The Socks – Biography of a Mother by Lyn Chatham (Shortlisted)
a grief dream—
my mother a spinning top
then
a woman with no mouth
***
my Mac was humming
in front of ferns waving behind glass
when I heard my mother scream
with those opera lungs
like when I stayed too long at the spring
or when I was near the edge of a cliff
her yell would fill the yellow slopes
and I knew I had to leave
the creek for the farmhouse
but it was just the printer jamming
or was it the wattle bird running
along the fence, intent on its next aria
***
Millicent was back near where she grew up
moving with her middle daughter
around inner southern suburbs of Melbourne
to flats half-houses units
the last one was the best
more of a small house, really, light brick, in a crescent street
it did have a high front fence but she went with it
as she could see down the driveway
they lived in Jewish neighbourhoods where she found the women pushy
in the deli (which her daughter found amusing
as she believed her mother had Jewish roots)
but there was the aroma from barrels of exotic coffees
and the watching of Hasidics on the way to Temple
Millicent helped her daughter by attacking the hard pumpkin
until she could no longer attack it
and it had to be subdued for her
there was television television china painting television china painting television
from farm to city without finding a community
***
I have a sparkling photo of my mother at a ball in our local hall when she was fifty. She is wearing a belted frock with a white stole and classy shoes. (Because she had been a city girl, she always put effort into dressing well. Her usual attire was a scarf/cravat atop a cardigan and skirt. And shoes with a heel). Her hair is quite grey and styled back from her face in neat waves, brought on by rollers the night before. (In later years my mother ran a black dye through her hair, to remind her of her true colour).
In the 60s, balls were the pinnacle of social life in our rural area. Very occasionally we went to neighbours for tea (what is now termed ‘dinner’) or slide nights, and, on Christmas Eve our family attended a sophisticated party at Dad’s brother’s place in Ballarat. However, balls, although infrequent, were the glamour events of the year. There was chiffon and satin, long gloves, diamonds and sublime dancing of the Pride of Erin, the Fox Trot and the beloved Barn Dance. Sashes for the best dancers, male and female – how those women could do the back bend on corners – and for the Belle of the Ball. I often wish I could replay my early life and observe myself in those spaces. Being fully present. Joyfully running up and down on the polished boards of the halls, sometimes even venturing onto the stages. And watching men in the Barn Dance move their hands down ladies’ backs, after accidentally landing on bare skin.
Mum usually attended such events without Dad because he didn’t like dancing. She may not actually have had a dance, therefore, as you couldn’t just get up on your own and freestyle. And Mum would not have had a ‘drink’ either, because there was no alcohol allowed. At these events, the men tended to congregate around the door, partly to be near to the booze in their car-boots. At about eleven my mother would have gone into the supper room for a six inch high piece of sponge with passion fruit icing, and a cup of tea. Then at midnight she would have driven us home.
My mother was married to my father, Arthur, a sheep and cattle grazier, for thirty years until she was widowed at fifty-nine. She had a family of three girls, of whom I am the youngest. Mum always said that ‘marriage is not a bed of roses,’ even though my father was a ‘good man’ who used to help her with the tasks of bringing up small children. What also sustained her through child-rearing was a folder of typed notes from the Ballarat Infant Welfare Nurse, as there was no mother to help her. And the fact that there weren’t three children to look after all the time, as Catholic boarding school was part of her husband’s commitment to the faith.
After my mother married, she never worked in paid employment again. She had been a book-keeper in Melbourne, although working in a bank was something she would have loved to have done. It wasn’t the accepted thing for a grazier’s wife to work outside the home, except in drought times; however, my mother did do the books for Dad. And, for a few years, she cooked for the workers during shearing time, when lunch had to be huge and there needed to be morning and afternoon tea provided, as well. My mother wanted to be a partner in the farm business but that was denied her as my father’s brother was his business partner. She might never have said the word ‘feminism’ in her life but she knew what inequality was. Women who married in the 40s were generally not seen as being equal to their husbands, in business or home life.
When her children left home my mother felt isolated. Our house was surrounded by acres of paddocks, and, although she could see a road and a couple of houses from the home, in the country, the closest properties did not necessarily provide girlfriends. It didn’t help that Mum was shy, either. Although she used to say that, ‘money is your best friend,’ my mother did write to four friends, who she had worked with in the city, until the end of her life. Also, there was no community house offering social connection and adult education. And Mum wasn’t interested in washing football jumpers. Although my mother’s heart was never in Catholicism, her (forcibly) adopted religion, she was involved in the Altar Society, helping with flowers for Mass and ironing cloths. Another activity was looking for old nails on our track, in order to prevent them from sticking in the tyres of her car. Her car was her lifeline.
