My Curious Upbringing

I was shaped by men – two men –

more than the women. The women 

shaped me, I suppose, negatively

as something to rebel against:

that traditional role. I could not see

the joy in cooking and cleaning.

But father and grandfather shaped

my curiosity, my lifelong wanting

to know and understand. My Dad

by example: ‘Let’s look that up!’

(What would a home have been,

without dictionary and encyclopaedia?)

My Grandpa in long nature walks

when we were together on visits,

pointing out a rich variety of particular

trees and flowers, birds and insects,

kinds of clouds.… And in letters, so many

over the years, wide-ranging conversations.

In some respects it was as if

they didn’t know I was a kid.

They spoke to my mind, that ageless 

part of a person, with respect

for my intelligence. They knew

I could think – and even better, enquire.

‘Think for yourself, make up

your own mind,’ they said. ‘Don’t

just take things at face value. Look 

deep.’ I was a dreamy little girl,

fond of fairy-tales, but I also knew

to use logic and common-sense.

My brother was brought up the same.

He didn’t have to rebel against cooking

and also didn’t need to abjure

fist fights, booze and sport. He grew up

taking it for granted that real men

include the gentle, and those who think.

Yes, we were ‘different’ – didn’t fit in

with the ‘norm’. We survived that

and found our tribes. Now we are

an old woman and an old man; each 

moved far from where we were born:

still filled with curiosity, and life.

Written for Poets and Storytellers United's Friday Writings #26, where Rommy invites us to be inspired by the phrase, 'stay curious'.

The Good Dad

For the April 'poem a day' challenge this year, I'm writing haibun to explore and reflect on my new Tarot deck, Forests of Enchantment. This is the last day of April and the final one in the series. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Keeper of Boons (in other contexts King of Pentacles), being of the Earth element, embodies the highest practical wisdom. He’s a rescuer and problem-solver and has all sorts of physical skills and knowledge. 

When the card indicates its qualities rather than a personality, it tells you that material help or practical advice is available. As a person, it suggests someone ‘warm, jolly, lusty and generous’. The Emperor in Tarot represents the father among other things, but I see this fellow as having a fatherly energy too (and a king is traditionally the father of his people). 

Of course I like even better the decks such as Voyager, where the highest card in a suit has no specific gender. But – loving the one we’re with – this is a good expression of male energy. His shadow side is described as overbearing and judgmental, but hopefully by the time one gets to become a king, one has learned how to accept and integrate the shadow so as to achieve balance. (Though, let’s face it, few of us get to be perfectly integrated and balanced. Most people are a bit of a mixture.)

Some men can be what I once heard described as ‘a benevolent bully’ – so focused on looking after you and giving you what they think you want and need, that they don’t give you much chance to make your own decisions, let alone the necessary mistakes we all need to learn from. Hopefully the Keeper of Boons is not like that, and will step back and give women, children, colleagues, friends (and even subjects … er, subordinates?) room to move as they need.  

I liked having

a Dad who knew things

and could whittle

Father’s Day Recollections

 Father’s Day Recollections

My father comes back to me now

in his prime, not as the old man

frail and forgetful – though even then

he found ways to be cheerful. No,

I see him as the wise counsellor

and personal friend; before

the flaws became visible

and filled my gaze … ah well, 

it was a brief time. But good.

I could go further back

to the fun young Dad, 

the one who rolled on the floor

as we tickled him, the one 

who hugged us, laughed, taught us 

our letters on alphabet blocks,

made us toy bows and arrows 

from his own home-grown bamboo.

(All his life, he loved to garden.)

Or I could focus on 

his walking-stick, his limp,

the suppressed winces of pain.

There were bad days and good.

I never asked what made

the difference. (Was it 

the weather?) All that 

was just part of the background 

of life, of what made him him.

I try not to think (but I must)

of the weakness, the betrayal.

I call it out now:

self-indulgence, cowardice.

The serial infidelities that at last 

lost him my mother’s love; the failure 

to guard his children from the cruel 

mad stepmother he gave us

in a face-saving, hasty remarriage.

Poor Dad! But was he? After 

she mentally castrated him (ironic 

fate) he taught himself to paint 

landscapes in oils, and sold them. 

(Some he gave away to my brother and me, 

after we were grown, living our own lives.)

And he wandered the Mallee, finding thick, 

knobbed, curling sticks which he sanded 

and polished as walking-sticks. Sold them too.

All this, and more, made up the man.

There was also the boy I heard about

from his sister my aunt, and my grandma

his mother. Crippled young by an accident, 

but cheerful, making the best. A dreamer, 

a reader. A lover of poetry, who wrote it too.

