To Mother - sometime in late 2009

To mother

Mother (n)

To mother (v)


I am of a certain age.

( I wonder who first coined this phrase, and what was the exact age they were referring to, and were they referring to a man or a woman when it was first said and did they have any idea how the phrase would work itself into our vernacular)

Anyway, I am of a certain age where it is very conceivable (and yes the pun is entirely intended) that I could be a mother. (Please insert your choice of the following three sounds effects:1. Beginning of the opening bars of Beethoven’s Symphony No.5 - de de de dom 2. Sickly sweet sigh - ahhh 3. Nervous laughter). And if I want to be one, well, this is the decade to do it.

The whole concept of being a mother was much easier when I was eight. Back in Primary School my girlfriends and I had it sorted. We would play ‘giving birth’ at little lunch. The births were dramatic and painful and short enough that we had enough time to experience our maternal bliss, deliver each other's babies, eat our apples and chips, and possible play elastics before the bell rang for class. Those were the days.

I find it amusing, and to be honest a little disturbing, that we used to play ‘giving birth’. Was it practising? Genetic memory? Cultural Conditioning? Whether I like it or not, the whole motherhood thing has always been there. And it ain’t going away.


It was there in my teenage years. No matter how cool and rebellious my girlfriends and I got, no matter how much black we were wearing (90s grunge, not Noughties goth), no matter what illegal activity we were plotting or cafes we were haunting to agonise over university choices and formal dress colours , the topic of what would you name your children came up regularly. However, when we were teenagers, the idea of being a mother belonged to a very distant future, after we had won our Oscars, worked for the UN and owned our own apartments with harbour views. So that was at least after we were 25.Those were the days.

(NB Those hypothetical conversations on hypothetical babies’ names are still happening. It was only a few weeks ago when I was having dinner at friend’s place when this topic came up. My good friend Rors and I both realised that we both had a particular soft spot for the name Olivia. We laughed it off, but a close observer would have noticed our slightly flared nostrils and that we both made a silent and some irrational vow to get knocked up asap so that we could rightfully claim the name.)

In my university days I was fairly insistent I was not going to have any children. Children were so bourgeois. Indeed, for the majority of my twenties, most of the conversations I had with my girlfriends that even related to motherhood were really about pregnancy; and how best to avoid it. Those were the days.

So, for the last five or so years when anyone has asked me if I am married or have children I have chortled ‘Oh god no. I am way too young for all that’. That has been my answer. It has come from a deep and instinctual place. But as I ascend or descend into my thirties (however you want to look at it) I realise something has shifted. Strangers have stopped referring to me as ‘that nice young girl’ and have started referring to me as that 'nice young woman’. (and sometimes they drop the 'nice' and 'young') I am getting invited to baby showers. Hell, I am throwing baby showers. These are my days now.

And it has got me thinking.

See, when I say I am of a certain age, what I really mean is I am of a certain age where I could possible still have a few more lone overseas adventures, some exotic passionate but ultimately misguided love affairs, a brilliant career, an ethical investment portfolio. And then find the right stud, I mean man, to settle down and procreate. Sounds like a plan.

However, I am also at an age where I have learnt ( and learnt and learnt) that there is a limited supply of fairy godmothers out there to grant you your wishes. And even fewer princes who would be bothered to go out of their way to return a lost shoe to a girl.


So, here it is. What if I want children and there isn’t the right man, enough money or enough fertile little eggs? What if being a celebrity becomes a pre-requisite for adopting and that optioned is ruled out? What will I do with my maternal instincts? Or, what if I have children and find out I don’t have any maternal instincts? And then there are other instincts that come into play. I have the instinct to reproduce. It’s quite fun actually. I get the biological drive thing but what about our instincts as human to survive on this planet. With overpopulation and so many people already on this planet in need of looking after, could it just be irresponsible to think about creating more?

And then there is this; the thing about having children is that it inevitably consumes your focus, for most people their families are their world, and as it should be.Blood is thicker than water and all that. But what about the world beyond your family, the secondary world that flashes by on the news or stands next to you on a crowded bus, which begins at the point where all that is familiar to you ends. If blood is thicker than water…well… who is looking after the water?


One night I vented all this to two older friends who, over a few quiet drinks, shared their own thoughts and experiences on the conundrum (And one of them was a man. While the ladies may take up most of the seats when it comes to the issue of motherhood, they are not entirely reserved for us. The fellas have their concerns too).They gave advice, laughed, listened and guided. And later it occurred to me I had been ‘mothered’ on this issue. ‘Mother’, verb, not noun.


