Little Aussie Shop of Horrors

One gift that comes with moving to a new country is the ability to play with identity. No one here knows me. I can be anyone I want. I recently donated my Banana Republic work slacks to Good Sammy’s, and I am considering lavender hair. I am drinking flat whites. Last week, someone asked me for directions, because apparently I look like I live in Perth.

But one thing will stop me from a complete transformation. My mouth.

Four out of five dentists agree. I have the teeth and gums of a 94-year-old man who hasn’t flossed in 50 years. Except I do floss – twice a day in fact. I have excellent dental hygiene habits. I have adopted the electric toothbrush lifestyle. I wear a night guard to bed, blatantly ignoring the well-established link between sexless marriages and mouth apparatus. I have a weird mouth in a it-stresses-me-out-I-don’t-want-to-talk-about-it way.

Interestingly, my dentist appointments in San Francisco always seemed to coincide with high self-confidence days. I’d waltz into the clinic, joke with the receptionist, and settle into the chair with People Magazine thinking, I’ll be out of here in 25 minutes. Fifty-five minutes later, I’d be getting a lecture on grinding and acid build-up, and making an appointment to come back for fillings.

Back in December, I had a four-hour deep teeth cleaning. The only consolation was that I could bring DVDs to distract myself from the coal mining operation happening in my mouth. Six Gilmore Girls episodes later, my mouth was numb and bloody but apparently… cleaner? Later that day, the pain medication I took made me throw up. It was a magical day all around.

We have been in Perth for more than three months now, and, BECAUSE I AM DEEPLY DEDICATED TO DENTAL HYGIENE, I booked family teeth cleanings. The clinic I chose is in a neighborhood called East Perth, which overlooks the Swan River. I figured in such a picturesque location, the dentist would be too distracted by the black swans to make me feel inadequate.

After the dentist treated both girls in 30 minutes (“Nice brushing, good on you!”), she turned to me cheerfully, “Your turn!” I told the girls, “Mom will be right back,” and then advised them to watch the Godfather trilogy.

Dentists everywhere have the same sigh. It is a disapproving, slightly exasperated sigh. I always hear it when the dentist is poking my gums with that unbent paper clip on a stick. It is a sigh that asks, “Do I need to get out my plastic jaw to show this moron how to floss?”

I left the office with a $33 tube of something called tooth mousse. My evening routine now consists of applying tooth mousse before popping in my night guard. Meow.

I don’t mean to sound disrespectful. The dentist in East Perth was great. She even made the girls latex glove balloons. But, and I ask this with the utmost respect for the profession, do dentists tend to exaggerate?

For years, I’ve been telling myself that America has irrationally high standards for what constitutes a healthy mouth. But now I know for certain. I can dye my hair purple and grill shrimp on a barbie, but I am who I am. Apparently there’s a reason dental records can identify a body.

Something Awful

Last week, two Australian men were executed in Bali. Ten years ago, they tried to smuggle a massive amount of heroin out of Indonesia. As a result, they have spent the last decade in a Bali prison, awaiting an execution date, appealing, then awaiting another execution date.

Everything about this is awful – trying to sneak drugs out of a country that will kill you for doing so, waiting ten years to be shot by a firing squad, boarding a boat to a special island dedicated to executions, and deciding whether or not to wear a blindfold when you are killed.

Since we arrived in Perth, I’ve gotten to know the faces of Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan – their crime, their lives in prison, their appeals, and finally, their executions. The West Australian newspaper prints its cover story headline in such a large font that I won’t leave it out for the girls to see. So I keep the paper in my bedroom where I read their stories with shameful curiosity.

