The Young and the Restful
People emigrate for all kinds of reasons, some grander than others. Wars, famine, poverty, totalitarianism—all excellent grounds for moving country. My family, on the other hand, had an altogether different kind of motivation for emigrating: my father's weakness for afternoon naps.
The photos I have of my parents in their youth show two beautiful people. In France in the late 1960s, they must have made a striking couple. My father was a winemaker and we lived in the wing of a manor house belonging to a Loire Valley winery that employed him.
My mother's mother, an Armenian seamstress, would come visiting from the south of France in the summer. She and my mother would dress my brother and I up in ravishing Russian Cossack uniforms she'd sewn. Or as Dutch milkmaids (headscarf, apron, clogs and nothing else). They'd order us to parade up and down the balcony while they sipped cups of tea and giggled. These memories appear like scenes from someone else's life.
Then my father lost his job. why exactly is a bone of contention. He says it was because of the economic downturn in France at that time. My mother has another take on it: she says he was sacked for indolence. He was apparently so fond of a siesta that he kept a sleeping bag in his office especially for the purpose. That, at least, is my mother's story and she's been telling it over and over ever since.
After losing his job, my father was unemployed for months and we lived in a public estate in a nearby town. Then fate stepped in—in my family history fate is always stepping in—and my father was hired by a winemaking company in faraway Australia. So my brother and I packed our Cossack uniforms away and the four of us journeyed to a country town in western Victoria called Ararat.
My superstitious mother must have considered it a good omen—Armenians consider Mount Ararat their heartland, even if, irony of ironies, it's just across the border in Turkey. In fact, the mountain on the horizon of this antipodean Ararat has almost the identical silhouette as the Armenian (or Turkish, depending on your point of view) mountain: a pregnant woman lying on her back.
On my first day of school in Ararat, I knew three words of English, and I had no idea what they meant: 'shut up' and 'goodbye'. I suppose this was one of my mother's little jokes—after all, she spoke English, having worked as an au pair in London as a young woman. Teachers and students at my small Catholic school approached me and said incomprehensible things to make me feel welcome, and I'd randomly choose one of these two expressions in reply - at least until it became clear to me that I was not saying the right thing.
Life in this new place was quiet - too quiet. The sky was too wide and the days were too slow. It gave us all the heebie-jeebies—all, that is, except my father the napper. In this new country, people didn't lunch for hours on end and they didn't nap either, not during the week at least, but on weekends at least my parents continued to nap. The fecundity of that nearby mountain must have rubbed off: soon enough, my mother discovered she was pregnant with my sister.
On those long afternoons, while my parents napped, my brother and I filled the time by planning our return, packing every available bag with every imaginable thing we might need for our lives on the lam. We never never made it past the front yard.
Soon enough, I abandoned my plans to escape and embraced Australian-ness with gusto. My difference became a source of shame, and I became obsessed with assimilating. My cosmopolitan mother made sure that would never happen. She made us wear home-made clothes in the European style. I yearned for the Vegemite-and-white-bread sandwiches my classmates nibbled while the steaming stews my mother delivered to the classroom just before lunchtime tasted only of mortification.
My brother and I learned to speak English with a country Australian accent so thick my mother forced us to speak "properly" at home - effectively forcing us to lead a double life: posh English at home and street English at school. As for my French, I soon forgot how to speak it altogether. When I learned it again in my adolescence it was with an English accent I've never been able to shake.
Other things I've never been able to shake include an abiding fondness for afternoon naps, an enduring horror of the expressions 'shut up' and 'goodbye', and a lifelong obsession with saying the right thing.
Little wonder I became a writer.
The photos I have of my parents in their youth show two beautiful people. In France in the late 1960s, they must have made a striking couple. My father was a winemaker and we lived in the wing of a manor house belonging to a Loire Valley winery that employed him.
My mother's mother, an Armenian seamstress, would come visiting from the south of France in the summer. She and my mother would dress my brother and I up in ravishing Russian Cossack uniforms she'd sewn. Or as Dutch milkmaids (headscarf, apron, clogs and nothing else). They'd order us to parade up and down the balcony while they sipped cups of tea and giggled. These memories appear like scenes from someone else's life.
Then my father lost his job. why exactly is a bone of contention. He says it was because of the economic downturn in France at that time. My mother has another take on it: she says he was sacked for indolence. He was apparently so fond of a siesta that he kept a sleeping bag in his office especially for the purpose. That, at least, is my mother's story and she's been telling it over and over ever since.
After losing his job, my father was unemployed for months and we lived in a public estate in a nearby town. Then fate stepped in—in my family history fate is always stepping in—and my father was hired by a winemaking company in faraway Australia. So my brother and I packed our Cossack uniforms away and the four of us journeyed to a country town in western Victoria called Ararat.
My superstitious mother must have considered it a good omen—Armenians consider Mount Ararat their heartland, even if, irony of ironies, it's just across the border in Turkey. In fact, the mountain on the horizon of this antipodean Ararat has almost the identical silhouette as the Armenian (or Turkish, depending on your point of view) mountain: a pregnant woman lying on her back.
On my first day of school in Ararat, I knew three words of English, and I had no idea what they meant: 'shut up' and 'goodbye'. I suppose this was one of my mother's little jokes—after all, she spoke English, having worked as an au pair in London as a young woman. Teachers and students at my small Catholic school approached me and said incomprehensible things to make me feel welcome, and I'd randomly choose one of these two expressions in reply - at least until it became clear to me that I was not saying the right thing.
Life in this new place was quiet - too quiet. The sky was too wide and the days were too slow. It gave us all the heebie-jeebies—all, that is, except my father the napper. In this new country, people didn't lunch for hours on end and they didn't nap either, not during the week at least, but on weekends at least my parents continued to nap. The fecundity of that nearby mountain must have rubbed off: soon enough, my mother discovered she was pregnant with my sister.
On those long afternoons, while my parents napped, my brother and I filled the time by planning our return, packing every available bag with every imaginable thing we might need for our lives on the lam. We never never made it past the front yard.
Soon enough, I abandoned my plans to escape and embraced Australian-ness with gusto. My difference became a source of shame, and I became obsessed with assimilating. My cosmopolitan mother made sure that would never happen. She made us wear home-made clothes in the European style. I yearned for the Vegemite-and-white-bread sandwiches my classmates nibbled while the steaming stews my mother delivered to the classroom just before lunchtime tasted only of mortification.
My brother and I learned to speak English with a country Australian accent so thick my mother forced us to speak "properly" at home - effectively forcing us to lead a double life: posh English at home and street English at school. As for my French, I soon forgot how to speak it altogether. When I learned it again in my adolescence it was with an English accent I've never been able to shake.
Other things I've never been able to shake include an abiding fondness for afternoon naps, an enduring horror of the expressions 'shut up' and 'goodbye', and a lifelong obsession with saying the right thing.
Little wonder I became a writer.
