the shape of a dwelling

“All living is dwelling, the shape of a dwelling. To dwell means to live the traces that past living has left. The traces of dwellings survive, as do the bones of people.”

(Illich, I. (1982). Gender. New York: Pantheon. p.119)

For some strange, wonderful reason, I was reminded tonight of a special time in my childhood. I would not have been more than ten years old, maybe younger. It was at a time when, ironically enough, things were materially most difficult; when my mum was getting us by with the patchwork of cash-in-hand cleaning gigs she was able to stitch together. But for all that it might be considered a 'shit-kicker' job, I still look back fondly on that handful of cleaning gigs mum had. In the school holidays or when my brother and I were off from school sick, we'd often come along to the places she cleaned. I knew even back then that to the occupants or patrons of those places, my mum was naught but an invisible hand that came through, made everything sparkle, but left no trace of itself in the act. The only way a cleaner is ever noticed is if they aren't doing their job. But to me, it was the occupants of the houses who were the mysterious and elusive presences. I never once knew them or met them, but the houses themselves were the outward reflection of each of their lives.  For a child, that was a wonderful, compelling kind of mystery. I can still clearly remember my wonder at trying to imagine the shape and form and lives of those people whose traces I saw in the dwellings around me. I wondered what they looked like and who they were; what lives they led and what made them happy. The question of home and its intimate relationship to identity is, by product of those earlier years of my life, never far from my mind.


From childhood to the point of ‘living independently’, I moved house on average every 1.8 years with my mum and younger brother.  Our house moves began with my father’s issues with alcohol misuse; the ensuing divorce, and the selling up of the ‘family home’ in regional Tasmania. At this point my mum brought us all to Adelaide, where half of her family resided at the time. I was six and a half years old. My brother was three.  To contextualise things just a little more, it was impossible at the time to re-establish a housing situation beyond private rental, as most of the money from the sale of the house was stripped back by legal and family court fees and by the costs of relocation. We also had no paternal financial support. The earnings situation for mum was difficult. After a temporary stay with relatives, we settled quickly into a pattern of shifting from one rented house to another, driven through circumstance and the pursuit of a better life.


Even as a child, I was quite aware of the fact that every one of our housing shifts and interstate movements were very much reluctant, unbidden, or were performed out of a sense of necessity and hope on my mother’s part. Each shift was for a different reason and in reaction to particular circumstances, frequently beyond our control. In some cases, our housing moves were part of a decision mum had made to seek out a better situation for us all, such as the search for financial security and adequate employment. But it also came about when mum needed to navigate away from problematic or failed relationships.  This included being forced to move into rental accommodations within a matter of days after being evicted by a man my mum had been engaged to, and in whose house we had lived for a year.Decisions to move also came about from my mum wanting to be geographically closer to the support of an often disparate extended family, spread out across the western suburbs of Sydney, rural Queensland and the northwestern suburbs of Adelaide.




At many other points, a movement happened because of the tenuous nature of the private rental market, such as the not-so-uncommon times when a landlord wanted to sell the house we were living in; when there was a rent increase we could not afford, or simply when a lease expired and we were told it would not be up for renewal. Together, these ‘calls to movement’ took us across the border into New South Wales and back to South Australia, and into temporary stays in the backyard caravans or spare bedrooms of friends and family while transitioning into other places. Such movement also ushered my own passage through the gates of four primary and three public high schools.


And as we went along, each move we made triggered the zealous task of re-making territories and habits: creating and nurturing gardens, choosing and maintaining spaces, arranging and inhabiting rooms, working out a new and unfamiliar neighbourhood; becoming the much-dreaded ‘new kid’ at school. All of this had to be done, of course, without dwelling too much on the thought that maybe, just a year or two from now, we would have to do the same thing all over again in some other place. Because, of course, there never was any way of knowing if or when the next shift might happen, or for what reason (for all we knew and hoped, our current place was going to ‘last us’).

Each house, piece by piece, became another sewn-in part of an untidy, itinerant patchwork;

the traces of our lives time and again dissembled…
reassembled...clung to,
thrown out and lost in transit. 


