Rebecca Handler

Notes On My Mother’s Spice Drawer

Two years ago, my family and I moved in with my mother for a couple of weeks while our belongings were being loaded onto a container ship in Oakland. One night, my mother was out and my children were asleep in my childhood room. Dave was in Perth, house-hunting and meeting his soon-to-be coworkers. I had three glasses of Merlot in me and was bored. Naturally I went through my mother’s spice drawer and cataloged them all on a spreadsheet, complete with notes and corresponding expiration dates.

There were 62 spice jars in total. The most frequent brand name was Spice Island. She had two of each of the following: Basil, Black Peppercorn, Chinese Five Spice, Curry Powder, Dill Weed, Coriander, Minced Garlic, Rubbed Sage, Sesame Seeds, Tarragon, Whole Cloves, and something called Singapore Seasoning. There were three jars of nutmeg and four jars of ginger.

There was something called Tuscan Sunset made by a company called Penzeys. According to the Penzeys website, the mix is mostly oregano and basil, with “the added zest of garlic, bell pepper and black pepper.” It is recommended for veggies, pasta, chicken and fish. It is best enjoyed if you have divorced your cheating husband, bought a fixer-upper, and your best friend is a perky lesbian played by Sandra Oh.

The topic of expiration dates is a sensitive one for Mom and me. When I was eight months pregnant, I went through her cupboards and threw out everything I deemed too old for consumption (I was not living there). This angered her, although she did agree with the fate of the bottle of soy sauce from 1984.

Twenty-four of the spices had legible expiration dates, the earliest of which was December 1985, Cream of Tartar. I included a comment next to my spreadsheet entry on Garden Mint from December 1989: Still smells like mint. The nutmeg that expired the year I graduated from high school did not smell like nutmeg but the Confetti Décor from the month Bill Clinton was sworn in for his second term as president looked brand new.

I could not find a date on one jar of nutmeg but it was made by a company that no longer exists. It cost 99 cents, and the label featured a recipe for creamed chipped beef.

My mother cooked me dinner practically every night for 18 years. An average meal was some sort of chicken dish, a green vegetable and a starch. Some nights she’d get home from work at 6pm, toss her canvas tote on the counter, and stir a pot of rice without removing her coat. My dad would have returned home 30 minutes earlier than Mom, made himself a Manhattan and a plate of Wheat Thins and Gouda before sitting down to watch the evening news. My brother and I were either on the couch with Dad or upstairs doing homework. Sometimes the phone would ring and my dad would shout, It’s probably for you, Sandra. She’d answer the phone and check the oven. Dinner’s ready, she would call out. Just prior to serving us, she’d grab a jar from the spice drawer and furiously shake it over the sauté pan.

Rummaging through her spice drawer, I felt guilty, but not because I was snooping. That spice drawer did something for my mother every night that the rest of us did not. It helped.

A Short Span Of Time

I dreamed that I was standing on Geary Boulevard in San Francisco, across the street from House of Bagels near the mediocre sushi restaurant. I was waiting for an Uber and people were throwing things at me. Finally my car showed up. When I got in, I discovered a homeless boy in the backseat. He was playing with one of those colorful plastic spheres that folds down into a fraction of its original size.

I woke up and realized this dream had occurred in the short span of time between my husband getting up from bed and bringing me a cup of tea. In less than fifteen minutes, I had fallen back asleep, traveled across the world, and met a young boy in the back of a gray sedan.

I decided today would be the day I get many things done in a short amount of time. In less than an hour, I showered, made two smoothies (one green, one purple) and two lunches (one sandwich, one thermos of ravioli), printed out a grant application for a school music program, edited a story, and walked my daughter to school. On the way home, I shooed ravens off a neighbor’s trash bin and recovered a milk carton and half a head of lettuce before securing the lid. I washed some clothes, packed a small duffle bag, retrieved my passport from my underwear drawer, and drove to the airport. There was a flight to London leaving in three hours. I ordered a flat white and flipped through magazines in the back of a bookstore. I charged my phone, bought some trail mix and a Pepsi Max, and boarded my flight.

