I often wonder where it comes from, this feeling you can carry for a lifetime— that no matter how great your efforts to achieve — something, someone, will always pip you at the post, will take away your winning trophy and hand it to someone else. Always a bridesmaid, never a bride; how true this analogy rings to me.
It's strange because Chassa-boy brought us up to be winners, and we were. We won every race and every championship going. My brother and I took home the trophies year after year; all round swimming champ, athletics champ; we threw the shotput, the javelin, did the high jump, the long jump, the 100 yards, the 220, 440, 880, and ran the relays. I was the breast-stroke, freestlye and diving champion and my brother smashed the butterfly record everytime— our sister did all of that and even better; going on to represent the state in cross-country skiing and giving birth to a son who has become an Olympian snowboarder. If only Chassa-boy could have lived to see one of his progeny represent his country in the ultimate sports carnival.
We came from a long line of athletes, Chassa-boy reminded us. His father had competed in the Stawell Gift as had he. When we were growing up he was a champ at tennis and golf; his mum, Deanie and dad, Roley, were unbeatable at golf and bowls.
I recall the satisfaction of early morning training sessions on crisp, freshly mown grass, digging our spikes into the turf track, practicing starts from the blocks, again and again; the crack of the starting pistol, the curve of the track into the home strait in the four-forty.
It was all so purely physical, our bodies so fit and healthy, everything tasted fresh and good. We lived our lives in our green tracksuits, whether we were off to train in the pool in summer or the oval in winter. Before a sports carnival Chassa-boy would cook us steak for breakfast with a dob of melted butter on top - you need strength for your race' he'd tell us.
On the day, we would win race after race, dropping our medals in mum or dad's lap, running off again to cheer our team to victory. With balloons and streamers, victory chants and mascots; we didn't know then we were celebrating the sheer joy of living, for we knew nothing else.
The idyll ended as adulthood loomed. Up until year ten life was a breeze; no responsibility, all possibility. In year eleven, you had to start thinking about what you wanted to do for the rest of your life, and how on earth you were going to provide for yourself in a future you couldn't yet imagine.
A vivid memory connected to the thwarting turns up. It's one summer when Chassa-boy got me a job at the local grocery store. Why we weren't going off on our usual six week camping holiday I have no idea, but there I was stuck stacking the shelves with the scent of White Wings cake mix and soap powder under my skin. It is my first memory of willing the hours to pass, of feeling so sick with boredom I had to invent distractions, like accidently dropping a Lamington Log, so it would land on the floor as damaged goods, broken and squashed. Then I would sit in secret in the back room and polish off as much as I could, killing time as I savored every mouthful of jam roll sponge iced in chocolate and coconut.
As I write these memories I'm developing a theory. Chassa-boy's praise was conditional; as long as you followed his will he was with you all the way. If you went against it all hell would break loose, leaving you in a strangely impotent no-mans land. He was empowering and disempowering you in one foul swoop. What was the point in asserting your own will, if you knew you could never win? And so the mind does its clever job; setting you up with the belief that 'what I want is always just out of reach' making subconscious choices to ensure this will be the case. Or in Marj's case, leaving you to languish in the place of non doing; the peaceful but dead world, of simply giving up.
The moment I told Chassa-boy I was leaving teachers college to work full-time in the theatre is memorable; I did it by letter; there was no way I would even get a sentence out if I had to face him in person. Driving two hours from the country, he arrived the next sunday morning at the Tribe house, an old mansion in Toorak where we rehearsed and where some members of the theatre group lived. He burst into the kitchen, letting us know he had the shotgun in the car boot, and a couple of henchmen (my brother and the art teacher) outside. He paced up and down smashing his hand into his fist and accusing my friends (longhaired, illiterate hippies) for leading his daughter astray.
'What would you know about education?' What would you know about life?' he shouted at the rag tag, but extremely well educated bunch, who were waking from their pot haze and groping for a coffee. I was so embarrassed I bundled him out of there as quickly as I could and took him back to my bedsit to talk.
Seated on the couch beneath the bright red kitchen wall, I stood firm. This was my chance to take a stand even if everything he predicted would come to pass: unemployment, no future, poverty, despair.
It was going well until Chassa-boy pulled out all stops. Until he knelt before me and cried. I had never seen a grown man, let alone my father, cry before. It was not a pretty sight, and it did the trick. I agreed to continue studying at teachers college, to finish my training and become what he wanted me to be, a school teacher just like him.
