You’re So Awesome At This

Moving from country to country isn’t easy, and I get that it can be particularly hard for kids.  We were truly shocked at the magnitude and longevity of Hambones’ grief over the loss of his childhood home; at age 3, he remained miserable for more than six months before he finally settled into island life, and then, three years later, it happened all over again in reverse.

Once again, our poor boy was miserable, and there seemed little we could do to coax out the happy, inquisitive and courageous adventurer who’d enchanted us for years.  His new cold, harsh, urban schoolyard was like Compton compared with the lush, soft, nurturing gardens of Island Primary, and his absent foundation in the machinations of supporting and/or playing Aussie Rules left him bankrupt of the schoolyard currency; devoid of both a social network, and a footing upon which to establish one. 

For months we would hear from teachers that Hambones would be alone each lunchtime; wandering aimlessly in some out-of-the-way concrete corner, talking to himself and staring at the sky. 

We were truly heartbroken for our boy, and in the time-honoured tradition of the sad and helpless, we sought to mend our damaged coronary muscles with greasy, fatty food form of inner-city foodtrucks.  It was Christmas 2015, and we headed off to the Coburg Night Market to drown our grief in rare, gourmet wagyu between seeded sourdough and cumin-infused Indian Pale Ale.

It was heartening to see the brief stirring of embers in Hambones’ eyes when he glimpsed the offerings of fat chips and tacos, but our shoulders slumped soon after when his shrugged at the offer to play with some old family friends; instead asking to go and look at the band.  I lost sight of him for a while as I chatted and looked after Waltzie, but when I eventually went to seek him out, I couldn’t find poor lil’ Hambones anywhere. 

I can tell you my previously heavy heart leapt into action and thumped with increasing anxiety as I scoured the park in search of my dear boy.  I was so pre-occupied with fear and dread at losing him, that I hadn’t registered the conclusion of the atrocious, 28-piece El Mariachi Band’s ‘performance’, nor the arrival on stage of a single, costumed female in thigh-high gogo boots and embroidered mini-dress.

But it was at the very front of that stage, before this screeching, gyrating 60s jitterbug that I finally clocked Hambones.  My instinct was to charge in there and squeeze him close, but as I approached, I noticed that Hambones was staring at the stage, grinning and completely entranced at this outrageous performer; following her every direction and step to the tune of Marvin Gaye’s Let’s Get It On.

I can tell you the next hour was one of my happiest that year, as I watched Anna Go-Go achieve in 10 minutes what his parents, his teachers and his indifferent peers had been unable to do for Hambones in three months.  This five-foot-six, second-generation Italian forty-something with the bogan drawl, powdered face, shock-lock cowlick and crazy 60s get-up had captivated my son such that he had dropped all his brooding, lonesome inhibitions, and was shaking his tail-feather, doing the swim and the rocking the pony with all the abandon of a 1968 summer, and all the courage and flare that we'd been missing from him ever since he stepped off the plane in Melbourne four months earlier. 

This enthusiastic commedienne-come-dance-coach had reached our son with warmth, humour, enthusiasm and encouraging belief.  It was a significant turning-point for Hambones … and for us, and we have Anna Go-Go to thank for it.

Anna Go-Go brought our boy back home to us.  It was a Merry Christmas in 2015!

Bag 'a' Chips

What the hell am I complaining for?  Sure, I missed out on my holiday in the sun; poolside cocktails, breakfast buffets and late night turndowns, but I’m not the one with the limp wrist (ooh err!).

Poor old Waltzie should be the one complaining!  She’s the one who got bowled over backwards and ended up snapping both ulna and radius like les carottes en julienne during the first days of her overseas jaunt.  She’s the one who had to be whacked-out on ketamine, slapped in heavy plaster and denied a bath, a holiday, gymnastics, bike riding, swimming, writing with her dominant hand, scratching her nose, rock-climbing, tree-climbing, social-climbing, skateboarding, scooting, football, basketball, dodgeball, pinball or a date to the ball!

It’s Waltzie who should be the one screaming ‘foul play’, but apart from an hour or so of some pretty piercing lunatic screeching, we’ve hardly heard a peep out of her.  An early start, a cramped car ride, two plane trips, five hours in a hospital waiting room and another four waiting to go into theatre - all with a smashed wrist – and her thermonuclear disposition remained with nary a quiver.

The following day, she emerged from her prolonged, drug-induced sleeping beauty act as her usual, patient, trusting, self-assured and assuring self.  And that’s how she’s been ever since.

