To understand why I am the way I am, one doesn’t need to look much further than the man who sired me. My small Italian father, Vincie, is a glorious lunatic and I wouldn’t have him any other way. I truly don’t know where to begin painting the picture of my dad, there are so many stories from growing up with the most impatient man in Australia. Imagine if Super Mario, George Costanza and Danny DeVito had a baby and you’re almost there.
I think the reason I am so capable of a vast array of things is because as a kid, I had no other choice. I had exactly 2.5 seconds to complete a task my father had set or he would take it over, briskly moving me out of the way and berating me for being too slow. Not because he is a mean person – he is the kindest person I know – he just has zero tolerance for slowness! So be it Lego, putting Spokey Dokes on my bike or eating, it was kill or be killed with my dad. As a result, I’m an extremely quick learner and have crippling anxiety over the completion of menial tasks. Swings and roundabouts, eh?
My father is in constant motion, he is always busy, and a lot of the time, everything and everyone pisses him off. He is also charming, hilarious and generous. My dad and I have always been great mates, we’re similar in a lot of ways and he has always amused me. We’re both impatient and intolerant of the world in general. As far back as I can remember, Dad has made me laugh – but not always intentionally. He has a deep love of slapstick comedy, and as a kid I would sit with him watching Jerry Lewis movies. He’d call me into the lounge room most Sundays and make space for me next to him on the couch, enthusiastically telling me, ‘You’ll love this one!’ My dad has a very particular way of sitting. He crosses his legs and then tucks his foot under like a pretzel. Everything coiled up like a spring, ready to explode at a moment’s notice. When we’d watch Steve Martin, Billy Crystal or Chevy Case be ridiculous on screen his whole body would be locked in fits of giggles while his legs remained tightly crossed; tears streaming down his face as one of the actors would take hit after hit to their junk.
Dad moves around like a small hairy ninja. He makes no noise when he walks, it’s quite something. Every night, once we were all in bed, he would dart from room to room checking everything was locked and secure. He’d do it with the speed of a hummingbird, and in tattered jocks that hung from his sinewy frame. The only giveaway was the click-clack of the locks, then the fridge would go as he’d grab one last olive before going to bed, but you’d never hear a footstep, not one.
Dad has always preferred to make stuff rather than buy it, which is fine unless you’re the person who has to try to pass the item off to your friends. He made me everything from bikes to go-carts. He’d study the picture of whatever had taken my fancy and proclaim, ‘I can make that for half the price, Em!’ Then we would head down to the local hardware shop in Diamond Creek, sometimes a trip to the tip was required for spare parts, and then he would lock himself away in his garage, crazy-inventor style. His creations hardly ever looked like the picture, instead taking on a strange Alice in Wonderland Mad-Hatter-tea-party form of their own.
If I was to pin down the greatest insult involving the use of an inferior product to replace the thing I really wanted, we would need to take it all the way back to 1987. Just like any eight-year-old girl at the time, all I wanted in life was a Cabbage Patch Kid, the kind that came in the green box, with the woollen hair and the birth certificate with a ridiculous name like Cecilia Badelia written on it.
Picture it: Christmas Day, 1987.
I was ready.
I had written a very specific letter to Santa in red texta demanding one thing and one thing only: a Cabbage Patch Kid. I gave him no other options. There was no way he could stuff this up.
Dear Santa,
I just want a Cabbage Patch Kid this year, that is it.
I don’t need anything else.
Please give the rest of my gifts to the children in Africa.
Here is my list:
1. Cabbage Patch Kid.
Thank you,
Emy Rusciano.
I woke up at 4am Christmas morning and waited – we had been told we couldn’t get up before 6am, which I now think is very generous of my parents. Finally the hands on my Mickey Mouse watch reached the twelve and the six, and I sprang out of bed, shook my sister awake and bolted for the lounge room. The first thing that worried me was that there was a pile of presents from Santa, and I had been expecting just the one box. I knew that those dolls were very expensive, that’s why I had specified that I only needed that one gift! Maybe I had been super, extra good that year? My sister was told to unwrap her gifts first, so I watched patiently as she unwrapped the My Child doll she’d asked for. Do you remember My Child dolls? Before the doll could become your one true kid and you its one true Mummy, you had to kiss it on the nose? They had those terrifying glass eyes and soft felt skin?
