Humming Along
Rebecca
It’s late afternoon and Tony and I are preparing dinner. I can hear Mum humming in the shower. She came home singing from church this morning. As the afternoon wore on, it shifted to her regular hum.
Tony and I catch each other’s eye and smile. Tempting as it is to find humour in Mum’s warbles, it is such a happy and unselfconscious sound that it’s impossible not to smile. Mum is in good form.
I heard her on the phone the other day to her sister Mary.
‘It’s terrific,’ she said.
Pause.
‘Yes, Tony is an excellent cook, and Beck likes to organise everyone, but we have a lot of fun together.’
Pause.
‘We do crosswords, and quizzes, and play Upwords.’
Pause.
‘Yes, Mary, I highly recommend it – highly recommend it!’
I loved hearing Mum say that, and I have to agree. We are the three amigos. I knew we would be. We laugh a lot together. Mum and I have our own special humour, and though I know it becomes a little tiresome at times for Tony, I do catch him grinning.
One night we were sitting at the table, eating dinner. I held up a piece of roasted pumpkin on the end of my fork and said to Mum, ‘I love eating yellow and orange vegetables.’
‘That’s very interesting,’ said Mum.
‘Isn’t it?’ I said. ‘I feel like I’m eating golden goodness when I eat them.’
‘I’ve never thought of describing plain old pumpkin like that!’ Mum said.
‘Once you start, you won’t be able to stop.’ I popped the piece of pumpkin into my mouth.
‘Really?’ said Mum.
‘Yes!’
‘Tell me more.’
‘Well, my favourites are pumpkin, carrot—’
‘Squash,’ chimed in Mum.
‘Oh yes, the often ignored yellow squash.’
‘Ignored?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Like the carrot, the squash can often be found limp and lonely in the vegetable crisper.’
‘Yes,’ said Mum.
I continued: ‘Capsicum, yellow zucchini …’
‘Sweet potato.’
‘Good one!’ I said.
Mum did a thumbs-up.
We make little games like this stretch for a good half-hour, and each time we play they become more amusing.
I still don’t have any secure paid work in Mount Isa, but have plenty on with all my Melbourne projects. I’m going to choir and keeping up my exercise, but I would like to meet a few people. Tony’s work is going well, and although we both have our questioning moments we know that what we are experiencing here is very special. The girls are happy and well in Melbourne, though we suspect that our house has a permanent listing on a couch-surfing website.
The weather has shifted at last. The long hot summer was enervating, but the coolness of winter has lifted our spirits. The mornings and evenings are crisp, and the days warm and sunny. I love it and have been doing daily walks along the Leichhardt River. Seppo has given me a bike that he fixed up, and I’m having a great time riding around in the late afternoon and early evening. Tony and I are spending long periods of time in the garden; we’ve established veggie and herb patches, and the native shrubs that we planted earlier in the year are finally flowering. We’ve all noticed an increase in birds to the garden. Most days we spot rosellas, lorikeets, miners and butcherbirds. Mum can’t see the birds anymore but listens for their song.
My phone pings and I pick it up. It’s a text from Belinda:
The boys have just texted. They have left Cloncurry and the bus will get into the Isa in about an hour. C u soon! 
I text back:
Thanks! 
I tell Tony and he looks at the clock. ‘I’ll have the cake in the oven in the next twenty minutes,’ he says, ‘and then you can get the bread in.’
I nod and go back to crushing garlic. We both know that time is tight so we need to keep focused.
Mum has no idea that her Toowoomba grandsons, Michael and Brian, are on the bus that will soon arrive in Mount Isa. They, along with Belinda, Samantha, Madlyn, Ashley and Jorja, are all coming over tonight for a surprise dinner. Mum thinks it’s a regular Sunday-night dinner with just Tony and me.
This afternoon she asked me, ‘What’s Tony planning for dinner?’
Over the past five months, Mum has made it quite clear that she prefers Tony’s cooking to mine. Most people do. She’s happy enough to eat my food, but often starts conversations about meals with statements like this. Initially it irritated me, but I’ve stopped being bothered because I too prefer it when Tony cooks. He’s a far more interesting chef and goes to more trouble to vary our meals, whereas I have a handful of tried and tested ones and roll them out week after week. Tony also takes the time to engage Mum in conversations about meal preparation, and involves her in the kitchen when he can. I get flustered when she’s in the kitchen as I often interpret her advice as criticism.
Mum and Tony have an easy relationship full stop. This was not always the case. When Mum first met Tony, we had only recently got back together after a break-up. We were in our mid-twenties, and I, due to naivety or self-consciousness, had displayed an offhand ambivalence towards him. I didn’t realise how completely in love I was until he called it off. Like many daughters, I went crying to my mumma and she propped me up.
