Gabrielle Gassin

A mother’s musings on life

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  • Holly Clark: an AWC assignment

    “…arms come up, and exhale.” Through the slit of her left eye and with her nose wrinkled, she sneaks a peek at the laptop screen and wonders for the hundredth time if she’s doing the posture right. She’s alone in the room, inhibitions as dormant as the desire to continue with her scheduled zoom meetings for the afternoon. Living through the corona virus lockdown in Victoria has helped Holly realise two things: 1. yoga is better without other bodies to accidentally fall on and 2. she wants to be a writer.

    Holly Clark is the sort of woman you can picture nestled in a cosy cafe, cappuccino cup empty but notebook stuffed as she drafts her third journal entry for the day. At this stage, journal entries are coming out as thick as her newly feathered eyebrows – her longstanding desire to have them done finally won up against the cost. After all, she has been impassively earning a living within the marketing and public relations arena for too long to not spend a bit of that hard earned cash on herself.

    The desire to make some bank was the drive behind Holly’s choice to divert from her original path. She studied journalism at Uni and was always an ambitious student – writing her 24000 word thesis on the hashtag ‘clean-eating’ and body image representation was a simple task. She strode toward a career in writing with intention and the feedback on her thesis confirmed that choice. But alas, Holly fell into the trap that captures many graduates; work for money, not for love. She slid into a job doing marketing with a tech start up, which ticked all the boxes except the one labelled “passion.”

    The work was enjoyable enough and in this role she certainly learned a lot. Interestingly, Holly was the sole female employee for the entire two years of work there – qualifying the stereotype that we need more gender diversity in the technology sector. This might have been a novelty for the friendly geeks, but sharing a unisex toilet certainly wasn’t. Their attempt at embracing gender diversity outside of work was endearing, though “they didn’t even have enough females to run a mixed netball team.” Holly laughs as she says this – indicative of her affable personality and making it easy to believe that she made “some really strong friendships that remain today.” Her extroverted nature and full face of perfectly applied makeup was not misplaced in this male-dominated-tech-nerd workplace. “I taught them social graces and they taught me to code!” Pretty cool.

    Now, Holly’s competency in communications translates through her work as a manager within a program that brings startups and government together to solve a variety of social challenges. The work is gratifying. She likes being the bridge between different worlds and as a woman previously in tech, Holly finds joy in bringing innovation from that space into the public sector. In the last 12 months however, things changed for Holly as well as the rest of the world. She became conscious of her deeply outgoing nature, and decided that working from home was not her thing. The social gatherings at the water station were non-existent as she refilled her bottle at the kitchen sink, and her exercise routine – once a stop in at the local boxing gym, cancelled altogether. Instead, the end of her day alone saw the closing of her laptop, a quick search for her joggers and the selection of a terrifying crime thriller audiobook, in order to make her run faster.

    Horrifying crime thriller audiobooks are not the only thing that scare Holly. Despite being a proficient writer with a distinctive and amusing tone, Holly has been reticent in sharing the words she writes in her personal time. Recently however, those paragraphs have begun to make the rounds through friends and family with positive reception. As she comes to her fourth week of completing a feature writing course, her confidence to serve the world with her expressive genius will no doubt grow.

  • Shitty Shirt

    Today I left the house with poo on my jumper.

    I saw it there as I left the kindergarten classroom, my child having been dropped off as the final participant of the school day. We were late, as is currently normal practice for us. You see, I realised today that I actually suck at doing morning drop off.

    There seem to be too many things to do on a school morning for it to run smoothly. Today, my four year old was both curious and pensive at breakfast, prolonging the time it took for the toast to enter his mouth and make its way down to his tummy. I felt like every second sentence coming out of my mouth was, “eat!” This, whilst my one year old ate half of his toast, threw half of his toast on the floor, squealed offensively until I gave him a mandarin to eat and then wormed out of his high chair straps and bounced precariously, cheekily, until I released him to the floor. Here he proceeded to finalise a giant poo which had the obvious texture of sand from his time at daycare yesterday, and needed specialist wiping with multiple materials – of which I am not entirely sure the residue is completely off my person even now. This then happened a second time right as we needed to walk out the door. Typical.

    After I finished calmly yelling at my bigger boy to eat his food, the next lot of shrieking was composed with a selection of “where are your socks?!” and “put your socks on!” as well as “stop shouting! Put the dogs collars down, we’re already late for school!” and “Come on! We’re late for school!” and “MOVE IT!! We’re late for school!” I became resigned to the fact that I would not be cleaning my own teeth before departing the house today, nor would I wash my face or brush my hair, clean up the mess from breakfast or the many things that were strewn across the floor. Upon arriving at school, I realised that we had also forgotten the Comprehension Pack due every Tuesday and the Library Book we need to return in order to have rights to a new one. Whoops.

