Letter from my Father (10 page)

An example of my steep learning curve is shown by an episode early in our courtship. Richard and I were with a group of friends in one of the new and fashionable coffee bars, and discussing Art. Someone mentioned Michael Kmit, an Australian artist from a Ukrainian background, who painted in rich, deep, sombre colours. I had no idea who Michael Kmit was, but noticed that the others seemed to be looking into the corner of the atmospheric little café, at a lamp. Ah, I thought as I joined the conversation, he may be involved with lamp design. Richard later gave me a small portrait of a student by the artist for my nineteenth birthday, a few months before we married. Such gifts became a tradition. Later, for our tenth wedding anniversary, Richard presented me with a painting by Godfrey Miller, another notable Australian artist. He had bought it at an exhibition held after Miller's death and kept it hidden for two years, waiting for this special occasion. It was an abstraction of a simple house, painted with geometric precision and given a jewel-like surface. It was a gentle reminder that the spirit hovers very near the objects of everyday life. I loved it passionately.

My friends were surprised by my choice of husband. Richard was twelve years older than me, and was balding, with poor posture. He had few close male friends and seemed
a bit of a loner. I remember meeting my friend Ezekiel at the Mitchell Library one day, where we were both doing research for our respective courses and his asking me to have dinner with him. I declined, since I was meeting Richard who was coming to pick me up at the library. When he arrived and we observed him at a distance, Ezekiel exclaimed:
You're not seeing this old man?
But I was. I am not sure whether I was in love with Richard or in love with being in love.

My parents borrowed money for the wedding and I had some beautiful clothes made for the occasion. I looked very young. My parents had last-minute qualms about how I was going to manage without their protective umbrella and whether Richard would be able to support me properly. I was still so naïve that I expected everyone to treat me well, to be kind and considerate the way I had been taught. I expected strawberries and roses,
happiness forever
, as my father put it. My mother and father had never talked about money in front of me, and now I needed to understand all about it. And there was more. Suddenly they started repeating that life was prosaic, full of obstacles and often disappointing. It was not all poetry. I took little notice, being more concerned with my wedding dress, my going-away suit in lovely beige linen and the forthcoming honeymoon at Lord Howe Island. I just wanted to be happy.

In the early years of our marriage, Richard and I were both dominated by our parents. Richard's father lent him a deposit, half of the cost, of our house in Ocean Heights, which remained our home for the next twenty years. It was not a gift, rather a loan with no expectation of repayment, but with an unwritten expectation that we would stay obedient, dutiful children. I certainly felt the weight of the obligation to our parents. Our house was exactly midway between them. There was little space for us to develop our own life as an independent young couple but a sense that we were constantly ‘supervised' and controlled from both sides.
This was uncomfortable but accepted by both of us. Neither of us was capable of rebellion at that stage.

Our house was certainly not one we would have chosen for ourselves. We had seen another at picturesque Harbourside Parsley Bay, a sunlit place close to the Harbour with many corners both inside and out for sitting and dreaming and reading poetry under shady trees. I wanted it so much but my parents' friend, a practical builder concerned with strictly prosaic values said:
This house is out of the question. It has a shingle roof which would need to be replaced.
So we did not buy it. The house we did buy was large, with five bedrooms of which we used only four, the other becoming a rumpus room. There was a long imposing living room facing south-east. Neither that room nor our bedroom ever saw the sun. I liked the big kitchen and old-fashioned orange-tiled bathroom. The rumpus room, on to which we eventually built an extension, basked in the northerly sun, like the garden, but their use was limited by the strong north-easterly sea winds.

Ours was the third house from a cliff overlooking the ocean. The winds and the salt air meant that the garden was rather bare. My numerous attempts at growing flowering shrubs and trees failed over and over again. We had to be satisfied with the ubiquitous oleander shrubs and a glossy-leafed salt-resistant coastal bush. The house worked in that it provided ample space to rear children, study, entertain and occasionally relax in relative comfort, but it remained a heavy house, a hard-to-warm house. Nevertheless, lots of good things happened in that first home of ours.

