Whose Reality?
Prompt: ‘What people remember shapes their understanding of themselves and their world.’
“I want to be an artist!”
My father’s eyes widened, he stood still and just stared at me in bewilderment.
“Don’t be ridiculous! An artist! Pfft! Who is an artist? Who’s going to feed you! I haven’t slaved away my life, come to a whole new country to have a daughter of mine become an artist. What kind of a person is an artist?
You don’t even know any artist! What kind of job is that?”
I could see he was building himself up to a major eruption. We argued on, but in the end, I stalked out of the house. Hours later, when I returned, he was quiet, but vigilant. I decided the best course of action was to avoid communication on the topic. I duly filled in the preference form for my Year 12 subjects, and here I am, doing Art, Design Tech. and Media. There’s not a Science or Maths subject to be seen. My father’s disgust continues, but what can he do?
Across the generations, these scenarios must be played out again and again. But it is in times of change that gap of understanding between the generations becomes a huge and seemingly unbridgeable gulf. That’s why, when I was reading ‘The Shark Net’, I could smile, but also understand the guilt that Robert Drewe feels as he enters the new world of the sixties and leaves his parents, with all their antique values and ideas, behind. I smiled particularly at the “one-hundred-percent Dunlop” family’s conviction that, “Bumpers don’t have the bad image of desert boots.” Though both my father and I have never heard of “bumpers” or “desert boots’, we have shared similar conflicts over trivial items like shoes. Only a few years ago I remember the hysteria when I teetered off to the Year 10 school dance in strappy, high heel shoes I’d saved up for from my tedious McDonalds’ job. I literally had to run out of the house, with my father horrified that I was on the downhill path to virtual prostitution. He would have had a better chance of getting me out of them, if he had pointed out the embarrassment I would suffer, should I fall over in them, which I did! I can smile now when I read Drewe’s wry observation of “She rested her case” on reporting his mother’s reaction to a boy sauntering through a Milk Bar and, to be outrageous, shouting out the words “rape” and breasts”. Her remark: “ That boy is wearing desert boots”, captures his parents’ worldview perfectly.
But the parallels between my family and the Drewe’s are simply part of the ancient struggle between generations to deal with an ever changing world. My father, born in rural poverty, the 8th of a family of 10, came to Australia, to seek a better life. He has toiled in low paying jobs his whole life, never once missing a house payment or letting his wife or children down in any way. In terms of wealth he has left the awful poverty of his childhood behind and his children have been given opportunities he could only have dreamt of when young. That‘s why he is bewildered by my causal attitude to the future, by my being always on the lookout for a good time. I can see how his past has shaped his attitudes, attitudes that are out of touch with the way the world is now. I’m not sure though that he’ll ever understand that the life I confront, both my personal life and the social and political world I inhabit, is so different from his and that many of the values and attitudes he holds are now irrelevant.
As for me, I’m living at a time, when there is so much choice. I don’t feel the pressure to find a job, climb the ladder, put a deposit on a house. My mother had a child at 18! I haven’t even thought about marriage, let alone having children. I’ve been raised in an era of relative affluence, being able to basically consume what I want, when I want. Of course I have concerns, but they are not my parents’ concerns. My worry is that the human race has no future. Should anyone contemplate having a child when the future of the planet is not even guaranteed? On the other hand, if I do have children, I wonder if my ideas will be relevant to them? They too will probably shake their heads in disbelief when I tell them they are free to be whatever they want to be.
Though we’ve had our disagreements, my father is slowly beginning to understand that the world has changed.
Drewe’s parents, loyal to their adopted Perth’s “gossipy, conservative, country-town mindset”, made him feel unrecognised. Drewe’s father, having risen to the rank of State manager of Dunlop by the age of forty, was completely driven by his loyalty to his career, so much so that, his initial and only reaction to hearing that Drewe’s girlfriend was pregnant to him was to ask,”What will the company’s reaction be?”
The other night, as I was toiling over a piece for my Art folio on the kitchen table, Dad asked, “What’s this all about?” Although I was frantic to finish the piece, I stopped and explained what I was trying to achieve. He didn’t scoff; he listened patiently. As he turned to walk away he quietly ventured,”Mm, that’s interesting.” In quickly remarrying after the sudden death of his mother, Drewe’s father seemed to take on the new world without ever really trying to reach his children. I hope my Dad and I can come to some acceptance of our different realities, knowing how much they have been shaped by the very different worlds we’ve come from.
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