The man recited poems (other people’s)

at parties, where the leg didn’t stop him

being a smooth ballroom dancer….

But he comes back first

in his prime; the one I could talk to,

the kindred spirit, the companion

sharing favourite books, the knowing advisor

enlightening his teenage daughter

on the male point of view, the grown-up

expanding my understanding

of history, sociology, psychology,

nature. And of course literature.

He was in his way, I suppose,

a good-looking man – open countenance,

fair skin; pleasant, even features 

(apart from the family nose with its bump)

and well set-up, as they used to say.

What he couldn’t get from sport (because 

of the leg) he could from gardening. 

So he never got fat. Just squarer.

His usual expression was kindly.

He gave me my own poetry,

reading and writing. He gave me

my politics, and my belief

that intolerance is the thing

I should most be intolerant of.

(Perhaps he also gave me

a liking for liquor, and a sad lack

of Puritan morals!) I loved him again

and he knew it, shortly before he died.

I don't have any photos of him at the time I most like to recall, so instead I show him as a young man in father role, and as the elderly artist (resting his hand on one of the wooden walking-sticks he crafted).

And yes,  today is Father's Day in Australia.

I'm sharing this post in Writers' Pantry #86 at Poets and Storytellers United.

When Everything Changed: 2.

When Everything Changed: 2

Continued from this post.

When my father remarried, he moved my brother and me far from sparkling rivers, hilly streets, craggy mountains and the surrounding sea – to the flat, dry Mallee where his new wife had house, business, and her own children older than us.

The river there was wide and sluggish. The few trees were small and squat. My stepmother lived near an expanse of grape vines, the primary industry there. We could walk into the village by crossing an irrigation channel spanned by a wide plank. I was terrified, but I learned to walk it confidently and alone. 

My new stepsister held my hand and showed me how to place my steps. She was 18 months older than me; we’d met when Dad brought his ‘new friend’ to our home town and introduced her around. They clearly wanted their daughters to chum up. With a love of reading in common, we did. But it was puzzling. When they married, it became instantly clear.

Merrie was often away long weeks at boarding school. When she was home, we lounged on her bed talking, sneakily smoking cigarettes she pinched from her mother’s stash. She taught me how to smoke. I was 16 by then; I wanted to be sophisticated.

Navigating my stepmother’s strange moods, strict edicts, bizarre accusations and weirder punishments, and my much older step-brother’s silent, glowering resentment, was even scarier when Merrie was away. 

Our father never defended us. The only time I asked, he said, ‘I’ve had one marriage break up and I won’t let you kids wreck another!’

When I told new friends at my new school what was happening at home, they frankly disbelieved me. I was already known as a writer, a dreamer. I must be making it up.

On holidays at home with Mum and our kind, fun stepfather, I said nothing. I wanted to escape from all thoughts of that. And I believed the court ruling – term time with Dad, holidays with Mum – couldn’t be changed.  

My brother said plenty, I learned years later; but without my corroboration they thought he must be exaggerating.

It took me months to realise my stepmother was drinking heavily. She masked the smell with strong perfume, sickly-sweet.

Written for Weekly Scribblings #81 at Poets and Storytellers United: Change and Renewal, where the invitation is to write of either or both.

When Everything Changed

When Everything Changed

The thing we never saw coming, my brother and I, was our parents’ divorce. It was in 1955. I was 15. My little brother was 11. 

They called me into my brother’s bedroom where he was playing, and said they had something to tell us both. We sat down on my brother’s bed, mystified at the sudden air of solemnity. 

It’s hard now to remember that room. It was the new house they’d built, not the one we grew up in. (‘When a marriage is breaking apart,’ someone told me years later, ‘People try and glue it back together with a new baby or a new house. It never works.’) There must have been chairs; I see them sitting across from us while Dad explained that people don’t always stay married and it didn’t mean they didn’t love us any more. 

Mum would move out, and live with ‘Uncle Jack’, a family friend, after he too got divorced. We could spend as much time as we liked with both parents.

I don’t remember us crying, or even asking questions. We went numb, I think.

I do remember feeling a surge of protectiveness towards my brother – genuine, but also in a strange, ‘this is what Good Girls do’ kind of way: a role I could take on, because I didn’t know how else to react. I always wanted to do what I thought was expected of me, what was right and good behaviour in my parents’ and the world’s eyes. I worked to be seen as normal, not the oddity I secretly feared I was.

But I didn’t know what would be expected of a normal girl in this situation. Being the protective big sister (whether he actually wanted that or not) was something I could get right.

