asking for any kind of financial support—all she needed would be provided by the order—but wanted to let them know what was happening in her head.

I could see in my poor mother’s eyes that she was watching the prospects of grandkids becoming smaller and smaller on the horizon.

After her revelation, she came into my room to discuss it further with me. I am more religious than my parents; I do understand why she is doing this. She was so excited as she spoke of her plans and of the people who are involved in this. We spoke openly about Mum and Dad’s reaction. I explained that it is just like my being gay, it’s a process of grief; the lives they had imagined for us, lives in which we were married with two-point-four children, were now dead. They died suddenly, with no warning. Mum and Dad needed time.

Academic closure

On Tuesday I did my take-home sociology exam. After a week or so of studying the material we’ve covered, I discovered that I was learning more in that one week than I had in the entire semester. It dawned on me that this could probably be due to the fact that I hadn’t opened the text book or further readings all semester. Nonetheless, I was happy with the exam. It was put online at 9am Tuesday and due 10am Wednesday. There were four sections, each one question. I think I wrote excellent answers for two of them (sexuality and multiculturalism), one okay answer (crime) and one iffy answer (education).

On Wednesday morning, Dad drove me to my Aunt’s place, where I left my bags—I was travelling to the coast to stay with Lala and Cal, but more on that later—before heading to uni to hand in the exam. My semester was over!

Fleeting encounters

After handing in the exam I went over to Broadway to buy a few things and then caught the bus to my aunt’s place. I was sitting at the bus stop, smoking, when a lady came up to me and said “we’re a dying breed aren’t we?”

Whenever someone speaks to me on public transport, I’m always anxious that the trip will be incredibly long and difficult. I had such an anxiety as she spoke.

“Pardon?” I said.
“We’re a dying breed. Smokers.”
“Oooohhhh.”
“Literally really.” She laughed.
“I know. Everyone used to smoke, now it’s no-one. But it’s my only vice; I don’t drink or gamble. Much.”
“So that means you do gamble. Only people who gamble say they don’t gamble much.”

The conversation continued and she was a lot of fun. We were talking as if we’d been best friends forever and always. As it turned out, she was 47 but she didn’t look a day over 30. I told her she looked fabulous for her age and she was flattered. We talked about what I was doing at uni, her days at uni, my fibromyalgia and her former drug habit—“I used for about ten years but I’ve been clean for four. I don’t know why I’m telling you this but you’re a stranger and I’ll probably never see you again.”—and about Pop’s death and Grandma’s Alzheimer’s, which lead to the topic of sad movies; she said it sounded like the story in The Notebook and I said that yes, it was. I told her I’d seen it but it was too close to home; I’d managed to hold it all in during the movie and then went outside for a smoke and totally lost it—“Have you ever tried to smoke while crying?” “No, I haven’t actually.” “It’s not easy!” “No, I don’t think it would be.”

We talked the whole way to my Aunt’s. For the first time in my life, I was sad to leave a stranger on the bus.

Holiday mode

I arrived on the coast in the afternoon on Wednesday to a jubilant Roxie (Lala and Cal’s dog) and it was as if I had never left. We hung out on Wednesday night and then left on Thursday for the north coast for a holiday weekend. On the way in the car I was on Roxie duty and I had a migraine coming on. Roxie is a very nervous little dog when she’s travelling in the car; if she’s not held firmly in place on someone’s lap she tries to leap to Lala (who was otherwise indisposed with the driving) and otherwise run amok.

We all arrived at about 8 pm, except Cal, who had to drive to Sydney and back so he therefore arrived at midnight. After much chatting, joking, frivolity, alcohol (although not for me and Amber, who is breastfeeding) we retired at 2 am, ready for the next big day—a day destined to be full of drinking, board games and fun. There were nine adults and two kids: Cal, Lala, Me, Bin (Lala’s sister), Ben (Bin’s best friend), Ade (Lala’s brother), Mary (Ade’s girlfriend), Amber (Lala’s best friend), Tom (Amber’s fiancé) and their two boys Brendan and Cooper (aged 18 months and three months respectively). The house has two bedrooms. It was squishy but we are all family. Lala, Cal and I shared one room; Tom, Amber and the boys shared the other; Bin and Ben shared a fold-out futon in the lounge-room and Ade and Mary shared an inflatable matrass in the TV room. There were clothes everywhere.

Thank God it’s Friday

I awoke to the sound of holiday noises on Friday at around 1pm. I had heard everyone else wake up much earlier and enjoy a breakfast of fried eggs, bacon, sausages and other items of fatty goodness. After everyone showered (at twenty minute intervals, due to the pitifully tiny hot water system that provided enough hot water for one five minute shower or approximately a third of a bath. Everyone except Cal, Tom, Brendan and I headed into town, twenty minutes away, for some shopping. We didn’t see the point in trudging around the town for no apparent reason so we stayed home and watched afternoon children’s TV with Brendan and hung out (I actually wrote half of this post at that time, the remainder being written on Saturday afternoon as I watch The devil wears Prada while everyone else sleeps).

