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Howard and Elle

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“You got me in my gardening hour”, smiles Howard, as we sit down in the bright kitchen of their Clunes bungalow. His vowels still reveal a touch of the classic New York twang even after 27 years in Australia. “I forced him to change!” says Elle, who is originally from Amsterdam where she and Howard met 42 years ago. Together the couple have three children and five grandchildren, and have helped pioneer the local organic herb industry from where we are now sitting.

Howard Rubin and Elle Fikke came to Australia during the open-door immigration policies of the 1970s and 80s, hoping to start a herbal tea business. Having sold everything in the UK, they went on holiday to Bali, met some friendly Aussies there, and turned up in 1987 to a house in Tuntable Falls which had been arranged for them by some herb growers in Nimbin.

“They made you feel welcome”, says Elle, “it was really nice, and so easy for us to come and stay here”. While still on tourist visas, the pair started a business with two local guys, which the government found out about. The two business associates rubbed their hands together, thinking they would take over the venture and never see Howard and Elle again, but they were back in the country within a week, the Australian government having arranged their exit and re-entry with a minimum of fuss, passports stamped and papers in order.

Weekends spent with friends in Clunes led to the purchase of a 1-acre block amongst a mango plantation being subdivided behind the Clunes Store. Hidden away at the end of a dirt track (now Smith Street), Howard and Elle began their own herb farm, running courses and setting up a co-op to encourage other small growers in the area to get into herb cultivation. The Organic Herb Growers Association was born: a volunteer group that met around Howard and Elle’s small dining table and pooled their harvest to send to market in the capital cities. This association grew steadily and gained approval to become a certifier of other organic producers. Through a few incarnations over the next 15 years it eventually became Australian Certified Organic, the largest organic certifier in Australia today.

“We came at a really unique time, multiculturalism was just starting to happen”, says Howard of their fortuitous timing. “It was a period of renewal, people were curious and wanted to try new things. Herbs like thyme, basil and lemongrass were suddenly in vogue”.

By the early 1990s herb production had taken off in the Northern Rivers, and increased competition from neighbouring growers and the introduction of the GST put financial strain on their small operation. To keep afloat, and “ahead of the many, many” as Howard puts it, they began Koala Tea, using the network of growers they had built up locally, and sourcing organic produce from around Australia.

These days their teas travel abroad more than they do, to clients all across Asia and to the USA. Koala Tea is even drunk aboard the Sea Shepherd vessels where, apparently, the Balance tea is quite popular!

Howard insists herbs are simple and easy to grow, even if you don’t have green thumbs, and they’ve made it their life’s work sharing this passion with others. He and Elle seem adept at anticipating every challenge this career path has presented them, so it’s fitting that his current favourite blend is called No Worries.

Tailgating a Toddler Is Hard Work, So I Stopped For A Little While

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Wooka, wooka, wooka, wooka.

That’s the sound my helicopter made as it rose into the air above the playground, pitched left towards the grassy embankment and landed gingerly under the covering of camphor laurels. A small boy had been left behind in the centre of the concrete clearing, blissful and oblivious to my departure.

My eldest child is 3-and-a-bit. He can talk well enough to hold conversations with big kids now. He’s inquisitive enough and carefree enough to approach other kids in the playground, even if they are bigger than him and clearly don’t wish to be interrupted by a pipsqueak chiming in on their game.

Being 3, my son loves chasing. Yesterday at the park, he started chasing two boys as they rode their bikes around on the basketball court. Round and round the little wooden skate ramp they went, the two bigger boys peddling their hearts out and little bugalugs running as fast as his little legs would go, his ankles flopping and feet slapping on the ground in the way that toddlers do.

After a while, the biggest boy started calling out “hey you!” over and over, looking at my boy. His companion soon joined in.

Eventually my son started echoing, “hey you, hey you!”  I stood under a tree at the edge of the court, watching to see how things would unfold. The two boys’ fathers shot hoops just a few metres away, clearly unperturbed.

A little while longer and the calls changed to “hey you, smelly pants!”

“Hey you, smelly pants!”, came my son’s reply at the top of his lungs, oblivious to the fact that he was supposed to be the receiver, not the giver, of the insults. Still, I stood under the tree and watched.