During a layover in Singapore, I met a family, also traveling to London. They had a jigsaw puzzle and invited me to join them on the floor next to the window where their youngest son could watch the airplanes take off and land. The puzzle was a photograph of a basket of red apples. It was not easy but I didn’t embarrass myself and it helped pass the time. The mother asked what was bringing me to London and I said my friend Evelyn. At that moment it occurred to me that I had not told Evelyn I was coming and had no idea if she was in town. She had a job in fashion that occasionally involved dropping everything and flying to Dubai to dress a princess.

I slept on the flight from Singapore to London. When I woke up, I ate chicken skewers and watched two movies, one with Monica from Friends and one with the dad from American Pie.

I called Evelyn from the airport. She told me she was pregnant and throwing up a lot but she couldn’t wait to see me even if it meant we’d be sitting on the couch.

And that’s what we did during my visit. We sat on Evelyn’s fuchsia couch and talked and watched TV and sometimes she’d leave the room to vomit and then I’d check my phone. Everything in Perth was fine. My husband was surprised I left without telling him and I missed seeing my daughter dressed as a soldier in the Anzac assembly. But things were humming along more or less as usual.

When I returned home, I stumbled into my bedroom, closed the curtains, and fell fast asleep. I awoke to the sound of a cup of tea being placed beside me.

Lions and Tiger Snakes

My husband and I have developed a formula over the years. When one of us plans a family outing, it is the responsibility of the non-planning partner to promote enthusiasm for the adventure, even when the adventure involves a boat trip – correction, is a boat trip – and the non-planning partner struggles with motion sickness.

One of the things that has happened to my body since giving birth is that I am incapable of sitting on a swing at a playground without my center of gravity moving from my stomach to the back of my knees, to my chest, and eventually to the ground in the form of vomit. One reason I love swimming in the ocean is that if I remain still in wobbly water, I feel sick. Boats are the worst.

Carnac Island is a few miles off the coast of Fremantle. Dave learned about a company that would take us out to this tiny island to snorkel and swim with sea lions.

My one close encounter with a sea lion was three years ago when I was swimming with my brother in the San Francisco Bay. It popped its head up directly in front of me, growled, and immediately sunk back under the murky water. I yelled at my brother, “What the fuck was that?” knowing exactly what it was but hoping for the response, “Ice cream. That was ice cream.”

Between the boat ride and the sea lions, you’d think I might have stayed home, but if my children were going to be eaten by sea lions, I wasn’t going to be the mom who stayed home to catch up on Scandal while her children were being eaten by sea lions. Plus, I’m in love. I got up early, ate some bircher muesli, and took two Dramamine.

The sky was overcast and the sea was bouncy. Two kayaks labeled Perception and Emotion were strapped to the deck. Seven thirty-somethings were ready for the best day ever and had coolers of beer and salami. When I see people eating on a boat, I feel like they are brushing their teeth at a cemetery. The captain offered us a platter of brownies and tiny muffins and I wanted to grab the tray and chuck it into the sea. We are on a boat! I wanted to scream. This is no place for muffins!

My husband and younger daughter stood at the railing and laughed hysterically as the wind turned their cheeks to Jell-O. The older one inherited my inner ear so she sat next to me, clutching my hand, staring at the horizon. That morning, she had taken one Dramamine. It tastes gross, she had said. So does barf, sweetheart. Drink some water.

Upon anchoring, the captain pointed at a dozen sea lions that were napping on the beach. They had obviously not been told about the tourists who were promised a romp. The captain suggested we dive in to see if we could “tempt the lions.” He then advised against walking on the beach because Carnac Island is home to hundreds of venomous tiger snakes. This is Australia and I live here.

