The Big Screen

Do you remember when home videos became popular? Was it in the late eighties? Everyone said, “Oh that spells the end of cinema”.

Now everyone is creating home cinema experiences with purposefully made recliner chairs, blue ray DVDs (not sure what these are, but my kids are up to date with it), surround sound (not that surround sound is new – my boyfriend in the late eighties had it. He was so proud after he’d installed it. Is this a guy thing? Personally I don’t mind if the sound of an approaching train emanates from the telly. For my enjoyment it does not have to appear to be coming from behind me to the right), projectors mounted from the ceiling and large screens on the wall. We’ve got one of these in our new house too – the home cinema room. Our four-seater recliner (in red) is yet to be delivered.

Even so, the kids don’t want to wait until the new releases hit DVD. They’re off to the cinema as often as ever. During the school holidays Prince Caspian, Kung Fu Panda, and Get Smart drew them to the box office. For the children, I believe their motivation for going to the cinema is to be up with the conversations rather than the desire to get out into society. For me, its all about getting out. Sitting at home with surround sound and blue ray will never replace meeting a friend in the foyer, squeezing in a drink or dinner before hand, filing in after purchasing a choc top to watch a movie on the big screen and chatting about it later (not to mention the people-watching opportunities), and you never know who you might bump into when you’re out.

Fruits of our labour

We have moved house. For eighteen months we have been building an environmentally friendly home. It has two twenty thousand litre water tanks buried underground (in Australia we are in drought). We have enough solar panels to be either electrically neutral or contribute to the grid. Our house design was audited by Going Solar before construction to ensure we had incorporated energy saving technology and know-how. We have LED down lights and other energy saving globes throughout and the house design is solar passive. In other words we have double glazed windows everywhere, and the house is orientated to the north with large eaves to allow winter sun in to warm our travertine-covered concrete slab but to block out the sun’s direct rays in summer.

But the thing I’m appreciating most is the new kitchen. My daughters love it too, all four of them. The most dramatic appreciation has been shown by Emma. She has developed an interest in cooking since we have moved. She has been riding her bike down to the shops to pick up packet cake mixes. She whips these up independently or with her friends. Twice she has made biscuits by herself from scratch (asking for help at strategic moments only). Its only a matter of time before she’ll be able to make family meals. I have a plan to teach her something simple (like tacos) to begin with. I think its worth harnessing this newly developed enjoyment of working in the kitchen. The best bit about it is: the kitchen is big enough for both of us to be working at the same time, with enough room for Sally to be doing her homework on the bench!

The Debut

My eldest wants to be an actress. She joined a drama group this year and recently performed on stage for the first time. All of the other kids in the group had been acting together for years. I wondered how Kat would shape up compared to them. 

The night I drove her to the theatre prior to her performance she was buzzing.  She wasn’t nervous and she didn’t rehearse her lines in the car. She was chatty and excited. I don’t think she realised it, but she spoke to me in an English accent.  I didn’t comment on this to her at the time. I didn’t want to interrupt her funk (or whatever it is actors need to do prior to these things: move outside of themselves or get into a flow).

I had tickets for the whole family for the following night’s performance. At the theatre entrance, I dropped her off and wished her luck. When I returned a couple of hours later to pick her up, the foyer was deserted. At the box office I made enquiries about the finish time. There was still forty minutes to go. 

“My daughter is in there”, I told the box-office girl, “I’d rather catch the last forty minutes than sit waiting in the foyer”.

“I can’t sell you a half ticket”, she said strictly, “and I can’t let you in for free”. She had a well-that’s-that look on her face and was surprised when I insisted on going in.

“Then I’ll purchase a full ticket. I’m not going to sit here while she’s in there”.

She hesitated but eventually sold me the ticket. “I feel guilty selling it to you for only forty minutes”, she confessed.

I rolled my eyes (inwardly wishing she would just hurry), paid for the ticket and moved quickly past ushers and black curtains into an intimate theatre space. Momentarily in the dark I felt disorientated. Scanning the stage, I ascertained that Kat was not on it, settled back into my seat and waited. At every entry of a new performer, my heart rose in my chest. Would this be her? I’ve had this feeling before, many times. Scanning groups of school children at school pick-up time, the sight of your own child’s face is like a home coming. Intimate familiarity registers and you can see it on their face too, as your eyes meet. I was ready for the charge of instant familiarity. But I knew she wouldn’t be able to see me. She didn’t even know I was in the audience. 