And the panic somewhat subsided.


How many ‘mothers’ have you had? How many people have ‘mothered’ you? How many men and women have popped up with sound advice, a loan of twenty bucks the day before pay day, told you to go for it, told you it was ok to give up, gave you a place to stay, a cuddle when you needed one and a kick up the bum when you needed one of those to?

When was the last time you did some ‘mothering’ yourself? What will I do with my maternal instincts if I don’t have children? The same thing I have been doing with them for the last thirty years; giving it to the people around me who needed them. Surely that is a life well spent.




I don’t know if there is a little Olivia or Max ( that’s my boy’s name -Hands off!) in my future. It would be lovely is there is, but I equally sure that life will still be lovely if there is not. What I do know is there are words to be written and new places to be explored, plants to be watered, children to be read to, and a world in some serious need of some tender loving care, and a smaller population.

And regardless of how many dependents you have or you don’t; some mothering for us all to give and get.



(I dedicate this piece to my mum. And to Max and Olivia)

Two Londons 2007

There was a box of herbal tea bags on my desk at the language school I taught at in London. It was an assortment of lemon, ginger and orange. I bought it at the beginning of winter when I was optimistically theorising that citrus could replace sunshine. After my afternoon class, I would take a tea bag from the box, walk into the kitchen, place the tea bag in a large yellow mug, add boiling water until it was two thirds full, walk back to my deskand sit the tea down. I would then walk back to the kitchen, get a glass of water and a spoon, walk back to my desk and sit down, pour the water into the tea to cool it down, strain the tea bag by placing the tea bag into the bowl of the spoon and wrapping the string around it to squeeze out the water and throw the tea bag in the bin. Then I would drink the tea while preparing the next day's lessons.

One day I noticed Paul, who sat next to me, watching me intently. I looked at him quizzically. "Just watching the ritual", he said. At the time I hadn't thought of it as such, I was just making a cup of tea. But now, looking back, I do the same thing.

Recall and watch the rituals.



There are two Londons for me. There is the London of my first impressions which turned my expectations upsidedown. I had not expected to like London. I thought it would be grey and dreary and lack lustre but I changed my mind before I got off the tube coming in from Heathrow. London was bright until eleven and excited and pulsing with energy ( I arrived in summer). London was brilliant. London was brilliant even in my jetlag haze.This is my first London. This is the London of my touristic squeals at Big Ben, and Tower Bridge and the Thames. This is the London first coffee at the cafe at the top of the Tate Modern overlooking St Paul's.This is the London of the excitement at getting on Red Double Decker buses ( actually, that particular excitement never really wore off). This is the London of feeling like I was walking around on a giant Monopoly board. The London shown in the snapshots of tourists, but MY snapshots. I remember that first visit before I headed off to Italy and Scotland for six weeks, in snapshots, and in a giddying rush of excitement and overstimulation. My first London is a crush I will never quite get over.


That is of course my first London.There is the second London that I lived in and worked in and paid bills in. The second London that I eventually cracked and made a life in. A place where I had daily ritual, weekly pleasure and pet peeves. The first London is a place where I took photos, the second Londin is a place where I made tea.

Working London 2007

The English school I taught in was tucked inside one of those terrace houses that line New Oxford St (and for that matter, most streets in London). It had three flights of narrow stairs and ten or so classrooms perilously stacked up around them. Before and after class, the school would swell with students as they spilled out of classrooms and out of the front door. In summer, when the school was at full capacity, you’d swear the whole building was about to topple over.

I loved teaching there, which came as quite a surprise to me. When I had left Sydney I was burnt out. I had sworn that I was never stepping back into a classroom. But in London with a bank balance of Australian dollars being pillaged by the UK pound, I had to reconsider. And I am glad that I did.

Maybe it was the diverse and dynamic exam class I had in the mornings, or just being in a new environment, or the three months traveling I had just had, but somehow I got my teaching mojo back. Teaching was great, teaching was fun, and teaching was paying for my weekends away. Yay.

