One of the brilliant pieces written by students from The Monthly Masterclass

I’m not sure how I feel about Jack White having an all girl band and an all guy band at his beck and call, that each morning pre-gig neither they nor the audience know who his Whiteness is going to call upon to back him up.

What does gender have to do with rock n roll? They could be hermaphrodites or ducks for all I care, as long as they play amazingly.

Having said that, when Jack White’s band of ladies float on stage in powder blue frocks like ghosts of 1910 deep south farm girls I was pleased we got the chick option. In a male dominated band scene its so refreshing to see ladies giving it as good as the guys.

Perhaps White chose his pale ladies to match his own anemic palour, since everything on that stage seemed placed there for a reason – his three powder blue vintage amps, powder blue guitar, slightly darker blue braces and smartly dressed, black-clad roadies wearing trilbies.

It’s hard to tell from a distance whether he has whitened his face with make up,  but with that american drawl, maniacal smile, painted, sharp features and pasty face its no wonder he’s been compared to Johnny Depp’s Willy Wonka.

Appreciation for his looks are often polarized: my boyfriend said he would jump the fence for him with his gothic gentleman caller looks, whereas I find him quite creepy, doughy and far from sexy.

Kicking off with White Stripes’ favourite Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground, White powered through a well mixed set list of tunes from past outfits including Dead Weather, The Raconteurs and his latest solo album Blunderbuss.

He brought a touch of his hometown of Tennessee to our much maligned Festy hall, filled with violin, double bass, pedal steel, keyboard, piano, drums, acoustic and electric guitar and the lush vocals of his black backing singer who he duets with on the most vicious of love songs, Love Interrupted.

Hotel Yorba took on a dosey-do, barndance feel with its skittering fiddle and White proudly introduced his Hank Williams cover You Know That I Know.

Even those not hugely familiar with his impressive back catalogue would have to see he’s come a long way since he started thumping out meat and three veg bluesy-rock nuggets with Meg 15 years ago.

(Where is Meg now? I thought pre-gig, what is she doing?  Part of me is a tad suspicious that the softly spoken drummer got chewed up and spat out as he scaled the heights to musical genius.)

For over an hour and a half he and his nameless pale ladies – mumbling some reference to them at the end as the “The Peacocks” – served up great lashings of gospel, rock, blues, country and soft rock in a well polished show.

The one time White spoke more than a few pleasantries was to share a story about an obsessive fan who broke into his bass player’s hotel room last time they were on tour in Melbourne. The girl then called White and threatened to commit suicide if she couldn’t see him. Later on, he said, she posted something online about how she and Jack had got married. On their return to Melbourne this time she had called White again and again threatened suicide if she couldn’t see him, and somehow they found her and carted her off to hospital.

He tied it up with some moralizing about treating others as you would like to be treated, and launched into the Raconteurs song Top Yourself.

I wondered, is this really appropriate? Is this song choice bad taste, and should you be sharing that story for the sake of thousands of fans’ entertainment?

Musically the show could not be faulted, although Festy Hall’s usually crap sound could. The strength of a six piece band behind the usual two piece White Stripes songs gave them so much grunt my ears were ringing for the rest of the night.

But something about all the contrivance left me cold and detached, with his vintage acoustic guitar scratched just so, the highly styled stage setting, his veneer of cool and cliched American “God bless you all” departing quip.

We walked out into the rain with our beaten happy ears and I couldn’t help thinking of that girl who’d supposedly been carted off, who’d become so unstable and obsessed with a persona who was so well crafted he may as well be Willy Wonka.

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One of the brilliant pieces written by students from The Monthly Masterclass

I met my husband late in life.

Not ‘late’ like ‘I’m-cashing-pension-cheques’ late. But late as in my reproductive clock has ticked over into Struggle Street.

I met him when I was 36. We married when I was 37. We got pregnant when I was 38 and then I actually started to feel old. Up to this point in my life getting older had never bothered me. No, I embraced it! I was happy to be done with my teenage angst, delighted to take life’s lessons in my 20s and ready to apply those lessons in my 30s.

Now I’m 40 and I’ve had four miscarriages in two years for no other reason aside from my age and bad luck.

When I was in my 30s and looking for love a girlfriend of mine said (over many a glass of red wine while we were seated at the singles table of the wedding of another friend), “Kimmy it’s just a numbers game”. Which roughly equates to “You’ve got to kiss a lot of frogs to find your prince.”

She was right. In the last few years I had struggled through 20 or so online dates before I finally met James. And I was only using the site for dating practice. I wasn’t even remotely committed to actual commitment with someone I met online. Not remotely.

