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One: Don’t take any shit. Ma, you are a famous firecracker. Riled by condescension and mansplaining. I love it when waiters think your age means you’re off with the fairies and you call them on false flattery (“my daughter and I do not look like sisters”.)
When you and Dad built conference facilities at our isolated Tassie hotel motel in the mid-1970s it was a big investment. Needed a solid return.
A national insurance firm made a booking. The first night, one fella propositioned you in the dining room. Shortly after, the whole group was back on the coach, exiled into the empty coastal darkness. The lesson: self-respect is priceless.
Two: Be prepared. Remember when I was an 18-year-old newspaper cadet living at home? Mum, we’d get back from work around the same time. You’d plonk down your bag, and pour me a couple of fingers of neat Scotch.
You’d heard journos loved getting on the sauce and wanted me to learn to hold my liquor. You literally ran a booze boot camp. So ace! Even if it didn’t work.
Three: Be generous. Ma, you grew up in a tough time. Your dad’s war experiences changed him, tingeing your home life with violence. You’d carry your siblings up the road at night to safety. Maybe it was that early responsibility that made you find accepting kindness difficult.
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Even now, it’s very hard to do something nice for you. Offering to take you to the doctor involves Kofi Annan level negotiations. But you’re a total gun at showering other people with love. Birthday cakes and scratchies for friends. Always down on the floor with my kids when they were little, playing, laughing.
Last week you decided the road workers outside your house needed morning tea. You made chocolate eclairs — chocolate eclairs! — and dropped them off. Then were beyond surprised when the workers reciprocated with flowers.
Four: Deportment. Anyone else remember when Miss Australia was on telly in the ’70s? Yeah, evening gowns, crowns, a different age. Mum, you were fixated on contestants’ posture.
“She won’t win, walks like a wharfie”. “Her shoulders are back, head is up, I like her.” Anachronistic now, but it taught me to keep my head up, literally and emotionally, and to walk with a bit of panache. Like you mean business. Like you run the show. It always gave me confidence.
You taught me more about parenting than any book, show, research. Some of it was valuable because it showed me how I didn’t want to raise my own kids. How I wanted to break generational cycles.
That doesn’t mean I don’t honour the way you raised me. Because we all know being a mother is about evolving. Reflecting. You did so much that was fabulous, Helene. Still do. Thank you.
Kate Halfpenny is the founder of Bad Mother Media.
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