Round and round went the two boys on bikes, their little companion starting to fatigue but managing to remain in pursuit and continue the game.

A few minutes more and the boys changed their calls again.  “Hey you, stupid pants!”, chanted the bigger boy. My son answered back straight away, “hey you, stupid pants!”

By this point I felt quite uneasy. This was the first time in which I had consciously stopped hovering close by in order to let my son play on his terms with whomever he chose, and he was loving every minute.

Did it matter that these words he perceived as funny and silly were meant as taunts by the bike-riding gang of two? Did he need my protection if he was oblivious and unoffended even as they pointed at him as they rode round and round? The older boys’ dads bounced their basketballs nearby, but didn’t intervene.

On the surface it was a fairly harmless game, but it raised the question of how much my supervision levels would be challenged in the coming months and years. If I didn’t want to end up just a helicopter pilot in a holding pattern, I would have to learn to balance the roles of security guard and teacher pretty quickly.

Thankfully I was off the hook for now, as it was time for the boys to go home, and my little runner was all out of puff.

Why It’s Hard To Surf After a Feed

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I have forgotten how to surf.

I used to be quite good at it. I could do it for hours on end, as time seemingly stood still until at last I came up for air realising that I was suddenly hungry or cold. These days I can barely manage ten minutes at a time.

We’re talking internet surfing here. If you ask me, it’s not entirely my fault. The decline in my agility is largely the result of the feeds delivered by a mob of little round-edged squares. Using a secret password, these guys have infiltrated the mini computer in my handbag, which, in medieval times, was once used for calling people. The bosses, Frankie “fb” Baloney and Enzo “Insti” Gramma, have convinced me that I’m no good at it anymore, that I can’t choose my own adventure in cyberspace.

Their power is so influential and far-reaching that I now seem to spend 90% of my time online looking at content they’ve arranged for me instead. And I, like a poor sucker paying protection money, thank them as I pay their ever-increasing costs.

Don’t get the wrong idea, these mafiosi know how to put on a feast. Delicious, tantalising and moreish in every way. The trouble is, I have stopped feeding myself. I have come to rely on others to feed me. But it isn’t always what I need and it certainly isn’t all that there is to eat.

I am now so conditioned that if Frankie or Enzo or any of their square amici haven’t mentioned it, then it hasn’t happened and isn’t worth thinking about. And, since these boys are all so nicely configured for use on a 9cm by 5cm surface, like the rest of the modern world I now use my phone for most of my internet use. Too bad most of the content out there doesn’t have an icon on my home screen.

Trust me, I enjoy having access to the entire world from my pocket, and knowing that I won’t get lost if I take a wrong turn somewhere between Booyong and Pearces Creek, but I don’t like the feeling that my mini computer is the only computer. My eyes get sore as the phone gets closer and closer to my face in order to combat my self-imposed long-sightedness. My fingers don’t always hit the right millimetre of the screen on a site that isn’t configured for smartphones, and so I give up on the internet as though it has nothing to offer me.

Meanwhile my big, shiny desktop computer waits patiently for me in the back room, like a border collie outside a shop.

On the odd occasion that I do venture the 6 metres from my lounge room to where this sleek monolith sits, I feel a sense of heaviness as if I am procrastinating writing a 3000-word essay. Since I am now so used to having content given to me on a platter, or rather a saucer, I forget what it was that I’d gone in there to look at. Stuck for what to actually use the internet for apart from banking, I leave the room feeling disappointed. Where I used to surf happily for hours finding information, going down rabbit holes or wasting time as my heart desired, now Google’s blank search box is powerless under my vacant stare.

There is still so much out there which Frankie and Enzo haven’t yet gotten their hands on, ideas I am yet to engage with and inspiration I haven’t yet discovered. If only I weren’t too full to get up from the table.

What Really Happens When Role Reversal Becomes a Reality

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I’ve just finished my second week back at full time work since Seth was born nearly two years ago. So far, it has been awful.  Forget all that pie-in-the-sky talk about how I will work to support us while Tim will stay at home caring for our son and it will all be fine and dandy.  Turns out it’s not that rosy when it comes time to actually swap roles and responsibilities.

