Jamie's kitchen rules
Coffs Coast is a continuous stretch of scalloped beaches with points and headlands that generate wave after wave in all winds and weather. The colourful willages and seaside communities are just as peaceful as can be...
The fishing fleet is in and the sun is warm. Kirsty and Jamie saunter along the breakwater wall on a 500 m stroll to Muttonbird Island. Jamie stops to watch a muttonbird shearing the water with its wings.
The bird is long gone, but Jamie keeps counting the water circles that stays behind it. His Mum keeps walking along the spine of the island until her son is a little speck in the distance, frozen in space and time.
Suddenly a group of children of Jamie's age, chasing one another, passess her by, the air fills in with shrieks and laughter, until they are gone and she is alone...
Kirsty hurries back and takes Jamie's hand: " I wanted to show you the little birds before they fly off, but never mind now, we have to go, there is someone I want you to meet."
"I am counting," Jamie says solemnly. "We can come back tomorrow," Kirsty tries. "The circles are here now, look," he points in front of him. His serious look scares her and she gives him a big hug.
It is nearly dark, crabs hide in the sand. Kirsty's boyfriend paces nervously in front of her house while talking loudly into mobile. Jamie crouches down near the gate and watches intently a tiny buttefly caught in a spiderweb.
Kirsty kisses the boyfriend while he fixes a new fancy watch on her wrist: "So next time you are on time," he laughs, while she appologizes: "Sorry, but Jamie, you know, he follows his own time."
"Autism is a complex, lifelong developmental disability, Kirsty, he needs speech therapy, occupational therapy and social skill group, he needs help now and he will need it whole life and I am able to pay for it..." Her boyfriend keeps talking...
following Kirsty to her kitchen, a piece of handwritten paper is sticked on its door: 'Do not enter if you want to kill my time.' "What a nutcase," he mutters to himself, opening the door and then slipping on the threshold ...
Jamie stands up, a complete darkness around him, he follows the butterfly that managed to free itself to the front door. The light and the noise inside makes him restless and unhappy.
The man lies flat on his belly behind the kitchen door, a few banknotes and coins spilled from his pocket under the fridge. Jamie crosses the kitchen, his gaze transfixed on something shiny under the kitchen sink...
"I don't want him to be locked inside the therapy rooms for the rest of his life, I remember when we first went to therapy, my inventive, humorous and affectionate boy was gone, they changed him to a robot and destroyed his soul..."
she picks up his mobile handing it to him, when another handwritten piece of paper fells from the wall on his head, he reads it: 'There is a wall between you and me, break the wall if you want to love me.' He shakes his head trying to stand up...
She helps him up explaining: "You see, he is only 12 and very clever with the words, I know he needs to fit in with the world but not if I loose his true self..."
"Where are my car keys?" Her boyfriend suddenly cries out looking around the kitchen throwing the chairs around: "I am already late..." Jamie watches him from the corner and then he starts to run in a perfect circle, screaming on the top of his voice
"Just tell him to shut up," her boyfriend covers his ears. Kirsty points out on another handwritten note on the wall: 'What a shame, you are not listening to me more, you disturb my peace, I disturb yours even more.'
"It is time for you to leave, I think," Kirsty said slowly picking up the chairs and taking Jamie hand to slow him down. " Do you think I would stay in this mad house if I have car key?" He spits out.
Jamie stops in his track and closes his mouth, looking miraculously straight into her eyes he open his hand. The car key lays on his palm. Kirsty takes them and hands them to the man, who has no place in their lives.
Jamie looks at her watch. She takes them off and hands them back too. The strange man leaves their house and Grandmother's pendulum clock with loud tick starts to measure Jamie's time again.
Kirsty picks up the cloth with the word 'Honour' written on it that slipped off the chair: "Jamie, I don't know how to make you sit still and listen and I don't know how we manage to survive, but I would not change you for anything." She huggs him..
Jamie crawls under the fridge and hands her money. Kirsty shrieks from the joy: " You are a clever cookie, Jamie, do you know that?" Jamie finds some nuts on the kitchen table and make a word: 'nutcase'. Kirsty wants to protest but he just swaps...
c for k and the word 'nutcake' appears in front of her. Slowly and carefully he puts a bag of flour, sugar and two eggs next to the bowl full of pecan nuts and she mixes the dough...
A rolling pin, of hoop pine in her hands, spreading the pastry, slowly, so carefully. Pecan nuts circling the baking tin. Before she can place the pastry in the tin, Jamie puts there the nuts first...upside-down cake for her, a normal cake for him..
She remembered many children around it, differ only by size and their names. All strong or weak, bastards, handicapped, loved and treated the same. She was one of them. And now Jamie is part of them too...
at least here, in their country kitchen, no one is pushed to normalise, no one is forced to change, different doesn't mean deficit, different means gain...
even, if the world outside doesn't want to see it that way.
How do you work with the institutions of this world, how do you work with the people of this world, who consider everything different than themselves, out of the norm and demand an unreal normalisation ...
Kirsty knows that Jamie is able to feel and show affection, the ability to care for people is there. It is hard for him to form relationships but it doesn't mean that nature isn't there, it is just expressed differently.
Jamie struggles with anxiety, understanding emotions and cognitive issues with cause and effect, often being overloaded by visual and verbal stimulation and yet he wakes up every morning, happy and optimistic to try again overcome obstacles...