I blossomed as a young married woman. I loved the security of a man loving me, the social status of being part of a couple, the freedom to build my own life and above all, the possibility of having a family of my own. A year after our marriage I noted in my diary:

I have had a wonderful year being married to my Richard. He has made me happier than I thought possible. Sometimes I am afraid of this wonderful happiness, afraid that it may not last.

I continued my university studies part time, one subject a year, so that it took six years before I graduated at the age of twenty-six. I set very high standards for myself. I rarely said
no
to any demand. Although older than me, I found that Richard was not the father-figure, the protector, I thought I had married. I became the family organiser, the initiator, the mover, perceived by our friends as the strong one. We allowed little time in our marriage for frivolity, for leisure, for lightness. We did, however, share many good times.

I learned to run an efficient home, entertained our friends and exchanged recipes with my girlfriends. We had some fantastic parties with a group of friends of mainly Russian and Polish background. I was known for my liveliness at parties, events which satisfied my urge for excitement and romance.

We went to a great deal of trouble to decorate the living room and provide food according to a theme, such as
oranges and lemons
, organising suitable music and seating arrangements. At the end of a feast accompanied by wine with vodka, we would push aside the furniture, put on records of Russian and Hungarian music, some poignant, some loud and jolly, and would dance all night. I loved Cossack dancing to the point of exhaustion.

After nine-and-a-half months of our marriage, our son Simon was born. We named him after my father Szulem, his Hebrew name. My adopted parents who now became Nena Gita and Grandpa Welo adored him. But this was cruelly cut short. Father died suddenly of complications from a weak heart and kidney. He was fifty-three years old and had been in Australia for only seven years.

Just a few days before his death, I spent a few hours with him which were typical of the way we related. He lay in bed with his legs swollen, breathing with difficulty. I had arranged a small table by his side at which I worked on an assignment for a course in Educational Philosophy. We were at peace with one another. While I read my notes and wrote, he dozed. He would then wake and watch me approvingly. I told him what I was learning about Plato's and Erasmus' theories and he commented:
Darling Ester, very good that you are studying some philosophy. It is valuable.

The death of my father devastated me. He had been my rock, my nurturer, my wonderful second father. He had loved me unreservedly. The night after his death and for many nights to come, I howled in pain so loudly that our neighbours complained of
the noise
. His death left a huge hole in my life although in many ways his love, his way of looking at the world and his values have lived on in me. In my busy life I did not take time for grieving and the hole remained.

VII

Our Two Sons

I
knew absolutely nothing about babies, but was delighted with my first-born.
To crown my married happiness I have a baby – a lovely, gorgeous, bright little darling
.
I am enjoying the bliss of maternal love. Sometimes when I gaze at the lovely face of that little creature, who is at the moment so dependent on me, I become quite overwhelmed with emotions of love and protection,
I wrote in my diary.

Richard, an equally enthusiastic father, talked to Simon while changing his nappies, ‘men's talk', such as issues relating to the dimensions of Marilyn Monroe.

I had no siblings and had lost my cousins in the Holocaust. I had never even held a baby in my arms. Like other young mothers of my generation, I relied on Dr Spock for all advice and his book became my baby bible. Accordingly I fed Simon every four hours, even though he started crying for his feed after three-and-a-half. I walked him up and down for that dreadful half-hour of utter misery, waiting for the correct time.

One great day, Simon uttered his first word
, li
as he pointed to the ceiling light. Richard and I were in raptures and celebrated each time he said this magic word. Then, the ten-year-old from the building next door, who along with his friends had adopted Simon as their special little person, and who spent endless hours amusing him, climbed a tree outside our window.
Tree,
said Simon clearly. More delight.

Richard loved to toss his baby son up into the air and down as Simon chortled and laughed, encouraging more tossing and laughing.

When Simon was two-and-a-half, his brother Jonathan was born. He was a long skinny baby, energetic and joyful. Though badly squashed during his passage through the birth canal, with red pressure spots on his face and in his eyes, he soon grew into a strikingly handsome baby and then boy, with fair hair, widely-spaced green-grey eyes, small regular features, broad cheekbones and fair skin that tanned easily. He wore an alert yet sensitive expression. I called him Sunshine.

