Farewell, Friends

Farewell, Friends
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday December 12, 2015

This column started as a happy accident. After twenty years in television, I’d resigned from the ABC to welcome baby number three. And then The West phoned, requesting a column on domestic life from the wilds of suburbia.

An old boss rang: “Are you sure?” he asked. “Every week, you’ll sit down and open up a vein for inspiration.”

He was right. I became attuned to my surroundings. I made small talk with interesting strangers. I stored away the snippets of a spat overheard at the checkout. I pushed my life outwards to absorb more. I once drove to York because the town was having a Medieval Fair and I was desperate for ideas. That became a column on manliness. Never had I seen so many grunting he-men in one paddock.

I made a rule to only write from personal experience: I hoped it would keep me authentic. I learnt that good writing needs clear thinking. I carried a notebook with me everywhere. My family and friends became used to my cries of frustration and woe. The gist of a column would float around in my head all weekend, then the column itself would arrive about four days and six drafts later.

I fretted about my deadlines. It was like standing under a windmill and being knocked down by one blade, only to scramble up to see another bearing down on me.

So this is my last column. It’s time to leave before I run dry, become stale or worse – begin to disappoint.

Over the last three-and-a-half-years, I’ve collected a wealth of stories. My great delight has been that so many of you have taken the trouble to write to me. I’ve marvelled at your insights. Back and forth we‘ve emailed, sharing crumbs of conversation and small truths until we’ve become like old pen pals who are yet to meet.

My first column traced my insecurities as I put my career on hold for toddlers. “When did we tell women who are ‘only mothers’ that their contributions are somehow less worthwhile?” I asked. One reader’s email I committed to memory: “Don’t ever confuse your life and your work,” he wrote. “The second is only part of the first.”

Your letters have made the writer’s block worthwhile. A one-liner that said: “Please get out of my head!” kept me going through a rough patch. My favourite came from 60-year-old Roger: “I read your column to understand my wife.” Underneath, his wife had written: “Are you sure you’re not living with my husband?”

Over time, I’ve discovered that the extraordinary often lies in the everyday. I’ve written about the oddities I see in suburbia and the absurdities I contend with at home. I’ve tried to make sense of the social order of things. I’ve written about old people and young people; why ageing is a privilege; why the story of loss is universal. I hope I’ve reflected the confusion we feel about being good parents, good workers, and good people. I’ve plumbed the ups and downs of relationships, using my own as a touchstone.

My husband has never once read the column before it goes to print. So I’m always nervous on Saturday mornings. I’ll study his face for amusement, boredom, or rising indignation. And then he’ll slap the magazine closed and say ‘Nice one, Blossom.’ Or shrug: ‘Not your best.’ (He likes to tell people I write fiction).

Last summer, at Bunnings, a woman berated me: “I don’t know how your husband puts up with you using your lives as constant fodder for your column.” That hurt. At 2am I was still churning. (“Hang on!” I should’ve said. “He’s the one who provides the constant fodder!”)

At times, I’ve been called a muppet, a ninny, and, since losing my licence, a public disgrace. I grew a thicker hide.

My most enjoyable subjects have been the people I’ve befriended in unusual places: the one-eared man at a train station, the leopard-printed lady at the Cat Show, the truck driver near Geraldton who freed his cargo of homing pigeons just so I could see how they clouded the sky.

But I’ve also dredged up my own traumas: the childhood emptiness of not knowing my dad, for one, and was overwhelmed by readers who wrote intimately of their own absent fathers.

I’m always trying to snatch time at my computer, sometimes at my family’s expense. Little did I imagine, back in 2012, that I would write nearly 200 columns. As a girlfriend recently pointed out: “Your writing used to be about your life, but now your life is about your writing.”

So thank you for all the stories we’ve shared. Without your loyalty, I would not have thrived on this weekly page.

To Matthew, my children Oscar, Dan and Gabriella, and to my nearly 80-year-old Mum, Joan: this summer, I’m all yours.

