Month: December 2023

First published on Mamamia – 22 December 2023

Thirteen years ago, my sister died. She was forty-three and left behind a fifteen-month-old son. Such an odd expression: ‘left behind’. Sounds like she may have simply left her bag at home or forgotten to pick up a scarf she may have taken off over lunch and draped across the back of a chair in a café.  

I can barely write about this. I shan’t talk about how she died. Forgive me. Forgive her. I used to write about her and her son and about my mother, our mother, more easily once. Not easily, it has never been easy, but only months after it happened, when my sister died, and the world changed forever, I could write about it a bit. I dare not look back at that writing because I was as they say, and I am not sure it is always true, writing from the wound, not the scar. 

But I want to write about it today. If at times the writing of the events of my life have been overly crafted, curated, sculptured as artefact then so be it; such is the contract the memoirist enters into with her audience: What I am telling you is true. It is what I know to be true. Trust me. And if I have misremembered things at times or if my story’s omissions and collapses of scene or character come across as dishonesties, then so be it.  

My nephew, now fourteen years old, has been reared by his grandmother since his own mother died. My mother is now nearly ninety-two. She has been extraordinary in her care for her dead daughter’s child. Extraordinary. Their relationship, its sacred intimacy and interdependence, is unusual, moving. 

But it is time. It is time surely, for me to take it on, to take over the rearing of my sister’s child, because it is the right and the good, the only thing to do. Dare I say the dutiful thing to do.

I adore him. Of course, I do. I adored my sister even though I am angry with her too sometimes. Her son is very emotionally intelligent, quirky and a tad overanxious for a child his age. 

He has been reared by a special sort of second-wave feminist. A woman politically switched on and opinionated, practical and resourceful, a former educator, union representative, and member and spokesperson of the Italian Communist Party during the early 50s. She has made my nephew, how can I put this? Weirdly, worldly. 

He is though now wanting to break out, to pull away and separate from his dominant caregiver, as is healthy. But that Mum is beginning to deteriorate cognitively, her memory lapsing and waning, her efficacy as his carer… Listen to me, I sound like a social worker. What I am trying to say is that Mum is no longer up to looking after him. She is almost ninety-two for God’s sake. Enough already! But she cannot and will not let go. And nor will he. 

Elly and her mum. Image: Supplied.

They used to play chess and cards together. Walk in our local botanical gardens together. Watch ABC telly at night together. Eat together. They talked, had actual conversations. This no longer happens. He used to rely on her but these days the tables are turning. 

I am scared. Yes, I am scared and at times resentful that at sixty-three years of age and having already reared a son on my own I must now take this on. I am a carer for three people in my family. Is this who I am now? Is this all I can be? Am I able to live with this future? Do I have a choice?

How can I be a mother again? How can I possibly be trusted to take on this beautiful and increasingly rebellious boy when my own mental and physical health has taken such a beating of late.

I have been an anxious and over-vigilant mother. Sure. At times. I have been, yes, a bloody helicopter at times. I have learned more about living with neurodiversity than you can poke a stick at. I have published about all of this for years. I wrote and performed autobiographical columns on ABC Radio for years about all of this. I have made art of my life since my son was born and my son’s father left us when our son was five months old. 

My son is living back home with me in regional Victoria after two years in the city. He left after he finished year 12 and during the second year of the pandemic and lived through all six of Victoria’s lockdowns. It was a nightmare scenario for him and for the couple of mates he lived with. But I shan’t write of this again as I have already done so and with his permission. It was the first time I had written about him since he told me to stop doing so when he was the age my nephew is now.  

When I spoke with my son recently about his cousin coming to live with us soon, he said: 

“Yes, he has to Mum! It’s time Mum. And no offence Mum because I know you’ve done your best and everything, but you are a bit overprotective and over the top sometimes.”

My son is warning me that I must be more laid back with my nephew than I was with him. 

He is trying to articulate as briefly and sensitively as possible how claustrophobic it can be growing up with me. Growing up a single child with a single mum. How my being so depressed after his father left affected him, affects him still. I know I know. Sorry. I am sorry!

So how can I be a mother again? How can I do my best for my sister’s son now? What would she want? Would she want me to have him now? Yes, she would, I think.

Perhaps a part of my mother’s unwillingness to let him go is because she fears that the grief at the loss of her daughter will resurface, be unbearable. Perhaps she is right. Once you lose a child nothing is ever as bad again and everything is worth holding on to.

