Ondine Sherman is the mother of three children; a daughter and identical twin sons with a rare genetic disorder. She has a BA in Communications and an MA in Environmental Education. She is the co-founder of the animal advocacy organization, Voiceless.

The Miracle of Love

By Ondine Sherman

Allen & Unwin

Copyright © 2013 Ondine Sherman
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-74331-620-7
CHAPTER 1

‘Ondine? Ondine!’ My grandmother’s deep raspy voice jolted me out of my daydream. I put the Beatrix Potter book down on my lime-green bedcover, leaving it open at my favourite illustration of Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail.

I’d been fantasising myself into the picture, happily feeding a small rabbit amidst the strawberry patch. I’d caressed its soft fur with my hands, fingernails muddy from working the garden, digging carrots and picking flowers from the overhanging trees. The spoils of my labour lay in my wicker basket.

‘Coming, Gran!’ I shouted, swinging my legs off the bed where I’d been lying next to my dog, Bronnie, a Cavalier King Charles spaniel. She was brown and white with a small black nose and long shaggy ears that I brushed free of knots. One day I, too, would live in the countryside, I promised myself; not under the root of a big tree like Peter Rabbit, although that sounded quite lovely, but in a house made of mudbrick, covered with pink climbing roses.

I ran down the spiral steps, Bronnie following close behind, through the hallway and into the granny flat that adjoined our old Sydney terrace. The house was large but it had been a good bargain. ‘Can hardly hear the noise of the six-lane overpass outside,’ my parents had told their friends.

Mum had sold her father Eric’s gold watch to pay for the new staircase and he had paid for the house deposit with the last of his money. Eric had only recently arrived from South Africa and was living in the hospice across the road. That was why we had bought the house the previous year, so Mum could see him every day. There was little time left as he was slowly fading away from Gaucher’s and Parkinson’s diseases.

We had emigrated five years earlier. Life in South Africa had been good to whites: Jewish communities were blessed with prosperity and peace while blacks were beaten, humiliated and denied basic rights. Emigration and forfeit of citizenship was my parents’ way of quietly protesting the apartheid regime; noisy dissenters were found and jailed. Eric’s family had originated from Austria, and my mother’s mother from Lithuania. My father’s whole family, including Gran, also came from Lithuania. They had boarded ships to South Africa, escaping persecution and pogroms, not realising at the time just how lucky they were. Relatives and friends wouldn’t fare so well. Later, the Nazis and local Lithuanian collaborators murdered ninety-six percent of the Jewish population.

My dad grew up in Brakpan, a small gold-mining town. Cows walked down the main street and his dog followed him across fields to wait outside his school gate. Dad ate raw sugarcane as a treat, and whole peanuts, including the shells, which the pet shop sold for pigs. His older brother Ron stuffed itchy powder from the local trees under Dad’s shirt. Their father Hymie ran the local general store; my gran helped out and Dad worked there too after school. There was never much money. Dad went into the army, compulsory for all South African men, and then on to university and a Bachelor of Commerce.

Mum and Dad met over a game of tennis. Mum had grown up in Johannesburg and was from a socioeconomic bracket above Dad’s. Eric had been a successful businessman until he’d lost it all on the stock market. When Mum married Dad, Eric shook his head sadly and said, ‘Genie, he may be creative, smart … but he’s undisciplined and will never amount to anything, can you live with that?’

My mother saw herself as a global citizen long before the concept gained popularity. Her mother, Micky, was a housewife, and although she was quiet and demure she was steely in her efforts to right wrongs in South Africa; not on the larger political front, but in small ways, performing acts of kindness that my mother witnessed in daily life. Eric was the same, philosophical and idealistic, determined in his belief that humanity needed to unite, despite colour, race and religion, and that the adoption of one universal language, Esperanto, could bring lasting peace to the world. In fact, despite his sister marrying a rabbi, Eric strongly believed that organised religion was the reason for all ills in the world.

My brother, Emile, and I were brought up with strict moral values such as giving to charity and standing up for human rights. Although my parents were Jewish, these ethics, they argued, were not constructed by organised religion, which they distrusted, but formed by their belief in the responsibilities of humanity. Although we celebrated a few of the major Jewish holidays with our extended family, my parents agreed with Karl Marx that religion was ‘the opiate of the masses’. They rather believed in Sartre’s philosophy of existentialism, that human existence happened by chance and it was our responsibility to make it worthwhile. They explained to me that my life was a blank sheet of paper. I could write on it whatever I wanted. It was up to me.

My parents left behind a big, rambling, comfortable home and good jobs and flew out with only five thousand dollars in their pockets, as South African policy dictated no assets could be taken out of the country. Emile was four years old when we emigrated to Australia, and I was just under two. Gran, my father’s mother, sixty-five and a widow, moved with us into a narrow terrace and we all lived together.