    I never thought I’d be the type the leave the house with shit on my shirt. But today I was. And the funny thing about it is that in fact, I didn’t even really care. Things change when you become a parent, the sacrifices you come to make outweigh personal gain if they mean a better outcome for your child. Even though my kid was the last one to arrive for his school day, he was happy. He had a full belly, a full lunchbox, a uniform and hat. He was greeted by his little crew of friends and he both gave and received a warm mummy cuddle and kiss goodbye. And after all the stress I endured, I walked out the gate and my watch read 9:01am.

  • define: tired.

    It’s 5am and I’m considering dragging myself out of bed for a fifth time since 10:30pm. The thought of it hurts my body in a way only the very sleep deprived know how. Every inch of tissue feels like it’s had it’s own sleeping tablet; clogged in the cells, lodged. The ends of the body can’t be reached through a habitual morning stretch; they feel dull – unwilling to switch on like an ignition refusing to fire.

    My limbs are the heaviest they’ve ever been. They will not be lifted from the warmth of the covers: the fog of an early morning dream is weighing them down. My head pounds – not with the affliction of alcohol: it’s the endless minutes spent awake in the dead of night that cause my brain to weep.

    And yet, there is another day to face. Another piece of toast to butter, another load of clothes to wash. There are too many phone calls to field, too many problems to solve and not enough time to breathe. Everything continues as it does each day whilst my body and brain quietly suffer, firing not quite as quickly with emotions that aren’t quite reasonable.

    The gaze of my spouse mirrors my own, the fatigue is tangible and visible and it wounds us both. There is nothing to do but to accept the forward propulsion, and hope for salvation on another day.

  • Corona Virus Cover Up – Mask McGowan rules in favour of false positive

    It’s day three of a snap five day lockdown in Perth – glory land throughout the Covid19 saga as every other city in the world struggles to keep it under control, people dying in the hundred thousands and everyone wondering when this crap is going to end.

    Here, we have been marching along to the orders of Premier Mark McGowan: ruler of the state and upholder of persistent and strict border controls, which disallow entrants into Western Australia without a police approved pass. Perth has remained an outlier; not a single community case of transmission in ten months of mayhem… and Marky McGee is not about to let one single test stuff up his record.

    Sunday the 31st of January. Word on the street is spreading quickly; a hotel quarantine security guard has somehow contracted the Rona. Macca acts fast – all of Perth will go into five days of lockdown. People who have absolutely nothing to do with anything anywhere even remotely close to the places this infected man has visited, must shut their lives down. We have to SHUT. IT. DOWN. The super spreader’s housemates are tested…they’re negative. 600 close contacts are informed of the grave danger they have been exposed to, and they’re all tested. They are negative. Mums all over Perth are planning McGowan’s usurpation after six weeks of school holidays is prolonged by another five days of care-for-your-own-children but no parks, no playgrounds, no play dates.

    Every single western Australian is compliant. Yes sir, yes sir, how many days should we stay home for, sir? Five days he says. And masks everyone! Don’t forget your mask! DO NOT FORGET YOUR MASK! Also there is no singing allowed, anywhere at any time.

    Toilet paper is gone within hours and there is no room for walking in the supermarkets. Masks are compulsory as well as check ins for contact tracing. No mask, no entry. But never mind being pulled up by the Covid marshals – the vitriolic stares from other civilians will pierce your soul and make you feel like an outsider, if there ever was one. We won’t step a foot outside of our limits; we aren’t allowed. Yes sir, yes sir, we’ll march in line to your orders, sir. Unquestioning and unequivocally trusting, the people of western australia stand united against Coronavirus yes, but too, against both the rest of their own country and certainly the world.

    Days go by and testing numbers remain stable – negatively stable. Not a single second positive test is reported. The law abiding citizens of Perth are doing all the right things…staying home, doing one session of exercise per day and only going out for “necessities.” The people are exercising their acquiescence; masks are being worn in ridiculous scenarios – people are alone in their vehicle, masked. People are out walking, alone, masked. People are masking their children when it’s not one of the rules to do so. People are utterly compliant and their compliance is unnerving.

    The final stages of the snap lockdown creep around. We are waiting and watching for announcements to tell us we can resume our state of incomparable perfection. Unexpectedly, the negative test results keep coming and many presume a false positive from the original germ-man. We wonder what we have endured this stay-home and mask-wear rubbish for. Why have we had to keep our children home, why have the parks been taped in plastic?

    Sunday arrives and restrictions are lifted. Kids can go to school on Monday, parents can sigh a breath of relief though many still work from home – wary of being in the workplace with potential microbes hanging about.