My mother became a mother again at nearly eighty years old and she did a damn fine job of it. Up until now. So surely at only sixty-three I can now take the baton and do a damn fine job of it too. Surely.

Elly Varrenti is a writer, broadcaster, actor and teacher based in the central Victorian regional town of Castlemaine.

Last year when I took my family to Community Christmas Day Lunch at the local town hall, they were a bit miffed given Christmas had been at mine for years.

I’d been volunteering at our local radio station and amidst all the community announcements, council updates and gig guides, the Christmas Day Community Lunch kept on coming up urging listeners to book early so as not to miss out. Really? I mean it sounded great and everything but surely our big old Victorian Gold Rush style town hall could accommodate everyone just rolling up on the day. The Community House was also offering free transport for those who needed it. You had to book early for that too.

I’d been to a few of the Community House’s weekly lunches when I’d first moved from Melbourne to the central Victorian town of Castlemaine thirteen years ago with my 9-year-old son but was still struggling with the transition. Surely there was no need to completely surrender my former identity in the city for something else, for something I didn’t understand yet or even really want in the first place. But I knew I couldn’t go on hiding from the present, so I’d determined to make more of an effort to immerse myself in community life. And those community lunches were splendid. All sorts would turn up. I’d made up some idea in my head that these people were not my kind of people, that we would have nothing in common. I was wrong. I liked that no one knew the old me. I even started to take friends visiting from Melbourne to Community Day Lunch as if I was introducing them to my community now.

Those weekly lunches became so popular that Castlemaine Community House decided to extend the idea to the Christmas Day Community Lunch at the town hall and so last year I took my ninety-year-old mum, my teenage nephew, and my reluctant twenty-year-old son along for the adventure. And it was funny and generous and a bit strange. The crowd was huge. Some people were all dressed up and others looked like they’d just walked in off the street to see what all the fuss was about. The food was great, the boys ended up playing with a scruffy old dog who’d come along with the old lady from down the road, and we all stood in line for the free banquet. Well, Mum didn’t stand in any line. When I’d search the crowd to check in with her every so often with a wave and a ‘I’m just getting us something to eat kind of a gesture’ she was always too busy talking to a stranger to notice.

The vast town hall was all decked out. It was noisy​ and colourful and chaotic and there were people ​from all kinds of families​ and situations. There was live Christmassy music up on the stage and whenever someone would grab the stand-up mic to announce something or other, the sound system was so rubbish, it was impossible to make out what they were saying. But it didn’t matter. We saw people we knew and others who remembered Mum but whom she couldn’t remember anymore​. But it didn’t matter. The focus of our day was ​all outward, not inward. We were ​just 4 people out of 150 and it felt good. Not sad at all. A bit strange but not sad.

Ever since my sister died 13 years ago, Christmas day, any kind of festivity really, has been tough. Every year with the day looming, a day my sister always loved, I’d become nervous and try to act lighter for the kids and for Mum. We would all try and act as unbroken as we could even though my sister’s leaving us behind has shattered us beyond repair.

There are a few blokes in our small town living on the street or in the gardens. My nephew tells me that he and his mates ‘got him some blankets and food and stuff the other night’. He wants me to bring him to Christmas day lunch. A few others in town, women mainly, are living in tents near the caravan park. The other day on a walk in the gold diggings National Park I stumbled upon a semi-permanent living arrangement nestled amongst the bush. It’s rough terrain, rocky and it gets brutally hot in summer. There are hardly any rentals in town anymore but plenty of Airbnb’s. It’s a common story these days of course.

They reckon that this year’s Community House Christmas Day lunch will be the biggest yet.

I​’ve just booked again​. This time Mum asked me to. She forgets most things these days but that funny, open-hearted Christmas Day last year is not one of them.

For the past 40 days and 40 nights I’ve been teaching in our Victorian regional town’s only state secondary school. It has been hard. Very hard. Or for want of a more interesting word than hard, as I might have told my English students, it has been eye – opening. (Or is that 2 words?) I might then go on to tell them to cut the word ‘very’ because if in doubt kill your adjectives first because they’re usually redundant, and the reader’s usually more than happy to see them go.

