Nadine Williams

Beautiful baby Zachary brings blessings

April has been a month of  high excitement. Baby Zachary Graham Williams, born the first week, presented as my fifth grand-child, a big baby boy weighing 4.12 kilograms and 51 centimetres long. A fine specimen and a beautiful brother to grand-daughter Scarlett. Records are important newsmakers when a new baby arrives and Zachary weighed more than a kilogram heavier than his sister, now 20 months old. He is unique, as blonde without any detectable eyebrws or eyelashes, as his sister was dark with a head of black hair, black eye lashes and dark eyebrows.

The uncomplicated birth saw new mum, Vanessa, my daughter-in-law ensconced on the 23^rd floor of the Grand Hyatt in Melbourne with my son Tyson, the proud new father 24 hours after birth.  We three grand-parents rostered ourselves to bring Scarlett to visit her mummy and daddy in their spacious hotel room.  Vanessa was one of 14 new mothers and their babies who were under the watchful care of two midwives who occupied one end of the floor in a fully equipped nursery.

 

With views over Melbourne and the Yarra River, I spent leisurely afternoons getting to know my latest grand-son – my third and marvelled at the sounds of a newborn…the gurgling, the wailing and the watching, fascinated anew, with the way infants mouth towards mother’s breast.  What is so intoxicating is to unwrap this tiny bundle of humanity and inspect how perfect he is, to smell the scent of a new baby, which does fade, but which triggers memories of all those years ago when Zachary’s father was my own newborn son, Tyson.  The other enduring memory of those three days in Melbourne with the family holed up in the hotel room is that blissful angelic expression of a baby, only 48 hours old, once his tummy is filled.

Scarlett was unimpressed by the new arrival, initially mistaking him for a doll, similar to her own much-lover “baby’’, a newborn look-alike. However, she sprang into loud action the moment her beloved father picked up baby Zachary and she realised the body in the blanket was a living, breathing being.

Unfortunately, I missed the all-important home-coming, but I sat quietly a few weeks later observing when the  mothercraft nurse visited Vanessa.  Baby Zachary had gained 900 grams in just 9 days, surpassing his birthweight.

 

A beautiful big baby boy is born – Zachary

Our family has welcomed a big, beautiful baby boy following the safe delivery of Zachary Graham Williams, first son – and second child – of my son Tyson and his wife, Vanessa in Melbourne over the weekend.

I have had a splendid time being caring grandma to 22-month-old Scarlett and we have spent much time in the luxurious Grand Hyatt where mothers who deliver without complications these days are transferred for a three-day stay on the 23^rd floor. One whole floor is devoted to new mothers and fathers with two midwives as nursing staff. They have full nursery facilities at one end of the floor.

Here I soaked up the wonderful sounds of a 4.12 kg newborn,  whose hungry voice at full volume could surely be heard down the lift well to the lobby!  His mouthing for mother’s breast, his little snuffles and the adorable sight of this beautiful infant peacefully sleeping are sights and sounds safely tucked away in my memory.   Then there is that lovely scent of a newborn, which fades away within weeks.

I watched the proud parents’ sheer delight at their child, so perfect in his body, but quite blonde! So unique compared with his older sister, who was as dark as he is fair.  Toddler Scarlett was not in a sharing mood initially and threw a tantrum when daddy, her idol, picked up the noisy bundle in the check bunny rug.

Then it was time for me to cuddle this bundle of joy, all wrapped up tight to keep him feeling secure as he felt in the womb, just two days ago. In his blissful sleepy state, he fastened his tiny fist around my finger as my son snapped many photographs of this idyllic scene. Such a precious moment as we shared family time meeting Zachary.

So now I am the grandmother of five and I count my blessings – three grandsons and two grand-daughters.

 

Poverty, violence worsens for world’s women

On International Women’s Day we could be complacent and think upon the amazing advances made by women into powerful leadership roles in the world today.

Particularly here in Australia, we have had the first woman Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, and our first Governor General, her Excellency the Honourable Quentin Bryce who is about to retire.  Recently, she presented  the Boyer Lecture and it is a powerful statement of, not only how far we have come towards equal rights with men, but also how far we have to go, particularly when we are compassionate enough to take a world view of poverty among women.

The figures Quentin Bryce gave in the Boyer Lecture deserve our attention.

