Part of my semester-one assessment was to do a three-week practicum (practice teaching) stint in a public high school with class after class full of recalcitrant, spotty teenagers who had taken drama because they thought it would ‘be a bludge’ (for non-Australian readers, this means an easy option requiring little to no effort). I valiantly worked (what I thought was) my magic in an effort to get them engaged in play making, scene work, and improvisation, only to be met with outright disdain and sniggers, or just be completely ignored. The one or two students per class who genuinely wanted to learn stood no chance amidst the mosh pit of conscientious objectors to my pedagogical brilliance. My bold naivety that I could bring artistic enlightenment to these ‘young minds’ was short-lived, and after the required three weeks (which felt like three months), that dream came to a rude awakenning.
I conceded defeat. Beaten but not broken, I marched bravely out of the schoolyard with a song from the musical Sweet Charity playing in my head.
“There’s gotta be somethin’ better than this….”
And, channelling my inner Shirley McLean, I was determined to find it.
(To this day, the sight of a teenage girl with her headphones fed up through her school shirt and into her ears makes me want to rip them off her face, along with her nose piercings and $20-eyelash extensions.)
Disclaimer time: several of my dearest friends are secondary school teachers, and it is out of absolute respect for them and what they do that I stepped back from secondary education. I have neither the stamina nor the patience to bring to life what is required to teach youngsters well (I have one teenage son, and he’s enough of a challenge on his own!). The people I know who teach children do so with passion, talent, and brilliance, and are a rare breed to be revered.
A Shameful Statistic
Up until this point, I’d been only vaguely aware of how poorly women (in particular, mothers who have dedicated years of their lives to child bearing and rearing) are financially prepared for life alone. The Australian Institute of Family Studies has found that the financial impact of divorce can last for decades and carry on into older age, with women downgrading their homes, or going through what is for some the ultimate horror of losing their homes altogether. The study also says that it’s women with children who suffer the most financially.
(Family Pathways: The Longitudinal Study of Separated Parents AIFS – 2016)
Now, I couldn’t help but notice I was at the midpoint of my life and still hadn’t sorted my shit out in terms of being able to support myself – not only as a single woman, but as a single parent.
Enter Shame!
A woman I have never met (my secret girl crush) was my absolute saviour during this time. Brene Brown is the world’s foremost authority on shame and vulnerability. Her books The Gifts of Imperfection, The Power of Vulnerability, and I Thought it was Just Me (but it isn’t) to name a few, along with her Ted Talks, helped me feel not so alone and ashamed of... well, pretty much everything.
When I first watched her TED Talk “Listening to Shame”, I wept with the body-wracking sobs of complete catharsis, such was the deep resonance her words had with me. It was like she had written that whole talk and posted it on the worldwide web just to reach me!
I was desperate to find a way, personally and financially, to create a life for myself and Leo and finally free myself from the heavy cloud of shitful shame that had been trailing around after me for so long.
One’s an accessory, two’s a lifestyle.’
Don’t know who said it first or where I heard it, but that quote has been stored in my vault of pithy one-liners for many years, and it has been wheeled out on many occasions.
And at the end of a marriage, with all that is to be taken into account, when it comes to your children, the number of little lives you undertake to uproot must be a factor for women wanting to leave but choosing to stay. One is easier than two. A sleepover for one, for instance, is infinitely easier to arrange than coordinating the different ages, genders, friend groups, dietary specifications, screen habits, and rules (and the list goes on) of more than one offspring.
Once I’d committed to one, I never seriously considered more. One was challenge enough for me. I got the hang of it eventually, but it wasn’t easy. It very nearly didn’t happen at all.
Children had never been on the menu for me. Or so I thought. Andy and I had discussed it and he didn’t seem fazed by my ‘no kids’ stance, but just like the lyrics of the song… ‘what a difference a day makes….’ When the bug bit, it hit like a bolt out of the blue. I literally woke up one morning and said to Andy, “I want to have a baby.”
“Hang on,” he said. “You’ve always said you didn’t want children.”
“I’ve changed my mind.”
“Right…. Er, so, when are you thinking you want to have this baby?”
“Now. As soon as possible.”
“Oh, right. Does it matter what I think, feel, want?” (He may not have said this, but was very possibly thinking it.)
The answer was, in my mind, at least: “No. I want a baby. If you don’t want to have one with me, I’ll find someone who will. So, best you get with the program.”
I was that ruthless. I can’t explain it. It was like an insatiable, pre-menstrual craving for chocolate. I had to have it. I had to have it now! Get out of my way, I’m a woman on a mission – I have a need to breed!
Upon reflection, I’ll admit, this was not one of my finest relationship moments.
Where had it come from? What turned me from actress, chanteuse, and good-time party girl into this hormonally fired-up ‘breeder at any cost’… and seemingly overnight?
For most of my adult life up until this point, I had avoided babies like they were herpes – highly contagious and (when you got them) a life sentence. I moved to the furthest side of the room when they entered and made sure I had a drink in both hands, lest I be offered to hold such a little bundle of joy. I held them only if they were thrust upon me, and I did so gingerly, fearing that I was somehow doing it wrong, holding them incorrectly. I watched as other women buried their faces into their little heads, inhaling deeply the smell of newborn innocence, collectively cooing at the infant in their midst. I didn’t want to smell their little heads or touch their little hands and feet. No thanks. No way. Babies were not for me.
Truth is, I was terrified of them.
You see, I’d already been a mother. And I’d failed miserably.
Horribly.
I was seven when my brother was born. Mum and Dad moved us from the wilds of the aircraft hangar on the outskirts of a small country town (yep, for a while, a dis-used WW11 aircraft hangar was home, but more on that later) to a modest little fibro house inside the town, opposite a park. I guess they felt that, with a small baby, it would be better if we lived in an actual house. My baby brother had gotten lost a couple of times by this point – under ancient tracts of equipment – and had required considerable efforts to dig him out.
At this point in time, Dad was 32, Mum 28. Young, footloose and fancy-free (except for the fact that they had two young children). They were party people. As was the norm for many people of their era, they drank a lot, and the house was often full of people laughing, dancing, singing, and generally having a ball. I had a lot of ‘aunties’ and ‘uncles’ – some genuinely related, some not – who were always around having a rowdy good time.
Unless they weren’t there. Then my parents were to be found at any one of a large number of pubs within crawling