In Sacred Scripture, the number 40 signifies new life, new growth, transformation, a change from one great task to another great task. In our new post pandemic, post truth, post ‘respect for the authority of knowledge, experience and verifiable qualifications’ world, nothing is sacred. Well, nothing inside the school classroom that is. But it’s true that working as a secondary school teacher again for the first time in many years has been ‘a great task’ for me, yes, and one that I admit to having not completed all that well. I tried hard. Very hard. But today with reports written, boxes ticked, exams marked, I just feel sad. Very sad. And very tired.

After surviving, no, enduring, no navigating with the thinly disguised terror of an old pro sailor still trying valiantly to look like she’s in control but finds herself all at sea, her ship heading fast for the rocks with twenty young passengers on board, all rowdily oblivious to any impending disaster, I tried my best, my very best to teach my passengers. I tried my best to be a good teacher to these passengers, none of whom I’d met up until the first day of term 4. All having already developed relationships with their ‘real’ teacher and most of them demonstrably unimpressed, if not downright hostile to this latest ‘sub’ (substitute teacher) who’d admitted to them first up that she was looking forward to learning from each other because having not taught in a secondary school for ages she was sure that whilst she could teach them what she’d learnt in the intervening years, she was sure that she too had much to learn from them. Mostly such an unorthodox admission of vulnerability was met with a mixture of amusement and disinterest. Occasionally someone would Google me – they were always on their screens – and read out a WIKI entry or something or other I’d done or written or appeared in or whatever, and for a moment, a tiny moment, a handful of these kids would erupt with questions:

Were you on television Miss? How come you’re doing this shit job now Miss? What a come down Miss? Nah, you know I’m only joking Miss?

 Are you married Miss? Can I go to the toilet Miss?’

It wasn’t all bad. Not at all. I did learn a lot from these students because they were largely lovely. Sure, they were teenagers out of control, out of Lockdown and out of their comfort zones but amidst the chaos of the usual mental health and academic delay issues, the behavioural and self-regulation issues, the self-evident day-to-day under resourcing, there were moments where these teenagers shone brightly and beautifully and when I felt a connection.

Like, apparently Romeo is a ‘simp. Simp is slang for a person (typically a man) who is desperate for the attention and affection of someone else (typically a woman). Excellent. I got a way in. They can teach me new words. Like Shakespeare did.

‘So, are you saying then…’, I ask the Year 10 English lad who’d offered up his analysis, ‘… that Romeo is a simp for crushing on Rosaline at the beginning of the play when she’s clearly not into him?’

‘Ha-ha, Miss. Yeah, he’s a simp at first and then he’s like a total hypocrite cause he falls in love at first sight with Juliet as soon as he sees at the ball and that.’

And yes, they persist in teaching Romeo and Juliet at Year 10 English level even though it ends in a teenage double suicide. I’m not into cancelling literature but in this case, I reckon it’s tone-deaf teaching this text to 16-year-olds in our current climate.

A Year 7 Maths student declared fiercely, ‘I’m going on strike cause my needs aren’t being met.’

I can’t teach Maths, but I could maybe teach him something about industrial relations, enterprise agreements and the right to strike.

‘Great. Okay’, I said. ‘So, before you go on strike, let’s try negotiating. What do you want?’

‘What? Nah. Want? I just want out of this class.’

I met the so-called ‘pick me girls. This is a sub-culture of Year 9’ers who sport long thick eyelashes, mega baggy PE tracksuit pants, hair long and bouncy – sort of Taylor Swift but way less energetic. The purple-haired self-identifying non-binary girls hate them and visa versa. There were more sub-cultures currently operating in this sprawling all-inclusive secondary school than you could poke a stick at. It was illuminating. It was confusing.

And then there were the other teachers, the well-being and teacher support staff; all extraordinary. All pushed to their limits. All working their arses off. All at near-breaking point. All wanting the best for their students but also hating what it was doing to their own corroding sense of self, their wellbeing, their self-efficacy. I admired them and I often felt inadequate. More like a spy than a teacher. An outsider.  They were helpful, supportive but ultimately, I was on my own. They didn’t have enough time to do their own job let alone show me how to do mine.

I did develop a tentative but solid relationship with a girl who was always reading and who even managed to read her latest whilst sauntering from one class to the next. How she remained so separate, so calm, I wanted some of that. Every week a new book and every week something I’d read or wanted to read. She was one of those old-fashioned kinds of girls who are sort of misfits at high school, but you know are going to be okay. Yep. She was going to be okay.