“The reality continues that women do not have, nor are they acknowledged as having, equality of power and rights with men,’’ said Ms Bryce who was Federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission from 1988-1993.

The following facts have not altered over many years despite feminism and the powerful women who have risen to positions of world leadership.

Women produce half the world’s food and are still the primary caregivers to children and the elderly. They earn 10 per cent of the world’s income, own less than 1 per cent of the world’s property, and represent 70 per cent of the 2.5 billion people living on less than two dollars a day.

AS if that is not miserable enough news, Ms Bryce also reported that the executive director of the United Nations Population Fund in New York told him in 2013 that “violence against women is on the rise and that the progress of women and children marginalised by poverty is stalling’’.

Reading her lecture, which was her personal story of equal rights advocacy over many decades, made me realise what a remarkable woman we have had as Governor General. Behind her is a stellar community career  working on the status of women, education, health and social justice programs, as well as founding chair and CEO of the National Childcare Accreditation Council.

But she turned our attention to one major point  – that women of developing nations are decades behind us western society women in so many respects.  Not the least being power to determine an economic future for themselves, to live in safety, to gain an education and access to birth control.

Here is her list of too many stories of violence against women: “intimate partner violence, rape and sexual violence in war; trafficking, prostitution, sex tourism; sexual harassment, abuse of women prisoners, genital mutilation, honour killings; acid attacks, dowry deaths and pornography’’.

I would add the cultural practice of child brides being offered to much older men and encouraged to become pregnant as young teenagers.  This has seen Australian Obstetrician and Gynaecologist, Dr Catherine Hamlin, a nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize 2014, operate on thousands of young African teenagers to repair fistulas in her Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital. Their young pubescent bodies have been terribly damaged by birthing and at 90 years of age, she still operates Thursday mornings.

This also introduces the matter of unhygienic birthing practices in many third world countries.  “The death rate of women in pregnancy and childbirth in developing regions is still 15 times higher than in developed regions,’” Ms Bryce stated. And let us not forget our own Aboriginal sisters who suffer domestic violence incidents at an 80 times greater rate than white women.

So the list of disadvantage, physical, emotional and financial abuse and poverty needs to ensure that no-one is complacent about the real status of millions women in the world today. Women of whole cultures and nations suffer systemic human rights abuses, one of which is the endemic practice in tribal societies of female circumcision, or cliterectomies.

In her Boyer Lecture, the Governor General pointed out that the overall aim of the UN Millennium Project set up to develop a “concrete action plan for the world to achieve the 8 Millennium Development Goals (or MDGs) by 2015 is to

“reverse the grinding poverty, hunger and disease affection billions of people”.

UN Women creates projects which educate, train and support women living in poverty across the globe.

Meanwhile, in her imaginings of a better Australia, Ms Bryce notes we need to achieve a nation “where women’s contributions to civil society, the workplace, the economy, the family and home are valued equally with men’s’’.

Despite the rhetoric surrounding IWD, this is still a work in progress.

 

“Flamby’s Angels” or “Hell’s Angels”

Here is a gem of a photograph from France which reflects the sexual politics of the moment. However, has anyone ever seen French president Francois Hollande smile? Must be heavily photoshopped because he is not a smiley fellow. He must have something mysterious though to trigger such a bitter war of words for his affections between his former common-law wife of 25 years,  Segoline Royale and mistress of the moment (oops “concubine” as the French media describes her) Valerie Trierweiler.  Rumour has it that Trierweiler smashed an 18th century clock in that scene in the Elysees Palace when he told her their relationship was over.   I am wondering if it was one of the gorgeous mantelpiece clocks my friend Jane and I saw on our recent tour of Elysees Palace to celebrate Patrimione Day last September.  No wonder Trierweiler threw such a paddy. The palace is glorious in its opulence and gracious style. She lived on the second floor which was not open to the public. However, we did walk goggle-eyed through Hollandes presidential “bureau”.  Someone should write a script about thegoings on in the Palace because Trierweiler moved right in with five staff – and in yet another unsubstantiated rumour, Hollande’s personal staff did not see eye to eye with Trierweiler’s staff. Now to the immense relief of many, she has moved right out.

Now France no longer has a “Premier Femme”, a title for Trierweiler which the French public never liked, and now since the divulsion, Hollande  has declared he will live as the first “bachelor” in the Elysses Palace.