Meanwhile, Mrs D and I moan and complain of our lack of tropical downtime, and fail to recognise the contrast of Waltzie’s predicament compared with other children around us who shriek and whine tirelessly over splinters in fingers or grazes on knees.  We are too preoccupied with our own material loss to rejoice in this special individual who makes for us a holiday … every day.  We are so proud of you, Waltzie.  Thank you for you.

There's certainly just cause for complaint ... she just doesn't

The Grumpy Hiker

The Rye Foreshore is a contradictory place, especially early in the day when there aren’t so many people around.  On the one hand, the terrain is sufficiently flat and wooded such that a person standing on the sand is unable to clock any buildings or man made structures other than the rickety pier reaching its way out over the sandy flats, while on the other, especially as the morning sun rises higher, turning the shallows a sparkling turquoise and the sand an iridescent white, the razor-sharp glare can pierce the eye sockets and burn a searing, migraine-generating scar on one’s spongy grey-matter.

Such was the case for poor, little Waltzie, who missed out on a good deal of open, outdoor space as a young ‘un, and who I was unable to coax from the shade of the canvas cocoon which, in this era of chemically-driven rapid squamous cell replication, has replaced the nostalgic stripes of the trusty beach umbrella.

After perhaps an hour and half of reading over and over the single, hastily packed story book (for just such contingencies), my cabin fever was on the verge of erupting into a great, Papa-Bear snarl, so in my best Count von Trapp clip, I ordered my two regimental infantrymen off down the now-burning sands for a mid-morning walk along the pier.

Now Hambones is quite partial to a good stiff walk, no doubt stemming from his early pram-riding days when I would take him down the street, and out of necessity, he was forced to vacate the seat to make room for a slab of VB cans.  But Waltzie, having been reared from her early days behind compound walls, never really built-up much of an appetite for even mildly strenuous ambulation.  As such we weren’t long down the beach before I was hearing complaints of sole-maiming sand, sunstroke and general weariness. 

But with good ol’ fashioned stiff upper lippedness and my best Sergeant-Major bark, on I marched them to the end of the pier, where she and Hambones developed a bit of a spring in their steps thanks to some Sunday-morning dive groups, fishing troupes and itinerant teens taking illegal and potentially spine-splintering leaps of the gull-soiled pylons.

Thankfully, sometime during our return journey through the shallows, my scheme took hold and began to flourish as Hambones and Waltzie fell into some ambient verbal exchange which grew into giggles and splashes and eventually, with boogie-boards in tow, a full-blown bout of Waltzie’s unique, electrifying shrieks of pleasure.  This rapturous, ecstatic music, not the blinding sun, was what truly warmed me as I dozed in the shade of the flapping tent, reminding me why it’s so important for these two wonderful beings that I get them out of the house, into the car, and off on a weekend adventure.  

Some like it hot

Now I’m not one of those guys who, when he gets together in the pub with the other Dads every few weeks or so, ends up in a pissing-contest over everything under the sun, including the dinner-time stand-off over who can stomach the most and hottest chilli sauce on one’s hipster-grade burger.  But this does happen from time to time, and to be honest I don’t do too badly in this.  But still I wouldn’t say that I am a Capsaicophile by any stretch [although I am quite partial to made-up words].  Spicy food, though, once you don’t have it anymore … well, you really miss it.

I guess that’s the refrain of many parents these days; one way or another, your kids’ eating habits do impact on your own, and although Hambones has a bit of tolerance for the hot stuff, not so Waltzie.  All trace of chilli, paprika and even fresh ginger has more or less vanished from the cook pot these days, and one has learned to make one’s peace with an ever-reliable stock of Samoa’s Own Chilli Sauce in the pantry which is cracked open most days after any given dish is served up.

It’s a shame, and Mrs Donkey and I try to hold tight in the hope that our two darlings might get a taste for spicy food in years to come, but recently we have played host to some other kids from school at dinner time … and oh my!  We are THE-LUCKIEST-PARENTS-EVER!  We’ve had visiting kids scraping the icing off cakes, scraping the hollandaise off eggs, scraping the Nutella off toast and scraping the vegetables off … well just about everything!

‘Oh yeah, Little Darren doesn’t like potatoes that have potato in them’, and ‘Charlene prefers to have her sauce on the left side of the plate or she won’t eat’, and ‘Janine has her carrot sticks placed in individually wrapped compartments, or she won’t eat’. 

