Week One: The Unanswerable Question
From growing up under the rule of a sadistic overlord in 1980s Sydney to a Floridian birthday dinner with Sting last week - how the actual *$&% did I get here?
Dearest friends,
First, I’d like to say a massive THANK YOU.
Last week, on my 49th birthday, I gave myself a year to write Hostile Environments (a memoir) and launched this project as a way to keep me accountable.
I thought I’d be sending these missives into the void, so I can’t tell you how grateful I am for the more than 100 people who have already subscribed. Your support means everything.
There’s no escaping now. I’m excited. Let’s go!
‘You’re never going to have a white picket fence, Kate.’
I can’t remember what caused my Nanna to make such a proclamation, but it thrilled me. I was in my mid-teens, upset that I wasn’t aging as fast as I would’ve liked, misunderstood by almost everyone, and oh so very angry.
I’d wanted out from day one.
‘This child has a temper,’ the nurse declared after all 9lbs 10oz (4.3kgs) of me was violently wrenched from my mother, forceps marks on my head, a body fit for the clothes of a three-month old.
The nurse was correct. The ire was justified.
My father was a tyrant. An alcoholic keen on inflicting both psychological and physical abuse. A couple of his favorite pastimes included testing my pain barrier through all manner of tortuous means and whispering explicitly sexualized language into my prepubescent ears. Choice experiences I’ll save describing for another day.
Stubborn and defiant by nature, I was having none of it. I knew, through the books and movies I’d escaped into, that there had to be more to life than what I’d been served - I just didn’t know what that looked like. So when Nanna said that thing about the picket fences, she gave me hope that one day I’d find out.
There were few things I knew when I graduated from high school in 1992. I wanted to be anywhere but on Sydney’s Northern Beaches (preferably America), and despite a smattering of filial discouragement, I aspired to be a writer. It’s still shocking to me that without any further plans or knowledge of how to go about either, I’ve somehow managed to nail both.
I’ve been paid for my prose for more than two decades. Following my second divorce (the first, my fault, the latter, his), I moved to the US for three months. That was close to seven years ago now. Before that, I’d lived in nine other countries and travelled to over 100 more. Along the way I learnt to speak French and Japanese, and survived a bunch of near death experiences and hospitalizations too.
So. Many. Scars. Mental, physical, metaphorical.
I’m married again, this time to the kindest most loving person I’ve ever known. He’s also an exceptional musician, which explains the dinner with Sting thing. My love was booked to play with the rockstar on a couple of gigs in St Petersburg, Florida, that coincided with my birthday. I went along for the ride, and we all have to eat, right?
These are merely a few of the facts that paint the layers of my life. Some make my stomach fall to my toes. Others, cry out in pain and turn to the bottle. Many more are hilarious, beautiful, cherished. None, however, were by design.
I know these things (and more) are true, but my mind is boggled.
I don’t understand how it all happened.
In Maggie Smith’s excellent memoir You Could Make This Place Beautiful, the poet (not the Dame) writes vignettes throughout her prose that begin with ‘My friend says that every book starts with an unanswerable question,’ each time giving a different response to what she was trying to accomplish by writing her story. It was an effective trope through which she explored the many facets of her life, including her husband’s betrayal, the end of her marriage and the rediscovering of herself in the aftermath.
I was inspired.
No one is asking for me to write this book, but it is something I know I have to do. I have been collecting intel for years. Notes on my phone, emails to myself, moleskins full of random memories alongside shopping lists, feature pitches and essay ideas.
How did it all happen? I want this question answered. The writing is the way.
Onwards and upwards,
Kate
Great stuff Kate.
I’m so excited for this memoir!