Karen Comer

Collecting Stories

Blessings for mothers

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Soulful, deeply-connected mothering isn’t really talked about, even in this week leading to Mother’s Day. There’s a profusion of pink cards in supermarkets, glossy magazines with beautifully curated gifts and sentimental advertisements on television but not much about how mothering requires every emotional fibre of your heart, and then some.

This week, I’ve immersed myself deeply in my current editing job, a slim sixth edition book on childbirth, as well as a friend’s beautiful heartfelt book on parenting and three school masses celebrating motherhood.

The childbirth book has made me feel queasy at times – so many potential interventions! So many things to think about for first-time mothers! So many new things to learn while recovering from the birth and learning to care for a newborn baby! But the sheer miracle of creating and nurturing a new little life is so beautiful and hopeful an act of love that I am in awe again at this miracle.

My friend is a psychologist and a mother of five adult daughters. Her book is part memoir, part parenting guide and I so wish I could have read it while my children were young. The section on listening deserves to be distributed to every new mother in hospital. My friend’s gentle, wise words on using reflective listening to truly connect with your baby, child or teenager comes deep from her experience of mothering and providing psychology sessions. I’ve carried her words around deep inside me.

I’ve attended two school masses for Mother’s Day, with one more to come today. And oh, the music – teenage boys singing You raise me up, teenage girls singing psalms. And the blessings – because mothers need blessings. Oh, we need the blessings for the times when the baby cries inconsolably at three in the morning, when the toddler won’t get in the car when we’re running late, when the seven-year-old doesn’t get invited to a party, when the teenager won’t do their homework or stays out too late.

And we need to remember my friend’s suggestions to listen – not only with our ears – when they won’t tell us about their feelings of loneliness or not-enoughness or social media angst.

And we need to remember our feelings of love when we first gazed at their wonderful unique selves after the ordeal of childbirth. Soulful mothering – it takes everything we’ve got.

This weekend, there are families missing their mothers, mothers missing their children, childless women enduring a day of celebration that doesn’t acknowledge their choice or loss, mothers who don’t quite feel their own enoughness. Blessings to all of us.

Fleishman is in trouble – book review

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Fleishman is in trouble by debut novelist Taffy Brodesser-Akner is the sort of book you want to discuss with someone – as you’re reading it, as soon as you’ve finished reading it – perfect bookclub material.

Toby Fleishman is a New York hepatologist with a recently separated wife and two children. The story begins with a newfound sense of sexual freedom for Fleishman – he’s free to indulge in all sorts of sexual encounters – online, in person, dates that work, dates that don’t work. He’s almost giddy with it – as a five-foot-five Jewish man who was overweight as a child, all of a sudden there are women who want him.

But his ex-wife Rachael goes missing. She’s dropped the kids off a day earlier than expected without telling him, gone off to a yoga weekend retreat and hasn’t come back.

Fleishman navigates the difficult world of his medical work, his two children (thank goodness for summer camps), his missing ex-wife and his forays into dating.

Brodesser-Aknew explores relationships not only through Fleishman’s marriage but through the stories of the women he dates, as well as his two best friends, Libby (going through her own existential crisis in her marriage to a perfectly nice man) and Seth (never committed, constantly dating, recently engaged). Fleishman becomes ‘the wife’, as his divorce lawyer tells him – he earns less money than Rachael and he has more responsibilities with the kids.

it was interesting to observe the gradual decline of Fleishman’s interest in online dating apps, once his twelve-year-old daughter received her phone. There’s a small incident with her and a photo, which shocks Fleishman and makes him question his own obsession with the photos women on dating apps have sent him.

The narrator is Libby, Fleishman’s friend from college days. She appears and disappears, leaving the reader a tad bemused that she pops up out of nowhere to insert herself in the story. I did wonder how Libby could possibly know so intimately Fleishman’s thoughts and feelings, let alone the nuanced and detailed encounters with Rachael, his kids, his co-workers?

And yet her invisibility in parts of the novel echo not only Rachael’s disappearance but also the general theme of women’s invisibility throughout the novel.

…whatever kind of woman you are, even when you’re a lot of kinds of women, you’re still always just a woman, which is to say you’re always a little bit less than a man…

Rachael is only seen through Fleishman’s eyes for the majority of the novel – it is only towards the end that we catch a glimpse through Libby of Rachael. While Fleishman is an empathetic character, a doctor who ‘sees’ his patients, an involved and tender dad, we realise at the end of the novel that perhaps his view of his marriage (and his friendship with Libby) was not entirely accurate.

See – so much to discuss!