For mum, the job of resisting the negative ‘labels’ attached by others to the image of the ‘single mum’ was an ever-present force in our lives. One of the most profound outlets for this rested in the intimate ways she inhabited and cared for our houses and spaces, always with a great deal of pride, attention and creativity. Not long after we moved into any given house, mum would set to work etching out and maintaining an entire landscape around us, transforming a rabble of neglected weeds or a stretch of dead grass and dirt into abundant gardens. Traces of these landscapes and their former beauty remain today in some of our old houses around the western suburbs of Adelaide and Sydney. These, I feel, were my mother’s indelible, devoted marks upon an ever-shifting stage.

Up until I started high school, when mum was in a position to secure a full-time job as an office clerk, our financial mainstay was the variety of cleaning jobs that she was able to take on in-between caring for us. Money was of course always ‘tight’ throughout my childhood and adolescence, but mum was very adept at ‘hiding’ the enormous stresses she must have laboured under. Though I wish now that she had shared some of those burdens with me when I was older, I have a whole new appreciation and gratitude each day for how strong and stalwart she was; how much she sacrificed, and how much she gave to us during those days of me and my brother’s youth. Resisting what she saw as the negative ‘labels’ attached by others to the image of single female parenthood was a major force in our lives, and mum actively avoided being ‘dependent’ in any way on ‘welfare’ or anything resembling it. Mum’s deep need for maintaining autonomy and strength of character – not to be confused with ‘keeping up appearances' - was often also reflected in the ways she inhabited and cared for our houses and spaces, always with a great deal of pride, care and love.


You might be wondering by now, though, why I first referred to this time in my childhood as ‘special’. It’s hard to completely bring this sense of specialness to a place where it can be understood on paper. But I suppose if I were to approximate this sense, that time in my life was special because it represented, in many ways, the ephemeral peak of my time as a child. During those years, I was truly a kid, completely embroiled in the ways of unassuming wonder and play. And I know now that a great deal of that wonder was able to come to fruition because mum was such a solid force in our lives; she was like a force field of a kind, sheltering us and keeping us together, so that it was not only possible but necessary that both my brother and I were able to revel in this time of our childhood, protected from whatever stresses and strains stretched out beyond our own little orbits.


Every house had its special attraction. In one house, down near the railway line at Woodville, it was the great, sprawling walnut tree that shed its delicious nuts on the soft, green winter grass beyond the peeling French doors. Sometimes, the owners of that house would leave out some walnuts for us in a bowl on the kitchen table, and I’d spend my time there cracking open the shells and looking for the sweetest, most delicious pick. They were a messy household though, and mum always had a complaint or two about how much they ‘let the house go’ in-between her cleaning visits. The fridge always seemed to get filled with mould; there were clothes and toys all over every floor surface, and the bathtub was always full of dirty water and soap scum from the children’s baths, which mum had to clean up.


In another house, it was the lurid canary yellow kitchen and the 1960s décor that I loved the most. There were no children living in this place. A young couple only. It was a house down by Semaphore, off a tiny lane that led down to the Esplanade. It had a jelly bean shaped pool out in the backyard, and the house for some reason smelt of stale bread when it sits for a while in an enclosed space. The occupants had a grey cat that loved to rub up against me when I sat in the sunshine by the pool. I’d speak to it and read it whatever book I had brought along. One time, I brought my small, enclosed hermit crab tank along with me in hopes I could go down to the beach later and find some new shells for them to live in. Whenever I accompanied mum to this place with my brother during the school holidays, Michael and I would pretend that our little red Toyota Corolla was a submarine, and the roads leading to Semaphore and down the tiny lane were deep underwater channels; the houses we stopped off at, they were docking stations. The backyard pool was to house and train dolphins. The possibilities were, of course, endless.


In another house, it was the back garden that I adored: concrete stepping stones leading to an old moss-footed fountain filled with the sequined glittering of dozens of goldfish; a rusty park bench beneath a gently swaying weeping willow, and countless mottled cats basking in the afternoon sun, beneath the willow tree or hiding underneath the house. This was the most relaxed, laid-back house I remember. I loved to lay back in the sunroom, or stand and trace with my eyes the stitches of the bright hippy inspired material wall hangings. The people who lived there were involved in a small theatre company, I think I remember mum saying once.