As a parent, Kirsty knows she has changed in a particular way because of him. She is richer person because of him, she has learnt a lot from him, a different world view.
Kirsty knows that one in 160 children is believed to be on the spectrum in Australia. Every week, about 50 children receive an autism diagnosis.
She wants to believe that just like her Grandmother long time ago, people will learn to reach out a bit more in their daily lives, to accept a world from a different point of view...maybe their view is right and our is wrong...one will never know...
Country kitchen,
flypaper
barely moving
in early morning
breeze.
Corner shelves
held
enamel saucepans
underneath.
Hearth tools
used,
every couple of hours
when stove was stoked,
next to it.
Pig's buckets
took
every scrap of food.
Window was small
lino was cheap,
easily cleaned
and
resilient.
Grandmum
polished it
daily
with a mixture of beeswax,
and turpentine.
A rolling pin
of hoop pine
in her worn out hands,
spreading the pastry,
slowly,
so carefully.
Jars of preserved fruit
circling the baking tin.
So many children
around it,
differ only by size
and
their names.
All
strong or weak,
bastards,
handicapped,
loved and treated the same,
at least here,
in this country kitchen,
even,
if the world outside,
didn't want to see it,
that way.
Pendulum clock
with loud tick
the smell of coffee
essence
with chicory
and the cloth
covering
the mantelpiece.
The word
'HONOUR'
painted in golden letters
on it.
Honour,
a much better word
than goodness.
It's to do
with honesty,
principle
and bravery.
As a child,
as a future parent,
that's the thread
you always look for
in your family history.
The thread,
many of us
are not lucky enough
to find.
The thread
found
in her,
the person,
Grandmother
to all.
In the way
she explored
the spiritual realms
of existence,
through prayer.
In the way
she probed
the moral dimensions
of human behaviour.
In the way
she celebrated
the unique traits
and differences
of the children
in her care
by asking them:
"Tell me about your family?"
And yet
therein lied the source
of a deep sadness
in her,
the failure,
as she would put it,
of her many children,
neither
able
to settle
nor belong
or be accepted
in the world
beyond
her country kitchen.
"What is wrong with this world?"
She kept asking no one particular,
for her it was just an impulse,
but she had started
something,
she hadn't counted on.
As a mother,
as a teacher,
as a friend,
as a citizen,
as a stranger,
as a human being,
I have promised
to myself,
not to judge
or take sides,
before I ask:
"Tell me about your family?"
And yet,
as a member
of a jury,
in 2002,
I had voted
the boy turned into the monster
guilty on all accounts,
without
considering
this question to be asked.
WHY?
He was living in my area,
where my children
played
before
safely.
He used a stolen bicycle
to lure an eight-year old boy
to his house.
Over the next 24 hours
he inflicted horrific abuse
on the boy
as a massice police hunt
for the child
raged through the town.
The boy managed to escape
his house
on the bike.
When police searched the house,
the accused said,
he wanted to relive the childhood
he never had
and engaged in that behaviour,
because
'that is what teenage boys do.'
He pleaded guilty
to 22 charges
relating to kidnap
and abuse,
sentenced
to 11 years jail.
In 2009,
the Supreme Court
declared him
a dangerous sex offender
and he was jailed
indefinitely.
The following year
during palliative care
for an HIV infection,
he died,
shackled to bed,
prison guards
standing over his body.
No one mourned his death.
There were no friends
or family.
He died alone,
unknown,
unloved.
"Tell me about your family?"
That was the question
I owned to him.
As a 17-year-old he shot his father
with the help of his mother,
to stop beating and abuse
in his drunken rage.
He was sentenced to 15 years in prison
and his mother got life.
In five years
they were released
on licence
on relation to domestice violence.
He started drinking at age of five.
He was made the ward of the State
in the age of nine
due to his mother's mental instability.
While in a state care,
in a foster home,
he ran away from many times,
an older man in position of trust,
sexually abused him
for long 13 years,
without anyone noticing.
The concern for his mother,
he loved,
kept forcing him back
to his violent home,
and he returned there
again,
two months before
he murdered his father.
Released from jail,
a long-haired 22-year-old
with homemade tattoo
on his arm,
reading "Mum",
in three years,
the only person
he loved and trusted
died in a house fire.
He later told prison officials
it was suicide.
The anger in his eyes
said it all,
the once-innocent boy was long gone.
Over the next few years,
he acquired criminal records
all over Australia.
When I asked about the necessity
of the shackles
that bound him
until the last hours of his life,
when I mentioned
the findings about his life,
I was told,
nothing changes the fact
that the boy
turned into the monster
and he payed for his crimes.
"Tell me about your family?"
I wanted to ask,
the judge,
the jury,
the prison officials,
his carer, who abused him
for so long,
the people around him,
who decided to look the other way....
"What is wrong with this world?"
The Grandmother's question
is here
again
to be asked,
"This monster was created by us,
this monster started as an innocent child,
failed by his parents,
by his carers,
(his abuser had never been charged
and kept working in foster care)
by his teachers,
by people around him,
by his state,
but at the end,
he was the only one
who payed the price
and no one cares,
the least of them all,
the legal system
of this state."
Victim and offender
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