I am
Caitlin, Eileen’s daughter. Thank you for coming.
My mum
detested simple narratives with no character development and could only
tolerate biographies, but she did love regurgitating her own life’s events
-good and bad- so I feel we have a
license to do so in her absence.
Just 2
weeks ago we were celebrating mums 72nd birthday at the Bowling Club, where she drank Aperol
Spritzes because she was reading a novel set in Tel Aviv where the protagonist
drank Aperol Spritzes.
My
experience of Eileen, over four decades, is that she was:
Kind,
compassionate, generous, courageous, independent, creative, very funny,
intelligent, eccentric, rebellious – with an exceedingly beautiful heart.
Here is
what she was not: tactful or boring.
Her adult
life before kids was unique and cool. She studied Economics at Sydney Uni and
then teaching, because she hated school herself, and like most teachers
apparently, dreamed of “changing the
system”. She became a teacher and
hipster at Griffith High in regional NSW.
Adventurous,
fearless and altruistic, she joined Australian Volunteers Abroad in the 70s and
was deployed to Malaysia where she taught at the university. From there she was
recruited by the Japanese Peace Corp and trained Japanese volunteers in Tokyo
before being sent to Tonga, Samoa, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe and other random places
on bizarre assignments like negotiating prisoner releases with African warlords
or conducting rescue missions for volunteers who had gone AWOL. I loved when she spoke about those days and gave
me practical advice about things like how to kill an enormous rodent with a big
stick, store your rice to protect it from weevils and floods,, get invited to
diplomatic parties when hungry or lonely. She stayed lifelong friends with many of the
volunteers and our childhood home was full interesting artifacts and people
from this time - shrunken heads, blow pipes and poison darts, tribal art,
meetings of returned volunteers, Japanese students.
She got
married, had my brother and I and
devoted herself to parenting with joy,
passion and creativity, acting as both mother and father to us . She made a lot
of sacrifices to give us a world class education - in terms of school, extra curriculars, excursions, travel, , art, history, culture and people of all walks
of life. There were some extraordinarily challenging times with marital strife,
economic insecurity, harrowing days in the Family Court and the dark night of
the soul as she called it. When we first moved to 133 Darling Street we would
sit on rocks, in a circle, like American
Indians, because we had no furniture. She was strong and stoic though it all.
Despite the challenges she was
vivacious, joyful, gregarious, interested in the world and other people and
always doing her best to create a happy home for us. She turned every day
events into interesting learning opportunities, like time and motion
studies on the trip to woollies or when she convinced Kerrie and John next door
to eat acidic foods , drink alkali drinks, litmus test their urine and record
the Ph on a chat, for our own scientific inquiries. . I received letters from
Santa that started with “Dear Caitlin, I have travelled , from the
North Pole, a tundra environment. Its latitude is 90 degrees north, and
all longitudinal lines meet there. Can you find it on the globe? “
She was
so profoundly generous, with
anything she had, including time and love. If she saw a woman in the bathroom using
a Q tip to get the last out of her
lipstick, mum would give the woman hers. She would buy a coffee and croissant for the
homeless man outside the bakery and say “here
Sir, I thought you might like some breakfast.” For many years in our
childhood she took us to a place in Surry Hills called “The Refuge” on Sunday
nights where homeless and mentally ill people gathered to celebrate mass, telling
us “you’re never closer to God than when
you kiss someone soaked in their own urine.”
Our home
was open to anyone who needed shelter, especially women leaving marriages,
conflict, danger, or simply needing a place to think and rest, pick lavender in
the afternoon sun and watch the stars in the night sky.
She made
a profound difference to the many kids she taught over the years - Geography,
Economics, Commerce, Society & Culture - at different schools. Her years at
Strathfield South, were stressful and
bad for her health but she forged lifelong friendships there, bound by the same
intensity as those formed between survivors of a train wreck.
Then she
moved to Balmain High where she taught Aboriginal Studies, worked with special
needs and smaller kids and again made many beautiful friends, but in much happier
circumstances.
