The Inner Sanctum

There are few places a person can truly be alone. Existentially, of course, one can always retire to the solitude of one's own consciousness, although I always find this induces a wave of panic that prompts me to ask, “Am I good enough company for myself?”
But let's segue from this mildly alarming thought onto the pragmatics of solitude. I'm thinking specifically here of the solitude one gains on hearing the satisfying click of the lock on the bathroom door. This, in theory, secures the inner sanctum and ensures that interlopers are cancelled out regardless of their efforts. Yes, you may be able to hear the mayhem and carnage unfolding outside the door, but that's someone else's problem now. You're 'in the bathroom' and, as such, are incommunicado.
This may be a dereliction of duty, but it's extremely effective at deflecting requests for breaking up fights, changing nappies and answering telephones. You can take your time in this tiled and mirrored alter-world. Why don't you gaze into the mirror to check for crow's feet, test out that new lip gloss, perform a mini pedicure. These were the simple and fleeting joys of the bathroom.
I say 'were' because a disturbing and fundamentally divisive event rocked my belief in Solitude recently. I was happily shampooing my hair (something I only do every third day so as not to squander the scant moments of Sanctuary) when I heard the usual harks from beyond the firmly locked door.
"I need a Band-aid. Can you open the door?" bellowed the eldest Youth. "You'll have to wait, I'm in the shower," I reply.
He tries again, "No, I need it now. The blood's dripping." I retort, "No, just hold a tissue on it."
Silence descends and I feel content that a crisis has been averted. But then I hear it. A little jiggle on the door handle. Then, quite unmistakably, the lock begins to turn until 'click', HE'S IN! "Out, out," harangues The Shrew (as I am fondly known on occasion). He scarpers and isn't seen again until I emerge from the Sanctum, demanding to know how he breached the fortress.
He holds up his weapon - a 20 cent coin - looking all sweetness and light.
One half of me is devastated at the demise of the Sanctum, but the other is quietly proud that the Youth had the ingenious temerity to even try.
However, I'm still with Franz Kafka when it comes to solitude. "Don't you want to join us?" he was asked by an acquaintance who encountered him alone after midnight in a coffeehouse that was already almost deserted. "No, I don't."

Don't Mess With The Lady

There are few things more ignominious than defeat at the hands of a 7-year-old. And here I'm not talking about pretending to be bowled out in cricket or letting them win at Scrabble. I'm talking about ACTUAL defeat where you're trying your valiant best but come to the heart-breaking realisation that you're seriously not going to win this game of chess. She's got you on the ropes and aside from resorting to infantile methods to remedy the situation (i.e. upending the board with feigned alarm, diverting her attention while reinstating your Queen, or convincing her that Rooks actually can move diagonally) you're going to have to fall on your sword.
This, however, is almost impossible. I stall, I perseverate, I pontificate, but she's onto me. "Just make a move," she says in her mini wise monkey voice. “Don't rush me, kid! There's dignity at stake here.” That's what I'm thinking, not what I'm saying. In reality, some verbal rubbish about being very busy or very tired or some such escapes from my lips before I can help myself. Then, "Oh Christ, look at the time! We've got to go." (These humiliations (plural) usually occur in the hour between breakfast and leaving for school so there’s always a good get-out clause.)
There is a fair amount of harumphing, tsking and ohhhhhhing before I can convince her that it really is most important that we get on the road. While she’s safely strapped into the car, I bolt back inside and sweep the chess pieces into their box. My pain is over for another week or so.
This ruse, of course, will only last for so long until she realises that she has the better of me. Is there any shame in that? I'm not sure, but it certainly doesn't feel good. In fact, in stinks. I thought at some point my children might overtake me - but at SEVEN!
So I take my lead and minor solace from the rambunctious French pip-squeak Napoleon, who opined that Death is nothing, but to live Defeated and Inglorious is to die daily. I don't mind dying on the chess battlefield if it means that I'll be remembered fondly. Adieu.

Life, the Universe and Everything

There are a couple of killer questions that you're never quite prepared for when they issue from the mouths of babes. So, on Wednesday I could deal with the "where do babies come from?" clanger from the 4-year-old. But the one that threw me was Thursday's, "Mum, do you believe in God?" Okay, so maybe when you're 7 these things really play on your mind, but I'd done my perseverating on Creationism versus Evolution many decades before and hadn't really given it much more airtime since.
Right, I thought, I'll go through the logistics first. I'm going to give him the facts and let him work it out for himself. I tell him about what the scientists say about the Big Bang Theory and Darwinian Survivial of the Fittest. At this point I'm struggling a bit having ditched Science in Year 11. But I'm sounding pretty erudite (to The Youth anyway) and Mr 7 is nodding sagely, taking it all in.
But when it comes to the Creationist theories I'm struggling a little. The more I talked about how some 'being' created the entire universe and every living thing in it in 7 days, the more Mr Back Seat is looking like I'm spinning him some sort of crapola. "What!", he says. "Invented EVERYTHING...in SEVEN days."  In the rear vision mirror I see that he looks supremely unconvinced and starts shaking his head. "No", he declares. "That doesn't sound right." I'm not sure at this point whether he's doubting my credentials as a reliable source of fact or whether the whole God Theory isn't washing for him. After an interminable silence he pipes up from the back. "I'm an Evolutionist", he says. I nodded my head in agreement. Do you think it's too early to introduce him to Richard Dawkins?

Who was that hoon?