The first day of work was the worst.  For a pretty unemotional person, I was almost in tears leaving home at 8am, kissing my son goodbye and knowing I was no longer his primary care giver.

Are all working mothers evil and insane?, I thought. Because that’s what I felt like.

When I got to work it was horrible.  That terrible feeling of being bombarded with not quite enough information to get a complete picture of how things work, but more than enough to make you utterly confused and exhausted.  I muddled through until the end of the day and unleashed all my insecurities on my darling husband as soon as I got home.  Second day: repeat.

Meanwhile in stay-at-home-parent land, Tim was despairing at his own predicament. Dropping Seth off at day care, his leg being clutched tightly as he tried to back out the door, he wrestled with his own doubts about whether going to university now was the right thing to do.

By the fourth day we were starting to mellow, and I had to laugh as Tim asked ME what I wanted for dinner and I mumbled something like “I don’t know, whatever you want”, as I rushed out the door and into the car.  Tim has been making lunches, packing bags, bathing the baby and doing washing.  In fairness, he did all those things before, but usually only after I asked him to.  In the past I was always the one reminding, nagging, thinking ahead.

Now, in a life-swap phenomenon rarely seen outside reality TV shows, I have subconsciously fallen so deep into my new role that I have ceased taking notice of the housework and daily chores.

I stepped over the same pile of clean washing in the hallway for a week, didn’t sweep the floor once and didn’t clean the bathroom even though it looked like an amenity block in a camping ground.  It was as though my work outside the home had blinded my eyes to the jobs that keep our house running comfortably.

When the weekend finally arrived, all the things I had wanted to do got sidelined by an insurmountable urge to do nothing except have ridiculously long breakfasts and then potter around in the garden with my dressing gown on.  What was happening to me?

If I am this upset going back to work after enjoying 20 months of being at home with my son, imagine what it must be like for women who return to full-time work much sooner.  Take Ms Yahoo CEO, Marissa Mayer, who returned to work after only TWO WEEKS of maternity leave.  Oh, that’s right, she took her son to work with her and put him in the next office. Perfectly normal.

Thankfully, the second week has been better.  Work is less confusing and some of my clean clothes have made it back into the wardrobe.  I’m still adjusting to being the working parent who feels guilty at taking a sick day, even though my head is pounding, my joints ache and my throat is rough as sandpaper.  I’m still adjusting to feeling guilty about actually enjoying my sick day because it means I can play with Seth all day and be there to ignore his tantrum when he spills his smoothie on the driveway.  Oh, did I say ignore? I meant soothe, of course. It’s been a long week.

How To Get That Fresh New Year Feeling All Year Round

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It’s now four days into the new year and that lovely feeling where everything is new and possibilities are endless is quickly starting to slink away into the dusty corner where it lives for 360 days of the year.

Something about the simple progression of the four numbers we write at the end of the date imparts us all with a fresh sense of wonderment, opportunity and imagination for what we can achieve, not just in the coming months but in our entire lifetime.

In the real world, nothing has changed since I went to bed on December 31st and woke up on January 1st.

I still live in the same house, sleep in the same bed and eat the same food. The sun still rises and sets at around the same time and people all over the world still face the same trials and challenges that they faced the day before.

So what is it about the new year that makes us so hopeful for change and personal betterment? I think it’s because we need this artificial shot in the arm to pull us out of our daily drudgery, even if your typical day isn’t that drudgey. It’s an external marker which we use to force ourselves to rethink our habits, our careers, our spending patterns or our relationships because we don’t have any motivation for this self-assessment any other time of year.

We all know that one of the secrets (actually, it’s not really a secret) of successful people is that they set goals and stick to them, biting off small pieces and chewing them up one mouthful at a time.

New Year’s Day presents all of us with the opportunity to reinvent ourselves, re-focus our attention and re-evaluate our goals for the year ahead without us having to arrange it on our own. How uninviting is it to sit down on a Saturday night in the middle of May and hash out a bunch of plans when everyone else is watching the finale of Masterchef?  At New Year we don’t have to force ourselves to think about these things, the date does that for us.

The only real change that occurs around New Year is in our attitude. Since all our mates are busy working out how to finally kick their chocolate habit, booking long-awaited dancing lessons or setting new household budgets, suddenly the self-assessment becomes a fun, communal affair.