Also it was a way of quietly punishing my parents, who were doing this dreadful, disrupting thing to us. ‘You are failing your duty,’ my secret self told them silently. ‘What you’ve abandoned is my job now; I won’t fail.’

I did, though. 

Dad, rebounding, suddenly married a widow from interstate, where we went to live during school terms – our real-life Wicked Stepmother, against whom, at 15, I had little power. 

Written for Weekly Scribblings #80: Sudden Moments, at Poets and Storytellers United. 

My Father Gave Me Gardens

My Father Gave Me Gardens

I see him squatting, fingers in the dirt, 

one hand holding a small trowel, 

paused to look up at me, smiling –

even in our unhappiest times,

with Wicked Stepmother / castrating wife,

when it became his escape.

But also when he was young 

and I was little, and Mum was 

up in the house cooking,

waving from the window,

and the sun shone

on our broad back yard….

He never got me to like

grubs and soil and sheer hard work,

but it’s due to my Dad that I love

hardy, bright red geraniums,

and wide round orange-yellow

calendula flowers we mis-called marigolds.

Because of him I know

that whether rhododendrons

bloom pink or blue depends

on acid or alkaline soil, 

that earthworms are essential,

pretty white cabbage moths a pest.

I learned the look and smell

of rosemary: small white flowers, 

dark green leaves. ‘Rosemary means 

remembrance’ he said (long before 

I encountered Ophelia). So I knew 

I was born gifted with memory.

I still know the long-ago taste

of tiny, fresh-picked strawberries.

I remember the hum of bees

thick around a bush in summer,

the feel of my bare feet on grass,

and what time of day to water.

Thanks to him, I don’t weed away 

dandelions, I cherish them; 

I relish the tangy scent

of the shrub I’m named for;

and every place I live, I grow

abundant red geraniums.

Written for Weekly Scribblings #47: Meme Madness at Poets and Storytellers United. We're invited to write about things we learned to love through loving someone else who loved them.

'These Foolish Things ...'

'These Foolish Things …'
(remind me of you)


My Dad loved gardening, and loved the hardy red geraniums he grew. So I learned to love them too. I’ve brought them to every home I’ve had, in every climate; waiting eagerly to see their cheery faces – even when bushfire summer cloaked the sky in smoke, even when all other flowers wilted fast …

rainy autumn –
my red geraniums
finally bloom


When Grandma came to stay, she told my Dad it would be good for me to start my own little garden.  He gave me a tiny trowel. Soon I dug up a huge coil of grey slime, semi-transparent, as long as my five-year-old hand and nearly as thick. It moved blindly through the suddenly-exposed earth. I gagged, ran crying … and never became a gardener. Now at last, in old age, I do a little pruning and weeding when the cooler weather begins – by which time it’s needed.

after
the hot wet summer
healthy weeds


It’s that time of year. Still warm, but not the fierce heat. Just now, no mosquitoes, no midges, no flies. Afternoon is golden, evening softly pleasant. I think of sitting out in my back yard, taking my book and my cuppa. Or I could do my meditation there. Or I might simply gaze at the trees against the sky, over my neighbours’ adjoining fences. But I’m still a little afraid that a tiny ghost might join me there, and I’m not yet readier to smile than weep if she did.

quiet garden –
the knowing eyes
of a small cat


Written for  Weekly Scribblings #13: All The Small Things at Poets and Storytellers United, and combined with the April 2020 NaPoWriMo Day 1 prompt at 'imaginary garden with real toads': April is for Fools and Poets. These are meant as individual haibun, but they do also form a sequence of sorts.

Willow Girl

For Tree Mythology, day 21 of Poems in April at 'imaginary garden with real toads' we are asked to rewrite a myth or legend about a tree, or perhaps make up one of our own. Instead, I give you a true story.

Willow Girl

She plays on the swing 

her father made,

big thick ropes

and a seat of wood.

Inside a circle

of fronds, pale green,

she drifts and dreams,

curtained, unseen.

When her father

made the swing,

Willow Girl

was very young.

As she grows,

it remains her place,

her safe and private

magical space.

How could she 

or her father know

the mystery

of the sacred willow?

They never guess

the ancient secret:

in every willow

lives a spirit.

And if you spend

a lot of time

beneath a willow,

your words will rhyme.

You will become 

a poet, if you stay

long in that green light –

so they say.

Willow Girl's old

when she finds this out,

but she knows it's true:

she is a poet.

All her life

the words have been,

as once the tree,

her true companion.

To be a poet

makes her glad.

She thanks the willow 

and her Dad.

Willow Tree by Geaugagrrl (released to public domain CC0)
(You have to imagine the swing, hanging from the lowest bough.)