When we got back together, Tony had to work hard to win Mum’s approval. But he did, as he does with most people. He has a natural ease and gentle self-confidence, which means that people feel comfortable with him. He’s non-judgemental and engages with people with a real sense of equality. Of course, like most people, he has an intolerance of dickhead behaviour, but overall he’s always willing to accept people as they are. Over the years, in moments when I’ve lacked confidence, I’ve felt that all my friends end up liking Tony more than they like me.
Mum and Tony have been good friends for years now, but I did wonder how it would work out for all three of us living under the same roof for an indefinite period of time. Now, as I watch him drink his beer and prepare food for tonight’s dinner, I realise there was no need to worry.
Mum lights up whenever Tony comes home at lunchtime and settles at the table with a new crossword. When he’s away, she asks, ‘When is Tony coming back?’ When I drive her to church, she asks, ‘Is Tony picking me up?’ In fact, I’m starting to wonder if she, too, likes him more than she likes me!
‘I’m cooking tonight,’ I told her.
‘Oh,’ Mum said, and although I know she’d deny it, I definitely saw the slight disapproving twitch that she does with her nose when she isn’t happy about something.
I considered telling her about our plan for pasta with pesto made from basil fresh from our garden, or the big pot of Napoli sauce that we made while she was at church, or the flourless orange cake that Tony has planned for dessert, but I felt that would give the surprise away.
‘What are you making?’ she asked.
‘Vegetarian sausages,’ I replied.
This time she made no attempt to hide it: the twitch of her nose was accompanied by a disapproving flare of the nostrils.
‘What are vegetarian sausages made of?’ she asked.
‘Sawdust,’ I replied.
Mum has eaten vegetarian sausages with my family and me for over twenty years, and she’s always asked this same question. Initially I used to run through the list of ingredients on the back of the packet, but these days I offer a deadpan response.
‘No, really,’ she said. ‘What are they made of?’
‘Sawdust,’ I repeated.
‘Really?’
‘Of course not! They’re made of TVP.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Textured vegetable protein. You know that!’
Mum nodded. After a short pause, she asked, ‘And what’s that made of?’
‘Sawdust!’ I said.
We both burst out laughing.
‘What will you serve them with?’ she asked.
‘Mashed potatoes and steamed broccoli.’
‘Make sure you steam the broccoli for long enough. Your broccoli is always undercooked.’ Her nose twitches again.
Mum would never say something like this to Tony, and his broccoli is always al dente.
Mum’s humming ratchets up a couple of notches. I recognise the hymn. It’s one that Ash and Tara, local musicians who attend the same church as Mum, play regularly. Mum often comes home from church humming it. She sometimes gets quite demonstrative, clapping and waving her hands from side to side. It’s an upbeat hymn reminiscent of the perky Christian rock numbers that Mum took a shine to in the late 1970s and ’80s. Think ‘Rock My Soul in the Bosom of Abraham’ and you’re on the right track.
Mum taught Sunday school on and off for years, and she would buy cassettes of children’s hymns for her charges. She’d sometimes play them at home, but none of us took to them. We were all too old and into our own music. We had records, Countdown and concerts.
Paul belonged to a mail-order record club and every week something new would arrive: Uriah Heep, Led Zeppelin, King Crimson. I pretended to like these records but they were a bit beyond me. I was into the bands I saw on Countdown and heard on the rare occasions we were allowed to turn the radio dial from the ABC onto the local commercial station.
In my first year of high school I noticed that everyone wrote the names of the bands they liked on their pencil cases. I thought this was a very daring thing to do, so in a bold moment emblazoned my red plastic pencil case with all my favourite band names. I recently found this pencil case in one of my clean-ups and was horrified to see that I had spelt Abba incorrectly. There it was in thick black pen: ABAB. I was obviously not the sharpest pencil in the case.
My first concert was in 1971. It was a matinee performance with Jamie Redfern at the Irish Club. I wore light blue gabardine hotpants with a blue floral voile blouse that Mum had made. I teamed these with knee-high white socks and black patent-leather party shoes. Not very rock and roll!
On stage, Jamie told a joke: ‘What’s green and runs through the woods? Moldy-locks.’
I was star-struck. Here was a live performer who could sing and tell jokes.
By 1976 I’d seen Hush, the Ted Mulry Gang and Sherbet at the Mount Isa Civic Centre. Daryl Braithwaite even held my best friend’s hand when he sang ‘You’re My World’.
So by the time Mum got into Christian rock songs, I’d well and truly moved on.
The family members who did love the cassettes she bought were Belinda, Brian, Michael and Samantha. From the early 1990s until quite recently, Mum had had the four grandchildren, and eventually the great-grandchildren too, over every Sunday for either lunch or dinner. When the grandchildren were kids Mum would play the tapes for them after lunch, and they would sing and dance around the lounge room.
Mum was beautiful with them. She loved children, especially these children, and also music and dancing. Her grandkids did too. I don’t know if they knew what the lyrics meant, but Mum always gave them her complete attention and they loved it. The joy of being a grandparent. Even now, when they get together, the grandkids often break out into an energetic version of one of the songs they learnt as children.