My older daughter and I peeled out of our clothes and stood shivering at the back of the boat. “We’ll feel better if we get in the water,” I promised her as the waves crashed and the wind whipped through our hair. We jumped in.

It turns out the sea lions were not interested in frolicking with humans. A few passengers, including my husband, swam to Medusa’s Lair to get up close to the sea lions. “We’ve got those at home!” I wanted to call out to Dave. “I’ll take you to Pier 39!” My daughter and I swam back to the boat to join her sister who was on her second brownie.

We made it back to the mainland without vomiting, and almost immediately, I felt famished. We walked to Little Creatures Brewing Company and ordered as if it were our last meal. The four of us consumed half a dozen oysters, one margarita pizza, one plate of nachos, one beet salad, one stack of sticky lamb ribs, two glasses of wine and one beer. When we got home that afternoon, I slept for three hours. I awoke to my daughters bouncing on my bed.

The Brush

The first weird thing is that I was in the bath at all. It was summer in Perth. But the sky was overcast and it was drizzling.

The second weird thing is that, upon close examination of my arms and legs, I discovered tiny clumps of sunscreen in every wrinkle and fold, even in the small creases on my knuckles and the sides of my kneecaps. This shouldn’t have been a shock, given that I purchased this lotion from a pharmacist who said this brand was especially thick as it was originally created “for burn victims who spend loads of time in the sun.” I thought this was an unusual way to sell something, to mention burn victims that is, but what can I say, it worked.

After my bath, I put on my sundress with pockets and small pleats, and googled “exfoliating brush.” I found one with 44 positive reviews including a comment that declared, in all caps, I CAN REACH MY BACK. One week later, a rectangular package arrived from a shop in Sydney, and that night I stood in the shower and vigorously scrubbed my entire body. As I watched flakes of dead skin and old sunscreen wash down the drain, I felt happy because I was fixing something. Goodbye old me.

Attached to the end of the brush was a rope loop. I stuck an adhesive hook next to the towel rack and hung up my new toy. It looked like a prickly oar.

In the morning, I spotted one long, blond hair hanging from its bristles. My husband has coarse black hair, and my daughters are brunettes. I am gray. Holding the hair, I walked to the living room and said to my husband, hey look what I found in my exfoliating brush. He was playing guitar and was annoyed by the interruption. It’s my mistress, he said with a straight face. She’s been exfoliating in our bathroom. I’m serious, I said, don’t you think that’s weird. He shrugged his shoulders and strummed the theme from the X-Files.

The next day I found a small black pebble, and the day after that, a single blade of green grass. Come on, I begged him, this is weird. Stuff keeps appearing in my exfoliating brush. Every time you say exfoliating brush, he said as he laced up his sneakers, you sound like an old lady.

One morning it was a tiny yellow feather and another, a white petal. The day the dishwasher broke it was a perfectly round shell with a swirled pattern, and the morning after they canceled the fireworks due to a plane crash, I found a piece of pink yarn. Each of these surprises I plucked from the brush and deposited in a brown canvas pouch I got for free at a trade show. I stopped telling my husband about all this because he was completely disinterested which angered me to no end. You might think he was playing a trick but that is not his sort of thing.

Yesterday I got up early to write a condolence letter to my old boss who had recently lost her husband. I didn’t like this woman much, but had a fond memory of her husband from a company Christmas party that I thought I might share with her. When I went to the bathroom I checked the brush out of habit, and there, tucked in the middle of the bristles was a small folded piece of white paper. I sat on the edge of the bathtub and opened it. Written in blue cursive was the following:

Dear Margaret,

I was very sorry to learn of Stan’s passing. I enjoyed meeting him at our company Christmas party and wanted to share something he whispered to me as you were making your toast that night. You were thanking the board of directors and making a joke about term limits. He leaned over to me and said, “Isn’t she amazing? I am the luckiest guy in the world.” I was very touched by his sincerity and thought I would pass on that remark to you, during what I imagine to be a very difficult time.