Then finally it was my turn. I headed for my pile and opened all the gifts that weren’t Cabbage Patch Kid–sized. After a frantic three minutes of unwrapping I eventually got to the last gift. The first indicator that something was terribly wrong was that the last present was not in the shape of a box. It wasn’t even in a box: it felt soft and it rustled. I was prepared to overlook this and assume there had been some sort of terrible box mishap at Santa’s workshop. I tore the paper off and what I found was a plastic bag with a fake, thin, manky, wannabe Cabbage Patch Kid inside. I looked for the genuine birth certificate and all I found was a gel satchel that said, ‘Do not eat.’ I checked for the signature of the Cabbage Patch Kid inventor on its arse. In my heart of hearts I knew it wouldn’t be there, there is no way Xavier Roberts would have put his name to this abomination. No signature, string hair and she didn’t even have proper individually hand-stitched toes. She didn’t even have toes, just a long webbed foot. Needless to say, I was beside myself. The injustice of the situation was too much for me to bear and what I did next I’m not proud of, but I feel ‘Santa’s’ reckless behaviour led me to it.
I ripped my sister’s My Child from her little hands and I KISSED ITS NOSE. I mean I really made out with it, I got that nose pregnant with my tongue.
Before she had.
I know. Was there a greater crime to commit against your younger sister in the late eighties than forcibly adopting their My Child through nose sexual assault?
To be fair to my parents, I did receive a real Cabbage Patch Kid two months later on my birthday. The dolls were expensive and they needed to spread it out over the two occasions. As a parent I totally get that now, but then . . . not so much!
Besides having a love of cheap knock-offs, my dad is also a talented self-taught musician. My earliest memories are of going down to Barwon Heads and Torquay on the west coast of Victoria to watch him play and sing with his band, Owen Yatemen’s Big Fat Brass. Owen Yateman was a huge, tanned, slab of a man. He looked like the lost member of ZZ Top. Big Fat Brass were a pretty big deal at the time, Dad even got to play on a tour with Joe Cocker and Sammy Davis Jr. The Big Fat Brass’s repertoire involved a great deal of The Blues Brothers soundtrack. I could recite every line in that movie and fiercely shake a tail feather by the time I was six years old. It’s one of my dad’s all-time favourite films, second only to The Great Race – Tony Curtis and his sparkly blue eyes never got old in our house. There is a very famous scene from The Great Race, where Max tells the professor it’s time to ‘rise and shine’ after a night spent sleeping in the snow. The professor doesn’t like that particular turn of phrase and cracks the shits with Max big time. It goes on for quite a bit. Almost every morning for the twelve years I attended school, my dad would act out that entire scene, playing all the parts himself, as he woke my sister and me.
Vincie is extremely mechanically minded. He started out as a fitting and turning apprentice and even won apprentice of the year in 1968! Dad has always loved trawling hard rubbish collections looking for abandoned electrical equipment to bring home and make his own. The thing is, once he has rebuilt something, only he knows how to work it. Rather than just one simple switch, his re-creations usually involve an elaborate series of manoeuvres. Turning on our home theatre system had more steps involved than launching a nuclear warhead. He controlled everything that plugged in or had a battery at our house.
Em: ‘Daaaaad, I can’t get the TV to work.’
Vincie: ‘Just flip the silver switch, put it on AUX, hold down the red button, press the blue lever and wait 5 seconds.’
Vincie: [Waits 2.5 seconds] ‘Is it working?’
Em: ‘No.’
Dad: ‘Here let me, you’re hopeless.’
Dad has weighed sixty kilos since he was fifteen and not put a kilo on since despite being a massive feeder. Dad doesn’t eat proper main meals, his life is spent grazing on his own antipasto creations. He keeps a cheese box in the fridge filled with pungent dairy – the salami is kept in there as well. Dad cooks for everyone else, though. Masses of lasagne, pasta and schnitzels. He loves feeding people, it’s his way of showing love and care.