But life’s funny like that. All that practice led me to the perfect fit. I played the numbers game and won a husband.

I mention this because that’s how I see this baby-making caper. It’s a numbers game. I’m a text-book mature-age want-to-be mother. I’m a statistic. A number. A percentage. Now that I’m ticking the next box in the age bracket my odds have gotten even longer.

And yet I’m hopeful. I simply believe. My husband and I are awesome people, with an awesome life that we love and into this life of awesomeness we will bring a baby or two (at this point I’ll settle for one, but he’s even more hopeful than me!).

I just need to manage my patience until the numbers swing my way.

Patience has never been a strong suit of mine. I was smoking behind the shelter shed the day they taught that in school. But, sometimes life makes you wait.

I waited the obligatory 12 weeks before having the obligatory 12-week scan at which point we discovered we had an eight-week-old dead foetus instead of a first trimester baby. Bugger.

Even though I was vaguely prepared for this (I knew the numbers were stacked) it still didn’t register when the nurse asked me to be specific about my dates because it seemed ‘a bit small’ for 12 weeks. So I had to have an internal scan (a delightful experience where you get a wand up your lady bits) to be sure the ‘a bit small’ was in fact, a bit dead. When we confirmed this fact the nurse said she’d leave us alone to ‘process’. I asked “Why?” because all I really wanted to know was what to do next. I had this lifeless thing not growing inside me. What does one do with that?

I had to go to my GP (I didn’t have one); I had to visit my obstetrician (I had one booked but we were yet to meet); I had to call work (I decided I needed two weeks to recover when I actually just wanted a free holiday).

So while I was in project commando mode, my gorgeous soft-in-the-middle husband had to process through this reality. He wasn’t quite as prepared for it as I was. We’d started calling this baby by it’s name. We’d talked about how we’d rearrange the house to accommodate and he’d been annoyingly vigilant about my alcohol intake (bastard).

But he put his feelings to one side and supported me 100% through my pragmatic approach to this wee conundrum. Bless him.

Two days after the scan we were up at 4am to be at the hospital for 5am. I had the added joy of having to have a suppository three hours prior to the procedure to soften my cervix (can’t remember the name of it, just that my cervix was clearly being as stoic as I was about the situation). Nil by mouth meant I was parched and hungry by 8am. I wasn’t allowed to move once the suppository had been inserted. So I was feeling pretty sorry for myself by this point and just wanted the whole thing over. What a palaver.

My darling husband sat patiently beside me the whole morning while we waited for me to go into surgery. He was the epitome of supportive. He didn’t talk unless I wanted to. He didn’t expect me to behave or act in any way in particular. He just was. Which was the opposite of how he behaved some years before when I was recovering from root canal, but that’s another story.

No, he was terrific. In fact, we’d been married for less than six months at this point and I fell in love with him all over again during this, our first miscarriage, together.

At 9am they finally summoned me to the operating theatre where all I remember is how fucking cold it was. That and that it was 9.10 when I lost consciousness and 9.45 when I woke up. Short and sweet. Actually, not so sweet really. The anaesthetic wore off pretty quickly and suddenly I was in a world of pain. “It’ll feel just like a bad period” my arse. I had so much pain I couldn’t lie still. The cramping was horrendous. Hearing my complaints the nurse tried to give me panadol. “Are you serious?!”, I screeched. “Get me the good stuff. Now!” Suddenly this whole miscarriage thing was making me angry. I did not expect the pain. Thankfully, now that I’ve been around the block more than once, I know that this level of pain is not normal. It was just not well-managed during this first procedure.

After some more screeching from me, and some signing of serious paperwork by my husband, I was allowed some of the good drugs and I drifted off into a lovely hazy slumber. I woke to Ellen on the TV and my husband sitting in the chair beside me – still. And then we were allowed to go home. Yay. Let the holiday begin.

In between pregnancy one and pregnancy two I was offered a fab new job in another state, so getting pregnant again meant getting acquainted with a whole new medical team.

I discovered we were pregnant again in the first week of the new job. Great. I hadn’t particularly bonded with any of my new office buddies so this was going to have to stay under wraps. Oh, that and I was suddenly a non-drinker. Try that one on when you work in PR!

Rather than wait it out and wonder we opted to have our first scan at the eight-week mark this time. The scan showed a 7-week foetus instead of an 8-week foetus but it was seemingly viable so we were advised to have another scan in a week. Not quite the ‘high five’ I was looking for, but we took it positively, none-the-less.