Thinking of you,

Ruth

I walked this tiny note to my desk and copied it word for word onto my engraved stationery. Then I refolded it and added it to my canvas pouch. As I drank tea and watched the sun rise over my neighbor’s house, I silently thanked the exfoliating brush for providing this perfect condolence letter to my old boss.

This morning the brush was gone. I looked under the sink, behind the tub, and in the shower. The adhesive hook now looked out of place. I peeled it off the wall and tossed it in the bin. I slathered myself with sunscreen and went to the beach.

A Sleazebag Story!

I took four girls roller skating. The sun was scorching and it seemed like a good day for an indoor activity. My daughter had been to a birthday party at a rink not too far away and remembered the name. We drove down the coast, my youngest scrolling the radio for good tunes. Ed Sheeran is big at the moment, as is a song about having scars, being beautiful, and not starving yourself. I have mixed feelings about songs like this but it has a good beat.

The rink was located behind a hardware store next to an abandoned lot scattered with broken glass and old tires. Two black crows perched on barbed wire. I turned off the radio and parked the car. “Is this the place?” I asked my daughter, skeptically.

“Yup!” she grinned, “Come on, guys!” My girls and their friends bounded towards the entrance and I locked the car twice.

The place smelled like feet and meat pie. An older woman in a black t-shirt featuring a brand of beer informed me that this fine establishment was cash only. There was no register.

We took off our shoes and stood on chalk outlines of different sized feet, like a crime scene for eight pairs of murdered shoes. Two men leaned over the skate rental counter and stared at our group, four girls and a mom. “Disappointed husband, you reckon?” the skinny one with the eye patch said to the other. It took me a second but then of course, I realized, he thought they were all mine.

“He loves having four girls,” I responded, glancing over at the kids who looked back at me, dumbfounded. “And so close in age too, we’re very lucky. Can we get our skates?”

The skinny one with the eye patch asked if I was Canadian, a question I get a lot in Perth, presumably with the intention of not offending Canadians. “No, American.”

“You think Trump’s gonna get the job done?” I didn’t know what job he was talking about, nor whether Trump would get it done.

The larger man with the muscular arms and bright blue eyes chimed in. “It’s that electoral college that’s the problem.” Perhaps I had misjudged this one.

A Justin Bieber song came on and the girls carefully shuffled their way over to the rink. I put our shoes in a cubby, laced up a pair of old, moist, brown skates, and joined them. There were about ten other kids skating and a few moms watching, drinking soda and looking tired. The lights were dim and multicolored. One bulb was blinking arhythmically. It felt like a David Lynch movie.

After an hour of skating and falling down, we changed back into our shoes and the girls ran off to find cold drinks. I plopped the skates back on the counter, one pair at a time. Eye Patch, alone now, said, “American, huh? Do you have any Aussie in you?”

“No.”

He rested his elbows on the counter and put his palms together. His one eye stared at me. “I can fix that.” His skin had the same worn-out condition as the skates, and he was sweating profusely.

“That’s a really lovely offer thank you, but I’ll pass.” I escaped and found the girls waiting patiently near the slushie machine.

We sat outside and slurped our raspberry-flavored drinks. “That guy was creepy,” my daughter said between sips.

“Totally. And he thought we were sisters!” her friend rolled her eyes. The four of them howled with laughter, their mouths stained bright red.

I laughed too. And the laughter was a protective shield, a bulletproof sleazebag force field. The girls tossed their empty cups in the trash and ran to the car. On the way home, we saw a helicopter patrolling the shoreline, looking for sharks.

The First Day Of The Year

The woman awoke to shrieking at half past six. Not anything to worry about, just the sound of four girls who had slept on single mattresses all lined up next to one another and were now awake, exhilarated by their closeness and exhaustion. Three out of the four had stayed up past midnight.