A writing retreat with Eliza Henry Jones

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Eliza Henry Jones is one of my favourite Australian authors – so prolific, so talented! She opened up her flower farm to a bunch of writers last weekend, and I drove away well-fed, with a bunch of beautiful flowers and several exercises to boost my writing. I interviewed her a few years ago about her novel Ache here.

Eliza talked with us about her own writing journey, her four books (two adult fiction, two young adult fiction) and her tips and tricks for developing characters, understanding the difference between plot and structure and persisting when writing becomes challenging.

One of her exercises involved a tour of her farm in the Yarra Valley, with an invitation to collect something that caught our eye – perhaps a flower, a stick, a stone.

After meeting Ferdy the duck and looking at the laden avocado and lemon trees and the sprawling sweet peas, we headed back into the barn to write about our object. My leaf sparked a poem for my current verse novel, set during Autumn and Winter last year.

Our afternoon tea was delicious – muffins, cookies, brownies! – and at the end of the retreat we were invited to gather flowers from the buckets lining the back wall of the barn to create our own bouquet to take home!

I have been to many writing retreats and workshops but I’ve never gone home with flowers before! Nor have I done a writing exercise which involved cliches and a Shetland pony!

Choose your own village

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I’m lucky enough to be part of many villages – my Easter crew, writing group, school communities, bookclub group and of course, family groups. Not only do the lovely humans in these groups care for me, but they are also wonderfully interesting people with a variety of skills, talents and occupations.

I’ve been musing on the idea of creating your own old-fashioned fantasy village, full of people with different occupations. (Every now and then I dabble in a fairy-tale/myth type of story.) Who would you choose if you had to people a village of ten occupations?

Here are my choices:

  • writer/librarian – to record the stories for prosperity and provide old knowledge and wisdom, to offer words for the unsayable
  • cook/forager – to gather food, grown from the surrounds, and prepare it to feed the crew
  • builder – to provide shelter and homes, fix things
  • scientist – to research, experiment, offer news ways of thinking
  • doctor – to heal, care, advise on all health issues
  • artist – to provide colour, tell stories through art, provide beautiful objects of meaning
  • teacher – to teach the young, guide their ways
  • environmentalist – to care for the land, manage our resources
  • psychologist/wise person – to look after our mental health, provide wisdom
  • musician – to sing stories, reflect our feelings, create community.

Who would make your top ten? Would you choose two cooks or two environmentalists? Would you skip the artist but add a trade/barter specialist? Maybe you’d choose someone with a boat or wagon as a travel guide? Perhaps you need a spiritual adviser?

And who would be the leader? The doctor? The teacher? Or would your village value music so much that the musician would lead?

Would your village have been different before Covid? It begs the question of who is an essential worker!

Tell me about your village of choice – I’d love to know.

Memory stories

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We celebrated twenty years of spending Easter together with three families at the beach – technically it was nineteen because we missed Easter last year due to Covid – but that’s a minor detail!

We started with eight adults, and now we have accumulated nine children between us, ranging from ten to nineteen. We’ve stayed at a few different houses as our crew has grown.

Looking at these beautiful kids and some of our oldest friends filled me with a hundred stories. The play the kids put on one year where Miss 14, then Miss 3, was too shy to participate but ‘helped’ behind the scenes instead. The year we had an Italian theme based on the movie Big Night and ate way too much pasta. Twenty years of eating fish on Good Friday, with each fish given a different name – Percy Poisson, Sammy Salmon. Many, many craft activities to keep little people entertained. The annual Easter egg hunt, even for the teenagers now!

I attended a talk by psychologist Andrew Fuller a few years ago where he talked about the importance of memory for learning. This included not only tips and tricks for helping students to memorise facts and concepts but also the importance of remembering stories as emotions are tied to memories.

When I remember to remember this(!) I can bring up memories for my kids at dinner, in the car, walking the dog. During the lead-up to Easter, when we’re talking about what to pack, what we’ll cook, we often remember other Easter stories.

  • Remember when M played his guitar and we all sang?
  • Do you think L will cook tacos on our first night like she usually does?
  • Remember when we stayed at the other house and all the kids slept in one room?
  • Remember when we put on plays with the shadow puppets and torches?

By reliving memories, we create a strong narrative about who we are and what’s important to us – important enough to remember. I hope you created or relived wonderful Easter memories, too.

Poetry workshop for kids – school holidays

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This is a quick post to let you know I’m teaching a poetry workshop for kids in the school holidays on Tuesday 13th April. The workshop is for 8-12 year-old kids, the cost is $10, the venue is Now and Then cafe in High St, Kew. Bookings are through the Kew Junction Traders Business Association here.