Mum’s father was an Anglican minister, and the church has always been a constant in her life. Mum took as all to church as children, and we all got confirmed, but none of us remained connected to religion. Mum never expected anything, and there was no pressure for us to participate. Religion and church were very much her things.
Dad, a lapsed Catholic, was not particularly inclined to any form of organised belief system – other than those found within the unions, at the races and in the pub. On Sundays Mum liked to attend either the morning service or evensong, and Dad would chauffeur her to and from church. His other primary Sunday aim was to get to the pub. During the 1960s and ’70s this was limited to two dedicated sessions: the first from 11 am to 1 pm and the second from 5 pm to 7 pm.
Before collecting Mum from the 11 am church service, he’d say to David and me, ‘Want to go for a drive to the dump after getting Mum?’
We’d be in the back seat of the FB Holden before another word could be spoken. An outing with Dad was a treat, and we knew that once we were in the car there’d be no way he would change his mind and tell us to get out. Paul and Michael were both too old to be tempted by the excitement of a trip to the dump so were not invited.
Dad would load the rubbish into the boot and then drive to the church to collect Mum. As soon as she saw us in the back of the car, she’d know what he was up to.
‘I’m taking Beck and Dave to the dump,’ Dad would announce, ‘and then we might go for a drive.’
Mum wouldn’t say anything, but her silence spoke volumes.
‘I’ll get them out of your hair for an hour or so,’ Dad would continue.
Then Mum would turn and address us: ‘Are you sure you want to go?’
We’d nod enthusiastically.
Turning back, Mum would say, ‘Lunch will be served at 1 pm. Don’t be late.’
‘Don’t worry,’ he’d laugh. ‘We’ll be back well before then!’
I always knew this was highly unlikely, but I was an optimistic and obedient child and wanted to believe everything adults said.
When Mum got out of the car at home, Dad would say, ‘You kids jump in the front with me.’
David and I would crawl over the seat to join Dad and sit three abreast on the bench seat. We thought this was the coolest thing ever. As we headed off we’d ask Dad to beep the horn and we’d give Mum a big wave through the front window.
At the dump we’d get out of the car while Dad sorted out the rubbish. The dump was a busy place on the weekend, and we’d often see other families poking through the rubbish. It stank and there were big mobs of hawks and crows and other scavenger birds hanging around, but it had a certain intrigue. Dad would let us turn over a few items with a stick, and then he’d say, ‘Righto, into the car!’
‘Where are we going now, Dad?’
Dad wouldn’t answer, but when we reached the crossroad he would always turn left and take the road into town. I’d always be thinking, ‘Turn right, turn right,’ because that was the road home. We wouldn’t say anything but we knew what was happening.
Dad would drive into town and park the car in West Street. ‘I gotta go and see a fella about a thing,’ he’d say as he got out.
‘What thing?’ David would ask. He was always more assertive than me.
‘A work thing.’
‘Can we come?’ David would ask.
‘You kids stay here and look after the car. Don’t get out.’
We’d nod, then watch as he walked down the street.
‘He’s gone into the Argent,’ David would say. The Argent was a popular corner pub that had Sunday sessions. In high school I learnt that argent was French for money and Spanish for silver. I would think, ‘Dad spent a lot of silver money at that pub!’
David and I have, as adults, discussed these outings. We’d never do such a thing to our own children, but back then we didn’t question it. It was what it was. Neither of us have memories of it being unpleasant or feeling anxious about being left. There were lots of other kids sitting in cars on West Street so it was all quite social. Of course we’d get out of the car and play games on the footpath. We knew from experience that ‘a trip to the dump’ was code for ‘go to the pub’, but we craved his attention so were happy to play along. We truly believed that something more exciting might happen, but of course it never did.
What always happened was that eventually Dad would come out of the pub and take us home. We’d be late for lunch and Mum would be furious. Arguments would start about why he was late, why he’d been at the pub and why he’d left us alone in the car. I could never understand these arguments. Didn’t everyone know what was going on? Why did everyone act so surprised and get so worked up by it all?
We kids hated these arguments, so eventually stopped saying yes to Dad’s invitations to join him, and he stopped asking us. Unfortunately, Dad’s drinking habits didn’t change and the arguments continued. We all learnt to live and operate around them.
It wasn’t as if drinking and fighting were new to Mount Isa. At school there was a regular lunchtime cry of ‘Fight down Wog’s Alley!’ and everyone would rush off to watch the latest punch-up. We sometimes heard people fighting in their homes or in the park next door. On Monday mornings at school there would often be someone who regaled us with a story of some kind of family barney. I never said anything about our family. I knew intuitively that that sort of conversation was off-limits.
From the outside we looked and behaved like any other working-class family. We went to school, participated in sport and arts events, had friends over, went to the pictures, played with our cousins and spent hours riding our bikes around the neighbourhood with other kids.
