A few good men

I find myself yearning, these benighted days, for stories – novels, films, TV shows – depicting good men. I am a voracious reader of novels and watcher of television series, and admirable male characters are thin on the ground.

I know such creatures exist. I suspect every man in the world has an unconscious sense of entitlement, but the vast majority of the males I know well – in my family, friendship circle, community and work place, are thoroughly decent. They are aware of gender issues and appalled by so much male behaviour. They do things like cross the road if they are walking behind a woman on her own. They are keen to do the right thing. They are, mostly, part of the solution.

But I open the newspaper and am bombarded, every darn day, no exceptions, with accounts of men behaving badly, in every field of public and private life, across every socio-economic group.

In the domestic sphere, family violence has been more rife than ever in lockdown. In the public domain, it’s hard to know where to start. We could begin with the most obvious places you might expect male privilege to be exercised in the most damaging and horrific ways – institutions that were traditionally only open to men, like the army. You could predict that. Male sporting clubs also fall into the ‘usual suspects’ category.

There is the world of entertainment where, since the long-overdue comeuppance of Harvey Weinstein, a staggering number of leading men have been exposed as predators.

And then there are the institutions where you would hope honourable attitudes and actions were de rigeur but, tragically, are anything but – the courts, the church, parliament.

Of course the reality of how the evil of misogyny plays out should be portrayed in books and movies. And they are. From the dystopian all-too-believable nightmare of The Handmaid’s Tale to the elegant horror show (if you’re a woman) of Madmen, from the casual and the vicious sexism manifest in The Newsreader to the murderous domestic tyrant of Deadwater Fell, to the fact that most detective shows feature violence against women, male perpetrators of horror are not hard to find when you turn on your television.

But there is another reality, and you attract more flies with honey than with vinegar, as the saying goes. I hunger for fiction writers and film makers who would give our boys and men some realistic and appealing role models in the tales they tell.

The reasons Shetland is one of my favourite ever shows is precisely that the main character, Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez, has such deep integrity, courage, decency and warmth. He treats everyone he encounters with the same respect, is tender with the vulnerable and unflinchingly courageous with the abuser.

I’m exhausted hearing about the carnage the male of the species has wrought upon our world. Another way of subverting the patriarchy is by providing alternative narratives. There are good men out there. Let’s start telling their stories.

This was published in The Melbourne Age on 4 November 2021

Trying (often failing) to be faithful in lockdown

Lockdown 5, morphing almost seamlessly into lockdown 6, has discombobulated me more than all the previous ones put together. I know I’m not alone in this. During the first lockdown or two, prolonged as they were, we were on fire with beating this damn thing; all in this together, not yet wearied of the effort. Our hopes of getting our lives back before too long were high.

Now we are all exhausted, and grieving for things we may never recover – big meals around the table, family gatherings, holding our grand-children, travel. Couples get a trial run at retirement – together all day long, not much news to share at the end of each working day.

As with other challenging times in life, I wonder what I can learn here, how I can use it to grow spiritually. And the thing with lockdown is, it pares our existence down to the essentials.

I don’t wish to overstate this. I am not in Haiti, I am not in Kabul, my life remains comfortable; there is always food in the pantry, I have a job, a home and a partner I enjoy immensely. But the usual life distractions have all but disappeared. We can’t go to movies, galleries or museums. We can’t go anywhere on holiday. We can’t go out for a meal or a drink, or even a coffee. Most frustrating of all for our household, we can’t have people around to dinner. As a result, we are thrown back on our own resources in a way that is rare in the affluent world.

We can no longer do those activities – church and community commitments – that make us feel we are leading meaningful lives, that we are worthwhile people. We are thrown back upon grace – the assurance that God’s love is not dependent on what we do.

And there is so much extra time – no daily commute, no socialising, no travel. So, could I use this time as a kind of retreat? Could I simply sit and see what is revealed, if I ask the Creator God, God of imagination and beauty and new life, to help me to focus on what really matters? Could I set aside more daily time for prayer and meditation? In a time when getting about and helping isn’t an option, could I hold others in my prayers more intentionally? Could I simply sit more often, taking in the changing light in the sky from my apartment balcony? Could I dwell on the extravagant beauty of spring, even in my inner suburb, to take time to really behold the wattle, smell the jasmine, touch the tiny, pale green leaves budding?

