Let them wear lipstick!

I predict that 2009 will consolidate the baby-boomer-bashing that has been creeping in, virtually unnoticed by us oldies.

We, who never in our hearts believed that we'd grow old. Certainly we never saw ourselves as growing old like our parents had - being perceived by the younger generations as "past it". But fellow boomers, we are - perceived to be, that is.

I suppose I could hack that. But as well as us being past it, everything is apparently ALL OUR FAULT. ASIF!

Reproduced with permission © 2006 ebonWeb

And the worse a problem is, the more our fault it is. There is a positive correlation between the severity of a world problem and the culpability of the boomers.

Global warming, the global economy, the global recession, President George W Bush. It's not our fault about Obama though, not yet ... It's not to our credit either that he's elected. The dividing line between our culpability and the achievement of the younger generations must lie between November 4th 2004 and November 8th 2004.

Look at the Spooner cartoon below. Baby Boomers, the privileged children of the late forties and early fifties. I wish! I was in Australia then. Women received less wages than me for the same jobs. Thousands of refugees from war-torn Europe were settling in Australia, in most cases arriving with nothing.

Nissan Hut, Broome circa 1956

Here are some family friends of the time, newly arrived in Broome, Australia. The corrugated dwelling behind them was their accommodation.

How quickly did the post-war boom happen? Certainly I was not aware of it till the seventies. When I think of the toys that I and my friends had, I think of perhaps one doll and ball, a Scrabble set and cowboy outfit for my brother, maybe a wire pram for the girl. Oh yes there were also Hula Hoops. The fact that these were popular at all is a sure indicator that our toy selection was meagre. Television was not available in Australia until the first boomers were turning ten. I think my family bought a set when I was 15.

Baby Boomer with toy pram circa 1949

Perhaps the boom years started earlier in the United States, though I have not met any American boomers who had an affluent childhood.

In the seventies some of us started making money. Others started making families. A few did both. We tried to provide for our X-generation babies in a way that our parents had wanted to provide for us, but rarely could.

My own children grew up with more than a ball and hula hoop. Four of us lived on a teacher's salary in the late seventies, early eighties. It was sufficient but in no way affluent. Vacations were camping trips or visiting friends. A typical family had one car.

In the eighties as our children became more self-sufficient and women found it easier to get decent jobs - even as in my own case - careers. There'd be the occasional overseas trip to Bali. We were paying off our homes, paying school fees, renovating.

For baby boomers I think that the nineties was "our time". Except for a brief period in the late sixties and very early eighties when we were young and free and poor, this was the time for ourselves. A brief respite before coping with caring for our elderly parents.

And now? Most of our children are launched though some of us still support a straggler. Most of us are still working, our savings crushed with the economic crisis of 2008.

Yes, life is good. We SHOULD see the cup as half full, though I expect Woody is right when he says it's "half full of poison".

Seriously though, I don't get the Spooners of this world who blame the post-war boomers for the worlds economic ills. When I see a professional, a lawyer, banker, dentist ... they all look about twelve! The people holding up societies infrastructure now are mere babies.

I hope the new year brings more joy economically. It certainly won't hurt us to use less petrol. I remember reading somewhere that when people stop buying, when times are hard, lipstick sales go up. This is seen to be because women want a little luxury, and if they can't afford a new dress or a trip overseas, they'll settle for a new lipstick. At the same time, lipstick fashion colours become brighter and darker. It happened in the Great Depression and its happening now.

So, to the new people coming along, I'm very sorry for what we boomers did - fighting against racial segregation, political and religious persecution, the war in Vietnam, women's rights ...

But you still have your lipstick ... Just make sure that it is eco-friendly and that the tube is bio-degradable and that no animals were harmed during its production.

Perhaps you can use it to paint a few slogans on banners .... after all, it's your world now.

Spooner Cartoon

Finding Felicity

About one hundred years ago when I was a teenager in Melbourne Australia, my life changed course. Encouraged by my mother, I applied for a place at Mac.Robertson Girls' High School.

I was successful. MacRob was, and still is I think, the main public academic school for girls in Melbourne. Going from a suburban 'feeder' school to MacRob with its uniforms, prestige and location (inner city) was a big thing for a working-class kid from a single parent (albeit left-wing) family. I only knew one other girl starting there and we didn't really know what to expect.

It was strange but exciting. Suddenly I was surrounded by girls from the then Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary. We had teachers with names like Mrs Raschka and Madame Lewellis. Life was about learning. There was something more to life after all, something better than post-war, white-bread, black and white, protestant Australia.

I didn't like everything about the school, but I did appreciate the exposure it gave me to a wider world; a world beyond a bigoted Australia grudgingly emerging from the 1950s.

I was a quiet girl, mostly on the sidelines. I'd listen and watch girls whose parents came from war-torn Europe, girls who knew what to read, who actually had a religion - and opinions. How I envied them. I wished I had the confidence to speak to them. They seemed so confident and all-knowing. They excelled.