Inside the house, we learnt to plan around Dad and his behaviour. Friday night was the best night to have my friends around for a sleepover; Sunday was the best day to have a friend over for lunch and a game. Dad would happily drive me to my extracurricular events during the week, but on Saturday I had to ride my bike or get a lift with my friends’ parents. Dad’s Saturdays were dedicated to drinking, and nothing stood in the way.
When we were younger, Mum, like David and I, believed that his behaviour might change. When he’d say, ‘I’ll definitely pick you up from the swimming pool at five-thirty,’ Mum would believe him. By 6 pm it would be evident that Dad wasn’t coming, so Mum and us kids would begin the long walk home. Sometimes other families would offer us a lift but Mum always said no. She knew that Dad would be even more furious if we accepted a ride from someone else.
On the Saturday nights when Dad didn’t come home for dinner, Mum would take us in a taxi to the Finnish Café in town. Though I loved the ice-cold milk served in tall glasses and the crispy crumbed fish, I could rarely eat much. I was a perky kid with a cheery disposition, but at these meals my stomach would be a knot of nerves. I knew eventually there would be a price to pay for the taxi fares and the dinner out. My anxiety drew a veil across my ability to enjoy the moment.
Occasionally Dad would still do things like take us on picnics out bush. I think he wanted to do the right thing but he carried a social anxiety that meant he was unable to settle into events unless he had grog to soothe his nerves.
One afternoon our family was having a picnic at a waterhole out bush with my cousins and uncle and aunty. I watched Dad as he opened the esky and counted the number of beers inside.
‘I’m going back into town,’ he said to Mum.
‘What for?’ Mum asked.
‘Pick up a few more beers,’ he said.
‘There’s plenty in the esky,’ Mum said.
‘We might need a few more.’
Mum didn’t say anything. She knew well enough to not cause a scene in public, even if it was just in front of her sister. Dad got into the car and drove away.
He was gone for hours and I remember watching Mum like a hawk. I was anxious and looked to her for cues for how I should feel or behave. But she gave nothing away.
‘When will Dad be back?’ the boys yelled out from the waterhole. ‘When will the barbie be cooked? Do we have to wait for Dad?’
Mum pretended not to hear them.
The adults made the fire and cooked the food, and finally, after dark, Dad returned. He was rotten drunk but we all piled into the Holden and he drove us home. No one in the car said a word.
I hated the tense silences far more than the loud arguments. I knew they meant that something far worse was to come. At least with the arguments I knew the procedure. Michael or Paul would get David and me and take us out of the house. We’d go and play in the park or go for walks and return when they figured the worst of it would be over. But the silences could linger for days.
It wasn’t that Mum disliked drinking per se. She didn’t have a problem with people having a few drinks, and every now and again I would see her have a glass of beer or wine. But Dad’s drinking meant he shirked his responsibility as a parent. Alcohol caused him to have a personality change, making him unpredictable.
So Dad would spend all Saturday afternoon at the pub, and Mum would spend it at home with us kids. She was no doubt tired, and sick of parenting alone, so her irritation would grow. When we saw Dad’s car roll into the driveway, we’d say to Mum, ‘Don’t start anything.’
‘I won’t,’ she’d reply.
The drunker he was when he came in the door, the greater her ire would be. There’s nothing to be gained by trying to have a sensible conversation with a drunken person but Mum would forget this. Dad would try to be coy but Mum wouldn’t have a bar of it. She would bait him and he would arc up. The tongue of an intelligent sober person is far sharper than that of a drunk, and Dad always felt the attack. His default position was anger, so then they’d be off.
I hated it. I felt sad and frightened. We all did. But then it would be over and we’d go back to being normal again.
Kids are incredibly resilient, but addiction and violence are damaging. When I first started to study social work, I felt for a time that the trauma of my family had left me wounded. But as I developed more knowledge, skills and experience, I realised I was not wounded. I was bruised and battle-weary, but thankfully there was always just enough love to keep us protected.
Mum once said to me, ‘Your father’s the sort of man who should never have had children.’
I knew what Mum meant, but still I felt loyal to Dad. Mum was loyal to him too, but she came second to his addiction. He never missed a day of work and always made sure we had everything we needed, but his drinking was always there.
Things did eventually get better, but not before getting worse. In 1971 my brother Michael disappeared, setting off an emotional explosion inside our household.
Throughout my adult life, I have tried to piece together what happened, but it has been difficult. Like many people of her generation, Mum believed that the past was exactly that – past. To speak about such things would do nothing but stir up sadness and grief. She felt that the best course of action was to let the past go and move on. I tried once or twice with Dad, but he made it clear that there was no way he would ever talk about it with me.
What I do know is that Michael was a greatly loved firstborn. Mum would tell me how she and Dad would sit him on the kitchen table dressed in his pyjamas and ready for bed. They would then bathe his feet in a little basin, and Dad would carry him to bed so that he could get into his sheets with perfectly clean feet. It always sounded to me that he was treated like a prince.
