To each her own

Around this time in 1979 I was confronted by myself. I gave birth to a baby girl. What was confronting about this was that I am not a feminine woman: I neither flounce nor flirt; wear the minimum of makeup; am not into shopping; don't gossip, nor read romance novels. What the hell did I have to offer to a female baby?

As it turned out, that particular female baby is small, delicate and feminine, knows exactly what she likes, thinks, and wants. Somehow she learnt this by osmosis. She did not get it from her mother, the reverse in fact.


So, now she has a daughter of her own. And that is just dandy by me: her mother can do the feminine things; and her grandmother can continue what she was doing thirty years ago.

When I was eight, my family moved from suburban Sydney to a small farm in the Hunter Valley. I am the middle child of three, with a brother either side. In Sydney, we played with our Matchbox cars, our Meccano, and our Hornby train set. In the country, we did the same. We had a long driveway that ended in a round-about. In the centre of this circle, our mother tried to grow flowering bushes, but all I remember is an uprooted tree-trunk. Which suited us fine. We built our city and our farms in, around, through, and under it. Out came the Meccano and the cars. We had entire farming neighbourhoods, and my imagination blossomed.


So, what does this have to do with my grand-daughter Alannah? Just this week, I have job-lot purchased from a cousin, a whole swag of Duplo, and a shopping basket full of Thomas Tank Engine paraphenalia. I am haunting eBay bidding on old Matchbox Lesney models like police cars, fire engines, garbage trucks, tow trucks and the like. Things that show her how her city operates. Toys that she will be able to see on the roads around her suburb. I am, gradually, building up a collection of model farm animals for her to incorporate into her play, learning their names and their sounds. I mix and match. Take some things over to play with her; bring other things back. Hold back some items that are too advanced for next year, or the year after. I have a large wooden trunk, you see: 'Ma's Chest'. It is filling rapidly.

Shhh ... not a word!

If you go down in the woods today ...

If you go down in the woods today, you're sure of a big surprise. If you go down in the woods today, you'd better go in disguise. For every bear that ever there was will gather there for certain because Today's the day the Teddy Bears have their picnic. Every Teddy Bear who's been good is sure of a treat today. There's lots of marvellous things to eat and wonderful games to play. Beneath the trees where nobody sees they'll hide and seek as long as they please 'Cause that's the way the Teddy Bears have their picnic. If you go down in the woods today, you'd better not go alone. It's lovely down in the woods today, but safer to stay at home. For every bear that ever there was will gather there for certain because Today's the day the Teddy Bears have their picnic. Picnic time for Teddy Bears, the little Teddy Bears are having a lovely time today. Watch them, catch them unawares, and see them picnic on their holiday. See them gaily gad about, they love to play and shout, they never have any care. At six o'clock their Mummies and Daddies will take them home to bed, Because they're tired little Teddy Bears.

Ma's chest

The pregnant-pair drove me up to the Blue Mountains yesterday to pick up some quixotic purchases on e-bay. One of them was this toy-chest to store my grandmotherly treasures in. I have to rub the wood with some sort of oil, that escapes me. Think it starts with "s" ...

Collecting: Family letters (3)

Written by my grandmother - Sylvia Irene Veronica - to her younger sister - Vera - on the death of Vera's infant son, Laurie Boots. Both Sylvia and Vera married men named Willl. Written in November 1922 when Sylvia was nearly 27 (with a 3 year old son, Gordon and a 1 year old son, also named Laurie) and Vera 25. Grandma was living out in Wetherill Park with just a horse (Dick) and sulky to get around. To come in to Drummoyne where her parents lived took most of the day.

The extreme religiosity of this letter takes me back: Sylvia was not a church-going woman in all the time that I knew her (1948 to 1984). She was obviously distraught about the death so early of her sister's son. In 1956 she lost her own 30 year old youngest son; and, in 1972 she lost her only daughter at the age of 43. This is but a photocopy, but it is interesting to compare the handwriting of Sylvia aged 15 in the previous Collecting post and this but a short 12 years later.

Taken in 1926 at Wetherill Park, Sylvia aged 31 jiggles her third son, Athol Reginald who was to die on a curb in London in 1956. Excerpts from Athol's diary (14 Dec 1949 to 17 March 1951)will take us on an altogether different journey. If Sylvia was 27 when this letter was written, and 31 when holding Athol, then her husband, Will (William George) aged from 44 to 48 over the same period. She was a workaholic; he a lazybones.

Collecting: Family letters (2)

The handwriting is very carefully formed, the manner deferential and self-effacing and the range of interests constrained and homely. We move on nearly fifteen years from the first "letter" announcing the birth of my grandmother, this next offering was written by her: Sylvia Irene Veronica Cole. This gem of a collectable was written in 1910 when SIVC was a whisker past 14 years of age; written from Tamworth, a small country town in the northern tablelands of NSW; written to HER grandparents. The watercolour gives me a thrill each time I study it. My older brother, who saw it for the first time this past weekend, was mesmerised.

Sylvia's mother was Sarah-Annie and HER mother married three times (Evans, Finch, Faull) all of whom were road-workers and Australian. Ma Cole was not highly educated and I surmise that her own mother was even less so. My guess is that in this letter, Sylvia is writing to her paternal Grandmother, Hannah Wilkins Cole, who remained in England and to whom her husband Steven, returned after a brief sojourn in the Antipodes.

A wee slip of a girl who was to bear four children to a man 17 years her senior; to lose the two younger children whilst continuing to live to 88 years of age. A grandmother who told me about her astonishment on her wedding night; who poo-pooed her garulous older spinster sister's pontifications about married life: "what would she know!" I adored her.

SIVC in 1916, aged 21; and, in 1942 aged 47, with two sons serving in the AIF in New Guinea.