It’s hard to escape the all-pervasive gloom and ennui of this time. I long to trust that in this hard time, as in all times, God can use the situation we are in to draw us closer to Godself, to fill us with God’s boundless resources of love.

This was published in the October edition of The Melbourne Anglican

Surprising lockdown discoveries and delights

In that first, long ago lockdown, the only thing that bothered me much was the abrupt closing of public libraries. I am a voracious reader with limited space and income; free lending libraries (for my money up there with public health, transport and education as a sign of a civilised society) are the answer to my bottomless appetite for reading material.

Working in the CBD as I do (well, did), the delightful City Library in Flinders Lane, with its piano and mini art gallery and its proximity to arguably the best café precinct in the CBD, was a weekly lunchbreak destination.

In March 2020, desperately seeking books, I discovered to my sweet relief that my suburb is liberally endowed with ‘Little Libraries’ – jauntily decorated mini chests or old, glass-fronted cupboards hoisted onto front fences or the low forks of pavement trees. Here, locals ‘leave a book, take a book’, as the instructions read.

These unpretentious gems have kept me sane through six lockdowns, a constant source of all kinds of literature. To my surprise, I have picked up books I had been meaning to read for years, like Geoffrey Eugenidies Middlesex – a masterpiece way ahead of its time. I also discovered some wonderful authors I had never heard of. I gobbled up Esi Edugyan’s Washington Black, Gil Courtemanche’s A Sunday at the pool in Kigali and Days without End by Sebastian Barry – three of the most confronting and exquisitely written things I’ve read in an age.

Then, of course, you can always find thrillers and detective fiction – my comfort reads in trying times, such as in a pandemic. Your Jeffery Deavers, Susan Hills, Nicci Frenches, Peter Robinsons, Val McDermids, Ellie Griffiths, the incomparable locals Garry Disher and the late lamented Peter Temple. And, being thrillers, you can pop them right back in the little box you found them in, as (mostly) they are not worth wasting limited shelf space on.

Although, having said that, one of the good things about having been a reader for as long as I have is that I have completely forgotten Whodunit in all these books, so I can quite happily read them again, reliving the delicious suspense.

Realising this set me to examining my own groaning bookshelves and finding that not only are there books there I haven’t read yet, but that those I have read have slipped from my memory and could well stand a revisit.

So, really, even if we – heaven forbid - have lockdowns till Christmas, I will be set. Between my own books and the charming book boxes on so many street corners of my neighbourhood, I will survive.

This was published in The Melbourne Age on 30 September

Sweet September

Sitting on the verandah of my family’s beach shack late September, white ti-tree petals waft like confetti. Footy’s over for the year, the spring racing carnival has just been launched, cricket has yet to start for the summer. In Melbourne, we measure the seasons by sport.

Me, I stick with the ti-tree. I’d rather know the time of year by blooms and blossoms, the colours of the flowers and the scents they dispense so generously.

Our beach shack sits on a chaotic acre and a half of bush. Wild old marvellous crazy gums wind and contort, their branches twisted in weird angles or lying horizontal, parallel to the ground. Come down here late July, officially mid-winter, and the wattle is set to take off—all Aussie gold and green and the heavy sweet smell of cake.

By late August the wattle is past its best. Come September and the official start to spring, all that is left of our proud national symbol is moth-eaten balls of dirty yellow that come off on me every time I brush past, so that my little nephew bursts out laughing when I appear at the door and says, ‘Why are you wearing wattle all over you?’

September is my favourite blossom time at the beach. Get out of the car after the drive down from the city and it hits you in a wave of sweetness: freesias. The bush block is carpeted with the things: pure white, creamy yellow and pale mauve. They are everywhere. When I go back to Melbourne I take bunches with me to fill our city home with the smell of the bush and the beach. When my sister leaves, she takes a bunch in a jar to leave on our mother’s grave.

Jonquils take me back to another bush-beach place where we lived when the kids were tiny. We’d drive out of the country town on a day off and go picnicking where there was an old stone church, still used on the odd occasion, and a crumbling tennis court to go with it—vines devouring its sagging fences and the roots of trees buckling its floor.

Early spring in this magic place was jonquil time—mini daffodils of bright yellow and white. We’d gather armfuls to take back home and look around and not notice the difference, so many were left.