Dad had left his job at a Sydney bank and was working like crazy to get his own business going with my mum’s first cousin, Laurence. They ignored all advice from colleagues in the financial markets and were quickly building a company, Equitilink, which would make Australian financial history. Years later, budding business students would study them at university and marvel at their creativity and audacity. In any case, my family’s money struggles would soon become a thing of the past.

‘Here, you can eat this in front of the TV,’ Gran said after I’d raced downstairs into her flat. She handed me a glass of cut vegetables. She was a health-food fanatic and we weren’t allowed any sweets, chips, fried food or chocolates in the house. I pulled out a curly capsicum stick and crunched into it hungrily as I sat down next to Emile. I was seven and he had just turned ten. He elbowed me and I moved over a few inches. Our favourite TV show, Get Smart, was about to start.

‘Where’s my “Good afternoon, Gran”?’ my grandmother asked, leaning down. Her embossed silver and turquoise locket, filled with musky perfume, jangled over her cream buttoned shirt and large bosom. I kissed her soft, warm, wrinkled cheek. She grabbed my face with big damp hands as her lips smacked my ear.

An hour later I heard a key. Emile was practising his karate moves in the mirror, and I rushed to the front door.

‘Hi, darling,’ Mum said quickly, before catching sight of my yellow schoolbag strewn by the door. ‘Ondine,’ her voice deepened, ‘put your bag away where it’s supposed to go. How many times …’ she sighed, hanging it on the hook.

She closed the front door and began unpacking her black briefcase, carefully placing manila folders in ordered piles on the entrance table. It was 6 pm and she was home from work as a lecturer at Sydney University. The week before she had officially received her doctorate in French Literature. Seven years of work. Her smile had been as big as the sun.

‘What did you learn today at school?’ she asked.

‘Nothing.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Ondine.’ Her curly black hair, now bent over an enormous handbag, shook slightly in disapproval. ‘Do you have homework?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Well, get started. Always best to do your homework straight after school. Then it’s finished and you can relax. My father taught me that.’ She sighed heavily again. ‘Take off your school uniform and hang it up. Remember what I said about snacks in your uniform? And brush your hair.’

She pulled a large black brush from the bag, her silver bracelets jangling.

‘Here,’ she said, handing it over.

‘But Mum …’

‘No buts. I will not have my daughter walking around with knotted messy hair.’

‘I’m at home, not walking around.’

‘Don’t whine, Ondine. Nevertheless, one needs to look after one’s hair. And one’s skin,’ she said, peering at my freckles for signs of multiplication. She was an early believer in skin care, convinced the sun was our enemy. Not a fan of the outdoors in general, in fact.

My grandmother appeared behind me. She wiped her large wet hands on her apron and, looking at her daughter-in-law, took a deep breath.

‘What a day. The plumber called and you wouldn’t believe that the pipes —’ ‘Hi, Minnie. How are you?’ Mum said resolutely. ‘Just give me a few minutes and I’ll be ready to talk.’

My mum ran upstairs, small feet in elegant black flats, her thin legs hidden beneath a voluptuous skirt.

If in my fantasy life my mum was mother bunny in The Tale of Peter Rabbit, with a sky-blue dress and clean white apron, in real life she was Mr Rush, the purple triangular man from the Mr Men series: a blur of movement, words in quick succession, long skirts whooshing, curls flying, hands forever moving objects from one place to the other.

What was Mum running from? I was aware she had bad stories: her mother and brother, both dead before I was born. I knew nothing else. ‘Brick by brick,’ she told me solemnly, ‘I built a wall.’ I didn’t imagine mudbricks. These were made of much tougher stuff. ‘To keep out the past,’ she said. ‘It’s important to look forward, Ondine, not back. I would never have been a good mother to you and Emile had I done otherwise.’

But children soak up their parents’ secrets like sponges and hers filled our house: her fears about depression, madness and death became ours. Any negative emotions were quickly sorted, solved and filed; or rather, colour-coded, alphabetised and locked in a vault. We were to never open that vault, as insanity lay behind the steel door. Sadness was an enemy and my childhood tears never dampened my mother’s shoulder. In fact, childhood tears didn’t flow at all. Although my family considered me oversensitive, a label Emile used for many years, crying was not part of the profile. Rather, I sulked. Bottled up my emotions and kept the cork on so tight I barely knew what lay inside. No one in my family talked about their emotional life. It was the opposite of Woody Allen — stiff upper lips all round.

Mum expressed her love for me in a myriad of more practical ways, overseeing, organising and delegating every aspect of my daily life so that I had every conceivable opportunity to reach my potential. I learned ballet, piano, tennis and the flute. Mum also noted my interests and ensured they were fostered. Seeing that I loved to draw, she arranged after-school art classes for me. Realising my two favourite subjects, Art and French, conflicted on the school schedule, she argued with the principal until the programming clash was rectified. Mum had high standards for my schoolwork and showed by example with an iron-strong work ethic. She had no patience for laziness or boredom and expected Emile and me to strive, like her, to be the best we could be, morally and intellectually.