Goodness me.  Hambones and Waltzie, I am so proud of how much of the food revolution you have embraced; from pies, to burritos, to lasagne, to curries, to stirfries, to pho, to risotto … and to vegetables, just about any way they come!  You guys are amazing – thanks for joining-in with, and allowing Mrs D and I to maintain our passion for good, fresh and tasty food.

My other two kids; I know we’re not supposed to have favourites, but…

The Pokemon Betrayal

Hambones came to me the other night long after bedtime; he was visibly distraught, and so in a rare moment of empathy, I sat himon my lap and asked if he was OK.  After skirting around the issue for a while, he eventually took a deep breath, squared his shoulders and advised me that I was going to be angry about what he was about to say.

It seems that one lunch time, a week before (he’d been hanging onto this for a while), he’d offered to assist a teacher with some task or other up in the library, but didn’t know what to do with his most prized tin of Pokemon cards, which has been his obsession for months.  He couldn’t think of anywhere safe to put them, so he opted for the collection of school Lost Property under the main stairs, and he sunk the tin deep down under a pile of festering jumpers and odd socks.

He went and did the task and of course, on his return to the Lost Property, some skanky little brat had knicked the entire Pokemon stash.  Little Bastards!

Poor Hambones had been gutted with grief at this loss, but, it seems, considerably more distraught at what his grumpy father might say when he found out.  Needless to say I was kind, and placating on this occasion, and deeply affected by poor Hambones raw, emotional injury.

And now I am reflecting on the irony of it all; Hambones’ fatal decision to hide the cards in Lost Property, rather than to exercise any of the other dozen or so options available to him (to take them with him, to ask a friend to hold them, to ask a teacher to hold them, to run them up to his schoolbag…) was so illogical, and yet exactly what a seven year old kid, intent on trying to help someone and to get to it as quickly as possible would do … it’s exactly the kind of thing I would have done when I was seven.  Poor Hambones.

In the Asylum

They have this game that they play, Hambones and Waltzie.  Well, it’s not so much a game as some kind of performance they get onto.  This happens on any given day, either in company or alone, and sometimes they can be way down the other end of the house, completely on their own, and the game they are playing – whatever it is today, “Hey, pretend I am a man at the door and you don’t know I’m there…” – starts getting louder and louder, and the theatrical, shouting demands of each character become more and more outrageous, fuelled by the maniacal laughter of the other. 

…and on it goes, louder and louder, “shout shout!”, “cackle cackle!” … louder … louder…

I assume, judging by the escalating volume, that they’re performing for me … but I am miles away, so the decibels climb and the outrageous drama continues … louder … shout … louder … cackle … until eventually I crack and scream (really loudly, so as to be heard, with my sudden anger sparking out of my eyes and forehead like some villain from a 1960s comic book) for them to keep it down “..or it’ll be timeout for both of you!”.  I then return to my dishes/laundry/mopping, gutted with shame at having put a stop to something which I suddenly recognise to be innocent loveliness.

This game, or play-pattern is a constant in our house, and while I can mostly tolerate it in the home, I do get a bit [more] on edge when it happens in public.  It was on at the fruit shop the other day while I was racing around to get it all done before they completely lost it.  I’d been setting a gruelling pace that morning to get all the jobs done before we collapsed in front of the teev for the afternoon, but I wanted to do this last stop for the weekly supplies.

Hambones’d helped with the apples and pears, and Waltzie’d spent a good seven minutes looking for the broccoli before returning to the trolley with a stem of rhubarb in hand.  I’d flipped around chasing-up the loose ends, and at some stage their microchips’d been tripped again and they were back in the zone.  As we approached the checkout, their game (something about angry, flying bananas) was getting louder and crazier.

As my shoulders slumped in polite, contrite response to the regular barrage of abuse from the elderly checkout ‘hen’ for failing (yet again - that’s every week for the past eight years!) to put all my items in plastic bags, I could feel my knuckles growing whiter and whiter against the trolley in seething proportion to the crescendo of shouts and cackles that was escalating behind me. 

And just a split second before my combined embarrassment and intolerance tripped over to Def Con 1 and I spun around to give them both barrels, the matronly attendant – smiling at me for the first time in near a decade -  nodded to them and said, “They look like they get on well”, to which I looked over at Hambones and Waltzie embracing each other and squawking and grinning like a couple of loons.

I was reminded of how well they really do get on, Hambones and Waltzie, and of how very lucky I am to have them.