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

There is a little known religious practice primarily associated with the Greek Orthodox faith that has a parent placing their child in the spiritual care of a stranger. This is at least how I understood it when I first witnessed a mother purposefully making her way with her baby in her arms to the front section of the church that I attended with my mother, grandmother and sister as a child.

I remember the woman placing her child at the foot of an icon and walking away. As a large section of the congregation stepped forward to attend to the child, I turned to my mother and asked how anyone, let alone a mother, turn her back on a baby? She explained that the baby had not been abandoned – its mother had simply dedicated her child to God in return for her answered prayer.

My mother added that the person who picks up the child accepts to be its godparent, thus taking the responsibility for its spiritual upbringing, especially in the absence of its parents. “But they are a complete stranger” I whispered to my mum, to which she responded that no member of a close community is a stranger. She assured me that the child would be safe no matter who got to it first. She went on to explain that it is not so much the individual who reaches the child but the community that they belong to that provides the spiritual support that all children need and deserve.

Sadly there are many children who are, for whatever reason, left in the care of strangers. The unaccompanied refugee child who arrives on our shores seeking asylum is, in a way, similar to the child who is left at the foot of an icon. The child’s parents or kin look to us for support, but all they seem to receive is indifference and cynicism.

Our community does not surge forward to embrace the unaccompanied minor. Instead it turns its back, accusing strange people from afar of offloading their children on us. We shut our eyes to the prison cell like detention facilities that unaccompanied minors are place in, happy to leave them in the care of government officials, private security firms, and the few who have the decency to hold out a helping hand.

A compassionate community does not stand back and expect the good few to provide the spiritual support that all children deserve — it offers its hand. I remember my grandmother telling me that a strong and decent community functions as one hand, and it is primarily for this reason that I am saddened to see the country that once held out its hand to my grandmother and the many post-warmigrants like her, threaten to push away our newest, youngest and most desperate arrivals.

The ‘unaccompanied minor’ epitomizes all children who are in need of refuge and spiritual care. A strong and compassionate community orientates its heart towards them, holding out its firm, warm and reassuring hand. This is the measure of a true community and indeed the moral standard by which all communities ought to be judged.

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

I love the day after a hangover. Who doesn’t? I call it ‘the hangover-over’ and it’s truly a wonderful day. The outside world gets its colour back, basic shapes and patterns become clearer and you can start living your life again. The bad taste in your mouth finally dissipates and you suddenly find yourself putting on that Sherlock Holmes hat of yours and figuring out why your wallet is completely bare aside from a business card from a girl called Sheena. If we examine the term “hang over,” within it there seems to be the inherent image of a kind of filthy residue dripping over from the previous night. It’s as if your body is unable to conga its way out of a conga-line. Hangovers remind me of those melting clocks Salvador Dali liked to paint as we each become melting clocks ourselves, slumped over the couch, head in our hands, slowly praying for death.

The realm of the hung-over is an incredibly lonely place. Nobody wants to talk to you and, quite frankly, you don’t want to talk to them. You’re forever trapped in a plastic bubble of blah where the only thing worth doing is wallowing in your own misery. A quick text to make sure your friends made it home alive is always a nice gesture however it’s usually only a prelude to the inevitable religious moment of crouching over the toilet bowl like a pathetic praying mantis.

The next day is a different story. As soon as you wake up that very next morning, you are a completely different person. You can feel the haze rising from your zombie-fied corpse and you want to shout “Hallelujah! Christ has risen!” while pumping your fists like you’ve been given a free blender on Oprah. One quick shower and you are back into the world, firing on all cylinders, a functional member of society.

Many people have written about the “hang-over cure” if there is such a thing. Everyone has their own method; their own little secret cauldron of concoctions, and the one that seems to pop up most frequently is grease. Grease, grease, grease is the word! Bacon, eggs, tomato, hashbrowns shovelled into your mouth until your arteries can take no more and your veins flow with Hollandaise sauce. Personally, this approach has never really worked for me. Feeling blocked up with grease actually makes my headache throb even louder. The safest option for me is fruit salad with a regular cappuccino. While I’m aware that it’s probably not the wisest approach and it certainly isn’t likely to fill you up as well as the aforementioned grease feast, there’s something rejuvenating about eating fruit after a night of Hungry Jacks and 3am kebabs. I’m reminded of that ad (I think it was for Gaviscon) where a disembodied figure takes a swig of medicine and the diagram on the ad shows white liquid coursing effortlessly through the body, instantly resolving all its problems. That’s what fruit salad does for me.