Dad is a mad keen F1 revhead; he is particularly passionate about Ferrari. Mum and he went on a trip to Italy and, against her better judgement, they ended up at the Ferarri testing track. He’d somehow gotten wind that they were testing the new Alonso and wanted to have a peek. Like that is something Ferrari would allow. Don’t think that the massive security around Fiorano Circuit, so that people couldn’t just have a peep at top-secret new models, put Dad off. Oh God, no, he made my mother crawl on her stomach under barbed wire just to catch a glimpse!
My father doesn’t believe in hospitals or doctors – there’s nothing Aspro and Savlon can’t fix. Which leads me to this: the story about my father that has been seared into my memory for all of time.
I arrived home from school one spring afternoon to find my dad tinkering with our brand-new ride-on mower in his shed. (Although to call it a shed is a little insulting to the tool palace it actually was.) As soon as I saw the tiny red hood popped on the mower I began to panic.
‘Dad! What are you doing?! That thing is brand new, you don’t need to fix it. Just leave it alone, would you?’ I shouted at him.
‘No, Em, you don’t get it. It’s not powerful enough to make it up the side hill. I’m just making some slight adjustments. It needs a tad more juice, just a tad. Wait and see how fast it goes!’ He was genuinely pumped at the prospect of his pimped-up mower.
‘Dad! Why do you need a fast lawn mower? It’s not like you’re going to be racing it. Stop it. Does Mum know what you are doing?’ This was my last resort, my one and only big move to attempt to control his behaviour – playing the Mum card.
‘No! Don’t you tell her either.’
As if.
‘You’re out of control. Have you even tried to make it up the hill? I’m sure it would, that’s what it’s made for!’ I already knew the answer to this, as he wasn’t one to trial things.
‘I don’t need to try it, Em, I can just tell. Just trust me, I know what I’m doing.’
I sighed heavily and went in to find my mother so I could dob on him and hopefully put a stop to this madness.
Luckily for him, Mum was still at work, so at fifteen I was the only responsible person in the house. I sat down to watch The Afternoon Show on the ABC and as the strains of Degrassi Junior High began playing, I heard what sounded like a V8 firing up. The people next door had just bought a brand-new Holden Clubsport so I thought nothing more of it until I saw my father zoom past the window at great pace on the ride-on mower.
Let’s put the speed aside for one moment and discuss his choice of safety clothes, shall we? On his feet not steel-capped boots, runners or even shoes of any kind, just a pair of thin rubber thongs because that is my dad’s standard issue footwear. He would scale a fucking volcano in thongs if given the choice. Dad has huge Hobbit toes, they account for fifty per cent of his foot length, and they can only roam free in an open-toed situation. He welds, mows, cuts, runs, does everything in thongs. Thongs aren’t known as safety footwear, especially since his huge toes cause the toe straps on them to bust out continuously. He solves that issue by putting bread tags underneath the little knot that goes through the toe hole. They once caused him to fall off our roof. He was up there trying to increase the signal power of our aerial (of course he was) and one of his thongs got caught in a loose roof tile. I was in my room, heard an almighty thump on the roof and then saw him him sailing past my window, his oversized cargo shorts flapping in the breeze (everything is oversized on Dad as he is 5 foot 4), barefoot and screaming ‘Faaaaaaaaark!’ as he went.
I raced to the backyard to try to get him off the mower before he took himself out.
As I turned the corner I heard him start up the hill. I yelled out to him to slow down, but he just turned around and raised his fist in triumph as the mower made light work of the enormous hill at the side of our house. You see, in his mind, Dad was in his own personal grand prix. He continued to fist pump as he rode the mower in a very jaunty fashion. You’ve never seen someone so pleased with themselves. Up and up the mower climbed until – well, until everything went to shit.