    Some rules still apply, however. Mr. Premier wasn’t going to let us off so easy…after all he does have a façade to maintain. As we moved further away from the first “positive” case and no further eruptions occurred, the love of his people faltered slightly. There was one man who tattooed Mark’s face on his arm, but he remains the sole idiot to date. We had to continue with the mask wearing, and it became the “strictest in the country.” For one case, guys. ONE. Thousands of people had to have their breathing obstructed by a stupid piece of cotton (if you’re fancy) for two entire weeks, FOR ONE CASE. When leaving the house, babies had to look at half the face of their mother and wonder where the rest went. Confused, bemused and continually grabbing at the thing hiding mummy’s smile, their mothers wondered if kids were experiencing effects for the long term. Maybe not for just two weeks of this annoying directive, but more of this would certainly see it.

    At 12:01am on Valentines Day 2021, the mask rules were to be lifted. The Fringe Festival was on, and obtuse regulations were to be adhered to until EXACTLY one minute past midnight. At 9pm the same evening, the people were masked and not allowed to remove the sheath, unless to take a sip of a beverage. Immediately to be replaced, however and with not a moment to lose. The Mask Police were rife, lingering behind those who dared to dwell too long with their drink, or take a desperate sip of fresh unimpeded air. The Mask Law seemed more stupid than ever, when in just a few hours the people would be free to remove the face cover and continue living normally.

    And that is precisely what happened. Most of Perth were snoozing when the veil was lifted; not only the mask rule but too the pretense of rampant coronavirus in Perth. The question became clear: what is the true agenda of Premier Mark McGowan? Are his directions those as advised by the Chief Health Officer…or the polling office?

  • the nature of passing time

    I see the days falling away as my eldest child grows and changes and matures and we get closer to the end of babyhood for the littlest one. I feel a low level of stress – almost like I’ve got to meet a deadline I am unprepared for. In the little moments with each of my boys I wonder how much I’ll remember of this time… The urge to somehow capture it all consumes me, as in my mind I desperately repeat phrases, questions and gestures in an attempt to keep them all close.

    How soon Arlo has moved into boyhood, how incomprehensible is the size of his heart and his emotional mind. He’s taking on so much; the reflective and absorbent brain and its trillion firing synapses such a wonderful, beautiful thing to witness. And how careful one must be right now – the evidence of influence so obvious as his vocabulary expands and so too his understanding of the life he leads, and that which surrounds him.

    And since recognising this desire to keep something tangible, to catch the words and even the actions and store them somehow outside of me so that they are real, I have made peace with the reality that it is unnecessary to burden my heart with such a task. Instead I realise now that I must just “be” in every single second I spend in the presence of both of my boys, so that each special moment is engraved upon me, burned beautifully into my soul for all of eternity.

  • the things i want

    i want to write

    but there is no time.

    there are children to feed, a kitchen to clean and a house to keep tidy

    there is exercise to be done

    that doesn’t get done.

    there is sleep that needs to engulf a body

    but there are too many things

    clouding the list of desires

    so that all I really do in my truest reality

    is look after everybody

    but myself.

  • the wise guide inside

    Two glasses of proper champagne and only bits of sleep last night and I’m attempting a settle; he’s 9 months old and the sleeping struggle is tangible. Chopin’s Nocturne No.2 in E-Flat Major has overthrown my monkey mind…I’m simply swaying in rhythm to it. Through the alcohol induced mist, the music is piercing a little tiny hole into the turbulent year I’ve endured with a second little boy in my arms, during both sleeping and waking hours.

    He thrashes about. Overtired and uncomfortable and palpably searching for some remedy that will send him into the ether, the realm of sleep so desperately needed but that which continuously slips through first his and then my fingers, accompanied by a sense of longing dreamt about, and wonder too, at what could alter the plot of this story.

    And then there in that space, I am not. I’m strolling through the local marketplace. I’m right in the very midst of my sleep deprivation, a time where the mind can’t be trusted to act accordingly, when through the dreamcatchers swaying daintily in the breeze I see it. A passageway I had not yet encountered, although many times I had passed this way. The ceiling seems to narrow as I step cautiously inwards; the wall not graffitied colours but shimmering rock, flecks of somethings glinting and other things gold and hard to make out…is this an illusion?

    It is there at the smallest cave-like part of the passage that I come to a blackened pot, sitting neatly on a small fire somehow propped up and unlikely to tumble. An intoxicating smell invites my senses forward; emerging from a dark blue liquid thick with humbly sparkling silver. I could swear the word “sleep” appeared in the curls of steam wafting from the pot, but was I even really there? The cauldron sits confidently, and so too its owner. There is nobody with me, and then there is, and I blink a few extra times as a force sits me down and I am there, aren’t I? She stirs the contents with a large golden ladle as I watch, mesmerised and wanting nothing more than to feel it, to bathe in it and to have it engulf me entirely. 

    I hear no voice, only the whisper of a question unanswered. 

    Why did you walk this way?

