Last year, Willa invited a friend to play after school. In the car ride to our house, two third graders talked about an upcoming birthday party. Referring to the birthday girl, Willa’s friend asked, “How much do you think she weighs?” Before Willa could respond, the friend continued, “I weigh 52 pounds. I bet she weighs 58 pounds.” Simone, who was six at the time, chimed in from her booster seat, “I weigh 40 pounds.” “You’re lucky,” Willa’s friend said. “You’re skinny.”

Later that evening, I told my daughters I did not like what I had overheard. I reminded them it’s not polite to talk about how much people weigh, and, oh by the way, weight doesn’t matter because bodies are beautiful and they are all different sizes and let’s all be healthy and kind, ok now go brush your teeth.

I don’t know if I handled this well. When the Looks Monster pops up, I want to play Whack-a-Mole with a sledgehammer. Sometimes I think talking about not talking about it as bad as talking about it. It’s like books titled, “They Say I’m Weird but Weird is Normal,” the very existence of which contradicts their main point.

 

I imagine girls in Australia think about the same stuff that American girls do. The media machine is alive and well in Perth, and glossy magazines seem even glossier. There are articles in the newspaper about how to apply eye makeup. Parents express social media concerns and talk about how children don’t need phones as they’re buying their children phones. It’s not all that different.

What is different, however, is the apparent absence of discussion around “raising strong girls,” a common theme in the U.S. I haven’t seen “girls kick butt” t-shirts, yet everywhere you look, girls are kicking major butt. They are running, swimming, dribbling, and scoring. They are being loud and opinionated, their bodies are all banged up, and their hair’s a mess. Simone plays on a co-ed field hockey team where the only apparent difference between the genders is that some of the girls wear skirts. Helping out in Willa’s class the other day, I noticed that girls were raising their hands high and yelling out answers. And then I noticed I was noticing.

Willa left for camp today. It’s a three-night trip with her schoolmates, but from the way the whole family is feeling, you’d think she just left for college. Simone, Dave and I keep reviewing the schedule. “I wonder what she’s doing now?” “It says tree planting. Do you think she’s wearing her boots?” I just realized I forgot to pack her sunblock, which, in Australia, is like not having gloves on Everest. We’re already planning a dinner for when she returns – three days from now – and can’t decide between pesto and puttanesca.

We moved to Perth in January, and we’ve had more family bonding than all seven seasons of Growing Pains. Today we’re Three’s Company missing our pal Larry who’s at The Regal Beagle. My wise friend Ruth said it’s natural; of course we’re all feeling a bit anxious. “It’s the first time a member of the team is leaving for awhile.”

When I was a kid, I spent a week at Camp Swig, a Jewish camp in Northern California, where Hannah Schwartz slapped me across the face. We had just returned from a Shabbat service, held in a small, outdoor amphitheater where ancient Jews presumably fought to the death. On the way back to our cabins, Hannah and I stopped by the canteen to buy Mint It’s-Its. We were dressed in white, the required color for Shabbat service, and the perfect option for girls who are five minutes away from getting their first period. I don’t remember what Hannah and I were fighting about, but the chocolate from my It’s-It got all over my Lands-End culottes. My face stung and things were never the same. The next morning, I ate breakfast with Sarah, the girl who was allergic to grass, and watched Hannah at the next table, laughing with her new friends.

When I was thirteen, I went to a French immersion camp in Minnesota. I wasn’t wearing white but I did get my period. I put the maxi-pad on upside down, and buried my cut-off jean shorts in the forest. Sabrina, my cabin counselor from Cameroon, winked at me that night as we sang Bonne Nuit Mes Amis. Did she know? Did I remember to flush?

In high school, I was a counselor at a summer camp for visually impaired children. I loved this camp, despite being persistently hit on by a twenty-six year old Pakistani counselor who, upon learning of the death of his brother, left camp to return home and marry his brother’s fiancée who was also his cousin.

I also have happy memories from camp. In Minnesota, I got to wade in a lake after dark and watch the reflection of the stars dance all around me. At Camp Swig, I learned the long and glorious prayer, the Birkat Hamazon, and made a dream catcher out of popsicle sticks that hung in my bedroom for years. I just never had that whole camp-changed-my-life thing. My friend Jason swears that his summers at camp were some of the best times of his life. My cousin Emma’s eyes well up at the mere mention of River Way Ranch Camp.

I don’t know what Willa will think of her first camp experience. I just can’t wait until Friday, when I can grab her off that bus and hold her tight.

There are two scenarios that require running: rescuing a loved one and escaping a mad man. So what’s going on?

I blame Elaine. I met her the first day of school in Perth, when her sweet daughter took Willa by the hand and showed her around campus. I introduced myself and said, “Your daughter is lovely.” Elaine replied, “I’ll never remember your name.” Elaine is Scottish (she would correct me here to specify Glaswegian) so it sounded more like, “Ar nevah thrirembah yar nem.”

Elaine bears a resemblance to Julianne Moore and her humor is biting. Whatever you’ve been through, Elaine has been through ten times your shit. Her plate’s been full since the day she was born.

Elaine used to run half-marathons and then life happened. She is determined to lose the weight she’s gained over the past few years. Last month over coffee, she told me about this app she’s wanted to try. “It’s called Couch to 5K and it gets you off your fat arse.” She asked if I wanted to join her. I believe it was my magnetic personality and not the shape of my bottom that inspired her invitation. I was over-caffeinated and over-confident, so I said yes.

Three days a week, Elaine and I meet at a local park for a 30-minute session of Couch to 5K. There are many versions of this app, and they all rely on the same strategy: walk/run/walk less/run more. Elaine uses a British version where a voice named Laura gently bosses us around for half an hour. Imagine Julie Andrews as a personal trainer: “After your warm-up walk, you are going to run for 90 seconds. It is going to hurt, but trust me. The pain you will feel is nothing compared to the joy you will experience upon completion.” Laura is our teacher, our mother, and the woman we long to be. Laura is most likely a hedge fund manager with four children who wear tweed and open doors for old ladies. We love her, and we hate her.

Belle and Lexi, Elaine’s two miniature schnauzers, run with us. They bark at Asian people. They used to live in Malaysia so the whole thing makes no sense. Recently we had to pause our workout because Lexi went ape shit on a woman taking the peaceful, scenic route to work.

So there we are, with two tiny racist dogs, walking and running laps around a grassy oval. Elaine and I try to maintain conversation while running, which is like attempting to meditate with your hand down a garbage disposal. We talk about anything we can think of: family, religion, politics, you name it. “Tell me something, Bek. Anything. Keep talking.”

I am Elaine’s first Jewish friend so I consider it my sacred duty to provide her with as much false information as possible. Between gasps for air, I tell her, “Being kosher means you can only eat pork from Eastern Europe.” “Really?” she says, believing me for a second. Then I snort and she growls, “Fuck off.” I tell her that in the Jewish faith, cursing is pretty much a ticket to hell.

Somewhere around the two-minute mark, one of us inevitably wants to quit. It is at this moment, we repeat our mantra, Run Bitch Run. It is inspired by the book Run Fat Bitch Run by Ruth Field who also wrote Get Your Shit Together. She’s British.

Elaine left yesterday to visit family in the UK. For the next two weeks, I am on my own with Couch to 5K. I couldn’t find Laura on the app store, so I downloaded the American version that replaces Mary Poppins with a process efficiency consultant. There’s no voice at all. Just a timer and a graph. I miss Laura. And Elaine, if you’re reading this, I’m not running until you get back.

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.