When she
retired, she took extreme pleasure, every day, in not going to
work. How are you today Mum? I’m great! I love being retired. Every day you
don’t have to go to work is a fantastic day.
She was
still busy, preparing literacy and
numeracy lessons for her many biological and surrogate grandchildren , staying
up late chatting with the steady stream of house guests passing through, going
for yum cha, reading voraciously, dropping into Brays and arguing with Tim
about the Booker prize shortlist, sending bizarre emails, posting things all
over the world, walking around Balmain drinking coffees with her friends and
later with her beautiful helpers.
She is no
longer chilling out in her home in Balmain smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee
or wine.
But she
is every wild woman in her 20s on a motorbike flying through the rubber plantations
of Malaysia in a tropical thunder storm. Every teacher picking up her car from
the mechanic saying, “never mind son, you did your best”
She is
the frequent, unexpected and thoughtful presents - books, tailored to your
temperament, or for your kids, 1-2 years above their reading age, an electric
carving knife for One-Arm-Charlie, a purple umbrella to match my purple hair, the
Zambelli business shirt for a girl with her first office job, glittering loose
blue sapphires collected during our travels for the friends who already had
everything, obscure spices and belle fleur chocolates posted around the world.
She is friendships that span 50+ years, characterized
by fierce loyalty, consistency, love and honesty. She late nights of laughing
so hard we cried at the absurdities of life.
She is the teacher taking a disadvantaged kid to
lost property for some new uniforms, showing him how to wash his clothes in the
sink with sunlight soap, asking her hairdresser to cut his hair for
free.
The woman
who gives her wedding ring to the heroin addicts getting married at the Refuge,
buys flowers and caters for their wedding.
Mum, let me address you directly:
You are
every time I see a mother and daughter perched on the balcony of the London
with a bottle of champagne and a martini glass full of strawberries, a mother
and daughter travelling together, squabbling about what room to take or playing
good cop bad cop whilst bargaining with the jewelers. You are every single mum
going hungry, so your little kids can
eat that night. You are Feng Shui, Jungian dream analysis, synchronicity, the
mystical side of Catholicism and the tangent drawn between them. The pied piper on family picnics, leading a
little band of children around explaining the medicinal properties of various
plants. The lady
who uses her winnings on the race 8 trifecta to pay off the fines of a
stranger.
You are
every crisp and fabulous Simona suit I see, every flock of jet black shiny hair
on a wild and rebellious woman, every insightful but totally inappropriate
observation. Every truly sincere
compliment which starts with a huge insult, just so I know it’s genuine. You
are the sun streaming through the stained glass windows in Edward street, and the
sage reminder that a house is just bricks and mortar, that things are just
things and you cant take them with you.
You are the
gentle old lady cuddling your newborn granddaughters and telling me “Caitlin the
happiest time of your life is when your babies are little”.
Maybe you here knew Eileen
as a fiery woman, a gifted teacher, an open minded confidant, an eccentric
aunt, a loyal friend, a warm hearted neighbor, as a kind old lady or an
iconoclastic rebel. To me she will always be my mum, an inner voice that does
not age nor fade.
If mum
was here today she’d ask you what you’re reading, tell you it’s rubbish,
suggest a much better book, then look around, say “Well. This is boring. I’m going for an iced coffee. Bye.“
I’ll leave
you with mum’s own words from a postcard I came across, from one of our
adventures together:
“Dear Hethertons,
This place is fun, fun, fun. We’ve decided to forget about sightseeing, and
will look it all up on the internet and just hang out by the pool instead.
We’ve met so many interesting people. There’s a shortage of single women.
Caitlin and I are surrounded by men from breakfast to 1am, sometimes later. Not
much sleep going on around here. We leave for backpacking on Thursday – we can
get educated then. Laughing all day
long.”
May god bless her the way she blessed us and protect her the way she protected us.
.