In my teens everyone was doing it, in my twenties it was totally de rigeur, in my thirties it was generally tolerated, but now that I've hit forty, my hoon driving has become officially unacceptable (to selected persons anyway). I'm not sure if you know the type of driving I'm talking about, so let me live it for you here. The sunroof is open, all the windows are down (regardless of wind chill factor), the stereo is at ear-bleeding, sunnies are on. Music selection is incredibly cool, of course, and all other family members have been dispatched from the car. It's just me, the stereo and the open road (or Anzac Parade). The speed limit is not necessasrily being adhered to at this point.
In my own mind I'm this hip, urbane, groover behind the wheel. But then there's the time-space continuum. Strictly speaking consciousness is subjective, so I can be whomever I want in these little hoon fantasies of mine. However, the continuum does allow for other realities and I suspect that mine may be at the delusional end of the Bell Curve.
Let's take a moment to study, shall we, how an unbiased voyeur may see things. Observe, the mother in the 4WD with the four baby booster seats arranged in the rear of the vehicle. Note, the harried look and furrowed brow. These seemingly inocuous details are vital in determining what we have here. She is The Ageing Hoon, unable to glide gracefully into middle-age, into sensible shoes and grown-up couture, into blow-dried hair and Blackberries.
The Youth have declared my hoonish behaviour mildly amusing, sometimes alarming but only acceptable if their choice of music is playing. My husband vascillates between love and loathing. He loves it on a Friday night after a dinner out when he can play Joy Division as loud as he likes and hang his head out the window yelling at passers-by. He hates it on a Saturday morning when my erratic antics bring on billious attacks.
Yes, it may be juvenile behaviour on my part, but I like it and I'm sticking with it.
But this does beg the question: how old would you be if you didn't know how old you were?

School Holidays SUCK

"Let's get one thing straight", I said to The Youth this morning as they whipped up their 457th origami crane to add to the collection which I will later be called on to purchase from their 'shop'. "We're not spending any money today, okay. We're not buying any Strawberry Squeezes from Boost Juice, we're not going to the cinema, we're not even getting a box of orange Tic-Tacs at the service station." This news went down like the proverbial lead balloon, and their tiny little minds started ticking over almost immediately. How were they going to vanquish this parsimonious malcontent they had before them?
As I see it, the whole game of master and slave is a relentless exercise in autocracy and degrading submissions. Regrettably, The Youth have sussed this and are using it to their advantage. They know that a war of attrition is the ideal way to achieve their goals, and that school holidays are the parents' Achilles Heel.
With this ammunition in their holsters, they began their assault early. Could they watch a movie before breakfast? Absolutely not. Could they check their emails? No. Could they have pancakes for breakfast? Are you joking. With my despotic reputation intact, the Infantry decided to make their move. I want a haircut today. Can we go to Alice's house? What are we doing today?...You get the idea. My armour was slipping, and it was only 7.15am.
Weet-bix were eaten, clothes were donned, travel was undertaken and we found ourselves at the Museum where I had booked them into a FREE children's show where the little blighters were required to do things maritime: scrub decks, haul supplies, eradicate rats, you know the stuff. After an hour they came off the 'ship', huddled, conferred and arrived at the universal opinion that the show was 'for babies'. 
Was Dostoevsky talking about me when he said in The Idiot, 'The soul is healed by being with children'?

The Book Club

It has been much talked about and finally it's been done. I've started a book club with 4 friends. You know how it works: you read a book, make a date, gather at a wine bar and discuss in a very grown-up fashion the contents of the nominated text. All very straight-forward. Or so I thought. However, there is peril at every turn here. Choose a book that's too lightweight and you risk being branded an idiot. Aim too high-brow and you're a wanker. Go the middle ground and you're just too predictable.
Then there's the angst of 'jumping the shark'. Have all your incredibly smart and literate friends already read the very clever tome you're putting up as the next target? This is an anxiety reserved specifically for Book Club.
But it doesn't stop there. I also get a little worked up over how fast everyone reads. One of the Book Clubbers snorted that she hadn't even started the novel we were to be discussing in 3 short weeks' time. What! While I've been religiously reading my 10 pages a night so as to arrive at the conclusion just in time for the meeting, this anti-swat has devoured another 3 or 4 books and will "just read it in one sitting" on the weekend.
Some might say this flies in the face of what Book Club is all about - the pleasure of reading and re-reading each sentence at a leisurely pace, taking in every nuance and grasping every plot line.
Regardless, it's my turn to choose the next book, and I'm getting in early because who knows how fast these conches read and what's currently stacked beside their beds.
So, I'm off, I need to get reading. This is my reputation at stake here! And as we all know, the appearance of success is a great competitive advantage.

Deja Vu...all over again

There's a certain comfort in repetition, predictability, reliability - especially so for children. And so it comes to pass that a number of perfectly good genres of music and artists has been forever sullied by The Youth and their desire to play certain tunes over and over and over again. And we're not talking about juvenile trash here, we're talking about reputable material. As an example, Michael Jackson can never be listened to ever again in our household - he is persona non grata. In particular, anything from his Thriller phase is considered The Devil's Work by pure dint of it being played on such high rotation that it shall never be rotated again in my presence.

However, I never learn. Every time I introduce The Youth to a new artist it's with a certain amount of alacrity, but the bonhomie is quickly sucked out of me when they insist that every conceivable moment near an ipod is spent listening to said artist and generally to one particular tune.

And so it was with my new favourite, TZU, a very clever band from Melbourne. The Youth have comandeered them and ruined them forever. Their favourite track, Number One, was a winner, but is now a loser. I apologise to TZU and give them this advice: happiness is destroyed by the repitition of slowly destructive LITTLE things.