I thought of Myuran and Andrew when we recently toured the former prison in Fremantle. Like Alcatraz, the Fremantle Prison is a tourist destination. We learned about some of the prison’s most famous convicts and escape attempts. We sat in the cramped cells and visited death row. We looked out the tiny windows, up at the watchtowers, and imagined how we’d escape. Feign illness? Steal a guard’s uniform? Dig a hole? Sarah, our Tig Notaro lookalike tour guide, relayed every fact and fable in an enthusiastic whisper, as if we were all sitting around a campfire. “Some people say they’ve seen the ghost of Moondyne Joe wandering the streets of Fremantle.” It was a sunny day, and after the tour, the kids frolicked in the prison yard.

People become stories and prisons become playgrounds. Something so awful can’t last forever.

192

On Monday morning, a truck holding a big, blue shipping container pulled up in front of our house. Three guys – Small Shorts, Big Man, and Missing Tooth – trudged across the front patio. Small Shorts, the sprightliest of the bunch, mumbled, “We have your things.” He handed me a clipboard, a pen, and a grid displaying numbers one through 192. “Check ‘em off as we yell ‘em out.”

It turns out our lives fit into 192 boxes. Clothing, books, pillows, chairs, robot costumes, linens, Lowell Junior Prom 1990 champagne flutes. We haven’t seen this stuff in four months. And here it is, our very own episode of This Is Your Life, hosted by Grumpy Moving Men Who Want to Get This Done as Quickly as Possible.

Over the next four hours, I heard “Thirty-two!” to which I replied, “Please repeat that,” because I couldn’t understand their strong Aussie accents. I thought that after awhile they’d start enunciating to save time, but these guys were not wearing t-shirts saying Ask us to compromise. I saw Missing Tooth crack a smile once, when he said eighty-seven and I heard lady heaven. Two points, Missing Tooth. Zero points, Expat.

I wanted to read the side of each box before it entered our house to make sure Den Footstool was not going to the bedroom. This annoyed my new friends, as apparently all three have interior design degrees. Small Shorts: The box says plastic containers so I put it in the kitchen. Me: But it’s the plastic containers from the office, so please move it to the office. Small Shorts: groan, sigh, stupid American.

My mother is here in Perth visiting us, and she offered to put things in kitchen cupboards as Big Man was unwrapping them. Big Man told us that he had just gotten back from a month in Thailand and he wishes he were still there. But instead of pretty ladies and lychee martinis, Big Man was in my kitchen, unwrapping Mason jars and sighing. My mother can usually get anyone to talk, but the two of them worked in silence like railroad workers at the tail end of a 16-hour shift. After the kitchen boxes were empty, Big Man summed up the experience. “That was a nightmare.”

Speak the Truth Moving Company was supposed to unpack all of our boxes, but when I began to visualize stacks of unwrapped artwork and piles of sweaters laying around the house, I told them to stop. Plus, I didn’t want Missing Tooth touching my bras. “You can leave now,” I said. “Just leave the rest of the boxes to us.” I signed the forms and watched as the container that we’ve been waiting for drove out of sight. Then I walked around the house smelling things.

From a hotel room in Bali

Do you know what Alanis Morissette is up to lately? She’s doing lots of interviews, talking about connectedness and purpose. Apparently she was inspired by a trip to India. I know this because I am presently in Bali, sharing a hotel room with my two daughters. They go to bed early, so I am spending quality time with my friend, Internet.

Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill album was released in 1995, the year I was supposed to graduate from college but instead was waitressing at Legal Seafood and doling out meds at a psychiatric facility in Somerville, Massachusetts. I was listening to a lot of female artists who were pissed off and addicted to heartbreak – Ani DiFranco, Juliana Hatfield, Veruca Salt, and the wonderfully irate Alanis Morissette:

And every time you speak her name, does she know how you told me you’d hold me until you died, till you died. But you’re still alive.

My daughters and I were at the beach earlier today. It is hot in Bali and the sun here is best friends with the sun in Perth; they are like Kate Winslet and the girl who is not Kate Winslet in Heavenly Creatures and want to kill us. The ocean in Nusa Dua is calm and warm. It is the kind of water that inspires the word lap. Our bodies sank into the sand and the warm water lapped at our feet.