I guess it was the students. London had impressed me with its multiculturalism from the moment I got on the Piccadily Line from Heathrow and my English classes took it to a whole other level: there were the two sisters from Bogatta Columbia who forever changed my opinion on the seeming innocuousness of cocaine use, my student from Yemen who changed his mind weekly about his university choices, a rather temperamental Georgian with visa issues and issues in general ( I once remarked upon him being late to class again and asked what he was going to do about it. ”You can’t change me” he yelled in response “Nobody can change me”. And promptly walked out of my class), a Russian student who would occasionally freak me out by wearing purple contact lenses ( very disconcerting) and the grumpiest woman I have ever met, a ridiculously good looking partially deaf Italian who was brushing up on her English before taking a senior position in a bank ( she was great, when she learned I was heading to Berlin she told me it was her favourite city and wrote me a list of everywhere I should visit). And Lucia, who was working on her PHD on Brazilian literature and was also a Portuguese and Italian teacher ( - it was laughable that I was her teacher and not the other way round but she was my student and is now still my friend). And that is but to name a few…

And then there were my colleagues who were both highly amusing and highly likeable. Just as well as the staffroom was so small that when I pushed the chair back I would consistently hit the Director of Studies desk, threatening daily to send his milky tea sprawling all over his keyboard. ‘Oh no, not to worry’, he would retort to my daily apology with distracted politeness. But that small staffroom worked for the most part, mostly due to the quirkiness and general good nature ( generally) of English language teachers.
As the token Australian in the room I was the recipient of the occasional odd question -What is a flaming dingo? I think you mean Flaming Galah. - You don’t have real universities in Australia, do you? Well if we don’t who on earth is sending me those HECS bills.

Most of them I could answer

Robert, tall, lithe and kind of sexy for sixty came to me one Monday morning – “ Gemma, there are these Australian young guys live near my home and they have these parties with so much beer, so much beer. Why do they have so much beer? And they insist on wearing flipflops and shorts even in winter. Why do they do that?

I just don’t know, Robert, I just don’t know.

Tokyo 2007

‘Too convenient and too complex’

Five Days in Tokyo

It amazes me. You get off the plane, you get your bags, you look at the map and the directions you have scribbled on a bit of paper tucked inside your carry on bag, you negotiate some transport and you get to the unknown accommodation you booked 40,000km away and the adventure begins. It’s so simple. Most of the time. An exercise in total trust in the travelling gods, in guidebook writers, in your instincts and in the first taxi driver that crosses your path.



My first experience of this was Tokyo. I was going to Europe but decided to go via Tokyo for a few days. I’d taught a lot of Japanese students as an English language teacher and it had sparked my interest. I had even entertained the idea of working there a couple of years earlier and enrolled in an evening class to learn the language. I could only remember a handful of phrases; sumimasen (which means excuse me) was one which was going to be particularly useful over the next five days.

That first night I had got into the airport quite late and booked into a local airport hotel to have a decent sleep and to put off having to actually navigate the subway .I’d come with few expectations of Tokyo but plenty of reservations, most of them were about the subway system. I’d been staring at the densely packed interweaving lines of the subway map for the last few weeks. I’d been dreaming about it and waking up with night sweats. My sense of direction was not great at the best of times, even in my home town of Sydney I had mainly relied on others to get me around for the last 27 or so odd years. But now (terrifyingly, electrifyingly) there was only me, a lone aussie red head in a city of 20 million armed with some scrappy directions, a phrase book and a jammed packed backpack, which 12 hours into my trip was already digging into my shoulders and limiting the blood flow to my arms. I arrived at the hotel, got to my room which had an Ashai beer vending machine outside it. I took it as an omen. A good one.

Kampai (which means Cheers)

The next day I set off to get into the real Tokyo. It is hot. It is hotter carrying my backpack. A man on the train platform looks at me bemused and says 'Strong'. I wonder how the women around me manage to look so manicured and fresh. A woman worries when traveling by herself, but I was comforted, coldly comforted, by the fact that perhaps the Japanese wouldn’t recognize me as being a woman.

I am sweltering. There are many beautiful times to come to Japan, it is becoming quite the hotspot in winter for skiing, and is spectacular in May when the Cherry Blossoms are in full bloom. The one time all the guidebooks will tell you not to arrive in the whole year is June and August. It is hot and humid and likely to rain. I arrived in Japan on the 20th of June.

Rendering my weeks of worry useless, I get the train to Asakusa station with no hassles or confusion. Asakusa hits me with its Temple, tourists, traffic and an unusually high amount of sequined shoes stores. I have a few hours to wait before I can get into the hostel, drop off my bags and start to really explore. I wonder down to the Sumida River and get my first glimpse of what has become one of Tokyo’s infamous landmark – the giant beer bubble above the Asahi main office (It looks like a giant poo, one of my Japanese friends told me. It does. A giant gold coated poo). I sit in the park for a while and rest. It seems to be something that a lot of other people are doing as well. They don’t really seem to notice me, or pretended not to. Maybe they had other things on their mind. My friend Megumi later explained to me that where I had stretched out that first day, waiting for my hostel to open, was where the homeless people go and I, unknowingly, had parked myself and my bag right in the middle of them. Sumimasen