It's strange because Chassa-boy brought us up to be winners, and we were. We won every race and every championship going. My brother and I took home the trophies year after year; all round swimming champ, athletics champ; we threw the shotput, the javelin, did the high jump, the long jump, the 100 yards, the 220, 440, 880, and ran the relays. I was the breast-stroke, freestlye and diving champion and my brother smashed the butterfly record everytime— our sister did all of that and even better; going on to represent the state in cross-country skiing and giving birth to a son who has become an Olympian snowboarder. If only Chassa-boy could have lived to see one of his progeny represent his country in the ultimate sports carnival.
We came from a long line of athletes, Chassa-boy reminded us. His father had competed in the Stawell Gift as had he. When we were growing up he was a champ at tennis and golf; his mum, Deanie and dad, Roley, were unbeatable at golf and bowls.
I recall the satisfaction of early morning training sessions on crisp, freshly mown grass, digging our spikes into the turf track, practicing starts from the blocks, again and again; the crack of the starting pistol, the curve of the track into the home strait in the four-forty.
It was all so purely physical, our bodies so fit and healthy, everything tasted fresh and good. We lived our lives in our green tracksuits, whether we were off to train in the pool in summer or the oval in winter. Before a sports carnival Chassa-boy would cook us steak for breakfast with a dob of melted butter on top - you need strength for your race' he'd tell us.
On the day, we would win race after race, dropping our medals in mum or dad's lap, running off again to cheer our team to victory. With balloons and streamers, victory chants and mascots; we didn't know then we were celebrating the sheer joy of living, for we knew nothing else.
The idyll ended as adulthood loomed. Up until year ten life was a breeze; no responsibility, all possibility. In year eleven, you had to start thinking about what you wanted to do for the rest of your life, and how on earth you were going to provide for yourself in a future you couldn't yet imagine.
A vivid memory connected to the thwarting turns up. It's one summer when Chassa-boy got me a job at the local grocery store. Why we weren't going off on our usual six week camping holiday I have no idea, but there I was stuck stacking the shelves with the scent of White Wings cake mix and soap powder under my skin. It is my first memory of willing the hours to pass, of feeling so sick with boredom I had to invent distractions, like accidently dropping a Lamington Log, so it would land on the floor as damaged goods, broken and squashed. Then I would sit in secret in the back room and polish off as much as I could, killing time as I savored every mouthful of jam roll sponge iced in chocolate and coconut.
As I write these memories I'm developing a theory. Chassa-boy's praise was conditional; as long as you followed his will he was with you all the way. If you went against it all hell would break loose, leaving you in a strangely impotent no-mans land. He was empowering and disempowering you in one foul swoop. What was the point in asserting your own will, if you knew you could never win? And so the mind does its clever job; setting you up with the belief that 'what I want is always just out of reach' making subconscious choices to ensure this will be the case. Or in Marj's case, leaving you to languish in the place of non doing; the peaceful but dead world, of simply giving up.
The moment I told Chassa-boy I was leaving teachers college to work full-time in the theatre is memorable; I did it by letter; there was no way I would even get a sentence out if I had to face him in person. Driving two hours from the country, he arrived the next sunday morning at the Tribe house, an old mansion in Toorak where we rehearsed and where some members of the theatre group lived. He burst into the kitchen, letting us know he had the shotgun in the car boot, and a couple of henchmen (my brother and the art teacher) outside. He paced up and down smashing his hand into his fist and accusing my friends (longhaired, illiterate hippies) for leading his daughter astray.
'What would you know about education?' What would you know about life?' he shouted at the rag tag, but extremely well educated bunch, who were waking from their pot haze and groping for a coffee. I was so embarrassed I bundled him out of there as quickly as I could and took him back to my bedsit to talk.
Seated on the couch beneath the bright red kitchen wall, I stood firm. This was my chance to take a stand even if everything he predicted would come to pass: unemployment, no future, poverty, despair.
It was going well until Chassa-boy pulled out all stops. Until he knelt before me and cried. I had never seen a grown man, let alone my father, cry before. It was not a pretty sight, and it did the trick. I agreed to continue studying at teachers college, to finish my training and become what he wanted me to be, a school teacher just like him.
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