progeny

I have a son and a daughter. And a grand-daughter.

My son’s full name is Olmo. He is born 32 years ago in at home in the Adelaide hills, although home is a couple of rented rooms in a Gothic mansion owned by an eccentric university laboratory technician. His real name is Bruce but he calls himself Muni. He’s an Orange Person, a devotee of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. He washes his orange lab coats in an orange washing-machine.

Olmo is named after the hero of Bertolucci’s epic movie 1900. A week later we wonder what we have saddled him with, but the name sticks and he is Mo to everyone.

My daughter Gemma is 30. She too is born at home, this time a rundown weatherboard in an almond orchard at sleepy Eldorado out of Wangaratta. The house is owned by my good friend Doctor Will who is entertaining the scientists at Casey Base, Antarctica, with his eccentricities.

Gemma is not named after any movie character or anyone at all. I want the name Madeleine for a daughter; her mother prefers Magnolia. We compromise with Gemma. Her mother’s family name is her middle name—Lawson. My son has the same middle name.

My daughter’s daughter is Nerrina, named after a location of no note—no store, no sign, no grain silo—outside Ballarat. Nerri is 17 months old today. Today she travels from Bendigo with her parents to my place in Croydon, en route to Tasmania. She has eleven teeth and can walk on tip-toes if requested.

I never was a ‘baby’ person. My delight is in watching my daughter being a mother to her daughter. My daughter seemed too young to have daughter of her own at 29. Yet I had a son of my own at 27. When I was born my father was just 26 and my mother was 23.

     

Rock on.