He was by all accounts a ‘normal’ kid. He went to school, played sport and hung out with his siblings. He liked cars and camping. He had an easy and confident disposition.
Michael finished Year 10 in 1966. He chose to join the army and do an apprenticeship as a fitter and turner. Throughout high school he had been involved with army cadets, and as Dad was a returned World War II soldier it must have seemed like a logical move. The apprenticeship was in Melbourne, so at the ripe old age of fifteen he was put onto a train and sent away. I had just turned four.
Early on during his apprenticeship, Michael absconded and was listed as AWOL.
Years later, Michael told Mum that the reason he ran away from the army was that he was lonely and scared. Mum understood the loneliness bit. He had been left more or less alone for a long weekend in the army barracks. Most of the other young men were from rural Victoria, and had gone home. We don’t know what scared him but he took off and headed to the city. Becoming lost and disorientated, Michael didn’t have the confidence to ask for help. I don’t know how long it was before the army found him, but when they did they put him in a military prison in Melbourne.
Michael told my brother Paul that the army’s main aim during his prison sentence was to break him. They saw his absconding as a weakness, and they told him they were going to break that aspect of him and make him into an army man. But Michael refused to break. Eventually the army dismissed him, saying he was ‘psychologically unfit for military service’.
Michael was now free to do whatever he liked, and he chose to disappear. My parents did not know where he was. They contacted the army but they wouldn’t help find him. I can’t imagine what this was like for my parents, when their son was so young and naive.
After many months Dad received word from somewhere and went to Melbourne. He found Michael living quite close to the army barracks in a share house with other men and working on a rubbish truck. Dad brought him back to Mount Isa, and arranged an apprenticeship for him as a diesel fitter with Mount Isa Mines.
Paul remembers how changed Michael was. He had gone to Melbourne as a shy bush kid and come back gung-ho and assertive. ‘He was not the person I knew before he left,’ Paul told me. ‘I never felt comfortable around him after he returned. He had a bravado that lacked compassion.’
Michael completed his apprenticeship at the end of 1970 and then went with a group of mates on a holiday to the Gold Coast. While there, they all got drunk, drove a car through a zebra crossing and accidentally killed a young woman. I don’t know who was driving. I do know that my brother bolted from the scene of the accident and went into hiding.
Again my father went looking for him, and eventually found him in Far North Queensland. Together they sought legal advice. This was at the height of the Vietnam War, the beginning of the Bjelke-Petersen regime, and a time of great fear in relation to police and legal affairs in Queensland. The lawyer’s advice was that Michael should ‘disappear’ for the next ten years. He did, and was on the run for the next decade.
Like many people from that time who wanted to hide away or escape, he gravitated to the Gulf of Carpentaria and the Northern Territory. He worked on prawning and fishing boats, drove trucks and did stints in the mines.
Back at home, no one said a word. I had no idea what had happened or where he was. I was a chronic eavesdropper as a kid, so would occasionally pick up tiny threads of information from overheard conversations between Mum and her sister Veronica. But in the family no one said Michael’s name or spoke about him. We did not acknowledge his birthday or his absence at Christmas or other special occasions. It was as though he had never existed.
Over the years, I’ve wondered if this decision to not speak about him was quite conscious. Did my parents actively encourage us to forget in order to spare us pain, or were they in so much pain themselves that they couldn’t bear to speak his name?
I didn’t ever ask Mum where my brother was. I spent an enormous amount of time with her, as Dad was largely absent too, but nothing was ever said. Like most kids of that era, I took my cues from the adults around me; if they didn’t speak about it, neither would I.
Sometimes, when no one was watching, I would slip into Michael’s abandoned bedroom and go through the items in his drawers. I found his army dog tags and his apprenticeship records. I looked at his handwriting and wondered where he was. I went through photo albums and found pictures of him. My favourites were one of him in his cadet uniform, and another of him wearing stovepipe jeans and a white turtleneck sweater. I would stare at these and try to remember what his voice sounded like, how he smelt and what his touch might be like.
One afternoon, a few years after he had disappeared, I came home from school and Mum told me to get my homework done quickly because we had a visitor coming for dinner. I asked who it was but she wouldn’t tell me. After dark, the back door opened and a man with a big black beard came into the kitchen. I looked at him and felt something lurch in my stomach.
The man put his hand out and tapped the peak of my Skippy cap. ‘Do you know who I am?’ he asked.
‘I think you’re my brother,’ I said.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I’m your brother.’
I remember his smile, and the deep urge I felt to know this adult, but the visit was short and before I could get past my shyness he disappeared again.
I recall seeing him again a few years later, but again the contact was covert and guarded. At the time he was driving trucks and snuck into town after dark. He parked his truck in the bush on the outskirts of town, and Dad drove out to pick him up and bring him home. I have no idea how Dad knew where to find him. We didn’t have a telephone, so I can only think that Michael rang Dad at work.
