Fatherhood

Take a new born human being, add many cups of love, a few tablespoons of values, a dash or two of discipline, as many dollars as you can or can’t afford, season with pride, cultural expectation, concern and a good quantity of anxiety and then stir rapidly over extremely high heat from the moment that your first child is born until the moment you die. Taste frequently to see that things seem to be progressing as desired but expect that the taste will change periodically without notice from sweet, to sour, to salty, perhaps all in the one mouthful. If you find that the taste is perfectly balanced, drink as many cups as you can at that stage because you can’t be sure when it will next taste this good. Once it has all brewed to a certain indeterminate level, recognise that you have created the best dish that you can, stand back and as difficult as it may be, try not to add any further ingredients. Other than love. You can never add too much of this.

Jazzy was the one who first made me a father. Out she came and immediately Tori and I were confronted with our first parental decision. Shall we give her the vitamin K injection, the doctor asked. “Errrhhhh…. I don’t know”, we stammered without a clue. “What do you think”? That’s your decision to make, the doctor told us. So after an anxious and extremely muddled few moments, Tori and I decided to go with the odds and what appeared to be the general flow and told him uncertainly to go for it. And I guess the process from one day to the next is to try and do what you think is the right thing for your kids, while at the same time trying to balance your own sanity and remembering occasionally that you have a partner (if you still do), and try and have the time and energy to still share affection with them. If I let my five year old climb that extremely high tree over there and clamber precariously out on the edge of that bouncing limb, am I being a good parent by allowing them freedom to express themselves and push themselves to achieve, or am I being an irresponsible parent who is not caring appropriately for the safety of their child? If I call them back down am I stifling their growth and instilling my own fears in them or am I merely ensuring that they will survive intact to live another day? The answer to this question, just like AFL tribunal decisions, is inconsistent and ultimately depends on the consequences of the action. Like the player who chooses to bump and inadvertently hits the head of his opponent and knocks him out cold, if you choose to allow your child to do something dangerous and they end up in some kind of critical condition, you made the wrong call. At least that’s how the tribunal inside your head will probably adjudicate the matter and the penalty will be handed out in lashings of guilt and regret.

On the other side of the ledger however is the front row seat that you get to watching the development of probably the best human beings that you’re ever likely to meet in your life. Seeing them grow and revelling in their every achievement, from being able to use a spoon, successfully wipe their own bums and on to even greater heights after that. I’ve tried to not be one of those parents who bangs on and on about how great their kids are. I am sure however that at times I have failed miserably and crapped on for way too long about how awesome Jazzy, Finn and Kimi are and bored some people senseless about their achievements. I make no apology for that though. They are awesome.

No topic has ever been off limits for discussion in our house. Sex. Religion. Drugs. Politics. Racism. Gender roles and human equality. The environment and the world around us. Whatever. All the big issues are welcome and conversations have always been plentiful, passionate and no holds barred. We have always addressed all issues as openly as possible. I don't think that there are too many topics that the kids would feel that they couldn't discuss with Tori and I. As they get older, the conversations become even more interesting. I certainly get as much out of learning their views on all the big topics as I expect them to get from mine. We are all always learning and having children in my life has probably been the biggest ongoing source of education for me. It has taught me a lot about myself and has also given me the opportunity to see the world through other sets of growing eyes. Fascinating, albeit on occasions confronting.

I’ve been fortunate to have the opportunity over the last eighteen months to spend some good one on one time away with each of them. Lying in a hospital bed early last year reminded me of the importance of making this happen and so when the opportunity has arisen, I have grabbed it with both hands. It has allowed me to hang out with them in different surrounds, away from the regular family dynamic full of history of me being the dominant father and them being the child. It’s allowed me to experience time with them much more as separate individuals in their own right, looking to find common ground, sharing experiences together, being more of a travel companion than a father (where possible), letting them free to explore themselves with me being an interested observer rather than somebody steering the path. I hope that in years to come they will occasionally be able to set some time aside from their busy lives, potentially with partners and children of their own, to come and hang out with me for a little bit. Hopefully in some exotic location where new adventures await.

I love you Jazzy, Finn and Kimi. And it will always be so.

Sermon from the mount (Blessed are the cheesemakers)

What is it about human beings that there seems to be a need to believe in some greater power. To either relinquish control in the form of “God’s will” or to not be able to accept that some things just can’t be explained by the human mind. With a disclaimer up front that I firmly believe that people have a right to believe whatever they choose, seek their own spirituality and follow whatever doctrine they fancy; the ramblings here are my beliefs. If you are offended by those who express disbelief in your religion, then perhaps you should stop reading now.

