This memoir is the culmination of five years of stitching together fragments written over a considerably longer time. If Susan Wyndham had not asked me to contribute to My Mother, My Father, an anthology on losing a parent, I would not have had the incentive and validation required to tell the rest of this story.
Thank you to Kris Olsson for a generously constructive reading of a very incomplete first draft at a crucial stage. Your comments steered me off a dangerous reef.
The raw material of this manuscript was developed at two week-long intensive writers’ retreats run by Charlotte Wood. I arrived at the first one in bad shape from my father’s funeral. I would like to thank fellow writers Carolyn Swindell, James Tierney and Cath Hickie for their tact, kindness, patience and encouragement, which got me over the line; on the second retreat Kris Olsson, Susan Wyndham, Julie Bail, Ashley Hay and Sandra Hogan provided words of support to push the project forward. Charlotte’s low-key but ever-present guidance, combined with the bountiful nourishment she provided each evening at dinner, made the experience of writing more focused and even occasionally joyful. Her friendship has been a continued source of strength, pleasure, solace and mirth. But I still don’t get camping.
I owe Ailsa Piper a huge debt for two meticulously close reads of the first and last drafts and so much more.
To my publisher Jane Palfreyman: I will never forget the moment I read your email response to the manuscript. I was sitting under a canopy in Jaipur listening to golden paragraphs tumbling effortlessly from Colm Toibin’s lips when I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket and sneaked a look. Your connection with the story and fierce desire to take it on were so overwhelming I cried for joy most of the rest of the day.
Ali Lavau showed me how to lick the manuscript into a more coherent shape; thank you also to editors Christa Munns and Susin Chow, to Nicola Young for her forensic proofreading, to Andy Palmer and the marketing team at Allen & Unwin.
I would also like to express my thanks, in no particular order to: Good Weekend magazine editors Fenella Souter and Ben Naparstek, who commissioned early sketches of what later became chapters; Aviva Tuffield, Hannie Rayson, Meredith Jaffe, Lee Kofman, Maria Katsonis, Agnès Varda, Antonia Case, Sabine Amoore Pinon, Christine Jordan, Peta Landman, Marie-France Casalis, Laura Kroetsch, Rosemary Neill, Ariane Allard for research into my grandparents’ death, Patti Miller for the writing exercise that prompted the Kennedy story, David Hughes, Mary Minzly, Valerie Redgrove, the most gifted teacher who believed and was gone much too soon, Alison Manning for coaching wisdom, Bundanon Artist-in-Residence program for allowing me to share my husband’s stay to undertake uninterrupted rewrites with wombats, Helen Garner, Magda Szubanski, Geraldine Brooks, Richard Glover, Elizabeth Gilbert—and anyone who ever said, after hearing one of my family anecdotes, ‘You should write a book,’ making me believe there might be a readership for these stories.
I accept full responsibility for liberties I have taken with time: close observers of the events of 22 November 1963 have pointed out that mothers waiting at my school would not yet have heard the news. But that is the way I remember it.
During the course of writing, I read many memoirs, of which Boy, Lost by Kris Olsson, H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald, Fierce Attachments by Vivian Gornick, Flesh Wounds by Richard Glover and Reckoning by Magda Szubanski all provided me with much-needed injections of determination and truth serum. Mary Karr’s The Liars’ Club gave me a pure shot of adrenalin, reminding me to be fearless and get down the physical details.
Finally, I wish to thank the two people to whom this book is dedicated: my mother Jacqueline, who was brave enough to let me share her story and took the cover photograph; I am sorry for any pain the telling of it has caused her. And my husband David, who read many drafts, laughed, cried and read again, always with invaluable suggestions and much-needed tech support. Your grace in the world humbles me daily and your love shows me what is possible.