They arrived home at around six. Amber was really mad because the chemist had refused to sell her some cough medicine for Brendan. Apparently the chemist doesn’t like selling that type of cough medicine to under-twos, despite the bottle saying it is for use from one month onwards. After a dinner we played the new Trivial Pursuit in teams: Lala and Amber; Bin and Ben; Ade and Mary; and Cal, Tom and I. It was a fun game, filled with lots of jokes, lots of drinking and lots of swearing, much to the chagrin of Amber, who lives in constant fear of her boys swearing to her mother. Brendan was put to bed but soon came back out to join in the fun because he couldn’t sleep; Cal and Tom are very loud when they’re drunk, Bin was cackling at every turn and the poor kid was so congested he could barely breathe. As the night wore on, and everyone got drunker (except of course, Amber and I), the game got wilder and wilder. Tom got an answer right for a question which no respectable straight boy should know the answer and exclaimed “I’m so gay!” I commented that he must be a closet metrosexual and he replied that he only moisturised, nothing more. This admission was all the funnier because he is the typical Aussie straight bloke—he swaggers, drinks beer and bourbon, swears like a sailor, and has the typical strine accent. I was shocked—“You moisturise?” I asked incredulously. “Hey!” Cal interjected, “there’s nothing wrong with that.” “You too!?” I said between uncontrollable fits of giggles, “Don’t you think it’s funny that out of the three of us, I’m the only one who doesn’t moisturise and I’m the gay one.”

After the game (by now 1 am), the others played a drinking game while Amber, Lala and I played with a very sleepy Brendan, who was still having trouble breathing. He sat on my lap at one point for a cuddle and I could feel the phlegm rattling around in his chest as I lay my hand on his back. By 2.30, Amber, Brendan and I went to bed. After I had turned out the light and got comfortable in bed, I heard Roxie, who was asleep on Lala and Cal’s bed when I came in, jump onto the ground, walk over to my bed and hop on. I felt her walk the length of the bed, from my feet to my head, whining. As she got closer to my face her whining became more desperate as she sought me out; I could hear her sniffing around looking for me. She located my head, sniffed briefly, and then curled herself into a ball next to my chest. Lala opened the door and came in, telling me she would be coming to bed shortly, as soon as she cleaned up Ade’s projectile vomit from the toilet, the bathroom floor, and the wall behind the toilet. She returned half an hour later, flopped into bed and was promptly snoring within five minutes.

Saturday, bloody Saturday

I was rudely woken four hours later, at 7.30am, to the booming sound of talk-back radio. It took me a while to gather my thoughts and realise it was not my alarm going off, but originating from somewhere outside my room. It was silenced fifteen minutes later, only to resume shortly thereafter. Getting sick of this rude intrusion on my morning sleep-in, and suspecting Brendan was up and about and playing with the stereo, I stuck my head out of the bedroom door into the lounge room only to discover a house full of sleeping people and a silent radio. I put on some trackpants and ducked outside for a smoke, where I discovered, with a mixture of amusement and incredulity, that the early morning aural assault was coming from next door. There was no mistaking the purpose of this acoustic onslaught.

“The spiteful cunts next door have put their radio on full volume, presumably because we were rowdy last night” I said to Cal, who had just let Roxie outside so she could go to the toilet and had heard the ruckus. “You’re not serious!” he said as he got dressed, “I’m going over there.” He went outside, swiftly got Roxie in the house and went next door. I should point out that these people are nuts who have had it in for Cal and his family since the beginning. They have sent nuisance claims to the council for every tiny infraction on Cal’s family’s part, over every development application they have ever lodged (Cal’s family built the house and these people lived here before that), they paid a landscaper $20,000 to landscape their yard in such a way as to obscure Cal’s family’s ocean view and are constantly spurting all manner of vitriolic insults at them when they walk past on the way to the beach. He stuck his head over the fence and saw that they had moved their stereo to the back veranda and pointed the speakers towards our house.

I stood on the front veranda watching as Cal walked purposefully over to their front door. He disappeared behind their garage and I waited. Over the sports scores that were issuing from the unseen radio, I heard the woman next door squark like a fishwife. A short silence followed, after which there was more squarking and shouting. This cycle was repeated a few times, after which I heard a door slam and saw Cal walk back looking thoroughly ropable and miming a telephone signal at me. I went inside and got the cordless phone and brought it to him, by now just inside the front door. “Cunts!” he said succinctly as Amber brought Cooper out of their bedroom.

He called his father to quickly detail the situation and then told me what had happened. He had knocked on the door and asked what was going on. He was informed, by the fishwife, that we had kept her up until midnight with our noise, accusing us of taking drugs and having a laughing prostitute over. Furthermore, she informed Cal that his father had a different hooker here every week, that he had called a lady down the road begging for sex, that his mother’s illness was caused by the stress of having such an awful family, that he should get a job and they should move to some other cheaper town where they belong. We can only assume that the laughing prostitute in question is Bin, who gets very jovial when drinking; the remaining comments defy logic. Cal called the police and shortly after the music stopped. We were a little annoyed since it would have been nice to have them caught red handed. Maybe the cops called them. Who knows. Where they get any of the information from is quite beyond Cal’s family anyway.

Since we were all up—at 9 am—we sat around and plotted the timely demise of our neighbours while playing with Cooper. He is just like a cabbage-patch doll. So cute. Brendan and Tom emerged at 1pm, Tom looking as chipper as ever despite what must have been a spectacular hangover, Brendan looking thoroughly depressed. He wheezed when he breathed and was not a happy little camper at all. After calling every doctor within an hour’s drive and not finding a single one who was open, despite several doctors answering the phone (one informing Lala that it must be asthma if he is having trouble breathing and that it couldn’t possibly be a chest infection, advising her to take him to the hospital two hours’ drive away). Since it was clear Brendan wasn’t going to get better without medical intervention, they packed up the car and left a day early, cursing the lack of medical care on the mid north coast.

Right now, Cal and Lala are making dinner as we prepare for a night of Pictionary, a game at which Cal is totally inept for a change, and no doubt a good deal of drinking. Life here is pretty perfect; I have an ocean view, I can hear the roaring crash of the waves as I drift off to sleep, I’m with some of my favourite people and I don’t have uni for another six weeks.

Yay for holidays.