I was born into a Jewish household. One that wasn’t particularly religious but one that still sent me to Sunday school to learn some Hebrew and about my culture, until such time as I reached thirteen years of age and did my bar mitzvah. We occasionally did Shabbat (the Sabbath) dinner at our house on a Friday night, went to the shule (synagogue) on Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) and some years even went to shule with mum on Rosh Hashana (Jewish New Year) in the morning before going to the Royal Melbourne Show in the afternoon. A good form of bribery. When I was a kid I would have done anything at all to get to go to the show. My Grandfather was quite a religious man, having been born in what was then (and some would say still is) Palestine. When I was around seven or eight years old he taught me a Jewish prayer called the Shema, which he said was the most important of all prayers, and suggested that I say it every day. Shema yisrael, Adonai elochainu, Adonai echad. Hear Israel, The Lord is God, The Lord is one. I loved my Zayda and so him sharing this with me made me feel special. He lived far away in Perth and I only got to see him periodically when he and my Nana made the long trip across the country or we went over to see them. He died when I was only ten. It felt incomprehensible. For some time I said the Shema daily. It made me feel closer to Zayda, especially after he was gone. It also made me feel like I had a direct hotline to God, which I acknowledge was quite a warm fuzzy feeling. I also threw in some other prayers for good measure, like the ones I’d seen on TV from the mostly Christian world. God bless Mum. God bless Dad. God bless Natalie (sometimes, when I hadn’t been fighting with her). God bless Rusty (our dog). God bless Whisky (our cat). God bless the St.Kilda football team (well we know that he wasn’t fucken listening for that one!!!!).

I think that at their base, religions try to provide an answer to humans on the three big questions; Where did we come from? What does it all mean? What happens to us when we die? I personally don’t really care what the answers are to any of these questions and I feel confident now that nobody here on Earth has the answer. I find it abhorrent that Christians of some denominations preach that if you don’t believe in “our savior” Jesus Christ, then no matter what kind of person you are and what deeds you perform during your life, you will be damned in hell for eternity. I saw a graphic storybook pamphlet just the other day, in 2019 AD (the year of our lord), that displayed exactly this. It showed a person trying to cross the lake of fire and good deeds only took you part of the way across, like a bridge that was only half completed. It was only with a crucifix that the gap was filled and easy passage was provided over to the safety of heaven. In fact with the crucifix firmly in place, no good deeds seemed required at all for you to stroll across. The magical cross bridged the gap without a need for anything else at all. Believe what we believe and you are one of God’s people. Don’t believe and you will go to hell. To me that seems a completely fucked up belief system, basically just a perfect way for writing into your doctrine that you are someway superior to others. Not to mention the powerful controlling mechanism this provides for the Church. No wonder we have had many hundreds of years of missionaries with their ethnocentric views trying to “save” the poor savages by converting them to Christianity. Taking children away from their mothers to put them in good Christian homes or institutions to try and breed the savage out of them. Typically this was done with goodwill and with best intentions. These, often goodhearted, people thought that they were doing the right thing for those poor unfortunate godless kids. It can only be through a sense of superiority according to your teachings that you can possibly believe that it is any way good to separate a child from its mother in such a systematic way. The Jews had a different air of superiority. They believed that they were God’s chosen people. It says so in the Old Testament, so it must be true. Unlike the Christians who tried to convince everybody that they should also be Christian, the Jews didn’t really want to let anybody else into their club. They certainly didn’t seek them. If your mother is Jewish, you are Jewish. Otherwise you’re not. Simple. And clearly some deference to the fact that we can’t ever really be certain who the father was. Even Jewish women must have been open to temptation from some suave, handsome, smooth talking Samaritan back in the day. To convert to Judaism there was a lot of study to be done to make sure that you knew all about the faith, meetings with the rabbi and eventually a test to see whether or not you were worthy. If you really wanted to become Jewish then you really needed to want it bad. I remember having a sense as a kid that people who converted to Judaism weren’t real Jews, no matter what they did. I was a kid so I’m sure that this thought didn’t just spring from my own mind but permeated my consciousness through exposure to this idea from elders of the tribe. Famous converts always seemed welcome though. I can recall that my family was really happy that Sammy Davis Jr and Elizabeth Taylor had become Jews. Paul Newman proudly identified as Jewish even though his mother wasn’t, but in his case, that was good enough for us. I mean, who wouldn’t want Paul Newman? The Jewish community of Melbourne was so cliquey that there were even levels of being a Jew within it. I didn’t go to Mount Scopus (a local Jewish high school) so was somehow made to feel a lesser Jew by those who did. I was instead at a Church of England boys’ grammar school loaded up with pedophiles and anti-Semites and I was certainly made to feel like an “other” by a number of people who inhabited that space, both students and teachers. I’d get jostled by a group of other kids on the way to class who would disparagingly call me Fourbee i.e. four-by-two, rhyming slang for Jew, while pushing past me and laughing at me with ridicule. I seem to recall being called a Christ killer on occasions, which always seemed a little incongruous to me given that he was a Jew himself and I felt pretty certain that he had famously been killed by the Romans.