A change of act, and suddenly her familiar face was before me. It was my Kat, but they had dressed her in a long auburn wig, raunchy seventies gear and platform shoes. She looked adult and stunningly beautiful. I starred in disbelief. Waiting for her to speak her lines I almost held my breath. She delivered her lines in an English accent with confidence and conviction. Her character was convincing as a gossiping trouble maker (which is funny, because Kat is not that type in real life. She is trustworthy and thoughtful). 

I fossicked in my bag and pulled out my camera. My thoughts at the time were to capture Kat in the wig to show her sisters. I locked the camera onto no-flash. Furtively I captured the following two shots:

After the show I found a seat in the foyer. From this vantage point I watched as other patrons merged and converged and actors were reunited with boyfriends, girlfriends and families. Finally Kat emerged flanked by a group of other actors. I wasn’t the only one who noticed them. A large group of kids about the same age as Kat and the others converged on them. The talk was excited. There was lots of hugging. I approached the group in time to hear Kat’s friends complimenting her on her performance, how surprisingly well she walked in high heels, and the look of her wig. Kat’s smile was enormous as she joked about stealing the wig and worrying whether she would roll her ankle in the shoes. 

She confessed to me in the car on the way home that she loved wearing the wig.

“Seriously”, she laughed, “I want that wig. It was like I was fulfilling a little-girl fantasy or something”, was the way she expressed it.

“Oh, I know why”, I said, “Its like Areal the Little Mermaid. Do you remember dressing up like her when you were four?”.

“No! But that explains it lol”. (Yes, she really did say lol. Kat and her friends actually talk chat-speak sometimes. lol).

“You really did look beautiful in it”.

“Thanks. Everyone was coming up to me back stage saying Kat, grow your hair that long, dye it that colour, you look hot! or Kat, marry me in that wig! It was cool”. 

We laughed.

She was on a high. I thought she was chatty on the way there, but it was nothing compared to her elation on the way home!

Retrospectively…

The first time I travelled without my husband and children was two years ago. I went to a conference to present a paper written about my Masters thesis and it went down well. My primary occupation prior to this had been parenting for thirteen years, punctuated only in the last five years of this with part time teaching and postgraduate study.

Full time parenting was a wonderful stage of my life. The displacement I experienced after leaving full time teaching was supplanted gradually and completely by the challenges and joys of raising four daughters, whose development I found fascinating. During those years, I was cocooned in a completely fulfilling world of unconditional love. Raising my children I felt a sense of purpose and direction beyond rationality. Yet during those years, from a societal perspective I was largely invisible. After so many years, I think it was inevitable that invisibility seeped into my psyche. It took hold by stealth.  

When my youngest went to school and I was suddenly bereft of constant childish companionship, I realised I had become accustomed to hiding behind my children. The first time I went to the market alone, for example, I felt disconcerted by the direct gaze of the familiar store holders. I had grown accustomed to their eye contact being drawn away from me by a child vying for attention. Without a child holding on to my leg or my hand, I felt exposed and incomplete. I didn’t know how to be. 

That first conference was a marked stage in my journey of finding myself again as an individual and as a professional person with something to contribute to society (in a way that was recognised). Suddenly in my forties I find myself no longer invisible! I can hardly describe the turmoil I have experienced between then and now. Even the word turmoil isn’t quite right because it doesn’t convey the excitement and sense of adventure rediscovering yourself engenders. 

I have referred to the past two years as my mid life crisis. I know that its over because I feel solid again. I have reconciled new-found freedom with my responsibilities.  Parenting is still a large and important part of my life, but there’s a me in there too who can stand on her own two feet. Ah life.

Change was in the air

I was feeling different. I had survived the turmoil that was my mid life crisis. I had learnt (and changed), and decided it was time for a New Chapter.

I have opened Comfort Food like a new piece of slate upon which to start afresh. I can’t predetermine the content of this new blog, only that the things I choose to write about here will reflect the differences I feel. Some of the epossums themes will be left behind and new ones will begin.