Since we moved to Perth in January, my mother has been mailing me her issues of The New Yorker. In the table of contents she circles her favorite articles and sometimes adds little notes like “Read!” and “Who knew?” She and my father used to do this for each other, and I love that she’s doing it for me now. I brought two issues to the beach today and after I was lapped out, I plopped down to read an article about invisibility.

After awhile, I looked up to see my girls playing in the water. Simone looked red. I grabbed the SPF 50, walked over to her and said, “I’m here to remind you to put on more sunscreen.” Walking back to my beach chair, I sang to myself:

And I’m here, to remind you, of the mess you left when you went away.

Just now, in the dark, I watched a video of Alanis singing You Learn a few weeks ago in San Francisco. She looks happy.

I am 41 years old and I am in a hotel room with two sleeping girls who have their own soundtracks in front of them. When they are heartbroken or pissed off, perhaps they will find comfort in a song. I hope it’s a catchy song, because it will come to them, 20 years later, on a beach with their children.

Singapore

The last time we came to Singapore as a family, Willa was six weeks old and Simone was living out her prior life as an electric eel. Dave had been accepted to INSEAD Business School and we decided to take the plunge.

It was 2005. Our first night, I tried to put Willa to sleep on a chaise lounge at the Hilton Hotel on Orchard Road. In keeping with my semi-detachment parenting philosophy, I was hoping my newborn would fall asleep near me and not on top of me. Willa had other plans. She screamed until, in a sleep-deprived hallucination, Dr. Sears came to me and commanded, “If your baby doesn’t sleep on top of you, she will have trust issues and fail math.”

Ten years ago, Singapore was finding her voice. Would she be a sophisticated cosmopolitan city or a hipster historic fishing village? Construction cranes were ubiquitous and trees were being shipped in from Seattle. Singapore felt lost, but then again, so was I. My husband was in school and I was nursing a baby while watching Globe Trekker from the 18th floor of a condominium tower called Heritage View.

It is now 2015 and Singapore appears to have found her voice. It is a bold, confident voice and it is saying, “Neener neener. My government has more money than your government.” This place is on fire. There are spectacular displays of architecture everywhere you look, including giant metal flowers, humongous vertical gardens on the side of skyscrapers, and the Marina Bay Sands casino which… holy shit.

 

THERE ARE THREE TOWERS WITH A FUCKING SHIP ON TOP. My friend Christina, a long-time Singapore resident, rationalizes this building as part of what she calls Small Country Syndrome. Like Dubai, Singapore is getting all Elon Musk on the world, disrupting everything we think we know about gravity and engineering. In the last ten years, Singapore has strutted into the Lamborghini dealership and said, “I’ve got a world to impress. Give me one of everything.”

Seeing what a city flushed with cash can do in a relatively short amount of time is nothing short of awe-inspiring. The facelift is impressive. But thank you Singapore, for keeping some of your saggy bits – your cheap taxi rides, your dirty delicious hawker stands, your old men nose-spitting on the street, and your humidity. You were my home for eight months, and these are the bits that are seared into my soul.

Returning to Singapore for four days was like seeing an old boyfriend who has totally gotten his shit together. I felt sad that I didn’t get the best out of him, but thrilled that he’s finally wearing a clean shirt.

Cereal Killer

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When I was around ten, my family went on a trip to Italy. Walking through one of many town squares eating one of many gelatos, my mother pointed toward a fountain, at another family eating gelato. She leaned down and whispered in my ear, “Where do you think they’re from?” Then she said something that has stuck with me. “Look at their shoes.”

My mother was right. You can tell a lot about people from examining their footwear. Russian ladies enjoy bejeweled sandals. The French prefer a simple ballet flat. Chinese men have been wearing the equivalent of Toms Shoes long before they were cool. No one wears a sneaker like an American.