But jasmine is pure Melbourne. September in Melbourne means jasmine—climbing all over suburban fences in undisciplined riot. First the tightly furled, deep burgundy of the unopened buds and then opening out to white and pink. And the scent!

Every spring I pick jasmine to bring the scent into the house. But it resists me. Jasmine is only good in the wild, the urban wild of gardens and fences, pergolas and walls. When cut and put in a vase it flops around anyhow, looks odd, wilts in a day.

But I need to smell it. First of all, it takes me back to exams. As long as I can remember, I had exams looming around the time that jasmine is flooding the city air with sweetness. Just when a young girl gets restless with thoughts of spring and warmth, new life and romance, she has to have her nose in her books.

Secondly, an infinitely sweeter and more poignant memory—of young love. Back then I lived in Toorak where my Dad was minister at a church. I was never happy there. Coming from India and then a small weatherboard house on a tiny block the other side of town, the high walls and exclusive shops of Toorak make me miserable.

When we moved there, I was 14 and seriously in love for the first time. I had lived a couple of miles from the object of my affections—to move to Toorak felt like the end of the world.

Still, love will find a way, even teenage love, especially teenage love, and he caught the tram over to see me every weekend. We would wander those empty Toorak streets, ostensibly walking the dog but really just desperate to be alone.

Or else sneak off without even the dog as chaperone. Walk until we found a friendly wall covered in abundant clouds of jasmine to hide behind in the unlikely event of anyone ever walking along that cul-de-sac. Press up against the white brick wall and against each other; kissing and barely coming up for air, drowning in innocence and desire and the scent of jasmine.

The jasmine is all but over in Melbourne now and with it the vividness of memories that can only be evoked by the sense of smell. That boyfriend, to whom I’ve been married for nearly three decades, sits beside me on the verandah at the beach, bald and much loved, reading the paper, his glasses on his nose, cup of tea steaming gently in his hand. And the sea breeze surrounds us with the perfume of freesias and wafts white petals of ti-tree confetti around our heads.

I wrote this a long time ago. An oldie but a goodie.

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Meeting Jesus in the emergency department

Because I’m a Christian, lots of life experiences make me think about God.

Two five-hour visits to the emergency department in a big public hospital left me grey with fatigue, and I wasn’t even the patient. Waiting in what we used to call Casualty when I was nursing, is like being on a long haul plane flight, but without the excitement. After not very long, your hair feels dull and greasy, your skin starts to sag, and the reading matter you brought has long since ceased to hold any interest.

The youngest of our adult children has had dozens of visits to this hospital. She is perfectly capable of ubering, but if we can possibly be there, we are. These soul-destroying waits are bad enough with family beside you.

She’s very unwell, but there are always those worse off, and of course, they take priority. We sit in plastic chairs and watch the infirm limping and staggering in. Heavily pregnant women are bleeding and they shouldn’t be. They are terrified they might lose their baby. There isn’t much privacy in public hospitals and you soon learn exactly what is wrong with everyone who walks through those doors.

One woman is clearly ‘on’ something – pacing the room, talking incoherently, stroking her big belly, emitting angry vibes. Another two are sitting quietly but wearing their masks half-mast, noses out. An Indian couple with a two week old baby are there for the long haul, setting up camp in the corner of the waiting room with bottles and blankets.

One young woman in particular breaks our hearts. She is unsteady on her feet, wavering in pain, clutching her hot water bottle. Like my girl, she has endometriosis. ‘Please, please, just give me a hysterectomy,’ she begs the triage nurse. ‘Please. Please.’

We know there will be a lengthy wait and at the end of that the long-suffering staff will do what they can for everyone who turns up. We know that for many, there will be no quick-fix, just a patching up and sending home till next time.

All I can think of, sitting there, mesmerised by the passing parade of suffering womanhood, is that this is like a scene from the Gospels. Jesus was often besieged by crowds of the ill, those in agony, the disturbed, the poor, the desperate, those who couldn’t afford fancy physicians. And he looked into the eyes of each one, seeing the person behind the pain, seeing what they really needed, touching and connecting.

Two evenings in emergency in one week made me freshly aware of the depth and universality of human suffering. It reminded me of Jesus’ compassion, the time he took with each aching body and heart. Each time I am in casualty, I am reassured that the closest picture we have of God is someone who was intimately involved in the suffering of those he encountered. I think of Jesus and am reminded why I follow the God he embodied.

This was published in the September issue of The Melbourne Anglican