She got up from bed, untwisted her nightgown, and shuffled across the hall. “Girls, can you please keep it down? We’re still sleeping. Happy New Year.”

Remarkably they did quiet down and the woman fell back asleep and dreamed of a contraption that was half-oven, half-blender. She roasted beets on the top shelf of the oven and then pulled a lever to transfer them to the blender by way of a small conveyor belt.

A few hours later, she joined her husband and her friends upstairs for Earl Grey tea and banana bread. Her friends have a new puppy. It looks like a stuffed animal with black marbles for eyes. During breakfast, the puppy chewed on an actual stuffed animal.

After tea and clean teeth and sunscreen, the woman walked to the beach with her husband and her friends and the four girls and the puppy. They walked past empty houses that were built during the mining boom and deserted during the crash. The woman shooed flies off her face and laughed at the puppy who kept sitting down in protest.

The beach was called Pyramids. No one knew why it was called this, but they guessed it had something to do with the sand dunes or maybe the shape of the waves. They tossed their hats and towels in a pile and raced to the ocean, except for the one who stayed back with the puppy.

The woman jumped over the small waves and dove under the big ones. Surprisingly, some of the little ones are powerful, and some of the big ones are not.

It was time to say goodbye to the friends and the puppy and pack up the car and forget a few things. The woman’s husband put on a song for the drive home. The woman sang along, “We live in cities you’ll never see onscreen.” She fed her husband French fries from a drive-through chicken sandwich place. The children fell asleep and the woman and her husband talked about dolphins and how sometimes new friends feel familiar.

George Michael

I was grateful to hear my yoga studio was going to be open on December 25th. After tea and peanut butter toast, I drove through the ghost town that is many cities on Christmas morning. Hay Street in Perth is typically bustling with cafés and businesswomen in pencil skirts. But yesterday I drove down an empty street and parked easily out in front of the studio.

The class was packed. I asked a woman in neon orange leggings to scoot her mat forward.

The owner of the studio, a graceful, muscular woman with bright blue toenails, was teaching. After telling us to “get in whatever position feels most comfortable,” she started the class with a story about her father-in-law who had criticized her choice to keep the studio open on Christmas Day. “Sometimes people won’t understand why you do what you do,” she stated matter-of-factly without a trace of self-pity. “Move into downward dog.”

She worked us hard, and as we rolled up our mats, she put on the song “Last Christmas” by Wham!.

I sang it all the way home and was still singing when I walked in the front door.

“How was yoga?” my daughter asked. She was wearing a blue and white striped nightgown and playing with something called Thinking Putty, which is more expensive than Silly Putty because it’s smarter.

I serenaded her as I kicked off my flip-flops, “This year, to save me from tears, I’ll give it to someone special.”

“Will you make me a smoothie?”

George Michael died hours later. I learned the news this morning from my friend Alex who texted me the “Careless Whisper” video with the comment, “End of an era.”

Alex and I went to high school together, when “Careless Whisper” was the last slow dance before the gym lights went on.

I spent this morning listening to Faith, alternating between crying and singing. My daughters took turns checking on me. “Mom, your face is red.” “Are all of his songs about love?”

Not all of George Michael’s songs are about love, but many of them are about sex, and when I was in high school, his music was just sexy enough for me. “I Want Your Sex” felt daring but polite. “Don’t you think it’s time you had sex with me?”

In college, I saw him perform at the Worcester Centrum near Boston. I went with a girl whose father was a gynecologist who sent her care packages in old Vagisil boxes. We sat in the balcony and screamed every time George Michael shook his butt.

This morning I finished crying and changed into my bathing suit for a family beach outing. Today is Boxing Day, and it is sunny and breezy. My daughter and I swam out past the break where we could bob up and down like marshmallows in hot chocolate. On the drive home, my husband plugged in his phone and played Faith. “I thought you’d want to hear it,” he said quietly. This touched me because Dave was more into Metallica in high school. Windows open, we blared “Father Figure,” about which my daughter declared, “This song is a little creepy.”