I didn’t express my emotions to my father either but we had a silent bond that I cherished. Often, despite his frequent travelling and long working hours, we would take rambling walks together, slowly making our way from home to the enormous urban oasis of Centennial Park and the grove of oak and pine trees on top of the small hill. I would take my wicker basket, just like the one in the Beatrix Potter books, and fill it with treasures: splendid passionfruit flowers, complex, fragile and otherworldly; acorns, soft, humble, whole and full of promise; pine cones, each one unique in its size, shape and flaws; and small, smooth pitch-black seeds taken from the pods of a local weed. They were my favourite.

I also enjoyed my time with Gran. She was a practical, solid, no-nonsense woman. While Emile busied himself with endless games — handball, ping-pong, juggling, tennis and darts with his friends — I helped Gran grow mung beans in glass jars on the kitchen counter, carefully pouring out old water into the sink before refilling each jar from the tap. One of her old stockings was strapped over the top of the jar with an elastic band, cleverly preventing the sprouting beans from falling out. She had avocado pips perched on top of recycled jars on the kitchen windowsill, held in place with a toothpick, so only the brown bottom was submerged. Slowly roots would peep through and I would watch them descend into the glass until they were strong enough, when Gran would ask me to help plant them in our garden. She taught me to prune the lavender bushes, carefully snipping off the dead buds at their base, or where the branch forked. We would also cut fresh ones to dry in the sun, then sew little sachets, filling them with the fragrant, sun-dried purple flowers and tying them with a ribbon. Our underwear smelled of lavender.

Gran had a mischievous sense of humour, which I adored. For me, it spelled intimacy and camaraderie. When I went into the kitchen she’d flick me with her wet hands from the sink, scrunch up her face into a funny kind of wink, chase me with soapy gloves or kiss me roughly, stating with assurance ‘a face only a grandmother could love’. She found this last statement endlessly funny and I didn’t mind.

Gran took great pleasure in cooking and baking. Her birthday cakes were spectacular; that year she had made me a garden cake with green rolling hills sporting small delicate flowers made of icing. Seven candles were placed on the hilltops. Just like the English countryside of my storybooks. But soups were her big love: the freezer was packed with Tupperware filled with luminous colours — green for pea and orange for pumpkin and intense, fluorescent purple for beetroot. We were lucky to have her cook for us and we knew it. My mother didn’t know how to turn on the oven and boiling an egg confounded her.

On one particular night, Gran, Dad, Mum, Emile and I sat around the dinner table. After green pea soup I looked curiously into the casserole dish as Gran scooped the meat onto Emile’s plate. The stuff looked weird.

‘Gran, what is this?’ I asked across the wooden table.

Her green eyes narrowed at my challenge.

Usually we weren’t supposed to talk about food at the dinner table. My grandmother wanted constant reassurance that we liked what she made — ‘Not too bland? Really? Is the soup too thick? Carrots a little soft, no? You sure? Have some more.’ — so it became my mother’s rule: no kitchen talk around the table. Mum had grown up with the same, her intellectual father insisting on discussions on philosophy and politics, not home economics.

‘Tongue,’ Gran answered.

Suddenly the word and the meaning came together.

‘Tongue? As in somebody’s tongue? In their mouth?’ I asked, sticking out my tongue to make sure there was no misunderstanding. Surely no one would eat someone else’s tongue. Surely my kind Gran wouldn’t cook someone’s tongue. That sounded more like the witch from ‘Hansel and Gretel’.

‘Yes, dear, tongue. An ox … a cow’s tongue,’ she patiently replied.

Light bulbs flashed. The connection between storybook animals and the food on our plates fell into place. Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail ran away with fright.

‘No, thank you,’ I said.

At the end of the meal I walked into the kitchen.

‘Granny, I don’t want to eat animals. I love them.’ My parents and Gran agreed they would support my decision. I didn’t appreciate how remarkable that was at the time. Gran would make special vegetarian meals for me and gradually meat would feature less in our family diet.

Once my dietary life changed, socialising became more anxiety-ridden. I became a subject of great curiosity among everyone we knew. It was 1981 and the term ‘vegetarianism’, if known to some, was rarely used.

‘Humans are meant to eat meat,’ friends of my parents stated, seemingly concerned about my health. ‘I’ll be okay …’ I reassured them before my parents stepped in, Mum reiterating her pride that I was staying true to what I believed.

‘How do you know carrots don’t feel pain too?’ my brother’s ten-year-old friends smirked.

‘Animals eat other animals; we are part of the food chain,’ everyone agreed. That was the harder argument to debate. But I tried. Explained and discussed each time. And soon I learned better how to stand up for myself, for my ideas. But it was exhausting and I started to dread mealtimes with company.

(Continues…)Excerpted from The Miracle of Love by Ondine Sherman. Copyright © 2013 Ondine Sherman. Excerpted by permission of Allen & Unwin.
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