My brother sometimes goes with the ‘Powerade before bed’ approach, which is also quite common particularly around sporty people. Powerade is meant to help because of the electrolytes or something but this approach does require a bit of forward planning and not all of us are capable of that. The Powerade bottle needs to be in a placed in an area that’s both easily visible and readily accessible. A good idea is to use your bedside chest of drawers however you certainly don’t want to forget where you put it. Personally, I’d hate to stumble home after a big night out and later find out I was sucking on the family lava lamp to try and ingest the electrolytes within.

A good place to try out some of these methods is Schoolies trips, which many of us have been through before. I remember from my own hazy recollections of Schoolies in Ocean Grove that after the first three days of tequila-soaked mayhem, my friends and I were absolutely craving fruit. In a remarkable moment of solidarity, we all rallied together and marched towards the town centre on a quest for anti-oxidants. We grabbed the biggest watermelon we could find and carried it home like a trophy. As I chowed down on its sweet flesh I remember my body going a state of confusion. “Wait a minute, this isn’t macaroni or pizza. I may have to call my supervisor” my addled taste-buds seemed to be saying.

Some people see the hangover as punishment for too much fun, others see it as an unavoidable part of life and others brag about how painful it was and even welcome the next one. Call me old-fashioned but a morning of puking your guts up and an afternoon of daytime TV and yelling at strangers is nothing to be proud about. Nonetheless, when that next sunrise hits everything is fine again. I’m not really a religious person but if you do indeed see your body as a temple, consider this. Even though the hangover is your Confession, the hangover-over will always be your Absolution. So go in peace…

Tim is on twitter #timmymania

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Like others in this tangled time on our planet, I grew up with very strong influences from more than one culture.  These cultures were so different from each other that they could have been different planets.  When the very smells and sounds and textiles of your baby days come from different worlds, and get all woven together in your emerging psyche; yet the underlying rules are spectacularly different (and often opposed) what do you do?  As life unfolds, bits of yourself wind up here, bits over there on the other side of a chasm.  You can vest in one story and reject or bury and mourn the bits that don’t fit (and live your life beset with ghosts).  Or you can try and try and try again to throw spider silk guy-lines between the outcroppings, and create a web that can begin to hold more than one story.

I call it WaysWeaving.  The word was coined for a novella, written in homage to the most important chief in the valley of the highlands of West Papua where I grew up as the daughter of missionaries (American father, Australian mother; more cultural intrigue).  The changes that unfolded over the 40 years that my parents lived and worked in Tangma were colossal, and I honoured Aligat for holding an energy umbrella of “The Old Ways” over the valley, while creatively aligning himself with much of the new.  I have done my best, in my journey through life (and over a fair portion of the planet) to emulate this art; to be a WaysWeaver.

In my late 30s, to my considerable surprise I found myself married with a five year old child and another in utero.  I could no longer explore the possibilities of my world armed only with a backpack and a passport.  New circumstances call for new methods.  I began to read books based on the tremendously exciting work of Marija Gimbutas, an archaeologist whose importance in the domain of mythology should rival that of Joseph Campbell, because she literally unearthed thousands and thousands of years of hope for the human species.  I can still remember sitting in a chair, reading The Myth of the Goddess (Baring and Cashford 1991), and the sense of discovery, exhilaration, joy.  Wow!  For thousands of years of early human history, we lived essentially in peace!  And we rocked! Cultivation, pottery, arts of all kinds, and ceremony.  Carvings and figurines and pottery from the time, depict ceremony, or are placed in ways, or decorated with patterns, that reveal their ceremonial significance. The central image over a vast geographic area was that of a Goddess, in many forms.

