personal political

abbott, adoption, abortion

Thank goodness for Anne Summers, who has written a behind-the-scenes account of the Tony Abbott-reunited-with-adopted son story which gripped the nation last week. (Yes, I admit I was gripped though wary.) Summers puts the whole thing into perspective, but she won't be able to stop the anti-abortionists from making political capital out of this story. They're on a roll.

Plus: further thoughts about the meaning of paternity.

more troops to iraq

Australia is to double the number of troops it has in Iraq. It's still a small number, but who knows when the next 'request' will mean another increase? This is a typically sneaky John Howard manoeuvre.

Mr Howard said the rebuilding process was even more essential now, following the elections in Iraq last month.

"The government believes that Iraq is very much at a tilting point and it's very important that the opportunity of democracy, not only in Iraq, but also in other parts of the Middle East, be seized and consolidated," he told reporters.

Seize and consolidate democracy by sending more troops in.

Yet another corner turned.

football

And so the question has arisen: "is your son playing football this year?" A question asked by the other parents of first graders ... well, of first grade boys. I assume that parents of first grade girls are not asking each other this question.

[What do the girls do in the way of extracurricular activities? I'm not sure. I know that some of them do ballet and some yoga. Some do Nippers in summertime. Perhaps some will be playing soccer this winter... The boys do tae kwon do and gymnastics and nearly all Sydney kids do swimming at some point.]

Most of the boys in Olle's class are going to play soccer this year. One or two might be playing rugby league, Sydney's main football code. The others will be playing Australian Rules. I know this because four of them have been going to a pre-season clinic to try it out.

Two years ago, I took four-year-old Olle along to a soccer clinic, where he was punched in the back by an older boy while standing in line. He didn't want to go back, despite having fantastic co-ordination and ball skills. "Soccer" is still a word that makes him nervous.

Instead of playing football, Olle does dance - ballet, jazz ballet and more recently, hip-hop.

It was my choice for him to do dance, my obstinacy and yes, my feminism - I did not want my son to automatically learn to use his body in the way that he would use it in football or other 'masculine' sports. From when he was 18mths old, we did a toddler music class, followed by a movement and music class for three year olds. From that he graduated to ballet. This is his third year at it, his first doing exercises at the barre.

He is lithe and muscular, strong and agile. The jazz ballet warm-up would rival any adult aerobics class. He is very fit.

He also does Nippers on summer weekends (the junior surf-life-saving movement).

Our out-of-school schedule is more than full. And yet, when the question came up, I seriously considered putting him in Aussie Rules too.

Then I caught myself.

The other parents talk about the need for their boys to "run off excess energy". We don't have that need. Olle does four physical classes a week, plus at least two hour-long dog walks a week, as well as swimming at the beach most weekends. He gets plenty of exercise.

So I'd be putting him in football for the male bonding, for the 'in-group' experience.

Nothing wrong with that per se, but hopefully he gets plenty of it at school. I have my doubts about kids this young doing team sports and was relieved to read that "the National Junior Sport Policy recommends that children should generally not play organised competitive sport until 8-10 years."

"If children are started in competitive sport before they are emotionally or physically ready they are likely to experience disappointment and stress and may give up playing altogether."

That's exactly what happened to my nephew, who started soccer at age six and stopped altogether by age nine, as he could not cope with the competitive pressure. And I have heard from some parents that there is 'sledging' even with the very youngest players in the soccer comps.

There are many years of potential sporting activity ahead of us yet, so I think this winter we will skip football and stick with dance - at least we get to enjoy a concert at the end of the year's efforts.

matter

I was reading an article about raising an atheist child (found via Natalie's blog). I sat up when I got to this bit:

For a while, Katherine was terrified about death. We’d be driving along in the car, and all of a sudden she’d start screaming in the back seat. What’s wrong, what’s wrong? We’d ask, thinking we had to pull over for a medical emergency. I’ve just been thinking about death! She’d cry. I don’t want to just disappear! To die forever and that’s all, that’s the end.

I see a similar, but less dramatic, expression of this in my own child. Last Thursday he somehow ended up being allowed to watch a program about how children's minds work. It closed with a consideration of when children begin to be able to classify things as alive and dead. Two little boys were shown poking a dead (and bloody) rabbit with a stick - they were not quite sure if it was dead.

We went straight up to bed after this and Olle told me, "I'm going to eat very healthy food and then I'll live for a very long time, to be 102". He was clearly a little shaken by the scene we'd just watched, the reminder of mortality.

A year ago. with his grandfather in steep decline, I bought him a book called Lifetimes, about how every living organism has a beginning and end, a natural span of time to be alive - whether it's a few hours, a few days, 80 years or so. I read this to him once, but he didn't like it, didn't want to think about it.