If we can get this excited about new things once a year, why not do it all the time? If only it were that easy. In my case, I know I need that little push to get started, a reason to stop procrastinating and just do it. Like hopping on the ‘study bus’ which comes around every 15 minutes or so when you’re trying to get started on a 2000 word essay on naval warfare in the medieval Mediterranean. The clock ticks down and you get prepared, and when it clicks over to 9.45pm you know you had better start typing. Something. Anything.

This year in our house we made a New Year’s resolution to embrace the New Year ideals of fresh starts and new plans throughout the whole year. We will be celebrating New Month Day on the first of each month. Hopefully it will help us continue to re-evaluate where we are going and what we are doing and carry the optimism of the ew year all the way through to December.

I think we’ll be doing well to make it to April, but at least then there’ll only be eight more months until New Year.

A Loyalty Scheme That Rewards Me For Being Me. It’s A Supermarket’s Bread And Butter.

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I’ve just signed up for a supermarket rewards program.

I hate rewards programs. I joined one in the past, but then I realised I needed 50,000 points to get a $29 blender and it would take me 45 years to accrue that many, by which time I would be 67 years old and could hopefully afford my own blender, not to mention the fact that the points would have expired after the first three years. So I cancelled my registration. I have even come to cherish the two seconds of freedom and wind blowing through my hair as I casually answer “no” when the checkout person asks if I have this or that card.

The reason I have once again decided to sign up to such a condescendingly-titled scheme is not because I love my supermarket, or I want to get a dinner for two at Hog’s Breath in 10 years’ time. It is because the bread I like is cheaper if I present this particular card. That is the SOLE REASON.

Contrary to what your in-house analysts may tell you, Mr Supermarket Marketing Genius, I’m not a particularly loyal customer, I don’t harbour any strongly held Green Vs Red Vs Independent beliefs and I don’t even want your piddly 4c petrol discount. It’s just that I figure that the $1.41 I’m going to save each time I buy my favourite loaf is money I’d rather have in my pocket than yours.

You might ask why I don’t just go to another supermarket to buy said loaves of bread? Simple. I don’t know where anything is at the other ones! And anyway, it’s no cheaper elsewhere. So, you see, it’s a delightful combination of laziness and stinginess which has forced me into this situation.

I know the supermarkets don’t care about my reasons for joining their “rewards program”, or “thinly veiled carrot and stick data gathering program” as I like to call it. As long as I join, that’s all that matters.

I don’t have any real grudges against big chain supermarkets. I love farmers markets and buying meat from the butcher, but I also say ‘good-on-you’ to the original pioneers of the “super” “market” idea who had the foresight and/or capital reserves to start one in the first place. But don’t think for a second, Mr Supermarket Shareholder, that just because I have your shiny little card poking out of my wallet that you own me. You don’t own me. You are not my mother. You don’t need to reward me for spending my money wisely in your nicely laid out shop like a good little girl.

If I can save $1.41 each time I go to your store, Mr Supermarket Owner, why that’s possibly $73.32 a year. Enough to buy two blenders! As long as you keep up your end of the deal and put my bread on special.

Turned 30. Still, It Could Be Worse

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I just turned 30.

In the week leading up to my birthday I put a colour in my hair, got a facial, and started wearing suncream every day like the beauty magazines advise. All of a sudden my DIY moisturisers (aloe vera, olive oil) just didn’t seem to be doing the job, and my knees hurt when I went for a run. Not to mention when I played netball against girls half my age. The furrow in my brow has signed a long-term lease and I am officially ineligible to apply for those competitions aimed at “youth” pursuing artistic or community projects.

But I can’t be 30! When I look in the mirror I still see the same face I had when I was at uni, the same one I had when I got married. That girl wasn’t 30. I haven’t even learnt how to correctly apply my own makeup, or change a car tyre. Isn’t that something 30 year olds should know?

What’s more, I’m not convinced that 30 is the new 20. Rather, this milestone looms in my mind like a cliff over which I will tumble and keep on tumbling until I get old. I have visions of myself as a crazy old nanna with muscly Madonna arms, a wrinkly body and my current face, only the skin is all saggy skin so it doesn’t fit properly. On that note, perhaps my mind is already going.