However, bets are on that his latest love interest will remain in his life if somewhat more discreetly. (Also deliciously ironic is the news that Hollande’s own adult son introduced his father to the delightful comedienne/actress, Julie Geyet.

 

 

Joy of Life “quotidien”

I am trying hard to nudge out grief from my mind by paying attention to the joy of life around me.

There is delight simply by walking down my street with Oscar on his lead sniffing at every blade of grass and piddling to claim his territory. It is strange to do it alone, but then we never did walk these uphill downhill streets once we returned from renting at Hindmarsh Island. You were too ill and I didn’t want to walk without you.  Now I begin again walking a new dog as our Shi Tsu Jackson has been dead two years now – and you have been gone for five weeks.

I notice the koala turds on the road and look up into the gum tree to see if it is still there.  And there he is. A fat specimen wedged in the fork of a tree. I run home and get a camera and snap him, who stares down at me.  A  medley of birdcalls pierce the still, wintry mist. If only you were here with me this crisp morning because the winter creek, which runs across our property and along the side of the road, is rushing with water.  Such a rare occurrence that I cannot remember if we ever saw it gush like this.  For 360 days of the year it is as dry as Oscar’s bone, but now it zips along flattening weeds and grasses on its journey down the hillside.  There are magpies, too, hopping around, flying overhead. And I notice it all on my hillside stroll.

However, around the corner in High Street, where we walked a hundred times in eight years, lies undiscovered, your joy of joys.  Under the tall pine tree, no more than 10 metres from the corner I find two cepes!   I almost shout our loud with joy and pick them both carefully. And we turn for home.  “Here comes breakfast!’’ I tell myself. “And a beef and mushroom casserole.’’

Before I met you, I had no idea that finding rare mushrooms could be so much fun. One is almost as big as a saucer and neither have been infested with grubs.  And as I walk briskly home, my mind floods with the memories of our mushroom adventures last May when we went into the Kuitpo Forest and found so many we didn’t have enough bags in the car to carry them.

Armed with this precious knowledge – and I remember how Yvette would never tell us her secret places in Adelaide environs where she would collect cepes each year –  we returned to pick more mushrooms to pickle.

We had stepped over the fence into the ploughed earth which bordered the forest to find cepes by the score popping up through the bare ground. But you insisted on going into the forest anyway  – a dark place, dangerous to walk with the broken branches and years of pine needles covering rocks.

“No, let’s just go home,’’ I had said when you beckoned for me to join you. “Look how many we have to pickle.’’

“I will hold your hand, darling,’’ you had replied.

“This is fun.  I will show you some magic mushrooms; they are bound to be here somewhere.’’

So I traipsed alongside you through a wonderworld of countless fungi and we picked our way over the fallen branches, rocks, and pine needles, treading carefully onward with the smell of pine cones all around us.

Into a clearing where tall trees had long been felled where mushrooms of a different kind now grew in gay abandon.

“Aha!” You cried out in joy. “Magic mushrooms. You eat them and you will get as high as on marijuana.’

Now I smile at the memories and yet am sad to think you missed finding the same cepes, which sell for $80 a kilo in French provincial markets, growing wild no more than 100 metres from our house.  Now I can only imagine the joy that would have brought you.

French sexual politics sizzle for Hollande

Sexual politics in France will never be the same now that the not-so-secret love affair between French president Francois Hollande and French actress Julie Gayet has been exposed by the magazine Closer.

In the past French presidents have been shielded from scandal by a discreet media and a French people who were not interested in the sexual goings-on of their head of state anyway.

However, the closet door has been thrown open dramatically and it is unlikely that Hollande, nor any other French president to come will be allowed “la vie privee’’.   And in French society, as in the ages of the Louis Kings of France, that means keeping mistresses under wraps.   French president Francois Mitterand had his long-term mistress Anne Pingeot and he kept her and their 21-year-old daughter Mazarine as a secret family.  It only made news around the world when Mitterand’s widow Daniele Mitterand invited Pingeot and Mazarine to the funeral, many years after he left the presidency.

Mme Mitterandwrote about her husband “Francois the Seducer’’ in a book All in Freedom:

“I see how my husband excelled in the art of seduction towards the young girls who passed by here. He was Francois the seducer.’’