I remember Michael arriving with a large bottle of Coke. We’d never had Coke in the house before and I was very excited. Mum had made a popular new dip out of creamed cheese and a packet of dried French onion soup. As was the way in Queensland in the 1970s, she added a can of crushed pineapple to the dip.
I watched and listened as Mum, Dad and Michael talked. They weren’t interested in either the dip or the Coke so I ate and drank the lot. Michael stayed till late and then Dad drove him back out bush to the truck and he disappeared again. I spent the next day vomiting up dip and Coke. I still find both hard to stomach; the smell always reminds me of that night. I have no memory, however, of what anyone spoke about.
Over the next few years both my parents’ behaviour changed. Dad’s drinking and temper became worse, and Mum began to withdraw. She stopped socialising, and other than doing things like the shopping and going to church, she more or less stayed home. She had always liked having people over for lunches and dinners, but these now came to an end. I think partly it was a self-enforced purgatory, and partly it was that she wanted to be at home in order to keep things as ‘normal’ as possible.
I do remember that this was the time when she started doing crosswords. In 1973 my Grade 6 teacher said, ‘Everyone should read The Pilgrim’s Progress and The Thirty-Nine Steps and do one crossword puzzle a day.’ I went home and told Mum this. She got the books from the library for me but I wasn’t particularly interested in them; I was too young. But Mum started doing a crossword every day, and she never stopped. In hindsight I can see that it’s the perfect activity for someone who is somewhat isolated.
Dad came to rely more and more upon alcohol. The more he drank, the more unavailable he became – and the more unavailable he became, the more we wanted his attention, and the more irritated he became with us, the more he drank.
There were still times when he was just regular and normal Dad, when he was funny and solid. I remember one time when I was collecting the eggs in the chook pen. Mount Isa was a very multicultural town, and lots of my friends at school were bilingual. I remember asking Dad, ‘Can you speak another language?’
‘Yep,’ he said, ‘I can speak English and foul.’
I was very pleased with this answer and told all my friends at school that my dad could speak English and Fowl. In my mind he was the ‘chook whisperer’. It wasn’t until years later that I worked out he was having a joke with me.
Dad really liked company. Every Saturday morning, no matter how drunk he’d been the night before, he would wake up early and get us all up. His favourite way to do this was to come to the bedroom door and sing the famous lines from The Barber of Seville. He had a good singing voice, had studied piano as a boy and was quite musical. He’d shake the end of the bed and bellow out, ‘Figaro, Figaro, Figaro!’ until the whole house was awake and sitting at the table with him to eat breakfast.
We’d all think that it was going to be a great weekend, but by 10 am Dad would be preparing to head out. He was a creature of habit, and we all knew his routine. We’d be silenced as he listened to the scratchings on the radio. Three-Way Turf Talk ruled. Then he’d head to the bathroom for a shave and a shower. He’d douse his hair with Vaseline Intensive Hair Tonic, and comb it into place with his white plastic comb. For my entire life Dad always had the same comb. He was very proud of his hair, and it remained black and shiny until the day he died. Then he’d get dressed. If it was summer, he’d wear walk shorts, a short-sleeved shirt and leather thongs. He only wore rubber thongs if he was watering the yard. In winter it’d be long pants and a sports jacket. He’d emerge from the bedroom and his blue eyes would be sparkling. He’d virtually skip down the hall as he prepared to head out. I suppose he could almost taste that first beer. When we were younger, David would imitate Dad’s jaunty gait and vain air, and we thought it was the funniest thing ever.
We’d watch the car back out of the driveway and then he’d be gone for the day. He’d go to the TAB, then the pub, then the track and then back to the pub. It wasn’t unusual for someone to drive Dad home after a big session. Sometimes they’d bring him up the back ramp and into the house; other times they would just lift him out of the car and drop him over the fence into the backyard.
I hated when this happened. I would feel so embarrassed and ashamed.
Then out of the blue Dad would do something that made me feel like he was the best father in the world.
In the mid 1970s I started playing Monday-night basketball with a girl called Christine. She was a new friend from school, and we were having a wow of a time on the team. We both loved basketball and played hard. At one of the games our coach kept telling us to play ‘man-on-man’. ‘Stick to your opponent,’ he ordered us. We both liked our coach and responded well to his instructions, but it drove the other team wild. They couldn’t get past us, and one of them told Christine that they were going to ‘bash her’ after the game.
The coach told us not to worry, and after the game finished we headed outside the courts to wait for Dad. The girls from the other team were out there, and when they saw us they pounced – but it was only Christine they attacked. They punched and kicked her viciously. Christine was a tenacious thing and fought back, but this only made things worse.
Suddenly I looked up and saw Dad’s Kingswood pull in. Dad leaned over the seat and flung open the back door. ‘Get in!’ he yelled.
I grabbed Christine and threw her into the back seat. Of course, as soon as the other girls saw Dad they took off. Christine clung to me and cried. It was awful, and she was embarrassed. I was terrified that Dad would be furious at us.