Last night was the first night of Pesach (Passover) and so we went to my mum’s place for the Seder, as is our family tradition. Traditionally in our house this involves me reading some pieces in Hebrew from the Hagadah (Pesach prayer book), drinking a lot of wine (it is written in to the ceremony that everybody MUST drink four glasses of wine, while leaning to the left), eating way too much delicious food and listening to family favourites, such as Fiddler On the Roof and the soundtrack to the stage musical Hair. I knew more about the Jewish religion than either of my parents and was the only one who could read Hebrew so I was always the one running the Seder. As the years have gone by the stories have seemed more and more farfetched to me. I mean, how slow on the uptake would Pharoah have had to have been to need God to bring down ten plagues on him and his people before he acquiesced and let the Jews leave Egypt? How did he not realise after the plagues of blood, frogs, lice and wild animals that God was serious? And for that matter, how is it possible that the same God who saw fit to turn Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt for just one backward glance at Sodom, would have the patience to actually give Pharoah nine last chances at relinquishing before he decided to finally kill his eldest son and the first born male of every Egyptian family, to show that he really meant business. Surely in reality he would have smote Pharoah after only one warning. I told you once motherfucker, now take that. Clearly Tarantino didn’t write the bible. Even in soccer where they roll around like pussies you only get one yellow card before you’re sent off with a red, so how come God, who at one time decided he’d had enough of the whole world and drowned them all except for Noah and his crew just so that he could start all over, all of a sudden had so much patience?  And it wasn’t even just the people he took out. What kind of vengeful God also slays the first born male cattle because they happened to be owned by Egyptians? As if they hadn’t already had enough to deal with through the plague of the pestilence. What bollocks. But no less bizarre than the notion that Mary and Joseph who were husband and wife never had sex. Could Joseph not get it up? Was Mary not really attracted to him? What went on there if they were truly in a loving committed relationship? And if they didn’t consummate their marriage, doesn’t that mean legally by common law that they weren’t actually married. And if that’s the case, was Jesus actually a... you know? Not in the euphemistic sense of the word, because he seems like he was a really decent guy (told people to be nice to each other) and had some awesome party tricks (fed a whole mob of people somehow on only one loaf of bread and a fish), but in the so-called biblical sense. Mary falling pregnant despite her and Joe not getting jiggy together seems more than a little bit suss. Joseph must have had some serious questions to ask. It seems like a stretch at best.

The other night I went to see the fortieth anniversary screening of the Life Of Brian, clearly the most accurate documentary on religion ever made. Screw the calls for religious instruction to be reintroduced to schools in Australia. This should be mandatory viewing for all kids as part of the education curriculum.

Brian: “You've got it all wrong. You don't need to follow me. You don't need to follow anybody! You've got to think for yourselves. You're all individuals!”

Crowd: “Yes. We are all individuals”.

The stoning scene in all its ridiculousness (I’ll have two points, two flats and a packet of gravel) seems an embarrassment that should have been consigned to historical times long long ago, yet persists today in a number of countries. Only a few weeks ago, the Sultan of Brunei decided to reintroduce death by stoning for gay sex and adultery as part of some strict interpretation of Islamic law (even though stoning is not actually ever mentioned in the Quran). How is this possible in 2019?

The mob arguing over trivial symbols (Follow the gourd! No, follow the shoe! It’s a sandal, not a shoe!) in five seconds completely sums up the splits in Christianity and Islam into their various denominations. When Life of Brian was released there was uproar. Religious Christians and Jews felt united in being offended. “Blasphemy”, they yelled and I’m sure they would have liked to have stoned the Pythons to death if they could. Really it just put these belief systems under scrutiny, holding up a mirror to show how it all looks as an observer from the outside and to see where the cracks may appear. To me the gaps seem so wide that you could drive a camel train through them.

I think that for a lot of people (maybe the majority?), religious occasions are much more about family connection than they are with any religious doctrine. Pesach to me is certainly much more about getting together with my family and eating my mother’s food than anything else, and I look forward to it every year. The stories of Moses and his crew invariably facilitate good conversation over the four cups of wine, even if the stories themselves seem to lack any credibility. I know also that in a lot of Christian households, Christmas is much more about family and feasting than any religious belief. In the last Australian census, for the first time in our nation’s history, the largest single religious affiliation, recorded by just over thirty percent of the population, was “no religion”. Up almost eight percent from five years earlier. Thank God! Perhaps there is hope for us all yet.