I guess it is creepy, but I love it. And sometimes people won’t understand why you do what you do.

Things That You Can Touch Or Feel

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In 1993, between bites of a piping hot dinner roll at Bertucci’s in Harvard Square, my father leaned across the table from me and declared, “When you marry someone, you marry their family.” He revealed this as if it were a carefully guarded secret that had been passed down from generation to generation.

I had been telling my dad about my boyfriend, specifically his mother, a clog-wearing woman who made her own earrings and often glared at me. My boyfriend and I broke up later that year. I still have a childhood blanket of his that my children sometimes use to build forts.

My husband comes from a large family. He has eight brothers and sisters, all of whom live on the east coast of the United States. Recently we pulled the kids out of school in Perth for three weeks and flew across the planet to drink Dunkin’ Donuts coffee in Rhode Island (medium, milk, one sugar). The last time we visited my in-laws was more than two years ago, when Dave’s youngest sister married a gregarious New Yorker with excellent taste in wine and cable knit sweaters.

The nine children and their assorted partners are a diverse lot. We are dentists, poets, accountants, stay-at-home moms, engineers, mail carriers, actors, economists, and students. We have strong opinions. Some of us drink eggnog coffee while others think this is a beverage for monsters. Some of us prefer cranberry sauce out of the can. Some of us believe in God. Some of us feel crushed by the recent presidential election and some of us are more ok with it. (Before our trip, I reminded my daughters that family is more important than politics, and the younger one suggested, “Maybe we don’t wear our Hillary t-shirts on Thanksgiving.”)

Several of the nine siblings have had children themselves, and the kids are just as varied. My eleven-year-old niece recently stood up to a bully at school, and my four-year-old niece likes to throw chairs.

There were 30 of us for Thanksgiving this year, and we descended on my sister-in-law’s house with side dishes and folding chairs. As casseroles slid in and out of the oven, and children chased each other up and down stairs, I felt like I was in a 90’s home-for-the-holidays rom-com. All that was missing was Bill Pullman.

After the feast and the cleanup, we put the little ones to bed, poured ourselves more sangria, and gathered in the living room for the most sacred of family traditions: Pictionary.

I have been playing Pictionary with my in-laws for more than 20 years. We are fiercely competitive. I was infuriated by my brother-in-law’s inability to draw a hot air balloon that looks anything like a hot air balloon, and he chided me for my attempt to illustrate “cold” without including a thermometer. (I drew a stick figure in shorts and then crossed it out.)

At one point, the newest spouse in the group, the gregarious fellow with the sweaters, became enraged by a teammate’s failure to quickly identify the “object” category on the Pictionary card and shouted, “Things that you can touch or feel!” His baptism was complete.

My dad was right of course. It’s no secret that when you marry someone, you gain a family. And if you marry someone who has lost a family member, you respectfully inherit this absence as well. I am honored to be part of this clan. It is one of the greatest blessings of my life. And I am not just saying this to score points. Unless we’re playing a game.

The Boy In The Backseat

On Friday afternoon in Perth, a family’s car was stolen from their driveway. I learned about it on Twitter. “Search is on for stolen blue Subaru with child inside.”

The parents had left the engine running while unloading the trunk. They had just returned from a vacation. The thief smashed the car through the front gate and sped off. Their three-year-old son was asleep in the backseat.

That day, I attended a middle school orientation with my daughter where, after locating her name on a whiteboard, she ran off to join her friends. Prospective students were given a tour and popsicles. Parents were corralled into a hot gym and told that the uniform shop is open on Mondays and Thursdays. I took a swig from my water bottle and thought about the boy in the backseat.

When my children were three and five, I left them in a car outside of a butcher shop in San Francisco. I was going to run in quickly to purchase some beef for a stew, and would see the car from inside the store. One of my daughter’s favorite songs was on the radio, “Say What You Need To Say” by John Mayer, and so I left the key in the ignition.

