Life Changes
When I was 12, there were two big changes: I started High School and we moved house.
My parents had decided to build a new house on the highest point of a hill suburb, on a newly-created street next to a large area of uncleared bush which led down to the First Basin, a swimming and recreational area adjacent to Launceston’s famous Cataract Gorge. The house I grew up in, which I loved and didn’t want to leave (but I wasn’t consulted) sold quickly. While the new house was being built, we lived right in town for a couple of years, in the main street, just a block or two past the shops. We rented the top floor of a beautiful old two-storey houe built in a past era. The owner, who occupied the ground floor, was our long-time family doctor.
He seemed to me to be an old man by then – a dear old man. I had known him all my life. He was a kind and gentle doctor whom, as a child, I never found frightening. His practice was in downstairs rooms at the front of the house, which he shared with another doctor. He and his wife (who also worked as his receptionist) lived at the back of that floor, a space I never saw. Although we were on very good terms, we didn’t socialise. We walked in the big front door, past the door into the doctors’ offices, and straight up the grand-looking staircase to our quarters.
We filled the upstairs: kitchen and dining-room all in one, bathroom, large sitting room, two big bedrooms at the front of the house, and a smaller one at the back which enabled our boarder – a Welsh migrant, who by then felt like one of the family – to move with us. My brother and I shared a bedroom, of necessity, even though we weren’t little kids any more; however it was such a big room that we didn’t mind.
We were quite used to sharing rooms anyway, after years of the extended family, with all the cousins, gathering at one of the family homes over Christmas. Converging from various parts of the island, it meant a few days’ stay at least. One year when it was held in our house (the one we ended up selling) my bed was the lounge-room couch turned to face the wall under the window. I had to clamber over one of the arms of the couch to get into bed, but then I was deliciously private to read the new books I got for Christmas. (My main presents were always books, and that was perfect.)
Dad used to drop my brother off at school on his way to work. Living in town and going to the High School, I could walk to school, and home again afterwards. This meant that after school my best friends and I could wander through town, stop at one of the cafés for a ‘spider’ (a fancy drink with ice-cream and lemonade, even better than an icecream soda) and ogle the older High School or Tech boys, whom we identified by their different uniforms.
I didn’t need to hurry home. By that time Mum was working too. Once my brother and I didn’t need all her attention, she found herself deathly bored at home all day, despite socialising with friends and neighbours. It was a very big thing then for a married woman not to stay at home and be a housewife full time. Dad was an enlightened man who believed in things like education, and other equal rights, for women. Nevertheless, he had to do some soul-searching before supporting Mum’s wish to return to work. Still of his era after all, he was afraid the fellows he worked with would think he couldn’t support his wife. That would have been a huge stigma. But no-one could conceive of any other reason a woman would go out to work instead of staying home.
I can remember the worried discussions that went on between them – but finally he couldn’t let Mum keep going crazy with boredom. And although she was in the forefront, it turned out she was only a little ahead of her time. In a few years it started to be recognised more widely that domestic duties weren't always enough to satisfy a thinking woman
She got the first job she applied for, as a typist in an accountant’s office, soon rose to be Office Manager with a higher salary, and stayed with that firm as a respected and highly valued member of staff until her retirement many years later.
I wasn’t included in the discussions – that wouldn’t have occurred to anyone – but privately I had already decided that the last thing I wanted was a life like my mother’s. Her boredom was obvious to me even before she began complaining about it. It horrified me. Of course I hoped for love and marriage in the distant future (though I wasn’t at all sure about children) but no way would I end up a stay-at-home housewife!
I remember, at a family gathering, when the adults were idly speculating about the possible futures of the children present, Uncle Bill saying of me:
‘She’s the brains trust; she’ll be a career woman and probably never marry’ (which I heard as, ‘She’s not pretty enough’),
and then of his daughter Suzanne (who was both pretty and charming – and, I thought jealously, ingratiating ... though I might not have used that exact word at the time):
‘And this one’ll bring home a new millionaire every week.’
It amuses me (still with a smidgeon of ‘I'll show you, Uncle Bill!’) to note how both Sue and I, without ever mentioning the fact, immediately resolved to overturn those stereotypes. I know it was completely conscious then and there on my part, and I’m certain it was on hers too.
We did disprove the labels. Sue married young, long and faithfully until her death, was the devoted mother of three sons, and also had a shining career as a textile designer. I had three marriages and two divorces, as well as some memorable lovers. I too became the mother of three sons – and while I did, simultaneously, have a successful career as a librarian for 18 years, I then abandoned it for much less mainstream or lucrative endeavours – poet, artists’ model, crochet teacher, meditation teacher, Reiki channel, Tarot reader … usually several of these at a time.
What I really wanted was to be a poet. I wrote my first poem at age seven, thought poetry was the best possible way to create beauty, and couldn’t imagine a higher calling or a better way to spend my life.
‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’
‘A famous poet,’ I would answer blithely.
Eventually Dad explained to me that a poet wasn’t a thing you could ‘be’ in the sense of earning a living from it. I would have to have it as a hobby and support myself with some other job.
I kept on writing anyway. I've never stopped. Whatever else it might be, it was and is a vocation.
Wandering just a little way off the beaten track
By the time I got to High School, I had a clearer idea of who I was. Never one of the most popular girls, I knew where I fitted, and had just a few confidential and similarly nerdy friends (a word that didn’t exist back then!) who came on from primary school to High School with me.
By then I had buried my other-worldly experiences even from myself. (That willpower I’d developed was excessively strong!) Paradoxically, this meant I could safely join in with others to speculate about such things – because I was only wondering, like anyone else.
When my mum got a book on palmistry, I was fascinated. I used to study it in the evening, then go to school next day and read other kids’ palms by remembering what the book had said. I didn’t charge money for it or anything – I never thought of that. I also didn’t think of claiming any psychic powers; I told everyone I learnt the stuff from a book Mum had. It was just something strange and interesting, which some other kids were curious about too.
From my present vantage point I’d say that palmistry doesn’t need any psychic ability. It’s just a matter of learning what the particular lines, finger shapes etc are supposed to mean, and informing the client. Which was exactly what I was doing (except that I wasn’t studying it very deeply, and never became much good at it).
Rational thinkers, however, might well lump it together with other forms of – for want of a better term – fortune telling, as being unscientific and logically unprovable. I was still managing to be a bit weird.