There was one girl in particular, relatively quiet like myself, whose extraordinary intelligence, attitude to work, and perseverance, struck me. I hardly dared speak to her. I'd listen to her essays and her opinions. I poured over her contributions to the school magazine, Pallas. I saw what a person could achieve. And I never forgot her.

After MacRob and university, we all went our different ways. I traveled. Married. Had two children. Changed careers. Ended up living in New York. The friend I started at MacRob with, now lives in England. We are still in touch. But I've always wondered what became of that girl at MacRob who inspired me - I've always remembered Felicity.

Since growing up, every few years I've made an effort to find her. To no avail. Once the husband of a friend told me he'd been her neighbour as a child, but had lost touch. Other ex MacRob girls I'd meet would draw a blank.

And then last night I found her. She's in Melbourne. I called her from New York. I think she was dumbfounded when I told her why I'd been seeking her.

Me, I wasn't disappointed. She was just as I remembered her. Gracious, intelligent, sensitive and kind.

I'm glad I took the plunge. I'm even proud of myself for being so brave, as it was a bit daunting ... more in the anticipation than the happening.

So I'm writing this to have it sit amongst my Letters from New York, to encourage others - if there's someone you want to acknowledge - DO IT!

And thank you, Felicity.

The Decal

Defining moments. Those moments you remember forever, moments which define a transition in one's life as surely as they do in films and novels.

When Mr Darcy proposes to Elizabeth Bennett
When Lady Macbeth first washes her hands of her king's blood
When (for those of us who are old enough to remember) John F Kennedy was shot
When (and more of us will remember this) when the Berlin wall went down
9/11

But I'm more interested in those defining moments that do not signify an event that causes a change in world affairs, or the turn of a novel's plot. I'm interested in those remembered events that mark a change in ones life - signifying the beginning of something new, a different phase, a subtle event perhaps unnoticed by many, but signifying something ...

The moment, perhaps lasting only a second or less, when it finally hit me that my mother's cancer had spread. "Today when I went to the fridge, I could't pick up an egg," she told me over the phone, 12,000 miles away.

The last time I played hopscotch. I knew it was the last time, at the time. "This is the end of my childhood", I thought as I turned on the two top chalked squares, "7 8" to commence my journey into adulthood.

A Melbourne tram conductor singing "Love Love Me Do!" in September 1964; signifying the moment when the world turned to color from black and white.

I wonder, are such moments hooks on which to hang the 'dividers' of our life? Anything before that hopscotch game equals childhood, everything after equals adulthood? Or are they more than reference points, rather times of realisation that life is forever changed.

Not all such moments concern oneself. They be another person's realisation, acknowledgement, or divider.

One of my sadder memory moments occurred in New Zealand in 1983. I'd gone there with my boyfriend of the time, to see my father. We'd not spent much of our lives together, my father and I. My parents separated constantly from the day of my birth till when I was thirteen. From thirteen on the split was permanent and my father eventually moved to New Zealand. From then on our meetings were infrequent. In fifteen years I maybe saw him five times.

Somehow in 1983 I learned he was unwell, perhaps he had not much time to live. I had just started a new job in Melbourne and could only take one week off. But one week is better than nothing, and so tickets were bought and off we set, Robert, myself and my seven year old son.

It turned out to be not so bad a trip, in as much as a trip to see one's estranged and dying father can be 'not so bad'. Bill had stopped working, could not walk very far, and throat cancer had almost completely taken his voice. He was living in a caravan behind the Princes Gate Hotel courtesy of the then owners. You can actually see this caravan in the movie Sleeping Dogs where he had a minor role. He and Sam Neil have a drunken scene in the caravan, and I believe little acting was required of Bill for this cameo...

Day Trip Rotorua

Bill was poor, having never saved a cent in his life. But he had an old Hillman Imp. Cars were costly back then in NZ and so owning a car was something for him to be proud of. And it came in useful. The four of us would set out every morning, to tour of the Rotoruan countryside.

Bill loved the old Hillman. To us, Peugeot owners from OZ, it was a bit of a joke. But to Bill, it meant a lot. And as he could no longer drive it, the day trips with his daughter and grandson and defacto son-in-law were important, both in themselves and as a change in the monotonous life of a lonely invalid.

On day seven, arriving back from the last of our excursions, when I slammed the passenger door shut, the Hillman's decal fell to the ground. Bill looked at it anxiously, and unable to bend down, pointed it out to me. I went to pick it up, wondering how I'd attach it back. I hesitated. He looked at me, then back at the decal. "It doesn't matter does it?" he said. I knew what he meant. The Hillman would never be driven again in his lifetime. From that instant on, we both knew he'd entered the dying phase. He died five months later.

And that's what I remember. It isn't all that I remember from that seven-day trip. But it is the event of significance. And in that one event is held all the poignancy of discovering, and saying goodbye to, my dad.