The Male Mystique

The Male Mystique
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published Saturday August 24, 2013

I live with a man who inhabits a different relationship to mine. Our marriage is a his-and-her version of the same conjugation. I can never tell what my husband is thinking because he’s master of the poker face. On weekends, having tried (and failed) to read his mood, I’ll squeeze in beside him on the sofa and inquire: “Honey, what are you thinking?”  

“Nothing.”  

I like to press him further: “You know, it’s impossible to think about nothing. Even nothing is something if you can’t think of anything.”

“Okay then,” he sighs. “I’m thinking about what a plonker that Hayden Ballantyne is.  And if I’ll have time to scarper to Bunnings at half time. And whether they’ll have a sausage sizzle out the front. Happy now?”

He shoots me a look that’s either bemusement or incredulity but I can’t tell because I can’t read his mind.

I’ve spent years trying to get inside his head. I have tried to follow his man-mind by over-processing everything he says and does. I look for hidden meanings in his shrugs and read far too much into his harrumphs.

Here’s my theory: my husband has a one-track mind. His brain chugs along the straightest possible route from A to B. He stays calm, measured and entirely predictable. As far as I can tell, he neatly divides his day into work, football, family, newspapers and sleep. (On weekends, in reverse order). And if the gentle hum of domestic life with a wife, three children and a cat turns into bedlam, he seeks refuge in the dunny.

On Saturday mornings, the bathroom floor is littered with newspapers. The sports section is in disarray, and the liftouts have had pages torn out willy-nilly. No amount of my shuffling can get the paper back in page order. I can hear contented rustling as I walk past the john on my way to the laundry. The fan is a muffled roar. The kids are yelling for their dad to teach them table tennis.

I’m expected to respect his hide-out by declaring: “Papa’s ducked out to the shop to get milk!” And then I fumigate the hallway with lavender spray to throw them off the scent.

Why do I protect him from his own children? For love, apparently. What’s a wife worth anyway? I’ve become as ever-present and useful to him as fresh air.  

Sometimes, marriage and its chores are stultifying. For every man who dives for the dishcloth after dinner, there are plenty who push back their chair and announce: “Delicious, darling.” Then they ignore the kitchen carnage and settle into the sofa to watch Four Corners.

It’s never 50-50 in domestic work. It’s 60-40 or 70-30. Or worse. One party works tirelessly to keep the household juggernaut rolling, the other takes advantage of the smooth ride.

Every six months or so I like to give our relationship a litmus test. I prop against the door of the study and casually enquire: “So, honey, should we go out to dinner, just the two of us, and talk?”

“Talk about what?” he says.

”The state of our relationship.”

And he’ll reply: “It’s chaotic. There. Now can we stay at home?”

It’s the same answer every time. No man wants to talk about his relationship. Every woman likes to dissect hers.

My husband thinks my working week involves sitting around with my housewifey girlfriends drinking pots of tea and gas-bagging. It’s the kind of ignorant accusation that infuriates me and my two best pals when we meet on Friday mornings to discuss the latest Nielsen poll and why our husbands are infuriating.

I admire those women who tell their man to shape up. Instead, I have a happy husband by default. I pretend I don’t mind him always getting his own way because I don’t want to sound like a nag. Instead, I only come unhinged every few weeks. The resentment backs up and explodes at inopportune moments. Usually on turbulent school mornings when he’s swanning around after a 20-minute sabbatical in the shower.

The sexes also divide over fine detail: I like a nicely made bed with hospital corners, my husband cuts corners by shutting the bedroom door. After dinner, he’ll earn an adoring glance from me by announcing: “Sit down Blossom, I’ll do the dishes tonight.” And then he’ll put the last four plates in the dishwasher and leave the crusty lasagne dish and a burnt saucepan on the sink.

Marriage is the accumulation of thousands of nondescript conversations held over thousands of unremarkable breakfasts. It’s the kindness of a husband who lets me have the first shower, and the tolerance of a wife who picks up the five socks scattered across the bedroom floor. But next time the kids are screeching for their dad on a Saturday morning and I can’t find the newspaper, I’m going to give them a wink and point them in the direction of the lavatory. I hope they annoy the crap out of him.