Rebecca Handler

Here’s the thing about moving to another country. It involves living in another country.

At first, living in Australia felt like being on a tour organized by a sadistic travel agency. Looking to visit Western Australia? Step out of the guidebook and live like a local! Try to open a bank account! Live with a broken water heater! Enroll your children in school! Learn how to drive on the other side of the road!

Ten weeks into The Ultimate Australia Family Vacation, I began to feel the obnoxiously privileged exhaustion of too much vacation. This has been fun and I’m grateful for the opportunity. Now I want to go home. Then my head spun around exorcist-style when I realized, blimey mate, this is home.

There are clear signs we live in Perth. We get personalized junk mail. The doorbell rings often – friends wanting to play or teenagers selling candy bars. Weeds are sprouting and need to be pulled. My daughter says “G’day,” and it sounds authentic. The butcher knows me. I no longer stare at the coins in my wallet wondering which one is ten cents. I have strong opinions about neighborhood redevelopment plans. I whip in and out of tight parking spaces.

I have started to experience the joy of completely normal days. There is less what am I doing here and more I am here doing things. My brain has finally plopped down in a comfy chair and stopped racing around like an imprisoned Tasmanian Devil at the Perth Zoo.

And Operation Friendship seems to be picking up. We had our first adult dinner party last night, after a day spent marinating chicken and putting books back on shelves. Our guests brought housewarming plants and champagne. They gobbled up guacamole and told stories of pharmacy break-ins, celebrity encounters, and pre-teen angst. At one point, the Aussies at the table were debating whether or not the dingo did in fact eat the baby (verdict = yes it did). We drank too much and ate strawberries with fresh cream. It was ordinary and extraordinary.

I know as much about birds as I do Danish history or couch upholstering. Which is to say, very little.

But here’s what I do know. A bird is not interested in what I think of him. While I’m blathering on about how cute he is or how much noise he makes, he is thinking, “This is me, on a telephone line. Ask me how I got up here. That’s right. I can fly.”

Like many other creatures in this beautiful country, Australian birds ride that fine line between impressive and creepy. Like a handlebar mustache, you want a closer look but you don’t want it to touch you.  

Every morning at the break of dawn, the ravens and kookaburras say to the crickets, “Thanks for holding down the fort, mates. We’ll take it from here.” They then proceed to shout at the top of their lungs for nearly four hours. What on earth has them so emotional day after day? I asked Willa what she thinks the ravens are saying so early in the morning. Her guess? “I’ve got dibs on this house.” I often see ravens gnawing on bloody bones that they either a) dug out of a trash bin or b) received in Easter baskets from Satan.

The kookaburras are the size of possums. They like to perch on the gate around our pool. Their bodies are spotted gray and white, and their beaks are oversized, presumably the result of years of hysterical laughter. Simone named one Ronald, so in our world, there is a single kookaburra named Ronald who visits us every day.

The state bird of Western Australia is the black swan. In every lake, river or pond in Perth, you will find between two and two hundred black swans. They are stunning and fearless, just like Natalie Portman. Someone told me they bite, which was reminiscent of a hot sauce warning. All I can think about is what that bite would feel like. I’m obsessed. OH MY GOD I’M A BALLERINA AND I WANT TO MAKE OUT WITH MYSELF.

There are colorful parrots and parakeets. At the beach, there are seagull-type creatures with red eyeballs, and pelicans with pouches large enough to hold scuba divers. There are graceful egrets, wandering around like lost runway models. And there are the dreaded black and white magpies, or “cow-birds” as Willa calls them. During breeding season, magpies are known to swoop down and go after people, Hitchcock style. So much so that there are signs posted near nests, and notices on the library bulletin board about how to avoid being attacked. Apparently magpies are particularly suspicious of sunglasses. Because, as all magpies know, people who wear sunglasses want to steal your baby.  

When Dave and I were on a safari in South Africa many years ago, an older couple with fancy binoculars said something that stuck with us. “We went on our first safari for the lions and the zebras. We returned for the birds.”

A friend of mine keeps a handwritten address book. Next to a name she scribbles a note like “hip” or “knee.” She says it’s because she’s older now, and everyone has a thing, and it’s polite to remember the thing so you can ask about it.

I need a book to keep track of greeting protocol – one cheek, two cheeks, a quick hug. When I meet people for the first time in Perth, it’s easy – we shake hands. After that, it gets tricky. As far as I can tell, there’s no standard Australian greeting. I’ve gotten the one cheek kiss, the double kiss, and my least favorite, the awkward stand-there-and-wave. To complicate matters, there are tons of ex-pats in Perth and every meeting requires quick calculus. Look there’s Grace. Oh, here she comes. What do I do? Let’s see, she’s Scottish but married to a Dutch guy. They just moved here from Hong Kong, aaah, awkward wave it is!!

The well-known adult-to-child greeting, the high five, is evidently a North American phenomenon. I have stopped high-fiving Australian children because they think I am about to slap them. I am not going to attempt a fist-bump.

My parents used to have a friend I am going to call Victor. Whenever Victor and his wife came over for dinner, he would shake hands with my father, pat my brother on the back, and wave to me as I hid behind my father’s legs. Then he would turn to my mother and kiss her on the lips. Like, really kiss her. I don’t recall an open mouth, but it was definitely more than a peck.