Nevertheless he accepted his grandfather's death and funeral with equanimity. I think it came as a relief to him, no longer having to visit this scary old person who could not get out of bed. For me, it was so much easier to lose a parent to old age than it had been to lose my mother when she was only 63. There was a logic to death at 82 (although my father raged against it) which I think even five year old Olle took in. There is comfort for me in the idea of a natural lifespan. Natalie Angier puts it well:

By confronting the inevitability of your personal expiration date, you know there is a meaning much grander than yourself. The river of life will go on, as it has for nearly 4 billion years on our planet, and who knows for how long and how abundantly on others. Matter is neither created nor destroyed, and we, as matter, will always matter, and the universe will forever be our home.

I guess that's a good reason to scatter my father's ashes in a place where he can be happy.

ashes to ashes

I collected my father's ashes from the crematorium on Saturday.

He died last March. I organised the funeral - a non-religious ceremony led by a celebrant. I'd thought about raising the issue of whether he wanted to be buried or cremated with him over the last several months of his life, but when I approached the subject, he pushed it away. Other friends of his told me they had asked him about religion (he originated within a Catholic family and milieu) and he had pushed that away too. [Ironically, a woman minister was with him when he died. The palliative care nurse at the nursing home had told me this minister had a great way of simply being with people who were dying. I was happy for her to visit him and she happened to come to see him about ten minutes before his death.]

I felt odd arranging for my father to be cremated. Being Catholics, everyone else in my family - my mother, grandparents, great-aunts - had been buried. I'd always assumed that I would be buried, too, though in recent years I've become more aware of the cost and shortage of cemetery land.

A couple of weeks after the funeral, I received a letter and then a follow-up phone call from the woman who would give me the ashes. I would have to travel out to the crematorium, at the restricted times when she'd be there, to get them. I made a mental note to do that - and didn't. I kept the letter from her on my desk in my 'to do' pile - until about October, when it somehow disappeared. (I have no idea where it is). I then completely forgot about my father's ashes.

A couple of weeks ago I had a phone call from Nigel, who was very camp and friendly and invited me to come and get the ashes. When I prevaricated about the timing of a meeting, his tone shifted to no-nonsense - he would have to dispose of them if they were not collected soon. I promptly agreed to a 9am Saturday appointment.

There was a group of four, middle aged women in the waiting room with me, making nervous jokes. A man in his 70s came out carrying a small paper carry-bag (the type you get from fashion boutiques.) Was it his wife? The woman who followed him out then invited the entire group of women into her office, "for moral support". Nigel then appeared, handsome, gay and friendly, and invited me into his office. He checked some paperwork, asking me what I intended to do with the ashes. Scatter them, I guess. He told me this was illegal (except three kilometres offshore) but that of course people do it, so to be discreet. He subtly tried to sell me a memorial at the crematorium for $660. We discussed the relative merits and costs of gravestones, cemeteries and memorials. I declined to buy one. He then showed me a sample of what the ashes would come in (the urn, I guess, though that word was not mentioned) and explained how to open it. He left the room and came back carrying a small white paper carry-bag, with the ashes vessel inside, topped by my father's coffin plate with his name engraved on it.

"This is heavy, for an 82 year old" said Nigel. I was intrigued. My father was an Irish runt, shorter than me, in his old age. And he had wasted away by the time he died. But I had read somewhere that the ashes are not like ashes - in fact they contain a lot of bone. Perhaps my father had a large skull and that did make the container heavier than usual.

I left and drove home, with the ashes on the passenger seat, where my father had sat many times. When I arrived home, I set them down in the hallway and Olle came eagerly to look: "What's that?" It looked a bit like a present.

Only a few weeks ago I first told Olle about cremation, who until then had thought all dead things were buried. So I told him that Grandad's coffin had been burnt and this was the result. He wanted to look inside but I said that would have to wait till another day. We told him we are going to scatter the ashes in the bush near where Grandad lived - "and then he'll be happy". I don't know why I said that. I suppose there will be a certain sense of completion in scattering them, though in one way I don't actually think it would have mattered if I'd left them to Nigel to 'dispose of'.

Later that day I moved the bag into my study, on the floor. This morning as I rushed around getting ready for work, I noticed that a semi-deflated red balloon on a red string which has been kicking around the house for the past week had become entangled in the bag. So now it looks even more like a present.