The back wheels began to furiously spin, which caused the front wheels to lift off the ground, and suddenly the mower had flipped and Dad and the mower were rolling down the hill. He came to a stop just as the mower began somersaulting backwards down the hill – still on! I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, Dad and the mower had become one and I didn’t know how to stop it. I screamed for him to get out of the way as he flew off and the rogue machine catapulted towards him. Then, as I watched on in horror, the mower rolled over the top of his forearms. It was carnage.
Dad isn’t one for blood and he went white when he noticed streams of it clumping and pooling in the vast amount of hair on his arms. I ran over to him and ripped my school jumper off to try and stem the tide. He kept muttering, ‘It’s just a scratch, I’m fine, Em.’ Needless to say, it was far more than just a scratch. Thankfully the mower had ended its path of destruction after crashing into the side of a large tree.
That was also the moment Mum arrived home to find her eldest daughter cradling Vincie in her arms, covered in blood and freshly cut grass. But having been with my father for well over two decades at that point, she wasn’t surprised. I remember her sighing and putting the shopping bags down, and bracing herself for the catastrophe she was about to witness.
As soon as we mentioned he would have to go to the hospital he began yelling at us.
‘I am NOT going to a hospital, just get me the Savlon and an Aspro. GET ME THE SAVLON!’
Then he passed out.
Lunatic.
The thing I should tell you is that he isn’t the original lunatic; that title goes to his father, my grandpa, Luigi Rusciano.
A couple of Sundays each month I would go with my dad and my sister and sometimes my mum to visit Nonna and Grandpa. They lived in a small, immaculate house in Coburg in Melbourne’s inner north-west. Luigi served as a chef for the Italian army and I later found out was a secret vegetarian! Please understand that if you tell an Italian that you’re a vegetarian, they will offer you the chicken instead of the lamb. He immigrated to Australia in the early fifties with his brothers, my father and my Nonna came over a short time after. About twelve years later my Aunty Josie was born. It has been hinted that my Grandmother suffered a couple of miscarriages and perhaps a stillbirth between the birth of my dad and my Aunty Josie, but it’s not something that has ever been openly discussed. I can’t even begin to imagine what she must have gone through being in a foreign country and having to suffer that kind of trauma.
Sundays were spent with Grandpa either picking his tomatoes, planting his tomatoes, attaching his tomatoes to a stake or drying his tomatoes. We were on a year-round cycle with the tomatoes. After we tended to the tomatoes we would go in and get ready for our lunch. Nonna made everything from scratch. We’d start with pizza and minestrone then came the pasta followed by schnitzel and salad. We ate the same thing every weekend and I never once grew tired of it. To this day (and believe me, I’ve searched), I’ve never tasted food as delicious as those Sunday meals at my grandparents’ house.
Luigi never had a bank card and only ever dealt in cash. I got my first $50 when I was ten and it gradually grew from there. Every time I’d say ciao at the end of a Sunday visit he’d slip a wad of cash in my hand like we were taking part in an illicit drug deal. Obviously, I thought that was awesome beyond awesome.
Luigi once started a war with his local bakery. The Italians who had owned it decided to move on and sold it to another family, an Asian one. If you are related to or know an old-school immigrant you will also know their tolerance towards other races and religions is pretty low. I’d just stop short of calling them racist, just. When Grandpa realised that the bakery he had been going to for over thirty years was now run by another family, an Asian one, he started to find fault with the bread. (Note: there was nothing wrong with the bread.) He then accused them of hiding the ‘good bread’ in the back of the shop when they saw him coming. This situation escalated to a stand-off between Luigi and the baker. He refused to leave the shop until the ‘good bread’ was produced and tasted. My father was called into the shop on this occasion with the police not far behind.
I want you to understand how devoted my dad was to his father. After Nonna passed away, Dad began to take care of Luigi. He would call in each day and make sure he was okay. As time went on and Luigi needed more and more help, my father went above and beyond his duties as a son. He would work a nine-hour day then drive an hour to cook dinner for his dad, wash and shave him and then go home and cook dinner for him and Mum. If I achieve nothing else with this book I want to properly acknowledge my dad and his loving efforts with Luigi.