But Dad did not miss a beat. He just drove steadily to Christine’s house. ‘You okay, Christine?’ he asked.
‘Yep,’ she said – and then, between tears, ‘Sorry about that, Mr Lister. Those girls started it, not me.’
‘I know,’ Dad said. ‘Some people fight on Friday night at the pub, and it seems like some fight on Monday night at basketball too.’
Christine smiled. When we got to her house, Dad asked if she wanted him to come in and talk to her parents. But she didn’t. We sat in the car and watched her go in. I climbed into the front seat and we drove in silence for a bit.
‘You okay?’ Dad finally asked.
‘Yeah,’ I said.
‘Tough game,’ he said.
‘Yeah,’ I said, and looked across at Dad. He smiled and I smiled too.
At that moment I felt safe and protected. Dad had saved the day. He’d got us out of the situation and had not made a big deal of it. I had been scared that he might have wanted to go and speak to the coach or have a go at the girls who attacked us, but he got it – he knew that all he needed to do was look after Christine and me. And he did.
Fortunately, Dad’s worst behaviour did stop by the time I was in my mid-teens. By then he was in his late fifties and had started to slow down all round. Also, by then we had begun to confront him when he behaved badly.
‘You can’t wear that top!’ he said to me one night.
I was dressed to go to the pictures and was wearing a top with thin spaghetti straps. ‘Why not?’ I asked.
‘Put a shirt on over the top of it.’
‘No!’
‘It’s too revealing,’ he snapped.
‘It’s the fashion! Just cos you’re a “wrinkly” doesn’t mean that I can’t wear what I want,’ I argued.
‘Get a shirt or I won’t drive you.’
‘I wear this top every Saturday afternoon but you’re too drunk to notice then, aren’t you?’
‘Watch what you say!’
‘Or what?’ I screamed. ‘You’ll hit me?’ I raced to my room and slammed the door.
I was scared. I knew Dad wouldn’t hit me. He had never placed a finger on me. My brothers hadn’t been so lucky but I was his ‘golden girl’, and I’d reached an age where I knew this and pushed the boundaries all the time. I was scared he wouldn’t let me go to the pictures or would refuse to drive me. I had a boyfriend and had plans to meet him, and I didn’t want anything to get in the way of that.
Mum followed me, and I cried, ‘Why is he like that?’
‘You have to remember that your father hasn’t had much contact with teenage girls since before the war,’ Mum said. I couldn’t help but smile at that.
‘Put a shirt on. You can take it off when you get to the pictures and put it in your bag.’
I did as she said, got in the car and Dad drove me into town. Not a word was said, and there was Dad waiting to pick me up at 11 pm after the picture finished.
Like many women of her generation, Mum never spoke about or complained about any of the things that had gone on in our family. While on some level this capacity for stoic resilience is an asset, it can also set up patterns of behaviour that lead to emotional shutdown. Mum rarely let on that she wasn’t coping.
When I was a teenager, she told me she had been to the doctor for her insomnia and had cried when he asked her how she was feeling. When she told me this, I was both too immature and too surprised to respond with anything akin to empathy. The doctor offered her Valium but she didn’t take it. I remained mute and offered nothing.
Mum did start to emerge again during this time, though. She joined a few groups and started to volunteer as a tutor of English as a second language. She didn’t do a course but got numerous books from the library and used her skills as a teacher to figure out what to do. She loved this work. Every week students of different nationalities would come to the house and Mum would conduct lessons at the kitchen table. Many of these students were isolated and lonely in Mount Isa, and Mum provided a motherly presence for them. There were frequent gifts of food, which we all loved.
In Darwin, in 1977, Michael met a young Jordanian woman called Julie. She too was on the run, escaping a traditional family back in Sydney. Later that same year their first son, Michael Pancho, was born. Tragically, while backing out of the driveway, Michael accidentally ran over his son and killed him. Michael Pancho was just shy of twelve months old. Four more children were born from this relationship, but by the time the last baby, Samantha, arrived, Michael was himself a full-blown alcoholic.
My clever, handsome but damaged brother didn’t ever recover. In October 1994, on what would have been his first son’s eighteenth birthday, he brought it all to an end and took his own life.
Within hours of learning that Michael was dead, I went into labour, and Lucille was born the next day. I was unable to get to Mount Isa for the funeral, but the day after Mum arrived in Brisbane to help me with seventeen-month-old Georgina and newborn Lucille. Tony and I were living in a share house with our dear friend Ruth. The house bulged at the seams with both life and death. Mum insisted on spending time every afternoon writing thankyou cards to people who had sent sympathy cards. Mum sat at the table and wrote and wept. It was awful. I told her she didn’t need to write the cards immediately – she could wait weeks if she wanted, or even months or years. But Mum insisted there was an expected timeframe with these things, so she wrote and I wiped her tears.