We’ll be looking at different types of poems – and not all of them will rhyme! Kids will have the chance to write a black-out poem and a poem based on an image. Our theme is poetry in action.

I’ll be supported by Henry, a student writer, who brings a lot of energy and fun to the workshop.

Please pass this on to anyone who might be interested!

Happy Easter, happy reading!

My violin, my violin

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I am a fine musician,
I practise every day.
And people come from miles around
just to hear me play.
My violin, my violin…
they love to hear my violin…

This old Play School song is going through my head – along with David Garrett’s version of Coldplay’s Viva la vida – because I have recently started learning the violin!

One of the main characters in the current young adult book I’m writing plays the violin – it’s a crucial element of her identity. Don’t ask me why – I had an image of a teenage girl playing a violin in an empty tram and knew I wanted to write a story about her.

I wanted to write this part of her story with a little more knowledge so I bought a beginner’s violin and booked in for some lessons.

Some observations:

  • It’s an interesting process to learn something completely new as an adult, because let’s face it, it takes a while to learn the basic skills. I had to fight my frustration at hearing such awful screeching sounds coming from my beautiful violin, and my frustration at having to practise again and again the basic bow hold, even how to position the violin under my chin and the boredom of doing the same basic bowing techniques over and over and over.
  • But oh the satisfaction in making a beautiful sound, even if it’s just one reverberating D string!
  • The dismay on my children’s faces when I suggested I could play a few strings to summon them to dinner!
  • The pride in being able to play Twinkle twinkle little star – not well. Not fluently. Not hitting the right string every time. Not seamlessly easing from the E string with three fingers held down, thank you very much, to the A string. But I can play a somewhat recognisable version.
  • The rituals – how I love the ritual of adding rosin to the strings on my bow, then using the tuning app on my phone to tune my violin, before settling the violin into position tucked into my neck.
  • The distinct sound of my husband or children shutting the hall door when they hear the first screech of my violin!

I’ve been out a couple of times to listen to a contemporary violinist. First of all, how wonderful to be out in Melbourne hearing live music! And then all the notes I took, how each violinist held her bow with such grace, how the violin sounded played with the piano or the drums, how both violinists were also singers and how they moved between singing and playing effortlessly.

My violinist character now has some added depth, some authenticity as I describe her playing movements or talk about her musical dreams. I have a stronger image of her playing her violin in an empty tram now.

And sure, thanks for asking, if you’re interested, I can probably free up some time to play jazz violin at your next event – just check with my manager!

Cassandra speaks – book review

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Cassandra speaks, Elizabeth Lesser

The context in which we read books is important. My reading this week has reflected the state of affairs in Australia for the past month. The book is Cassandra speaks, When women are the storytellers, the human story changes by Elizabeth Lesser, published in late 2020.

Lesser, the founder of the Omega institute in New York, is an author who also organises retreats and conferences on topics ranging from women and power, mindfulness, health, sustainability and creativity.

This is a book about stories – the stories a culture tells, and how those stories become the culture. It’s about the stories we still blindly cling to, and the ones that cling to us: the origin tales, the guiding myths, the religious parables, the stories passed down through the centuries about women and men, power and war, sex and love, and the values by which we live.

Elizabeth Lesser

She wrote this book when reflecting on the stories of women such as Eve, Pandora and Cassandra. Of course, you will have heard of Eve, the woman charged with eating the apple which forever changed the course of human nature and Pandora, whose curiosity let evil spirits out of the box. Do you know Cassandra’s story? She was a princess from Troy, and both Zeus and his son Apollo were in love with her. Apollo gave her the gift of seeing into the future. But when she refused his advances, Apollo cursed her – she would remain clairvoyant but would never be believed. In vain, Cassandra tried to warn her people of the fall of Troy and other devastations but she was mocked and disbelieved.

See any parallels with current events?

Lesser invites us as women to speak with courage and confidence about the things that matter to us. She encourages women to be the storytellers, rather than seen through the lens of the male perspective.

This is not a new idea – female characters have been seen through the eyes of male writers for centuries. Hello, Shakespeare, Dickens, Tolstoy. Virginia Woolf, one of the earliest feminists, wondered about Shakespeare’s fictional sister in a series of lectures, published as A room of one’s own. How would this sister, Judith, have written her poetry had she been given the same opportunities as her brother?

Lesser’s book is equal parts practical and observational. She talks of her own experience – she was a single mother of two small boys, and is now remarried, with a stepson, ‘three daughters-in-love’ and a few grandchildren. She tells stories of her parents, her work as both a midwife and then a conference founder and author.

This is not a book that denigrates men – it is fair and open and non-judgemental.