But that’s all in the future. Right now I have a gorgeous son and a wonderful husband, who also happens to be turning 30 with me. I am comforted by the fact that he finds this event just as irksome as I do. He is noticing marks on the backs of his hands, going to bed earlier, and comments on how regularly he finds himself tuning to Classic FM these days.

When you’re little, I’m talking primary school little, you have no idea what 30 year olds actually do. Well, it appears they do pretty much the same stuff as 20 year olds, only with higher health insurance premiums. We haven’t got a mortgage, high flying careers, bulging bank accounts or even a will. But we do have a lot of fun. Too much fun for a bunch of 30 year olds, I think. It’s probably best we settled down and started acting our age.  Now where’s that walking stick…

I can see clearly now the dishes are clean

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I’m starting to think that a little bit of hot water and a little bit of suds does more than just get egg off a frypan. In fact, the waters of your kitchen sink hold deeper truths than a Dalai Lama quote on facebook. As dirty dishes are immersed and sparkling clean ones are raised up, they reveal much more than simply what you had for dinner. It’s WHO had what for dinner, and HOW. A microcosm of life at this particular instant in time.

Take my sink for example. Your standard one-large-one-small-plus-drainage-area kitchen sink, in your standard early-1990s-light-peach-with-cream-lino colour palette. Each day it gets filled with small, brightly coloured plastic bowls, of which I clearly don’t own enough because I am forever washing the same ones. Floating under those are several small, multi-coloured plastic spoons, some with rabbits on the handles and others with heat-sensing rubber technology. Into the murky broth goes the stick part of the Bamix, some Tupperware containers, and I like to finish it off with a nice cheese grater or potato masher.

If I’m feeling celebratory, I might chuck in some wine glasses (exaggeration, of course I wouldn’t actually chuck them), but that’s a rare occasion. There is the odd tea or coffee pot, but even these don’t get to feature as much as they probably would like. Let’s not even mention the juicer, which has not made it near the water’s edge ever since I ran out of time to contemplate drinking fruit and vegetables instead of eating them.

Yep, I currently live at the Mini Meals capital of the world. On any given day there will be various flavoured soups and stews making their way between the stages of stove top, blender, ice cube tray, freezer, tiny bowl, microwave, tiny spoon and tiny mouth that make up the kitchen circuit. Sometimes we add extra stages, called hands, hair, ears and floor, which I try to avoid but my little munchkin quite enjoys.

I can recall a time when my drainage rack displayed a vastly different lifestyle. There were fancy cocktail glasses and espresso cups, steak knives and sushi mats. And these probably sat there for several days on either side of the clean/dirty divide because who has time to hang out in the kitchen when you’re working full time and socialising every other moment.

If I look hard enough I can also see into the future through my sink. I can see school lunch boxes, sports bottles and endless cereal bowls. I wonder how many Weetbixes my boy will do? I’m smiling right now just thinking about it.

Nasty Nostalgia And The New Life Crisis

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It can strike at any time.

When you’re driving in your car. Or, for me, more often around 8.30 at night when I’m elbow deep in washing up water, while the microwave dings to announce that my frozen peas are ready and the washing machine fill cycle gurgles away in the background.

Nostalgia. A wistful desire to return to a former time or place.

In my case, to the time before my gorgeous baby boy came along and altered not only my physical state, but my emotional, financial and social states as well.

I’ve heard plenty of parents say that becoming a mother or father has changed them for the better. It has helped them to realise that they are not the most important person in the world, or at least not anymore. It makes them less selfish, more patient, more generous; which are all lovely attributes in a human being. And all this from simply spending less time thinking about their own wellbeing, and more time looking after their child’s.

Well, you might as well stone me right now, because I’m here to say that motherhood seems to have had the reverse effect on me! I’m calling it my ‘new life crisis’. We’ve had the mid life crisis and even the quarter life crisis, only this one isn’t brought on by reaching a certain age, but rather by grafting another life onto your own.

Now that I have another human being to look after every hour of every day in every way, I have wrestled with my own life-changing thoughts. Only problem is, instead of realising how selfish I was, I have been stung by nostalgia about how good my life used to be.