Grasshopper in an ant suit

I’ve always been haunted by the fable of the grasshopper and the ants. It’s summertime and the grasshopper is out there partying and having a great old time. The ants meanwhile are working hard, gathering food for the difficult times they know lie ahead when winter comes. The grasshopper tries to entice them to party with him but the ants turn him down saying that they need to keep working hard in preparation for the changing season. Eventually when winter comes, the ants are tucked up cosy in their nest with all the food they gathered during the summer, having a grand old time of their own. The grasshopper meanwhile has nothing to eat and the weather has turned bitterly cold. He approaches the ants for help and they tell him “Sorry bud. You shouldn’t have spent all that time lazing around. If you had have worked hard like us you’d have plenty to eat now”. And they ignore the urgent pleading of the freezing grasshopper and leave him to starve to death.

I guess I first had that story along with other of Aesop’s equally uplifting fables read to me by my mum when I was six or seven years old and it has stuck with me. The bleak outcome for the grasshopper was very off-putting. It seemed clear that being an ant was the way to go. I’m not sure if the ancient Greeks invented capitalism, but this seems straight out of that play book. Work hard when you’re young and able, don’t be frivolous and indulgent with your time and then by the time you get to retirement age, you can stop working and you’ll have plenty of savings to see you through your dotage. That theory was what fuelled the twentieth century where people would work and work continuously for fifty or so years to save a nest egg for retirement. But I’ve always struggled with that. The grasshopper seems to be having a way better time and hey, summer seems long. Winter seems forever away and may never arrive in any case. And when it does, I’ll probably be too old and decrepit to enjoy the feasts of my labour in any case.

I’ve had many long stints as a grasshopper and it suits me well. It’s my favourite me. But the coming of winter has often played on my mind and so I’ve had a specially tailored ant suit crafted for me to wear. It fits me perfectly and is quite a convincing one. It comes complete with ant-like behaviours where I work long hours and produce quality results. If you didn’t know any better and you peered over at me, you could easily mistake me for an ant, though it’s true that sometimes the costume slips and one of my long green antennae pops out when I don’t mean for it to. I try to stack away as much food as I possibly can in the shortest period of time to allow me to get back to lazing under a tree in the warming summer sun, singing my song well into the barmy evening. Over the last few years the ant suit has fitted me so perfectly that at times I’ve had difficulty taking it off. And that is when another thought tends to come to mind. I’ve always had a belief, also involving ants and which I unimaginatively call the ant theory, that just like in Aesop’s tale you are an ant. You are going about your business, working hard, gathering food and doing whatever it is that ants do. Everything appears to be going along swimmingly well when all of a sudden a giant foot lands on you and you are a dead squashed ant. Winter will never come for you, so what was all that working about? Might as well have been hanging out with the grasshoppers.

And therein lies the conundrum. What will come first? Winter or the giant foot from above?

There is another thing that comes to mind when I ponder Aesop’s fable, and that is what a pack of pricks the ants are. Bad luck. We told you so. You should have been more like us. We’ll leave you to die now in your hour of need. And I can’t help but feel that this attitude is one taken now by many people when dealing with others different to us when they truly require our assistance. You’re not like us. We’re going to look after our own first (as if it’s not possible to help your own and somebody else at the same time). We’ll just lock you up and leave you to go mad or die on a prison island. We’ll build a wall to keep you out. We’ll shout racist abuse at you online and sometimes to your face. Our leaders will make policies to ensure that you suffer because that’s what they think our colony wants. It will dissuade others from coming and seeking our help. And in the case of the majority of those people in need, they weren’t actually grasshoppers at all, but just some different species of ant whose nests were destroyed by some force beyond their control. The ant theory writ large on their lives. History has shown that it could happen to any of us. Where and the circumstances into which you were born are just pure luck, for good or for bad. But I digress…