I returned to the car a few minutes later with a tenderloin wrapped in brown paper, and noticed a police car had parked behind me. I hopped in the front seat. John Mayer was done and some young female pop star was on. Within seconds, an officer knocked on my window. “Did you just leave your children in the car? With the key in there?” She must have heard the music.

“Yes. Just for a minute. Their favorite song was on.” I stopped talking.

The officer told me she was a mother and that there are crazy people out there. She suggested one of my children could have climbed up front and started the engine. I almost said my kids weren’t that smart but decided nothing about that was funny. She made me promise I wouldn’t do it again.

The blue Subaru was found parked in an alley two hours later, and, according to the parents, the child seemed unfazed and unharmed. The mother reported that he went straight back to pestering his sister. The thief has not been found. I wonder how long it took him to discover the boy, the moment he realized the thing he had set out to do had become something else.

We’re All Invested

I went to the U.S. embassy in Perth recently for an event billed as “a coffee and a chat with the Consul.” Joshua was delightful but may have been overshadowed by the silver machine in the corner. “Drip coffee!” the Americans exclaimed after leaving our belongings in lockers and walking through metal detectors. The Consul told us, “You can’t have a U.S. embassy without drip coffee,” while distributing stars and stripes ballpoint pens. (Australia has outstanding coffee but it is espresso-based, which explains all the good moods and early morning jogs.) I met a young mother in a green cable knit sweater who described the Republican VP candidate as “a good guy,” and a woman in a Bucky Badger sweatshirt with a Frances McDormand in Fargo accent. When she said, “I liked Bernie, but Hillary can be trusted with the nuclear codes,” I felt homesick even though I’m not from Wisconsin.

The U.S. presidential election is not something that is happening only to America, or only to Americans. The debates were broadcast live in Perth, on at least three channels, and were summarized in the evening news and local paper. A friend here was raised in Sweden and Spain and has lived in Australia for many years. She is troubled by the fact that many Americans don’t vote – voting is mandatory in Australia – and suggested, half-jokingly, that people in other countries should be able to cast their votes. “It’s the most powerful position in the world. We’re all invested.”

I went to a café in Swanbourne with the newspaper and a notebook, and sat next to three men huddled around a foot-long wooden boat perched on the table next to their flat whites. One of them had built the exquisite model and brought it to breakfast in the hopes that his friend could help him with the knots in the sail. As they fiddled with the parts, the builder, a tall fellow in a navy blue sweater vest, said, “But I suppose it’s true. America’s getting weaker and weaker and China’s getting stronger and stronger.”

The knot master frowned and removed his reading glasses. “But this bloke is going to build a wall?” The three of them erupted in laughter. He continued, “In America you’ve got this working poor where people have jobs but they just can’t afford to live. They’re angry, of course they’re angry. But there’s a huge number of people in America now who believe everything they see on telly. It’s scary.” They all nodded.

The third man added, “The phenomenon is not Trump himself, it’s why he’s getting so much support. He just tells them anything they want to hear. It’s totally illogical. Mexicans out! Muslims out! What about the bloody Europeans?” More laughter.

Calling anything a silver lining in this election reminds me of the college party where I ended up with a tube down my throat, overheard nurses whispering about “a waste of resources,” and then called my dad who asked me if it was good beer. But I must say, watching a smart woman patiently and strategically take down an ignorant chauvinist is good beer. I’m just annoyed she had to attend the party with this jerk in the first place.

When I walked my daughters to school this morning, the air looked dusty and smelled like burnt toast. Bushfires are common in Western Australia, especially in the spring when they are purposefully lit to avoid catastrophic blazes in the summer. When I first moved here and smelled fire, I was alarmed. The world was burning and no one was doing anything about it. But now I understand that the smoke soon clears and new growth begins.