We spoke to friends who had twins. They said the first six months would be unforgettable.
‘How come?’
‘Because you won’t be able to remember a thing about them.’
Make that the first twelve months, a strange time which we longed to get through and at the same time wished would last forever. We wanted these two little bundles to grow up fast so they could help themselves and let us get some sleep; at the same time we hated the thought that they would ever change and stop needing us. It was a time of vulnerability for all concerned.
We drove fifty kilometres to the supermarket in Goulburn on Saturday mornings and did laps of the carpark until we could find the trolley with two baby seats at the front: it was a wide-bodied vehicle capable also of handling nappies for the babies and grog for us. I don’t know why we were buying grog. We didn’t need it. The beauty of sleep deprivation is that it saves money. It produces all the effects of a hangover without the expense of alcohol.
Strangers were often charmed and it was the soul’s balm to see how our two little babies brought magic to even the most mundane carpark. One old woman leaned over them, showing her concern for their wellbeing by holding her cigarette at arms length so that, except for the pesky wind, Jacob and Clare might have been spared some of her smoke. Having studied them for some time she asked if they were twins. She nodded sagely; she had thought as much.
‘And how long have they been twins?’ she asked.
People who had twins approached us from all directions, wanting to remember when their own were little. We met parents whose twins were three, seven, fourteen, sixteen, twenty-four, you name it.
‘My twins are fifty-five,’ said one woman. ‘I’ve been looking at yours and thinking back. It’s a beautiful memory. The time you have now is so precious. Don’t worry. Life will get easier. But it won’t get any better.’
On another occasion, Jenny was struggling to get three kids out of the car and into the two seats and one toddler tow-behind of a pram. A woman came along and put money in the parking meter for her.
‘I had twins too,’ said the woman, her kindness like the touch of a feather. She vanished before Jenny could burst into tears.
One night, we decided to eat at the Workers Club in Goulburn, choosing the venue because its carpet, being all the colours of a kaleidoscope, would help make our visit a bit less conspicuous. We had come to accept the fact that when we went out to dinner we were basically paying to feed the carpet. Patrons approached Jenny and congratulated her on what she was doing for Australia. This was one of the nice things about the Workers Club: anything anybody did that was good was always for Australia. If you won a raffle, you were doing it for Australia. If you lost a raffle, you were doing even more for Australia than winning because you were letting someone else win it for Australia. One of the members was so overwhelmed by the sight of a mother with baby twins and a little boy to boot that he was even prepared to leave his gaming machine for a few minutes to give us the benefit of his views.
‘This bloody country can be bloody proud to have produced such a bloody beautiful woman who can produce such bloody beautiful children . . .’
Pause. He was breathless with emotion.
‘. . . from her bloody beautiful body.’
Pause while he adjusted his trousers.
‘. . . And it makes me bloody proud to see the bloody future in such beautiful bloody hands.’
Jenny was quite pleased by this address, which made me think that perhaps this was the kind of thing she needed to hear more often from me. I had thought we were barely managing to cope from day to day and was surprised to learn that the whole country was depending on us.
The man then turned his attention on me.
‘And you make sure you bloody well look after her, mate, or you’ll have me to deal with.’
I said meekly that I’d do my best.
‘I mean it’s you that got her into this bloody mess.’
Another pause.
‘You know what I mean, mate. I don’t have to spell it out, do I?’
I assured him it wouldn’t be necessary. He told Jenny that she should feel perfectly comfortable about breastfeeding in any part of the club.
‘Anywhere you like, love. Anywhere at all.’
He was heading back to his machine.
‘. . . You can use one of the pokie stools if you like.’
Other times, people were less supportive. Or should I say more anxious. You don’t have to be in the parenting business for long before you notice that there are folk for whom little people are a terrible source of anxiety; these people often think of parenting as a precise science which is learned from statistics. If you depart from the script, they have to let you know. There’s a pot of gold to be made from parental anxiety, which is the main reason it keeps getting stoked. If you want a licence to print money, just think of any hairbrain scheme you can market as something that will help kids nudge their way to the top of the pile before their second birthday. It’s a wonder that schools haven’t started pre-natal learning centres to take advantage.
In my early expeditions with Jacob and Clare I was roundly ticked off a number of times. I was told that they should be wearing hats. I would normally have agreed heartily with this suggestion except for the fact we were inside when it was made. A woman loomed up at me out of the dog food aisle. She had read something about the effect of fluorescent light on babies and was concerned.
‘Cotton hats are fine,’ she said. ‘They don’t have to be Cancer Council hats. Just plain cotton will do.’
Like the ghost of Hamlet’s father, she delivered her message and vanished.
This was so odd that I had to ring Jenny and let her know. While I was on the phone, another person interrupted to tell me it was dangerous to talk on a mobile while pushing a shopping trolley and that kids required my full attention and if I wasn’t prepared to give it, then why did I have them in the first place.
‘Technically, it was my wife who had them,’ I replied, passing the buck as usual.
Another time, a woman noticed I was wiping their noses with an upward motion instead of a downward motion. She was concerned that I was pushing germs back up their noses and felt it incumbent upon her to let me know. A man once came up behind me as I was putting them in the car because he thought I wasn’t fitting their restraints correctly. On one occasion I was sitting in a coffee shop and gave some of the froth off the top of my cappuccino, the part with a bit of chocolate sprinkled on it, to Clare, then almost nine months old. It was rare that I could do this because in Goulburn it was the custom for the froth to arrive in the saucer under the cup and not on top. But I chose the wrong moment. The woman on the next table went into action. Did I have any idea what caffeine could do to a child that age? Was I so stupid that I thought the froth on top was free of caffeine? Did I have any appreciation of what caffeine could do to the cognitive development of a child? Did I realise that sleep deprivation was an officially recognised form of torture?
I felt like saying that I was the one being deprived of sleep, but you always think of these things at a quarter to twelve at night when it’s too late. People urged us and begged us and made us vow never to sleep in the same bed as the kids. I swear we did what they said. We may have been in the same bed but I promise we never slept.