Diary of a Mrs Dad 3: We’re All Going on Some Holidays
Dudina: Imagine if you could get the world and squash it into your head. You would be so brainy.
I’ve never been good in the water. Firstly, I could never understand why lying on the beach is supposed to be so much better for you than lying on the couch and watching a good movie; it could even be a movie about the beach. I was soon to discover, though, there are great things to watch at the beach too.
Dude: I want to be my own boss. Can I, Mum?
Having failed my second year of swimming lessons explains a great deal about my reluctance to let waves crash over me while I pathetically dog paddle. When I was growing up, aquatic frivolity at my house took the form of running under the sprinkler. When the kids visited their grandparents in Perth, the sprinkler was a highlight for them; damn you, climate change and water restrictions, you’ve robbed my kids of part of their youth and my ability to slack off by wacking the hose on in the back yard. A spinning, bulimic dalek spouting water from its appendages is as close as I have ever wanted to get to the water. The Breadwinner loves the water; swimming in and under it, playing in and sleeping near it. Sometimes I wonder how we ever ended up together. If opposites attract, we are really attracted to each other... a lot. The Dude and Dudina are water babies, so I’m outnumbered three to one, and we’re off on our beach holidays.
Dude: Why did my sister go to the doctor?
Mrs Dad: She has a virus.
Dude: So, she has to be destroyed and rebuilt as a robot?
Over Christmas, we went to Robe, a South Australian town that got its beginnings because the gentry would stay there when the weather got too hot in Adelaide. It was over forty degrees in the City of Churches when we were there, but Robe stayed in the low thirties; those old-time rich folk sure knew a top spot, but we just lacked the servants to lug our gear there.
Dudina: Petrol is food for the wheels.
We were lugging a fair load of gear too, because Santa was visiting Robe and he had hidden his prezzies in the back of our car, under a bunch of beach towels, actually. The previous Christmas, in one of my finest parenting moments, I had cut a wedge out of a halved potato, dipped it in flour and made hoofprints on the front veranda. When the kids found them, along with a half-eaten carrot, the Dude screamed at me to call Channels Nine and Ten, and tell them we had proof that Santa was real. This year, a parent at his school had asked him what Santa was bringing him and he said, ‘Santa...’ and made the inverted comma sign with his fingers. A little sadness touched my heart, for the loss of innocence, and for the appalling use of the inverted comma sign that I find so pretentious.
Dude: The round things on the top of your tongue are called taste bugs.
Complications are a part of family life, but this Christmas Eve brought a completely new one, when Dudina lost a tooth. It was a boon to Dudina, because not only was she getting presents but also remuneration from the Tooth Fairy. I couldn’t help thinking about Santa and the Tooth Fairy stumbling into each other late at night in our modest beach shack. Would there be disbelief, resentment, or a late-night fantasy folk sexual tryst? If they had a child, would the little Fairy Santa find disfavour with the conservative elements of society? Dudina was doing a little investigative journalism of her own and left out a questionnaire for the Tooth Fairy, complete with boxes to tick.
‘Are you sister, cousin, or friend of Tinkerbell?’ she wrote.
I ticked the ‘friend’ box and left a small donation, all by the light of my iPod. I really am a modern dad.
Dudina: There’s a vampire in my teeth.
On the beach, I like to wear a rashy; the top that stops a surfboard or boogie board scratching your chest. The rashy serves the dual purpose of stopping me getting skin cancer and not scaring toddlers if I go shirtless and they think there’s a bear on the beach. Middle age has put more hair on my back than on my head. It’s something for the young blokes to look forward to.
One day on the beach, my kids started making disapproving clucking noises.
‘Dad, that’s disgusting,’ said the Dude.
‘What?’ I feigned interest as I found myself adapting to the laid-back beach lifestyle.
‘That lady has no top on!’ His young voice was filled with fascinated disgust.
‘Where?’ I was up and a little too attentive now.
‘There,’ he pointed.
Obviously, I find a topless woman attractive, but as I age I catch myself looking at younger women’s blemish-free skin as much as at their bumps and curves.
‘Dad,’ said the Dude, ‘aren’t you going to tell her off?’
‘I am,’ I replied in a semi-hypnotised monotone, ‘I’m telling her off with my eyes.’
‘Well, you’re telling her off a lot,’ he surmised.
I quite like the beach now.
Matt Quartermaine is a Melbourne-based writer and comedian. With Matt Parkinson, Tim Smith and Andrew Goodone, he produces ‘The Chat’, a weekly podcast in which four grown men in comfortable chairs spill their guts. Click here to download it for free at iTunes.
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