How Mum ever finds anything to hum about amazes me. But hum she does. And I am so happy to be part of creating a household where, despite all her grief, she feels happy, and her humming survives.
I hear Mum get out of the shower and go into her bedroom. I need to get a move on with dinner, because if she comes into the kitchen and sees the mound of food we have prepared she’ll wonder what on earth is going on. Although she doesn’t know it, she’s the star attraction of tonight’s dinner.
Mum recently spent time in hospital after a heart attack. It was a sobering time for all of us as we faced the reality that her health was deteriorating. But from the way she described her five days in intensive care, it was as good as a holiday. It took us a while to leave on discharge day, as she had to say her goodbyes to all the ICU staff.
My nieces and I have often had a giggle about how formal Mum can be when thanking people. ‘Thank you for your kindness,’ she always says. We love saying this to each other, with tongue-in-cheek ceremony, as we hand each other a large glass of wine or an open stubbie.
But Mum really did want to thank everyone, believing they had given her care and treatment way beyond what their jobs required. She had connected with everyone – she knew where they came from, how long they had lived in Mount Isa and how they came to work in health care.
Within days she was back with her gang of buddies at church, and they all commented that she had never looked better. Each time I looked in the mirror, by contrast, I thought I had never looked worse. The tension of the week, my neglected work, along with the fact that I was smack-bang in the middle of menopause, had caused my insomnia to return, and the strain showed on my face.
I finish preparing the garlic bread and get it into the oven. Mum comes into the kitchen, and I’m surprised to see that she’s dressed in her winter nightie, dressing gown, socks and slippers. I know she will be horrified when the family arrive and find her in her ‘jarmies’. I also know she won’t have the energy to get changed into other clothes for dinner. ‘Don’t you think it’s a little early to get into your leisure suit?’ I joke.
‘I’ve recently had a heart attack,’ she says, ‘and I can wear my pyjamas at any time of the day if I choose.’
She moves to her chair and sits down without noticing the food preparation going on in the kitchen. I text Belinda:
A reply comes instantly:
LOL!!! 
But I’m actually worried:
What should we do? 
Belinda isn’t bothered at all:
Nothing! She’ll be fine
What feels like minutes later, the family arrive and pour into the house. Mum is thrilled to see everyone, but especially Michael and Brian. She can’t believe they’ve come all this way to see her. ‘One last visit to the old girl before she shuffles off,’ she jokes.
We all laugh, but on some level that’s exactly what this is.
The boys shower her with hugs and kisses. They are affectionate men and feel a deep love for their grandma. Mum glows.
I’ve always felt that it was the grandchildren who dragged Mum into the modern age of childrearing, where it’s acceptable to kiss one another and say ‘I love you’. I don’t remember anyone’s parents doing that when I was growing up, and mine certainly never did. I never talked about things like this with my friends, either. It wasn’t until I left home and started to study that I realised the impact that love has on growth and development.
In spite of all the things that went on in our family, I never doubted that I was loved. But the idea that your parents would say it to you or express outward signs of affection when other people were around was a ‘shame job’. I remember being mortified when Dad grabbed me in a huge bear hug at the airport in 1980 as I was leaving Mount Isa to go overseas as an exchange student. He’d had a few ‘sherbets’ at the bar beforehand, and just as I was about to walk out onto the tarmac, he rushed forwards with a show of emotion and affection. I didn’t know what was happening. The incident was captured on camera; for years afterwards I always felt a rush of self-consciousness when I looked at the photo.
Like many grandmothers, though, Mum embraced her grandchildren with unconditional love. Consequently, the grandkids feel completely comfortable talking about anything, either with or in front of their grandma.
‘I got the results of my pap smear,’ one of them says.
‘Oh yeah? How’d you go? Pass the potato salad, please,’ another replies.
‘Yeah, all good.’
‘I’m getting a new tattoo,’ another grandchild says. ‘It’s going to be an eagle with spread wings, and it’ll have your name in the middle of it, Grandma.’
‘What, you’re getting “Grandma” tattooed on your arm?’ says Mum.
‘No – Diana! That’s your name, isn’t it!’
They all laugh.
‘Well, the only thing I ask is that you spell it correctly.’
This reduces the grandchildren to hysterics.
The dinner goes off without a hitch. We cram around the table and everyone tucks heartily into the feast.
At some point the phones and cameras come out and the photos begin. In each one we place Mum in the middle, resplendent in her blue polyester fleece dressing gown, and we gather around her and take pictures. Someone starts to sing, and before we know it we’re all belting out one of Mum’s favourite call-and-response songs.
‘I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart!’
‘Where?’
‘Down in my heart!’
‘Where?’
‘Down in my heart!’
‘I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart, down in my heart to stay!’
Mum sings, claps and smiles, and the fact that she is part of a dinner party in her pyjamas and dressing gown is irrelevant. She is our queen bee and we are all happy to be, in this moment, buzzing and humming around her.