Before you call the men in coats to lock me away, let me explain. Having a child has made me realise that I have had the last 10 years of my life to myself. I could do as I pleased, go where I pleased, when I pleased. And now I belong to someone else. Ok, not exactly an Einstein discovery, but a revelation nonetheless.

Having a baby has certainly made me re-evaluate my priorities, but instead of erasing my self-centredness, it has made me crave more of my own aspirations and desires than ever before.

In this textbook case of new life crisis, I then get overcome by a feeling that I have wasted that time I had before. Not realising the brevity of that stage of my life, did I fritter away weeks and years not really doing anything? Should I have been more energetically pursuing my dreams that now seem so clear in my mind but so out of reach?

I could have been living it up like there was no tomorrow, taking extreme adventure holidays, working single-mindedly towards goals of career nirvana and world domination. But here’s where nostalgia plays nasty tricks. It distorts the past and fogs up reality to line up with your current mood. And while doing the washing up late at night the mood usually isn’t too bright.

The reality is, in my twenties I DID do as I pleased. I DID go on amazing adventures with amazing people. I DID work hard to pursue dreams that I had at the time, even though they might not have led me to where I thought I’d be today.

As it turns out, the cure for new-life crisis is actually the same as the cause. A new life has been started. Both for my son and for me. The self-prescribed treatment involves tackling this new direction as best I can with the tools I have at the moment, knowing all along that I might look back in another 10 years and wonder what on earth I was doing! Life isn’t like Seinfeld, and there aren’t going to be any re-runs, so I’d better pay attention the first time around and leave the nostalgia in the past where it belongs.

Blessings Can Come In The Strangest Packages

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This week some strange things happened in our house. Not in a ghost-in-the-attic, Round The Twist kind of way. Each event was not even particularly remarkable on its own, but coming as they did, one after another, they eventually made me sit up and take notice.

It began when my office phoned to let me know about some extra work I might be interested in. After hours, they said. Possibly able to be done from my home computer, they said. As much or as little as I could fit in around my day-to-day mothering duties. I was thrilled and accepted right away. Not exactly mind-blowing, but still enough to make me a wee bit excited for the extra money I would be contributing to our single income family.

On Monday evening an informal jam session had been arranged with one of the singers from our church band. Just a casual practice at our place to go over a song that needed work. Our guest arrived and let herself in, walking into the kitchen carrying a container full of freshly made minestrone, still warm off the stove. She hadn’t been invited for dinner. She had already eaten and so had we. It was simply an offer of food from one family to another because they had plenty to spare. The soup smelt amazing, and Tim and I were grateful for the gesture (who wouldn’t be?!), and promptly froze it for another day.

Then, one day in the afternoon mail, a cheque arrived for some freelance marketing work I had done back in February. It wasn’t a huge sum of money, nor was it out of the ordinary, since, like most people, I expect to be paid for work I have done. But I welcomed it with open arms and rejoiced again some more.

The next day, I was walking at the beach when my phone rang. It was another freelance marketing job for the same employer. It was an urgent project which required a 24 hour turnaround. Thankfully I had no appointments the following day so I was able to commit my time to it with no interruptions, except an 8½ month old baby, don’t get me started…

By now I was beginning to take notice of the favour which seemed to be following me around. It wasn’t usually like this.

A few days later, Tim phoned me from the doctor’s surgery, having gone to have some stitches removed from a wart which had been cut out. We expected to have quite a bill to pay, since the initial surgery and the biopsy of the wart hadn’t yet been accounted for. Tim was over the moon. It had all been bulk billed! Who knows if that’s usual practice, but we smiled down the phone lines at each other anyway.

Later that night the penny dropped that these blessings weren’t simply random events, but had actually come at a particular time when we really needed them. Last week I had been doing our banking online, looking at the funds not-available in our account. I had two phone bills which were due that day, but not enough money to pay them. Had we suddenly, or rather over several months, become what tabloid news refers to as ‘battlers’? Urgh! Right there, at my computer, all I could do was pray to God for help. We clearly needed some.

Now I don’t know whether to be more pleased by the string of events, or by the fact that God heard my prayers and intervened through situations I had not even considered worthy of a second thought.