It's very strange to think that my father's ashes are in that room, in that container. It's so ordinary, yet so weird. So odd, so ordinary. I guess walking around cemeteries can be a similarly surreal experience - and I've walked around more than a few graveyards. No matter how much we contemplate the evidence for death, it's very hard to comprehend.

horrid boys

Sue, my visiting friend from England, brought with her a book for Olle. Sue's own sons are now in their 30s, so she went into a London bookshop and asked for a book suitable for six year old boys. Of course, she ended up with one called Horrid Henry's Brother, by Francesca Simon. I say 'of course' because it's come to my attention that there is a genre of books for little boys which feature boys behaving badly - or horridly. Perhaps there is a girls' variation on this, but as I have a son, I only see the boy versions, such as Bad News - I'm in charge! and the awful A Day in the Life of Me by John Marsden (which I have to confess to re-gifting soon after Olle was given it as a present, as I couldn't bear to read him a story which promotes greed and laziness as the natural province of children).

I'm curious as to whether this genre was born in response to the recent hysteria about boys not being interested in reading. There seems to be an unspoken idea that only by feeding boys stories of pure naughtiness will their attention be held.

Our Horrid Henry book consists of four stories about the eponymous Henry, his hapless liberal parents and little brother Perfect Peter, who is always, you guessed it, perfect.

I was a bit dubious when I started reading them, but found myself smiling at the subtle humour and especially at stories featuring Moody Margaret, the girl next door.

Olle wasn't smiling. I could tell he didn't get the joke at all and found very little pleasure in these stories of a boy flaunting the rules. Every so often I would point out something funny, but he just looked anxious - my sweet little co-operative, compliant child! Finally I asked him who his favourite character was. "I like Perfect Peter the best" came the reply, "He's very nice".

vagina monologues

If anyone reading this happens to be in the vicinity of Alberta (Canada) next week, get along to see my friend Janice in The Vagina Monologues, tickets available here. Ten percent of the proceeds are going to the Organisation of Women's Freedom in Iraq, which looks well worth supporting:

"The OWFI is the only national women’s organization advocating for a secular society based on democracy and respect for human rights in accordance with international standards."

They say that the situation of Iraqi girls and women has "deteriorated dramatically since the invasion".

Riverbend, the Baghdad girl blogger, tells of visiting the Ministry of Higher Education last week:

“Please dress appropriately next time you come here” the man said to me. I looked down at what I was wearing - black pants, a beige high-necked sweater and a knee-length black coat. Huh? I blushed furiously. He meant my head should be covered and I should be wearing a skirt.  ...

My cousin and I turned to enter the room the receptionist had indicated and my eyes were stinging. No one could talk that way before the war and if they did, you didn’t have to listen. You could answer back. Now, you only answer back and make it an issue if you have some sort of death wish or just really, really like trouble.

Young females have the option of either just giving in to the pressure and dressing and acting ‘safely’- which means making everything longer and looser and preferably covering some of their head or constantly being defiant to what is becoming endemic in Iraq today. The problem with defiance is that it doesn’t just involve you personally, it involves anyone with you at that moment- usually a male relative. It means that there might be an exchange of ugly words or a fight and probably, after that, a detention in Abu Ghraib.

If it’s like this in Baghdad, I shudder to think what the other cities and provinces must be like."

I'm so ashamed that my country has been a party to this.

**************

Later: I hadn't fully realised that the Alberta production is part of a worldwide V-campaign for groups around the world to do a production of Vagina Monologues in order to raise money and awareness to stop violence against girls and women.

book club

I don't belong to a book club - or reading group, as they are also known. Just about everyone else I know does belong to one. At a party last weekend, I was chatting to two similarly clubless friends about the phenomenon. My friend V's partner is in one - they even go away for weekends together [as does another friend A's book group (to the Hunter Valley, where a lot of drinking as well as reading goes on, no doubt)]. V thinks it is something of a clique.

I'm beginning to feel a bit left out, but when I suggested to these friends that we start a book club, B, a teacher, replied that she would rather be in a shopping club.

I have my doubts too - mainly that I don't know how I'd feel about having to read books that I wouldn't have chosen myself in a million years. But I guess it was good for me to read the books on the syllabus at school (even though I literally can't remember anything about Lord Jim, except that I thought it was good at the time).

Via Stack comes this article on the reading group trend. I can't find a link to the British television comedy (set in Scotland) about a reading group [I thought it was called The Reading Group], which was weirdly funny. Did anyone else watch that?

Later: It was called The Book Group - thanks for the link Elissa. And here's another reading group site.

the corner

Has the corner finally been turned in Iraq?

(Not likely!)

atheism

I looked in on the Atheism Web, which amusingly lists the well-known atheists who have been in foxholes, and runs through the common arguments purporting to prove the existence of God.