Professional Writing - Recent Work

Shopping for Values: A Journey with my Daughter

Soon after my first marriage broke up, I had to take my then seven-year-old daughter Hannah shopping for clothes. It had always been something she did with her mother, while I mowed the lawns or wrote. But no amount of scribbling or gardening was going to fill the empty cupboard in my daughter's bedroom. I had to get out and prowl the racks with her.

We went to Dimmey's in Geelong during summer school holidays. We were bunking with my Mum and Dad for a few days and before we left Mum asked, ‘Do you want me to take her and you can go to the beach?' The idea was appealing, but I was locked into the notion that anything Hannah's mother could do I could do, if not better, at least capably.

Hannah led me around every square metre of tables and racks festooned with coloured cotton, while the red lights spun their bargains and the announcements told us what we already knew: we were at Dimmey's, and we could pay less here than anywhere else for quality clothing. I wasn't sure about the quality, but I was rapt at the pricing: six bucks for two t-shirts and $12 for a pair of jeans. Everything was Made in China, but Dimmey's didn't put a severe dent in my skinny post-divorce budget. And, even better, it hardly mattered what I bought Hannah; she was at an age when she couldn't have cared less about brands or what outlets her clothes came from. She worked on a variation of the Don Smallgoods theme: if they looked good, they were good.

By the end of our trip, my feet were aching. I groaned as Hannah tried on the last of seven different kinds of eight-dollar, three-quarter length pants.
‘Just pick one, sweetie. And then we're going.'
‘Can I have a hot chocolate?'
Yes, ten hot chocolates. Anything to get out of here. When we eventually did arrive back at Grandma's, Hannah fashion-paraded every item - and every possible combination of outfit - while we all ooohed and ahhhed at her style. And I forgot, as quickly as possible, about our shopping expedition.

Maybe it's a reality of being a parent in a separated family, but I have often been concerned I'm not doing enough to make my children's lives okay. And how can I ever do enough? I've denied them what they understand as a fundamental right: their two parents together, loving them in one house. No matter how resolved I have become to the truth that, yes, I am doing the best I can and I can't make up for the past, there remains something inside me that chews away, never far from the surface, telling me to make amends.

I suppose that accounts for my deep feeling of gratitude when I walked into Hannah's Grade Four classroom early in the school year following our shopping expedition and found hanging on the wall the poster she'd created to depict her three holiday highlights - one of which was shopping with Dad.