Within the week it was clear that pregnancy two, or P2 (I’ll start abbreviating for ease of reading shall I?), was going the same way as P1. Damn. I had some planning to do. Thank you baby Jesus for Christmas. To the surprise of my obstetrician I put off the procedure (technically a dilation and curettage) until I could break for a two-week holiday and have none of my new colleagues any the wiser. Happy days.

Ironically, for an atheist, I also have baby Jesus to thank for P3. We conceived in Tassie in a gorgeous stow-away apartment during our Easter holiday and while we were well-pleased with ourselves, twice shy by now, we were also naturally cautious.

Six weeks later we visited our lovely obstetrician again and the three of us held our breath and crossed our fingers as she did the scan.

Strike three. No heartbeat.

Off we go again for an early morning hospital admittance and form signing. By this stage I’m an old pro and just coast through it all, chatting to others in recovery as we come to. I even ask the nurses what’s in the sandwiches today because I want to avoid the weird tasting fish paste option this time.

I take another couple of completely unnecessary weeks off work and strike up another missed miscarriage. That’s what they call it, when you have no symptoms – a missed miscarriage. Like, ‘Oops, I missed my miscarriage. How did I do that? I’m sure I wrote it in my diary. I just missed it.’ Do they have a belated greeting card for that?

By now my quietly caring husband is getting a bit frustrated. Neither of us really expected that it would be this hard. It had taken all the joy out of planning for a baby. It’s true, if planned baby-making sex doesn’t dial down the romance then consecutive failed pregnancies will.

On the bright side, having three meant we were elevated to ‘recurrent miscarriage’ status which means that the medicos will investigate. Hurrah, thought I. We’ll get some answers. We’ll stop the leaky tap. We’ll replace the flat tyre. We’ll add more salt to the recipe. Alas, the investigations showed nothing more than a Vitamin D deficiency for me and that my husband’s batting average was pretty good (ask him to explain).

I now have two specialists in my medical ensemble – which is quite a lot for someone who’s never had a regular GP. I have a fabulous fertility doctor (which is queer because we don’t have trouble getting pregnant) who instantly bonded with my husband the minute he pulled out the Star Wars reference of ‘stay on target’. We loved him immediately.

I find out we’re pregnant with number four (P4) the same week my job (you know, the one we moved states for) is made redundant. This actually pleases me because I realise I’ll have all the time in the world to be either pregnant or recover from not being pregnant. Seriously. That’s how my brain works.

Because I’ve told you the ending at the beginning of this story you already know that P4 ends the same way that the first three did.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t looking forward to it this time though. I mean, sure, it’s a shit thing to go through, but the legal drugs are fabulous.

Last week we actually had a counselling appointment with an IVF clinic, which I’d put off until after a US holiday and my 40^th birthday dinner – do you see where my head is at? Mr Star Wars doesn’t necessarily recommend IVF for us but pre-genetic testing will increase our odds of a viable embryo. It’s still no guarantee. Neither of us has particularly embraced the whole IVF thing. Don’t get me wrong. Science is a grand thing and I’m fully aware that I have limited years left to roll this dice – I’m just not ready to roll them down that route yet.

I’m not prepared to tie myself up in knots with fear and anxiety and financial investment every month to make that work. That’s just not how I operate. And to be honest I really don’t think that’s in our best interests either. I’m not religious. Some might call me an atheist (or if they’re generous, a heathen). But I do have faith. I believe our family will happen exactly when it’s meant to. And while I wait, patiently I’m going to be getting on with my life.

I hope the next time you read something from me on this topic it’ll be all sunshine and light about how P5 has turned out into a – you know – actual baby. But you know what? It might not be. I might have a few more numbers left in this game yet.

 

You can connect with Kim’s cheeky side at https://twitter.com/kim_cowen or her rent-paying professional side at http://www.linkedin.com/in/kimcowen . One day soon she’ll roll all this sparkling wit into a blog with real stories and stuff. 

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One of the brilliant pieces written by students from The Monthly Masterclass

I was born on June 30, 1972. “We wanted a tax deduction,” my parents liked to say. Growing up in the sub-tropics with a birthday smack in the middle of Winter sucked. “What do you want to do for your birthday?”, Mum would ask. “Have a beach party”, I’d say with the conviction of a child with no notion that single-digit temperatures aren’t for swimming in. “You can’t have a beach party, it’s Winter”, Mum would reply. So when I discovered that seasons were inverted in the Northern hemisphere I resolved that one day I’d have a birthday in the Summer.

Last year, I got talking about my impending 40^th.  I couldn’t give a rats about turning 40 and struggle to understand people who see it as the doorway to irrelevance and incontinence pads. But I’ve become increasingly aware of the lack of milestones in my life. I’m disinterested in marriage and parenthood, which means my next likely rite of passage is  my funeral. I was also aware that life slips by too easily and it’s important to stop sometimes and mark the moment. So I decided to start creating my own occasions that would serve as treasured memories and opportunities to stand with those I love and say we matter.