***
in that crumbling farmhouse on the plains
with possums resident in the roof
Millicent used Contact on anything peeling
—black and white swirls on the side-table
—textured olive green on chests
—red and white diamonds on The Bible
—orange with brown flowers on ledges
—small squares of pink and blue on mantels
why did she apply it
was it to obliterate everything
that was old, dirty, incomplete
or was it to jump ship
from the Irish colleen she was meant to be
—it took days for me to remove it
***
Television alleviated some of Mum’s sense of isolation. When we were connected to electricity in 1964, we were able to garner the ABC, the local Ballarat station, BTV6, and Channel 0 from Melbourne, because of the massive antenna on our gabled roof. It was frustrating for my mother if on occasion she couldn’t get 0 properly, but then, she would watch very snowy pictures, just so there was something to watch. Her favourite programmes were The Three Stooges, The Phil Silver Show and even The Flintstones.
However, Mum was very proactive with regards to her health. She didn’t smoke and every day she walked for half an hour up our track to the main road and back. She also had a McWilliams dry sherry every evening, until she switched to Penfolds port, because she read that the red grapes in port were healthier. The Australian magazines aimed at women at that time were the sources of most of her health information. Mum was into wholemeal bread, ginger and garlic and was definitely not into cordial. My school lunches were gourmet ones with cheese, beetroot and walnut sandwiches. Unlike those of Strasbourg and tomato sauce on white Tip Top that my classmates had. Mum and I used to go into a weird shop in Ballarat, called a health food store, to buy dried apricots from large tubs. And when she went out to a café, my mother always ordered whiting. But at home we still lived on lamb – roasted as well as cold.
My mother did have conventional views on the female body, though. She was horrified when I stopped using ‘step-ins’ as a teenager, worried that I would really ‘spread’. When I cast these tight foundation garments aside, I couldn’t believe how comfortable it was to wear ordinary undies. I think Mum thought that massive flanks of tummy and bottom would grow on me overnight, as if in some macabre science fiction movie. She also told me, ‘your face is your fortune’, and encouraged me to use moisturisers and night cream. But the little jars she would give me went to the bottom of my cupboard and stayed there. My approach to skin care has only recently become more like my mother’s – now I seriously ‘grease and oil’, as my father used to say.
Because my mother knew what lean times were like, she tended toward frugality and conservation of resources. Our daily existence on the farm did revolve around vehicles but Mum was always turning lights off, so much so that I used to tell people that I grew up in the dark. She saved Christmas cards and made notepads out of them and clothes were mended and worn for years.
I yearn for my mother’s mental toughness. Occasionally she would talk about jumping in the lake (Wendouree) or packing her bags, but she did neither. She lived until she was ninety one, which I’m very grateful for. Perhaps some flirting didn’t hurt, to withstand the sameness of that view from the house on a hill. There was the bread-man who used to deliver loaves to the little box, shaped like a green and white house, at the end of our track. He made Mum giggle like a schoolgirl but was rumoured to be having an affair with an ill woman in the next town. And our dentist, a tall, Italian man, was also quite charming to my mother on many occasions as our family seemed to spend a lot of time in his Ballarat surgery. There was some luck, though, in my mother’s longevity, as she did drive cars very fast.
Once there was a hard-working Anglo-Saxon bloke who was a green grocer in the city. He married a Jewish tailoress and they had a boy and a girl. The family lived in a small cottage with leadlight windows, which they took a second mortgage out on. One day the daughter came home and went into the bathroom to find her mother lying in red water. The daughter ran next door to get help. But the mother died. The daughter left school at fifteen and went to commercial college because her teacher recommended she not go on. From then until she was twenty-nine she worked as a book-keeper, moving in her grandmother, because her brother had married and brought his wife to live in the family home. The grandmother was kind but the girl became sick of eating dripping and of the rags she had to wash out every month when the curse came. What she really lived for was singing. She had a strong voice for light opera and was part of a company based at the university. The years went on, she walked everywhere, World War Two started. She became used to air raid drills and beautifully tailored American soldiers. Wanted to join a women’s service but didn’t because of family obligations. One day she read in the newspaper that volunteers were needed to send gifts to Australian soldiers in North Africa. She was a good knitter and crocheter, so she selected a name from the published list, knitted a pair of socks and slipped a message into one of them. The soldier wrote back. They were married after the war in a small church in the CBD then went to live on his farm, one hundred miles away. She didn’t mind leaving the city because her sister-in-law hadn’t been kind and had grabbed her mother’s furniture.
***