Lesser offers practical suggestions for moving past our own biases towards the ‘other’, incorporating mindful practices and gathering the courage to make our voices heard.

I imagine that even if you were to read this book in a few months, a few years, it will still be relevant. Sadly. Change is slow, but it is a grassroots movement, as seen around our cities this week.

I hope my copy of Cassandra speaks will become dog-eared as I pass it around to both the women and men in my circle.

‘The practice’ by Seth Godin – review

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Really, I could just copy out quote after quote of goodness from this book by Seth Godin – The practice, Shipping creative work – but I’ll try and summarise for you instead.

Writers write. Runners run. Establish your identity by doing your work.

Seth Godin is an American best-selling author who has written 19 books on creativity, marketing, ideas, change and leadership. This book focuses, as the title implies, on getting your creative work out there. Your creative work might be dance, fine art, business proposals, a small business idea, a book or many other possibilities.

We fail and then we edit and then we do it again.

Many other luminaries have discussed the idea of showing up to your art. It’s not a matter of waiting for the muse to show up – you show up to your art and you treat it like work.

My husband is a cyclist and he has a t-shirt which reads – the harder I work, the luckier I get. Sport, art, Yr 9 maths – showing up regularly improves your chance at success, whether that’s a better race time, an art gallery show or a B plus for your maths test.

The practice is divided into eight chapters, which are further divided into 219 brief sections. Very easy to pick up and read in bite-size chunks, especially with Godin’s accessible language.

1. This is a practice.

2. It has a purpose.

3. I desire to create change.

4. The change is for someone specific.

5. How can I do it better?

6. Can I persist long enough to do it again?

7. Repeat.

We don’t ship because we’re creative. We’re creative because we ship.

According to Godin, shipping your work is a sign of trust, a generous act and an indication of your professionalism. There’s no certainty, but there’s no certainty in anything, really.

So go practise!

Cate Kennedy – workshop

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During Melbourne’s last lockdown of five days, I was supposed to attend a writing workshop with Australian short story writer and poet Cate Kennedy at the Wheeler Centre in the city. She kindly offered to run the workshop online. So that Saturday I spent the day in my study looking at a screen of the unknown faces of my fellow participants as well as Cate’s fabulously detailed slides.

I have long been a fan of Cate’s short stories and poems. Her poems about the miscarriage of her son and the birth of her daughter are heartbreaking. Her two short story collections, Dark Roots and Like a house on fire, have stayed with me long after I finished reading them. Cate focuses on ordinary people, and she shines a light on them to show both their vulnerability and strength.

Her characters are us – a woman organising herself and her family before she goes to a doctor’s appointment to have a lump checked, a man making poor decisions after his partner has left him, a woman struggling at work on her first day back after maternity leave, a young girl rebelling against her mother’s family Christmas photo, a young cleaner befriending an elderly man in hospital. But it’s never about just these events – there’s a subtext of anger or loss or relationship concerns which adds a quiet background hum that sometimes rises to a roar of frustration or despair. Cate discussed the idea that conflict, even though small, brings the inner life of characters to the surface.

Cate was generous with sharing her knowledge and experience with a set of slides which whizzed us through the different elements of creating stories. ‘Emerging writers always have wonderful ideas,’ she told us, ‘it’s about the execution.’ Too true.

Cate’s latest short story collection, Like a house on fire, is on the Yr 12 VCE English curriculum. My Yr 12 son’s first SAC (School Assessed Coursework) was to write an addition or adaption of one of Cate’s stories. It’s such a wonderful opportunity for students to try to understand another human being, through reading about ordinary people’s circumstances and choices and then writing a response. Cate’s stories can be so subtle, that students are encouraged to look at her characters and empathise with them while they imagine different possibilities for them.

What does that elderly man need at the end of his life? What sort of person will that young girl, rebelling against her mother, grow up to be? Cate told us,

The story is the transformation of the narrator.”

So how does that elderly man change the young cleaner’s life? How will that young girl grow up to parent her own children?

Writing is about imagining different scenarios, putting ourselves in someone else’s shoes, daydreaming about different possibilities for ourselves, reinventing ourselves as characters. Cate urged us to go into the ‘vortex of doom’, to face any resistance we have on the page, to allow the secrets of our characters and their inner worlds to float up to the surface, to be examined in the light. Therein lies transformation.

The wonderful thing about students studying these short stories is that hopefully, hopefully, hopefully, they gain insight into their own lives. That in writing their additions or adaptions, they look beneath the surface of Cate’s characters and see what they really want, how they strive to reach it, and how they transform when often they don’t get what they want but instead what they need. In fiction – and life.

Thank you very much for your kind comments last week – I’m glad to be back too in such wonderful company!