There was nothing fishy going on and Victor wasn’t a sleazebag. In fact, he was one of my favorite family friends. It’s just that in Victor’s World, an appropriate greeting between a man and a woman involved mouth-to-mouth. As I got older, I learned to dodge his lips and go in for a hug.

In San Francisco, my default greeting was a hug. That’s not working here. The other day, I could have sworn a new friend was emitting major hug-me vibes. As I went in for chest-to-chest contact, I could feel her cringe but it was too late. This hug was happening and it was going to be uncomfortable for both of us.

I hugged Simone’s classmate recently. When I pulled back and caught her eye, I realized I had become Victor.

If you are reading this in San Francisco, I am writing you from the future where it is 15 hours and two seasons later. It is fall in Perth and getting darker by the minute. The trees are dressed up as Vermont, and the sidewalks are covered with inedible berries which, when stomped on, make it look like all the world’s Fig Newtons pooped simultaneously.

It has been pouring buckets the past few days. Perth is effortlessly lush and green, sashaying around in her emerald silk nightie. Oh this old thing? I just threw it on.

It is 5:30 pm as I type this, and it’s pitch black outside. All I hear is a chorus of very loud crickets. From the look and sound of it, I should be staggering around trying to find the bathroom at a campsite. But instead, here I am, in a little brick house in Perth, participating in normal daytime activities.

To celebrate the change in seasons, yesterday I got in a serious funk. I am not using that as code for depression. I am using that as code for what-happened-to-my-life-please-just-give-me-a-minute. The funk was brought on by the fact that Bunnings doesn’t carry a certain kind of adhesive hook. The funk was exacerbated by the viewing of The Lego Movie, which was so unbearable it made me feel like we need to speed up global warming so the next species can take over because they will never create something as hideous as The Lego Movie.

I used to think Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) was something that some dude made up so he wouldn’t have to do the dishes. “Brad, honey, can you clean up?” “Sorry babe, my Seasonal Affective Disorder is acting up again so I need to watch football.” But it’s amazing what moving to Australia will do to a Northern Hemispherian. My body feels seriously out of whack. I want to eat nothing but cream-based soups, and my bones feel mushy. I am waking up with sheet creases on my face, and I have made three chicken casseroles in the past week.

So yesterday I cried in my room for awhile, and then announced to Dave that if we ever move abroad again, it will be for MY job and HE will need to go to Ikea and sweep the floor for the eleventh time today so help me god can everyone just lean over their placemat. And then he said sounds like a plan and we watched Veronica Mars and ate some cherries and I started to feel better.

There’s something fishy going on in Western Australia, and I’m not talking about the sharks. Over the last few months, I have seen many ads in newspapers and in the windows of medical clinics for something called the Designer Vagina.

Apparently our vaginas have been bad. Very bad. They have had sex and many of them have birthed babies. Our vaginas work hard and sometimes feel a bit bushed. As our vaginas get older, they want to rest, eat frozen Snickers bars, and watch The Golden Girls.

But ladies, our vaginas are evidently in danger of becoming a bunch of lazy koalas. That is why God invented the Designer Vagina. And by “God,” I mean doctors. And I’m not putting this one on the guys, because let’s face it, we women are perfectly capable of coming up with new ways to torture ourselves.

Unfortunately, the Designer Vagina is not a store that sells Gucci tampons and Prada vibrators. According to one Perth clinic’s website, the Designer Vagina is, “a surgical procedure that involves reducing the labia minora or inner lips to achieve an aesthetically more pleasing shape or appearance.” In other words, a vajayjay nip and tuck.

Obviously there could be functional reasons for getting a labiaplasty, and by all means, vaginas should not hurt and hooray for doctors who can help vaginas feel less ouch-y and more chillax-y. But Designer Vagina ads are not directed at women who have serious cootchie issues. With phrases like “youthful appearance,” “regain your femininity,” and “feel more confident in your appearance,” you and I both know what’s going on down under. One ad promises, “Feel more comfortable in a leotard.” Thank god. I’ve been feeling so uncomfortable in my leotard. I’ve always assumed it’s because I’m wearing a fucking leotard, but now I see that it’s my un-designed vagina.

Apparently the Designer Vagina procedure became popular following the advent of the Brazilian wax. Because, you see, once you remove all of your pubic hair, your vagina might look, um, kind of weird. And clearly, the most logical response is not to simply regrow your hair, but instead undergo major surgery. That’s like spilling a glass of grapefruit juice, and rather than cleaning it up, you paint your table pink.

Have I been living in a warm, wet cave? Is this happening everywhere? Sadly I assume it is. But the in-your-face advertising strikes me as very Australian. Get your snatch stitched mate, don’t be such a pussy. Like driving on the left side of the road or living in a world without burritos, I’ll get used to it. Our first few weeks living in Singapore, I was startled by all of the ads for whitening creams, as well as packs of cigarettes featuring photos of cancerous tongues. But soon, all the weird stuff started to feel normal, and before I knew it, I completely regained my femininity.