The conversation went like this. What do you do FIFO husband? I work on a rig. Where is that? Currently in the Bass Straight FIFO husband replied. Tight lipped she looks at me her 70 year old face forming a full set of judgment. She looks at the other ladies trying to gain some support in what is ticking over in her brain. She looks at me waiting for me to give my opinion. I tell her we work four weeks on four weeks off. Oh she says. She is waiting for me to say I hate it. That the kids are struggling with it. That I’m a single mum and hate it. That as a partner in this marriage I have no say in what my husband does. She is waiting I can tell. I have been here before. The other ladies smartly stay silent.
I tell her I love it. We do four weeks on four weeks off and I love it. We love it. What about the kids she says plainly. They love it too I say. How she says. She is indignant. She is one of these ones that has made my life so hard. Forced me to question myself and all that I have done. And I’m surprised that after thirteen years I’m still saying the same thing. Yet I am just this time I’m indignant that I’m right. And Iam. I know whats best for my family. He is home for four weeks straight with them. With me. I tell her smiling. Trying to convey exactly how I feel through a smile. She keeps looking at me. She is not convinced that Im happy and she continues looking for the answer she wants to hear. You must struggle when he is away she says. There’s that word ‘away’ again he isn’t ‘away’ he is at work I want to say but I don’t. Why? I said to her. Three boys on your own for so long. So long she repeats like four weeks, 28 days are eternity. No I say at first then yes I deciding to be true to what was unfolding. I have had my moments I wont deny that but doesn’t every woman when they become a mother and I don’t think my boys would be the wonderful boys they are if we didn’t live this way. I’m waiting for her to say its forced them to grow up because I had that one just last week.
Well in my day she said my husband came home every night. We tackled life side by side. We were a team. He saw his kids every night and we were a close family. She was insinuating my marriage wasn’t really a marriage. That my family wasn’t a family. That we were part time somehow. I was getting a annoyed with her judgement her point of view. I didn’t want to be rude she was my elder after all. A respected member of the cwa in my wonderful little town. And she was and is a wonderful person just with no clue to my life but a judgement already formed. How could I tell her that my marriage was no more inferior to hers or anyone else’s and that she was wrong and how dare she question it. My marriage I wanted to tell her was stronger than most. That we were in fact more of a team than anyones elses. That I love my husband, that I appreciate him more than most and that I appreciate every relationship I have in my life from the benefit from the lifestyle we live. I pondered how I could tell her that in the most politest way.
Then from the quite end of the table came the voice of my 91 year old neighbour. It was her the morning tea was for. We had brought her out from the home to see her old home. It was her former home the one we had been painting that she had come to see. Her husband and her had sold it to us as a wedding present. We wanted her to see it in all her updated glory. My husband she said smiling as she remembered him was home every night like yours she said turning to the tight lipped elder. He left every morning before the sun rose and came home every night after dark. We were married 68 years. My children said they didn’t have a daddy but he was home every night but he was to tired to play with them come a weekend. We lived for the holidays. He would take us on holidays once a year. And he was the devil at home she said laughing. I worked the farm. I worked my home. I worked a job and I raised the kids and I was a wife to my husband. It’s what we did. We had bills to pay. We had tractors and trucks to maintain and bullocks to feed. We had kids to look after. We were married 68 years she said again. She looked at me smiling remembering her wonderful hard life. She got it.
I didn’t need to say anything else after that, she had done it for me because who is going to argue with a woman of 91 years of age with four kids and 68 years of marriage under belt.
xx Deb
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