When it finally came time to move Grandpa into assisted living, I was relieved, as it gave my dad a much needed break.
Before you conjure up images of piss-infested carpets and green walls, rest assured, he lived in the Taj Mahal of nursing homes. Every flat surface had a plasma TV and they all got a wing-back recliner to watch the aforementioned plasmas in total comfort. Luigi would shuffle around the home unassisted, swearing at people in Italian but he did it with such charm no one really cared. As you can well imagine, in that environment, men over the age of eighty-five who don’t need an adult nappy or a walking frame were a hot commodity. It’s about a five-to-one ratio in there. Basically, he was living in the Playboy Mansion for seniors. Because he didn’t have access to any cash to give me, he took to swiping small items from the kitchen to present me with when I visited him. He’d beckon me closer with his tiny, spindly hands, give me a knowing smile and pull from his pocket a small container of jam/honey/Vegemite. I love the idea of him conspiring all morning to steal them, I also know a part of him wished he would get caught so that he could argue with someone. I’m not sure how good he was at stealth given he was in his late eighties – I think they had a fair idea where all the tiny packets of condiments were going.
Grandpa became increasingly tired of being in the nursing home, he wanted desperately to be out and about. It was hard for him to accept that his body was no longer able to do the things his mind wanted it to. He grew frail and eventually I noticed the light starting to leave his eyes. My visits would only elicit the briefest of smiles and then he’d go back to listlessly staring out the window. When he stopped wanting to get out of bed, Vincie and I knew it was time.
The night Luigi died I sat with him in his little room. The nurses had washed him and tucked him in bed, the skin on his face had relaxed and it was the first time I had ever seen my grandfather look still and at peace. I wandered around the room talking to him – I don’t know why, I guess part of me still expected him to answer. Then I looked in his small wardrobe and found all his clothes neatly folded. Luigi was the most dapper dresser you have ever seen, his favourite look was a pair of well-ironed front-pleat Italian suit pants, a pair of leather loafers, a woollen cardigan, a Penguin polo and a Kangol cap.
I picked up one of his jumpers. It was a blue one, he always wore blue. Luigi was no fool, he knew it brought out the striking colour of his eyes. Those same blue eyes now look at me each day in the form of my youngest daughter. I held the jumper to my face, and it still smelled of him, a mixture of scents: mint, soap and olive oil. I felt wretchedly sad, he and I were kindred spirits – he got me and I got him. I was most upset for my dad, though. That was the hardest part, seeing my beloved Vincie broken over the death of his father. They’d had a complicated relationship, but Dad loved his father in a beautiful and honest way. He has never said much about what kind of a father Luigi was but I suspect he was a harsh one. I am certain he was not demonstrative in any way – he was a proud, angry man, my grandfather.
So there you have it, I am third-generation lunatic.
My dad is going to pop up a lot over the course of this book so I wanted you to have a better understanding of him. This is not to take anything away from my mother, she has had to endure us both for many years. Mum tends to behave in a normal fashion, so she hasn’t provided as much fodder for this book. I’m very much a daddy’s girl; the fact that he now tours the country with me playing guitar and not charging me for it is testament to that. How did he come to be doing touring with me? Well the truth is, in 2013, when I was an unemployed, thirty-five-year-old single mother and had just moved back in with Mum and Dad, my guitarist at the time up and moved to Canada.
Dad came into my bedroom one night and asked me what I thought I might do now that I didn’t have a musician to play my shows with. I responded that I had no idea and then burst into tears. He gently said, ‘Em, I thought maybe I could play guitar for you? I mean, I haven’t played in twenty-five years but I’ll practise. You won’t have to pay me. Would that help you?’
YES, I KNOW! HE IS A FUCKING SAINT AND EVEN NOW I AM CRYING WRITING THIS.
And so he did, we did, and I have enjoyed every minute since. Dad retired from the place he worked at for thirty-five years and thought he would play a little golf and rewire a few flatscreen TVs. Instead he is spending it touring the country being hit on by women and drinking all the light beer he can handle, but more about that later.