Art and spirituality have travelled hand in hand for longer than any of us could usually imagine, and to a WaysWeaver mind this is exciting.  If we did it before, we can do it again.  We can choose paths of peace.  They are a familiar place, and we recognise them.  It’s important to know, I believe, that when we get our hearts and hands into materials, colour, we are standing on the side of Peace.  This is very literal.  When as a craftsperson or artist we immerse in our work, we begin to calm, maybe to hum or sing, to enter a space that we could call meditative, or Shamanic, or the wavelength of true prayer.  This can also be conducive to community and shared wellbeing.  I facilitate a Women’s Felting Circle and the way that we engage while felting is quite different from how we would chat over a cup of tea.  Art serves community wellbeing.

 My particular interest is traditional Women’s skills, and it’s no surprise that these are being re-vitalised by so many in our time.  The psyche calls for what she needs.  Knitting, crochet, mosaic, felting, arts from a thousand lands.  When we engage in these skills, we “hold hands with the ancestors.”  This hand of mine that pulls a needle through a stitch, and winds up the slack in a figure 8, as my tribal “mother” Dorkat taught me so long ago, how many hands through time have made that motion, created a netted bag, a useful beautiful art?

How many hands have laid out wool, wet it and rubbed and rolled it to felt?

How many hands have fixed tiles to a surface and grouted between to make a picture out of fragments?

These arts all go back to an ancient time of peace and belonging.  And I believe that when we engage our hands and eyes and minds in these creative acts, our brains re-connect with a deep Ancestral memory, when we were/are predominantly peaceful, and vitality and creativity can flourish.  We are “home.”

The variety of artistic skills we have developed is exciting, because each will, in its own way, wend a slightly different path home.  Art is always connected to Metaphor.  The net of the Highlands, in which women carried their babies, as well as the food for the day, was also a deeply significant symbol of the whole cultural fabric of old.  When a person creates a mosaic, I imagine this could be a profound metaphor for healing after a fragmenting experience, or a celebration of putting together many colours and textures into a new whole.  Felting, with its use of water, its tactileness and its freedom, expresses something quite different on the psychic plane, from weaving, or quilting.  Knitting in my mind has a resonance with Prayer Beads, and interestingly, it’s become a wonderful avenue to global involvement, as in the initiative Knit-a-Square.  Spiritual significance shines in day to day actions and objects.  And their everyday importance “grounds” the sacred.  This is the world illuminated through the eyes of a time when our deity was the primeval Goddess of Life, Death, and Regeneration, and her realm was right here on earth.

Art also helps to create the context for heightened energy.  This can be subtle.  For instance, we have a beautiful hand-made mosaic platter by our front door, where we place leaves, stones or feathers that we pick up on a bushwalk.  Set in honour on this platter, we take notice: “Look at this!  How beautiful!”

I recently learned of an arts project in a nearby town, (Hurstbridge) where community members are collaborating to commemorate the original steam train of the area, by covering a metal fence with an enormous whimsical crocheted train!  (yarnbomatraintoallwood.webs.com)  This is another example of how art heightens energy, and adds value to culture and community.

And I believe that art will always augment and create context for the kind of intense heightened awareness that ceremony can bring.  Allied with theatre and music, as well as more traditional means to invoke our connection to Spirit, it can help us to states of consciousness that are familiar and necessary to our psyches, as a species.  We have been performing ceremony, in community, for time beyond telling.  These times of intense “connectedness” serve us, and perhaps as we invite ceremony back into Western culture, some of our mental illnesses and dysfunctional substitutes will fade.

The domains of Art, Culture, Ceremony are what I love.  Through them, I WaysWeave.  In a time when on a global scale, our communities are becoming more and more of a mixing, colliding, melding milieu of cultures, I hope this may mean more than a personal exercise of making sense of my experience.  We all have much to offer.  Those of us who grew up as I did, dispersed in the chasms between our true loves, may find that we are particularly suited to a kind of creative speculation that is in service of our Planet, our finding our way Home.

Elisabeth lives in the rural outskirts of Melbourne.  She is a writer, artist, mother and facilitates crafts workshops.  elisabeth@outofthepouch.com.au

 

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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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