Her renowned attitude to his philandering was “That is part of life’’.

All this went on during his 14 years as president without a whiff of scandal of infidelity hitting the presses until a year before his death.

Now the French media has lifted its own taboo about prying into politicians’ private lives and has gone for the jugular of Hollande in an unprecedented frenzy of attention.

Anyone surprised by the fact that Francois Hollande has snuck out at night on a motor cycle to have intimate “liaisons’’ with Gayet, have not read the opening paragraph of a new book entitled How The French Invented Love by Marilyn Yalom. Sub-titled 900 Years of Passion and Romance, she begins:

“How the French love love! It occupies a privileged place in their national identity, on a par with fashion, food and human rights. A French man or woman without desire is considered defective, like someone missing the sense of taste or smell.’’

And its interesting that the French also accept just as readily as passion the fact that love includes the darker elements that other nationalities are reluctant to admit as normal “jealous, suffering, extramarital  sex, multiple lovers, crimes of passion, disillusion, even violence.’’

To the French people, Hollande’s sexual behaviour is not necessarily unusual.  This is the attitude from a society which constructed its attitudes towards love, passion and infidelity on notions that sexual passion has its own justification. For hundreds of years a different moral overlay has evolved, founded in French courts, and is accepted by the vast number of French people today.

The problem for Francois Hollande is that his illicit night life has happened when the French economy is in crisis and there he is indulging in l’amour a la francaise for quite a few months. And it has happened under the nose of the “First Lady’ his companion and live-in partner in Elysees Palace, the unpopular Valerie Trierweiler, former journalist of Paris Match.

Valerie can hardly be surprised, despite her collapse and hospitalisation on Friday afternoon when she discovered the truth.  It was she who stole Hollande from his common law wife of 24 years, Socialist politician Segolene Royale, when she was campaigning to be the first female president of France.  Hollande and Royale have four children together.

Did not anyone tell Valerie of the adage “What goes around, comes around?’’ .

Ms Trierweiler, 48,  had been having an affair with Hollande since the mid 2000s, but only moved into the Elysees Palace as France’s First Lady in 2012 following his election as French president. He reputedly was having an affair with Trierweiler while living with Segolene Royale, and when she confronted him about  the affair while campaigning for President, he refused to give up the mistress.  So Segolene  ended the relationship.  (All this happened under the radar of political campaigning.)

Royale lost to Sarkozy, but in a trick of fate, her cheating man, Hollande was the one to be elected president five years  later.

Monsieur President Hollande, an ordinary-looking French fellow,  is the first president not to be married in office; the first president to take his live-in girlfriend into the Palace as First Lady living in a de facto relationship.  And now as the worm turns, it seems Ms Gayet, at 41 years of age, has won his heart and Hollande is the first president not to deny the affair, but to plead for his right to “la vie privee’’.

In her epilogue  Marilyn Yalom provides insight into tolerance of infidelity where she explains that  French myths and literature are filled with iconic sexually vibrant women – mistresses such as Diane de Poitiers, lovers such as George Sand, distressed wives such as Madame Vovary, and experimental women such as Simone de Beauvoir, Colette and Madame de Stael.

As for men, there is hardly one hero who has not indulged in illicit sex or extramarital affairs, beginning with Abilard, the kings, francois 1, Henri II, Henri IV, Louis XIV and Louis VXI.  Every French schoolkid will know the famous mistresses of the Louis kings.  And into contemporary times, French presidents have certainly become “virile models”, none more so than Francois Mitterand. Perhaps it has something to do with the same Christian names.

It is unlikely the  deeply unpopular president will suffer any long term consequences.  One newspaper snap poll reveals that 77 per cent of the French people have not changed their view of Hollande because of the scandal.  Another French newspaper is even suggesting that people will now hold Hollande in higher esteem because he has been proven to be the “vrai’’ (real) president by taking a mistress in such a bold manner.  And it is engaging its public by holding a survey to find out.

As for the First Lady?  The French  people would be delighted if he gave Valerie Trierweiler her marching orders out of the Elysees Palace.  If a defining feature of love A La francaise is its forthright insistence on  “carnal satisfaction’’ then Hollande will cling to his new-found love, refusing once more to give up his next mistress, the actress/comedien, Julie Gayet.