Breakfast cereal, like footwear, is an anthropological marvel. If I ever get fooled into thinking I’m still living in the states, I can walk down the cereal aisle of an Australian grocery store. I always see my friend Uncle Toby and the sadistic pleasure he gets from taking iconic American cereals and coating them with even more sugar. Uncle Toby has a twin brother, Weet-Bix, who lives on a high-security organic farm called Sanitarium, where he manufactures tiny bales of hay and markets them as cereal. Sanitarium is a large Australian food company that is owned by the Seventh-day Adventist Church and therefore does not pay taxes. I am not kidding. Its tagline is “Good nutrition is part of the journey to a happy, healthy life.” The other part of the journey is learning how to properly digest cardboard.

I am more of a peanut butter on toast kind of girl. The whole concept of cold breakfast cereal is odd. Let’s process a whole mess of random grains, add vitamins and sugar, pour it in a bowl and drown it in milk. It seems like a lot of work when you could just rip off the end of a baguette. But I live in Perth, and I am already eating kangaroo salami. I will own you, Australian cereal. YOU ARE MINE.

I have tried several kinds of cereal in Perth. Uncle Toby’s Cheerios taste like Froot Loops – best suited to a late night snack. Last week I bought a cereal called Alpen, a “Swiss style muesli.” The box has a picture of a pretty snow-covered mountain, and the list of ingredients is written in both Malay and Arabic, so I felt fancy popping it in my cart. Apparently the Swiss start their day with a bowl of gray flour with a few oats and stale raisins.

Finally, there’s Weet-Bix, the Shredded Wheat of Down Under. (Uncle Toby also makes a version of Shredded Wheat, which I assume is actually chocolate covered marshmallows.) How can I become an honorary Australian citizen if I don’t like Weet-Bix? Unlike Vegemite, which seems more divisive, I have yet to find an Australian who does not love Weet-Bix. I have tried several varieties in the past couple of months– original, hi-bran, crunchy honey bites – and they all make me feel like I am being held hostage in a barn and my captor forgot to feed me the daily gruel so I am forced to eat wood shavings. Weet-Bix is survival food. Australians are pretty hard-core so it makes perfect sense that their attitude would be, “Crikey mate, stop crappin’ on and hand over the sawdust.” I refuse to try the gluten free version of Weet-Bix because, let’s face it, gluten free versions of normally tasty products tend to leave one questioning the very meaning of human existence. I fear the gluten free demon and what he will do to a box of Weet-Bix.

We Americans have our own types of Weet-Bix. I once caught my mother eating a bowl of Grape-Nuts on Yom Kippur, a day when many Jews fast and repent. With a mischievous twinkle in her eye, she told me her snack didn’t count as breaking the fast. She was right. Grape-Nuts is technically not food.

One Minute in Perth: Dylan

Dylan lives up the block from us in Perth. He and sister sometimes drop by our house in the morning before school. Dylan is very sweet, and has impressive eye contact for a ten-year-old. He likes soccer. A lot.

Thanks for chatting, Dylan.

Windy Day

My husband possesses a unique quality that his close friends refer to as present nostalgia. He is able to be wistful for a moment that is currently in progress. It is not unusual that Dave and I are doing something incredibly ordinary like cleaning up after dinner or reading in bed, when he’ll catch my eye and say, “Life is good.” It’s different from gratitude. It’s more like his future self is visiting his present self and reminiscing about this particular moment in time. He does it with friends too. Our friend Sarah is particularly adept at recognizing when Dave is about to fall into one of his ephemeral trances. In the middle of a round of Cards Against Humanity, she’ll smile knowingly and ask, “Dave, are you having one of your moments?”

It is one of the qualities I love most about my husband. It is right up there with his dedication to paying bills on time and his willingness to crack my back on demand. I will miss all of this when he is killed by a giant Perth wave.

My special quality is a unique ability to sense danger regardless of whether or not danger is present. Of course motherhood has thrown this quality into overdrive, because obviously, any minute now, my children will be killed in a car crash. It is exhausting, constantly rescuing my family members from imagined accidents.

Last Sunday, my family and I went to Swanbourne Beach in Perth.