Being diagnosed with kidney cancer felt like I had that giant foot hovering just above me. Would it come crushing down on me or would it step over me and leave me unharmed? When it moved on and I was able to breathe once more I couldn’t work out which ant parable I was in. It seemed like a convoluted mix of the two. There was stuff all money in the bank despite all my working. Was this to be winter arriving? A long illness with no income available? Should I have been working harder and saving up for this moment? Or was it a wake-up call that the foot could come down at any minute when least expected so just dance in the sun while you are able? On my first overseas work trip after I’d had a kidney and the cancer extracted from my body I found myself caught between these two trains of thought. I was in Boston, a city which I had never previously visited and so had a strong yearning to explore and perhaps find some other grasshoppers to hang around with. I heard a voice inside my head say, “come on Greg, you need to remember why you are here”. It was a work trip. I had a presentation to deliver and potential customers to meet and try and woo. I needed to stay focussed. But then I heard the voice speak the same message with a deeper context. “Remember why you are here!” and that had me asking myself what is the point of being here at all if I don’t make the most of it and enjoy what’s on offer? Should the ant suit come off? But my health scare was all too recent and I found myself passing up a number of opportunities that any self-respecting grasshopper would have jumped at. As time has moved on from there, I have progressed into my next phase of being. The foot isn’t hanging over me now really any more than it hangs over all of us. An old friend who has been living in India for the last twenty-five years or so just dropped dead the other day seemingly without any significant warning. Another sad and sobering reminder in what seems to now be far too frequent an occurrence. I’ve decided to try and maximise the ant suit, to turbo-charge my food gathering bull ant style, and to seek it far and wide. I’m in my professional prime. I’m good at what I do and I enjoy my work. But at the same time I intend to ensure that the grasshopper side of me has a little more time to play and to just chill out. To that end, when I jet off overseas for work, I’m going to take members of my family with me as often as I can and tack some extra time on the trips to just hang out with them in some different locations. I'm going to put family holidays in interesting places as a top priority and given that my work is taking me all over the world at the moment, to recognise the unique opportunity I have to do this and to make the most of it. There’ll definitely be a lot less food saved for winter but that foot could come down at any moment for any of us, so…what the hell.

A new affair with an old lover

Dear Alcohol,

It’s been around fifteen months since we had our big breakup and what an interesting time it’s been. For most of that first year, I didn’t really miss you at all. In fact if anything, and I don’t mean to be rude, I found my life to be more fulfilling without you. I was waking up refreshed. Clear of mind and clear of conscience. My mouth didn’t feel like it had been used by you in some kind of dominatrix sex act. My soul didn’t feel degraded and used. But I guess I still must have had some yearnings for you deep down. My spirits soared when we happened to meet up after all that time in the Czech Republic. Seeing you in a Prague bar made my heart skip a beat. We flirted quite shamelessly and even though we didn’t go all the way, your gentle whispers aroused me in a way that made me just a little light headed and giddy. And our rendezvous in Paris felt like those romantic nights we shared in our youth. You were a true delight to be around. But once I was back home, I was happy to just look at this interlude as a holiday romance. A little fling while abroad. And it was easy for me to do that. Back in my regular world, I felt there was no longer a place for you. I’d fully moved on. Or at least so I thought. I’d had no problems through that first year watching you being intimate with my friends. Seeing them be seduced and fall completely under your spell. In some ways I just felt slightly superior, being completely immune to your undoubtable charms whereas they would be staggering around blindly and slurring, complete fools for your love. But something happened and I started to get jealous seeing my friends sharing you and you wantonly throwing yourself upon them with abandon. Everyone would be having such a good time and I felt quite staid, like the prude at the party. I was boring myself and I started to want you. To need you. I knew however that that we couldn’t just fall back into our old ways, as our old relationship was too destructive for me. So we agreed to take it slowly. To be friends with benefits rather than in a committed relationship. I know that it’s a bit shallow, but I have decided to only see you when you are dolled up and looking glamorous. When the passion is truly there and you are able to seduce me over again with your beauty and style. I can’t afford to allow myself to give over to you completely and love you unreservedly or that will see me back in the destructive relationship we once had. I no longer will be prepared to accept you on those nights or days where you turn up dressed in cheap material and with the foul scent of vomit on your breathe. Whereas previously I could push through on these occasions, allowing you to stick your rancid tongue down my throat, forgetting your putrid state as the night unfolded and getting caught up in a passionate frenzy that only filled me with empty regret the next morning. I’m more interested in keeping our relationship fresh. To only see you when it suits me this time and not just when you rock up, or because I happen to see others engaged in a large orgy of your making and they invite me in to taste your juices. I intend this time to be regarding our dalliances more as an affair with an old flame, one with whom I’ve shared a lot of great experiences and am completely comfortable. But I need that magic spark. I don’t want to be just going through the motions with a partner who clings to me and doesn’t give me the freedom and space to do things without her. And I need more romance in our relationship. I am looking more for sensuality than just the physicality of the act itself. And from my part I promise to treat you with respect, to not take you for granted and to try and keep things fresh by meeting up with you on special occasions of our making, and not those of others. I look forward to the time when we next meet. And who knows? It may even be tonight.

Lots of love,

Greg