A colleague at work who had spent some time in Japan had remarked how reasonable the hostel was that I had booked. In a moment of paranoia I had booked myself into a female only room so was a little surprised to get into my room and find a laddish block of a bloke from Newcastle who warned me that the quite young Japanese guy on the top bunk had swiped twenty yen off him. He then proceeded to tell me about the Hostel movies he had recently seen and asked had I. He instantly reminded me of the sun drenched boys from up North which I knew from back home. There was something reassuring on that first real night away, after hours of walking round getting my bearings and trying to work out how to order my soba noodles through a vending machine ( why couldn’t I just ask the man behind the counter?) to get back to the hostel and fall asleep to the sound of the beer-induced snores coming from his adjacent bunk.

Tokyo is known for its technological edginess, so the irony that I couldn’t get the only two pieces of technology I relied on, my phone and my hair straightener, to work was not lost on me. (I found out later that the global roaming on my phone that was guaranteed to work internationally couldn’t work in Japan because their telecommunications network was ‘too advanced’. As for the hair iron, well, that to this day remains a technological mystery.)

No thanks to my phone but many thanks to a speedy internet connection I was able to meet up with two of my old students, M and M. I had nicknamed them double trouble when they were at my school in Sydney. This was mostly due to M No 1’s ability to tease me mercilessly. It had started with my rather funky green cardigan that had these holes near the wrist band so that you could put your thumbs through. ‘Poor teacher' M No 1 had teased, ‘she has holes in her clothes’. I had retaliated that I had to be nice to her and show her respect because she was older than me. Somewhere amongst the playful jibes, or perhaps because of them, we had become friends. M No 2 was joined at the hip with M No 1 when she was in Sydney. She always seemed a bit shocked but awed by M No 1 comments and when she smiled she didn’t just smile she beamed. I liked her immediately.

I had emailed and organized to meet them near the Asakusa train station exit that comes out near the ice cream store (there were five exits). And there they were; punctual and armed with pretty umbrellas (including one for me), English and Japanese tourists guides and diamantes on their high heeled shoes. Just gorgeous. God I wished my hair iron had been working. Sumimasen

We went to the Edo museum, a remarkable building housing truly remarkable things but to be honest it was all a bit lost on me. I was much too distracted by double trouble and the constant giggling.

The giggling subsided over lunch as we focused our attention on food .Oh the food – if I had to eat one type of food for the rest of my life it would be Japanese. We had some little Japanese restaurant in some little back street in gods know what part of Tokyo and my friends ordered Okonomiyaki. “Looks like vomit” M No 2 commented as our meal, as it was cooked on the hot plate in the middle of our table. Yes, it did look like vomit. But it tasted like salty goodness. This was my little taste of real Tokyo, washed down with a local beer.

After lunch we went to Odaibo. A strange man made island in the middle of Tokyo Bay with futuristic shopping centres, luxiourous hotels and a replica of the Statue of Liberty. And you have to take this super fast train to get there .Super fun.

Over cakes and coffee (although, Japan, not really the place to get coffee) the friendship and the cultural exchange deepened. I explained the difference between get on and get it on and they explained about Japanese men, smaller but harder. I was impressed. The girls were really nailing their comparative adjectives.

Later, over dinner, we sat together sipping sake looking down on the colorful lights on the cluster of ferries bobbing up and down on Tokyo Bay. And the endless Tokyo skyline that stretched out and up behind it. Oh Tokyo. So pretty from a distance. Exhilarating.

The next day it was Saki and sightseeing. Saki was also a former student turned present friend. We shared the same birthday and in a class of nine she had been the only girl. We bonded. We decided on the Emperor’s Gardens and Tokyo Tower. On asking her if they were good places to go, she said she had never been to them. ‘For tourists’, she said. What can I say the gardens were lovely and Tokyo Tower had a vertigo-inducing glass floor that I would rather not think about. But about a five minute walk from the tower was the temple that Sakiko family went to every New Year to get their fortune for the year. She took me there to get mine. It says travel is good but to look after myself. My fortune comes with a little gold- plated charm that I carry around in my wallet for the rest of the year.

We end up in Ginza, the international label laden brightly lit streets of Ginza. Saki takes me to this Japanese restaurant where all the tables are inside these replica igloos. I love it. We make jokes about big men trying to squash into them for business lunches and swap pictures of my sister's wedding and then her sister's wedding. We talk about travel. We talk about Japan. ‘Japan’ she remarks ‘too convenient and too complex’. I think about the Asahii vending machines, the metro ticketing system, the machines in the entrances to shops that dry your vasa (umbrella).