[The beaches in Western Australia are so magnificent that not mentioning that seems deliberate. I once shook Nicole Kidman’s hand at a work event in New York. I was supposed to tell her something about my job, but who cared about my job when the only thing that mattered at that moment was NICOLE KIDMAN IS VERY TALL AND PRETTY. Perth beaches are Nicole Kidman in Far and Away.]

Swanbourne Beach was, like all the parks and beaches in Perth, conspicuously uncrowded. Sunday was blustery and the surf was rough. The conditions were perfect for burying your feet in the wet sand and laughing hysterically while running away from the crashing waves. No one was in the water, with the exception of a few twenty-something surfers who were getting tossed around like tortellini in a pot of boiling water.

After a power nap in the sun, Dave popped on his goggles and announced he was going for a swim. To me, it was as if he declared he was going to cartwheel across the Mass Pike. As he sought out the perfect spot to embark on his dubious adventure, I tentatively called out “Be careful!” while mentally planning his funeral. What will I do with his body? We’re in the middle of nowhere, for god’s sake.

I watched my husband like a hawk as he made his way out beyond the break. I lost sight of his head once, as he dove into an oncoming wave. But then it appeared, popping up on the surface like a piece of fuzzy seaweed. I have to hand it to him. Once he made it out past the tsunami, he seemed to have a nice leisurely swim. He even stopped to smile and wave at me a few times. I took careful notice, as that was the last I’d ever see of him. I continued to track him as he bodysurfed his way back onto shore.

Dave looked a little hunky as he walked out of the sea – Poseidon in Lands End evergreen swim trunks. It could have been his brush with death. He was probably thinking, “Life is good.”

Nobody puts circumcised baby in a corner.

Imagine you wake up and there’s no Christmas. You still celebrate the birth of Jesus, but no one else has heard of this funny holiday with its jolly bearded man, piles of presents, and songs about sleigh bells. You have one week to find a suitable pine tree, chop it down, and drag it back to your house. You try to explain mistletoe and you sound like a crazy person.

Welcome to being a Jew in Perth. Jews might be the chosen people, but apparently they were not chosen to live in Western Australia. Where are they hiding? Is hiding the wrong word? WHERE ARE MY PEOPLE AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH THEM?

Passover is fast approaching and I am up for the challenge. There will be a Seder in my house if we have to substitute a Tim Tam for a shank bone. Unlike the Safeway on Taraval Street in San Francisco, our grocery store does not have an ethnic section. I regret my decision to not swallow a condom full of matzah ball soup mix before I boarded the plane to move here.

Last week, a waitress in Perth told me I don’t “look Jewish.” I have been hearing that my whole life. Yes, all you sweet goofballs out there, I know. It’s very complicated. I don’t “look” Jewish. My husband doesn’t “look” black. Our children don’t “look” like sisters. That’s because we are aliens who have come to Earth to enjoy your Woody Allen movies and smoke all of your salmon.

At my daughter’s swim meet last week, I met a Hungarian Jew and we high-fived. She politely inquired if I’m the American who just moved to town. Then she leaned over and asked cautiously, “Aren’t you Jewish too?” I stood up, hooted, and then held up my palm so we could exchange our ancient tribal greeting. A bit much perhaps, but meeting her felt like waving your hand around in the dark and finally locating the light switch.

Evidently there is a sizable community of Jews in Perth. They’re just not in my neighborhood. They live in a suburb called Menora. Swear to god.

One Minute in Perth: Helen

Helen is gorgeous, which in Australian means awesome (although she’s gorgeous in American as well). She spent her childhood in Papua New Guinea and now lives with her family in Perth. In this one-minute chat, I tell her I love her feisty attitude and she responds, “It’s a bit of a worry, I’m trying to subdue it for this.”

Helen refers to “swimming at Cottesloe,” which is a reference to Cottesloe Beach. It has ridiculous turquoise water, tropical fish, and white sand.

Thanks for chatting, Helen.