Simon, called The Prince by Richard's father, Opapa, was initially jealous and resentful of the new arrival. Unfortunately, I was not able to breast-feed Jonathan. Instead I held him close to me on a pillow, while giving him milk from a bottle. Big brother Simon sat close too, feeding his teddy bear, Theodore, who remained his friend and confidant, accompanying him to kindergarten and even moving to his home when he married.

Throughout this period, through pregnancies and child rearing, through grieving for my father, I persevered with my University studies and eventually finished my Bachelor of Arts degree as well as a teaching diploma. On afternoons when I had a four o'clock lecture at Sydney University, I fed my baby between two-thirty and three, handing him to the kindly Scottish babysitter, Mrs McKay, then driving to the lecture and arriving home afterwards around six, when the baby was again handed back to me to be fed. Would a more relaxed schedule have been better for both of us? I didn't ask. Richard encouraged and supported me, fitting everything into a tight schedule.

Simon showed his independent nature very early. He was happy amusing himself, and by the age of four was showing skills as a builder and a logical, mechanical bent. One morning we were in the lane beside our flat on the way to busy Bondi Junction to shop. On the advice of the Child Centre nurse, I had put a harness with a long lead over his
head and shoulders. Once it was secured and we were ready to set off, my son sat himself down on the ground and absolutely refused to move. Nothing I could say would convince him. He would not budge, and nor would he allow himself to be picked up. I recognised a powerful
No
. So much for the power of parents! I took the harness off. Straight away he got up and, holding my hand, ran along beside me.

As a dentist's wife and a conscientious mother, I was determined that my children would be brought up on a diet low in refined sugar, with no lollies or other ‘rubbish'. Yet by the time he was two, Simon's baby teeth were full of cavities. We were advised that it would be best to have the dental treatment under general anaesthetic. When our little toddler was brought home, he remained asleep for thirty hours – a terrifyingly long time. I sat by his bed stroking his chubby cheeks and his well-shaped head with its fair curls, checking every few minutes that he was breathing, and waiting anxiously for him to wake. Eventually he did. It was such a relief. It is moments like this when I believe in a God who looks out for me.

With Simon starting kindergarten, there was time for Jonathan to have me all to himself for the next eighteen months. We enjoyed many happy times together, laughing. He loved to jump up and down in his cot so energetically that I feared he might fly right out. He would also sit under the kitchen table banging pots and pans with a wooden spoon, and then would toddle out, grinning gleefully and proudly showing me the tools he had used to make all that noise. I would be preparing meals or tidying up, as the sun streamed through the wide kitchen window, and would join in my joyous little Jonathan's laughter.

I rapidly learned about child development as I watched our little sons pointing to animals, people and objects in picture books, naming them correctly and showing understanding of relationships. As they grew, I came to appreciate
more fully their qualities as individuals. Simon was a beautifully-spoken well-behaved boy, not a particularly good sportsman, though he did excel in sailing his little Manly Junior at Woollahra Sailing Club. He was a peace-loving child. At age five he declared:
I do not believe in violence
. However, during one of the many mothers-and-young-children afternoon get-togethers at our home, a slightly older boy called Jamie kept taunting and shoving six-year-old Simon. Suddenly Simon lost his temper. Screaming with rage he ran after Jamie, who escaped and locked himself in his mother's car. With a force and fury I had never seen in him, Simon hammered with his fists on the car door. My heart bled to see him so distressed, but I recognised that this was a boy who would set limits.

A striking quality of Jonathan's was an inordinate amount of physical courage. One summer when he was twelve, for days on end we heard a low-pitched, moaning sound which appeared to be coming from beneath his room. It was hard to identify. Was it a wounded bird? Was it something scraping against something else? Jonathan volunteered to crawl under the forty-centimetre-high space beneath the house and find out. The space was full of spiders and dirt and all sorts of scratchy plants and debris accumulated from the time it had been built some forty years before. He needed to move on his belly diagonally from the manhole at the north-western part of the house to the south-eastern and back again, in fairly dim light. He was gone for what seemed a long time, while we waited anxiously, blaming ourselves for letting him go under the house rather than getting a tradesman to do the job. But he crawled back, pulled himself upright and showed us that his mission had been a success. In his hand he held a tiny wounded kitten. We cared for it for a short time, but it died.