A few months later, Grant topped this incredible feat. Despite the thousands of dollars we spent on materials for the ‘still unfinished’ pergola (and if one green bottle should accidentally fall) and the countless hours we painstakingly contributed to its construction, all of that paled to nothing when Grant (emulating Dad’s approach to maintenance – finishing off all Mum’s jobs) came along one day with a one-hundred-dollar piece of shade cloth and tacked it awkwardly to Jeff’s beautiful white frame. It has more wrinkles than a Smith’s Crinkle Cut, but the only thing that matters is that Grant finished that last eighth of the job and saved the day. Again.
I’ve taken to throwing rose petals in his path as he walks.
The second slightly off-putting aspect of doing chores for the folks comes when they chronically under-value our time. Somehow, the older our parents get, the more they lose track of the actual costs of things – including the labour hire of their son (and mostly his poor put-upon partner).
‘How much will that set you back, Skeet?’ Dad asked years ago, when we told him we were replacing the roof of our inner-city house.
‘Forty grand,’ I confessed sheepishly.
‘No, just for the roof, I mean.’
‘That is just the roof, Dad.’
‘I can get it for you cheaper than that.’
‘Can you, Dad?’ I wondered if it would be like the time he equated our new two-thousand-dollar TV to the four-hundred-dollar one he’d seen on special at Aldi.
‘Yep. There’s a guy on our street who does them. Nice fella.’ As I said, Dad has a guy for everything.
‘But you live two hours from us, Dad.’
‘I’m sure he won’t mind a trip to Sydney for a job that big.’
‘Okay, Dad.’
‘I’ll send him down, Skeet.’
‘If you like . . .’
That poor guy drove all the way down and it took him six hours return as he got stuck in city peak hour on the way home. Jeff and I eagerly awaited his quote. It was forty thousand dollars, on the nose. I relayed this to Dad.
‘He must charge extra for the travel,’ Dad insisted. ‘I bet if you needed a roof up here it would be cheaper than forty.’
‘Thanks anyway, Dad.’ And I know he’s doing his best to save us ‘a few bob’, as he would say. It’s just that I can usually see the end result before the game has even begun.
Thing is, even putting a value on the work we do (Jeff does) is pointless and not something we give a second’s thought to. It cheapens the whole concept of family, doesn’t it? And helping each other out? Well, imagine my astonishment when, after spending weeks of literal back-breaking work designing, building then planting Mum and Dad’s garden for them, Dad triumphantly proclaimed: ‘I reckon you’ve saved us at least two grand in labour!’
I sincerely do not care one iota what the cost of our labour for them is. I know there is Buckley’s chance that any amount I spend on my parents will make a dent on the fortune they unquestionably spent raising us. That aside, even talking about value makes me all squeamish, like I’m somehow keeping a silent tally on what we’ve done and we will deliver Glen and Grant our invoice in due course. But when I’m literally doped up to the eyeballs on Endone because my landscaping-induced back pain is crippling, and my labour’s value is under-calculated by about twenty-fold, well then it leaves a slightly bitter taste in my mouth.
Reading my mind, Jude offers: ‘Does anyone want another mint?’
This time, I take one.
Attention Twilight Waters Residents:
The 1.5m Covid-Safe Distance Yard Stick is missing from the first-floor broom closet.
In its absence please ensure you remain two outstretched arms away from all people at all times.
Thank You,
Management
SEVEN
Two Vs or Not Two Vs
As I turn the car towards Lambs Valley, Dad begins whistling another Burl Ives’ classic hit ‘Down In The Valley’. This part of the country feels a million miles from the hustle and bustle of the wine tourism region, despite it being only thirty minutes or so away. Here, drivers wave at each other as they pass, roads have few speed-limit signs and, where the grass is green and lush, cows graze away to their hearts’ content. Also, there are many more hills and mountains to add interest to the scenery. Long before Jeff and I had left Sydney for our Hunter Valley tree change nine years ago, we’d viewed property along this road and remarked at how private and peaceful it seemed. Fate turned us in a different direction and we’d ended up buying a vineyard instead. That had proved to be fortuitous, but Lambs Valley remained of special interest to us and we always kept an eye on the movements in its property market.
‘For a while there I never thought we’d be able to leave the house again!’ Mum says. ‘It’s so nice to be out and about.’
Over the last few years of relative isolation, we in the Greater Hunter had it better than most – some of our local government areas were tens of kilometres across and even now, at roughly forty minutes away from Block Eight, we’re still in the same one – but for a place as expansive as the Hunter, it posed some challenges too. And for our parents, those challenges were compounded.
It’s a terrible reality that what will inevitably be most of our ageing parents’ last decade has become so utterly consumed with the death, fear, illness, confusion and restrictions that resulted from the pandemic. Though I might belittle their routine somewhat, my parents’ lives were simple and stress-free before Covid happened. But I know they were robbed of something intangible. Something more than bingo and Keno numbers.
Since retirement, Dad’s determination to watch the news – or listen to it if he’s in the car – borders on obsession. On the hour, every hour, he rushes to the nearest appliance like it’s providing him with another shot of insulin. He needs the news like Jude needs a Keno win.
The ever-changing Covid case numbers really gave him the opportunity to digest multiple news bulletins in one day. ‘Seven hundred and eighty-seven!’ he’d yell towards me (and the entire neighbourhood) as I walked in via the screen door at their house during the 2021 lockdown to deliver them some groceries.
‘Oh, you’re on the phone,’ Dad would apologise when he saw one pressed to my ear. The second I hung up, he’d bellow once again: ‘Seven hundred and eighty-seven!’
Like my mother’s random calling out of geographic locations (‘Uzbekistan! Lithuania!’), if taken out of context, people would assume Dad was on that slippery slope towards no longer being aware of his current environs. However, during a long and tedious lockdown when his wife had been unable to get her daily dose of therapy (her finger pressing mid-air, imagining she’s in front of that Cleopatra machine again like the pokie is a missing limb), he needed something to fill his time and that happened to be a singular and razor-sharp focus on any given day’s Covid infections in NSW. I got that he was eagerly counting down the days to his yearned-for release but in reality, his life had changed only marginally during the imposed restrictions: he wasn’t calling bingo and his wife had become a little more on-edge. But that of course never diminished the anxiety around it all.
‘Under a thousand!’ he boomed across the house another day.
‘Back up to a thousand!’ you might hear a few days later.