My 40^th seemed a good place to start. Over dinner I told some friends about my dream to have a Summer birthday and a French friend said Turkey was fantastic. And that was it, my boyfriend decided we were going to Turkey for my birthday. My boyfriend and I have a habit of orchestrating surprises for one another. It began about 5 years ago when I managed to get him to his seat and his hero Bob Dylan to walk on stage before he realised who it was. He cried, I cried, it was magic. So I told him to organise the trip and tell me nothing. I’m normally the over-organiser who reads every guide book, agonises over where to stay, what to do, how to get there. But this time, I simply got on the plane knowing I’d be in Istanbul in 24 hours. And the sum I knew about Istanbul was the lyrics of They Might Be Giants’ Istanbul (Not Constantinople): “Istanbul was Constantinople/ Now it’s Istanbul, not Constantinople”.

So we arrive and it’s warm. The kind of temperature to bask in. We spend a few days tooling around Istanbul and it’s awesome (just add it to your bucket list and go). Then it’s my birthday.  I accidentally burst the balloon of what my boyfriend was organising when it emerged that when I’d said I wanted to going dancing in a Turkish Trance bar, he heard “Trans bar” and had been feverishly searching for transvestite bars in Istanbul. But because it was Istanbul, we did end up in a restaurant with a palace hidden behind a hole in the wall. An actual 15^th Century palace the restaurant owner discovered a few years ago while doing some renos.

The next morning, we fly South. We step off the plane into the kind of humid heat that punches you in the throat. I have no idea where we are and it’s perfect. A taxi ride later and getting on a wooden sailing boat to spend 4 days on the Mediterranean Sea on water so clear and blue it’s as though Zeus squeezed the sky.

40 years wasn’t too long to wait for my moment in the sun. Especially with my man the dream-maker.

Follow Rachel on twitter @RachelTaylorAu

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One of the brilliant pieces written by students from The Monthly Masterclass

The high-rise estates in the City of Yarra house a diverse mix of cultures and ages, all living in very close confines, sharing laundries & stairwell with drug dealers. The ‘old guard’ are fearful of the young people – ‘if there are two or more young people together, they must be up to no good’.

The image of the estates is so unbecoming to ‘outsiders’ – fences and signs symbolise the ‘border gates’. Families from other countries, with many children, some who have their own children, but they won’t leave. Why would you leave? These estates cover many hectares of prime real estate in inner city Melbourne, the City of Yarra, with trams running past their doors or only a couple blocks away, providing access to anywhere in Melbourne. And what magnificent views! Views across Melbourne, out to the Dandenong Ranges, the Yarra River, the MCG, the city lights. But they complain – about access, lack of access, maintenance, safety, car parking, drug dealers, the department of housing, the lifts, the laundries, the rubbish.

Many community supports are provided, although they are increasingly limited. Community development workers and Police Youth Resource Officers run soccer programs for the kids, Community Information Centres coordinate activities. There’s the mothers groups, the singing groups, the Safety groups, the Men’s Shed, Health and Wellbeing Groups, Community Gardens and much more.

Uniquely, the estates do provide a ‘village’ atmosphere where neighbours will become friends, carers, helpers, babysitters to each other’s children, regardless of background or culture. Residents have the opportunity to escape their boxes, into their local neighbourhood house or community garden. Residents can spend their time growing and tending their veges, flowers or fruit trees.

Residents have come from all backgrounds, many from war torn countries to fid a better life in Australia. They are trying to integrate into the Australian culture, learn the language, learn the law, learn about justice, from a very narrow view of the world – a box. With security, with swipe cards, and locked doors, with concierge staff, people tailgate, people don’t sign in, people get angry, and police are called.

What will become of the children and young people growing up on the estates, many left unsupervised, as their mothers are home in their boxes caring for their younger ones. Who is mentoring them, teaching them how to integrate, how to grow up in Australia, how to behave appropriately, how to behave respectfully to their parents, to authorities, to women, to each other.

 And what of the broader Melbourne, Victorian, Australian community. What of the boxes that the broader community put the residents in? The stereotypes that create such a cultural divide, that residents who grew up on the estates carry with them into adulthood. These estate communities are great communities, rich and vibrant in culture and personalities. Currently there is a public housing shortage in Victoria. There is a government consultation, residents are scared of losing their housing. The information hasn’t been translated, they don’t fully understand what is happening. They are marching in the streets. This is their home, even if it is in a box.

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