    I have a thousand words and none at all, my mind fractured with memories of moments and sounds of un-stillness. The magical substance lures my eyes and the desire to immerse myself grows stronger. I want so badly to take some of this magical potion home with me. Something tells me that once I take it, everything will be okay. The months of sleep deprivation will be over, I would be sitting pretty; routine established and structure ruling over my life. In a sudden moment but with what seemed like a million minutes before it, this notion was gone. The pot was empty, the contents non existent.

    I blink twice then three times, and my eyes adjust to the darkness of the nursery. Then, the fog that had engulfed me for so long dissipates alongside nine months of heartache. In that moment both my body and my mind had a realisation that would change the way I was currently existing. As if I was coming up for air made purely of clarity, I understood. 

    I had been trying too hard.

    I had been trying to fit a mould pressed upon me by thousands of words either read or uttered, in my quest to fulfil a role of perfection. My baby would not be the one to sleep on demand, at a specified time. He would not follow the same routine every single day. He would not be “a good baby.” He would need my help; the touch of his mother and the sway of her step; her beating heart close by, to settle him into a reverie filled slumber. And, so what.

    For too long I had allowed the pressures of this modern day to try and construct my life. The saying “square peg in a round hole” had never sounded more true; and I was the hand jamming that poor peg over and over and over again, not noticing that it was the wrong shape the entire time.

    I have always been a sensitive mother. I have endless patience for my children, and like most of us, I want the very best for them. But in my mission to provide the blocks that support a smart and contented child, I had let slide the intuition that was so crucial to my own happiness. I had stopped listening to my gut in exchange for “advice,” and in doing so had completely blindsided myself.

    Motherhood has become something different in the current era. From being a role that many women once intuitively fit into, to one that is now overwhelmed with information, mothers feel the weight of expectation coming at them from all sources. And the information is often contradictory, shaded by the preface that “something that works for one child may not work for another,” and “every child is different.” 

    The counsel advises, but only experience truly teaches, they say. However, by the time that “experience” has taught us anything at all, it’s too bloody late to use it. And then, if we decide to go for round three, the lessons we learnt the second time no longer apply. Oh, that’s what it means by “every child is different.”

    Having children continues to be the most awesome experience in my life thus far. This doesn’t mean it’s easy, it doesn’t mean I love every moment and it certainly doesn’t mean I know what I’m doing. I don’t. I’m getting to know MY boys and what works for them, and I’ve finally realised who I should really be listening to…it sure as hell ain’t the internet.

    So what if your baby falls asleep at the breast. I’m pretty sure he’s not going to be 25 and looking for nipples to suck himself to sleep…(or is he?) 

    So what if you rock and cuddle your baby to sleep…one day he will fall asleep in stillness, in his own bed, probably in his own house.

    So what if your baby sleeps in short stints…this may be the only time in your life that you are excused from chores because of time restraints.

    I could go on. Just remember, whether you’re a parent yourself or an advice-giver – that pegs come in all shapes and sizes – and even you are a different shape to your littlest and most precious peg. Everything will be okay, and even if it isn’t now, it will be eventually. Don’t stifle the voice within, trust it. You have got this.

  • “Real Mums”

    Arrived home from successful trip to the shops today with both boys and no disasters. Tears in the last 3 minutes of driving – nothing compared to the usual throat screaming marathon, anxious steering wheel tapping and attempted utterances of comfort.

    Neighbours passed by as I tried to juggle baby, items and toddler from the car up the stairwell. Walked out to say hello – my infant has grown so much since they last saw him and we were overdue for a chat.

    Proceeded to discuss “how things are going.” Was honest; things haven’t been easy. Neighbours empathised as they did the same thing – coming from Zimbabwe with no family support and then raising two children had its fair share of difficulties.

    Vented a little about my morning – a disaster if there ever was one. Pondered the loss of my patient temperament as I was tested over and over by toddler (somewhat targeted) and un-slept baby (purely a victim).

    Neighbours mentioned that on a couple of occasions they had “heard me, (shouting),” and had commented to each other about it, expressing that I must be a “real mum.” Was evident that they were not judging in a negative way, merely empathising and sympathising. Still, I laughed awkwardly and explained that my fuse has reached near the end of its tether and on no sleep it is particularly minuscule.

    Since this chat, I have felt a bit strange about these observations. Today has been a very hard day for us; this morning I felt like a monster in front of my toddler after a night of no sleep with the little babe. The day was topped off by an acknowledgement and confirmation of the beast that lives inside me; one I am ashamed (am I?) to be harbouring like a wild animal being kept at bay.

    I have questioned, on this day and one of many, whether other people lose their shit like I do. I won’t go into detail now; these are just some thoughts I needed to get down before I shower and rest my weary brain… and write myself a reminder to keep my balcony doors closed when somebody in my family has a melt down, regardless of their age.