We call it a night and I wonder when or if our paths will cross again. I go back to hostel, lie on my bed and feel very disturbed after reading Banana Yokomoto’s haunting short stories. There is a bit of a niggling pain around two of my remaining two wisdom teeth. And I have a bit of a sort throat. I rationalize it away with my prediction that a good night’s sleep and two Nurofen will take care of it. The pain wakes me up a four a.m. More painkillers and I am finding it difficult to open my jaw.


The next morning I can barely get my mouth open to brush my teeth. It hurts. A lot. And I find myself counting the down the minutes until I can take another dose of Nurifen. Bugger, Bugger Bugger Bugger. I had planned to get out of Tokyo for the day and visit Kamakura and see the giant Buddhist statue. No zen for me today.

I comfort myself with the fact if I get really sick I do have friends here. This is not a drama. Just need to find a dentist. Just need to check with my insurance first. Just need to call my insurance company. Just need to do that.

But my mobile doesn’t work. I find a pay phone and try to call the international number of my insurance agency. And try. And try again. Not working. My tooth is really hurting. They have another number but I need to pay. The pay phone doesn’t take coins and or money. I try to get an operator. I can’t speak ( or understand) Japanese. I go and buy a phone card. I follow the directions. It should work. It should work. It doesn’t work. My tooth throbs and there are still two hours before I can take any more Nurofen. Coffee will help. I go to Starbucks. The Starbucks has one of those devices that you place your umbrella in and it dries it and covers it in plastic. I scowl at it. I don’t need a plastic covered umbrella. I just need to make a phone call.

Buoyed by caffeine, I go into the Asakusa tourist information centre. I try the phone there and somehow manage to get in contact with an American international operating service. The pre-recorded voice tells me it will be sixty dollars to connect the call. Sixty American dollars. I am not that desperate to get in contact with my insurance company…yet.

I ask for help at information desk. Sumimasen. Fortunately they have a little more English then I have Japanese. I ask why my phone card won’t work here. It’s only for national calls. That phone company only deals with national calls. I ask which card I should buy for international calls. They don’t know. But they are very helpful and try the phone numbers for me and I don’t have the heart to tell them that the numbers they are dialing aren’t going to work to because they are the exact combinations I have been trying for about an hour. Together we reach a stalemate with the telephone. I am sure there must be an easy way to make an international phone call; we all know there must be. We just don’t know what it is. What they do know is where there is a dentist surgery with a dentist who speaks a little English. About thirty metres down the street. At last. Something easy.

A little English is right. Very little. I lay back in the dentist chair and point to my back left teeth. I find my phrase book and point to ‘antibiotics’. Yes, he says. He sorts me out with a prescription and even sends one of his nurses with me to go to the pharmacists to get it filled. I am so grateful I want to hug them all.

The next day, antibiotics in system, dosed up on Nurofen, I take a cruise down the Sumida River. It is a grey and rainy day which matches my mood. We cruise up the river. Much of Tokyo’s homeless live next to the river in make-do tents made out of blue plastic. They dot the cement banks all the way up to Tokyo Harbour. In the afternoon I wonder round the shops at Asakusa. A man in an expensive looking gold car pulls up next to me and says hello. I say hello back. He indicates that he would like to have a drink. I think that is what he meant. I shake my head politely and walk to into the next shop. He is still there when I get out and says hello again. This is getting a little uncomfortable. I walk into the next shop and spend a long time looking at some brightly bejeweled handbags hoping he will be gone by the time I leave. He’s not and is ever so persistent that I join him. My heart thumps a little in my chest and my head goes into overdrive calculating how many days I would have to be missing before anyone would think to notify the authorities. I quickly pass in front of the car and duck into the markets, where there is no road you can drive down. I figure no matter how much he would like a drink with me, he is going to like his car more and won’t leave it.

I lose him but feel a little shaky when I get back to the hostel. This is not helped by the fact that later that night there are raised voices downstairs between the owner of the hostel and cleaning staff. And the Japanese very rarely raise their voices. At least it has gotten my mind off the pain throbbing in the back of my mouth. The American guy across the hall say he is happy to get out of here. Maybe I have been reading to much of Banana Moto but I feel spooked. I think the spirits of Tokyo are telling me it’s time to go. And it is.

I get to back to the airport hotel early the next day. Order room service, take painkillers and watch BBC World News replaying their main story that tomorrow is Tony Blair’s last day as Prime Minister. It seems fitting as tomorrow I fly to London. Goodbye Tony. Hello ME!

.