There were other places that were less relaxing and comfortable. Like one of the houses down at West Lakes, which seemed to me at the time to be the biggest, most intimidating fortress I’d ever known. It was sealed off by the highest of solid, dark brick fences. To get in, mum had to type in a security code on the front gate, which was made of thick, opaque glass or Perspex. There was another layer of security at the front door, and another set of codes. When we got inside, we weren’t allowed to move at all. We just sat on the lounge room floor and read books or my brother would play his Game Boy. Beyond us, there was a designated ‘play pen’, walled off by thick, dark glass similar to the front gate. The toys and stuff in there was amazing, and I remember thinking of this house as almost another world entirely. Its architecture and the technology in there were so beyond anything, materially, I’d ever seen.


No matter where mum’s jobs took us on occasions, I’d find these special things and gravitate towards them. I’d take in the strange smells and wonder at the personal meaning of the countless ornaments and knickknacks that occupied shelves and ledges, all the while taking these impressions and adding them to the pictures I had in my mind of how these people looked and lived.


But as much as I loved encountering that weird and wonderful universe and marveling at how people could possibly make so much mess in a week (or grow icky green mould in their refrigerators and leave the grimy, oily water in the bathtub for god knows how long), none of that compared to mum’s ultimate cleaning destination. Michael and I both loved it. In fact, it was our favourite haunt during the school holidays. The time we spent there still recalls long lost feelings of magic and adventure.


It was in fact “The Capri” that I’m talking about; a small, independent cinema on Goodwood Road, on the outskirts of the city. It doesn’t have the same feel today, but just looking at it as a child made me feel as though I’d passed back into the 1940s or 50s. The building hasn’t changed much since that time, only the personal feel of it for me. It still has the old-fashioned façade, with the imitation marble steps leading to a row of double doors. Usually, the outer side walls of the older cinemas – which aren’t really visible from the front - are drab, even a bit decrepit, but painted on one of the walls of this cinema is a mural of actors and movies from the past. The foyer – if I can remember – still has the original carpet (as evidenced by a few worn patches here and there) and the ticket box, a crème, solid brick booth decorated by a central square of amber glass tiles, hasn’t changed either. Even the candybar, with its peach and green formica counter and the bench and stools facing the window, remain relatively unchanged.


The whole place only has one cinema, split into two levels – upstairs (for the general public) and downstairs (for functions and matinees). The staircase leading to the upper level is a white imitation marble. The way the first few steps are wide and tapered, together with the ivory coloured balusters, always made me feel as a child like I was a princess ascending a royal staircase in some kind of imagined palace. I always felt that way about it. As soon as I stepped on to the second floor, I definitely felt I’d been transported to another world. The original carpet still lined the floor up there as well - an intricate floral pattern against a rich burgundy background – and I remember the windows of the foyer were covered by long, heavy drapes of a similar burgundy, trimmed with a golden weave and scalloped at top and bottom. The walls were a crème stucco and a very 1950s style cornice pattern ran around the ceiling. Even the toilet doors were ‘old fashioned’, with brass doorknobs and the words: ‘ladies’ and ‘gents’ painted in cursive below respective silhouettes of a woman with a feather in her hat and a cigarette in her gloved hand, and a man in a top-hat.


What always enchanted me the most though was the cinema itself. The upstairs section had the old leather seats, which granted, aren’t all that comfortable, but they were – according to the stories the manager told my brother and me at the time -- still divided into the original sections, with first class seats having more stuffing and comfort than general admission. So, the seats nearest the balcony were plush and full, whereas the ones closer to the projection room were a little skimpier – an artifact of movie-going which has since been brought back by multiplex cinemas everywhere. But what was extra special about this cinema was its ‘key attraction’: an organ that rose up onto a stage in front of the big screen. I don’t know if they still use it now, but I did manage to see it being played on a few occasions when I was younger. The piano/organ emerged from below stage with an old lady or man seated at its keys (it’s quite amusing in a way) and at the same time, the huge curtains on either side of the projection screen mechanically slid open to reveal a pair of 10 to 15 metre high windows behind which lay the pipes of the organ, lit up in the colours of the rainbow. It was a very odd sight; kind of like a giant music box that’s been cross-sectioned and sourced from the set of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.


I was always puzzled by how it worked, until one day we got a chance to follow the organist in her passage to the organ. She took us on a journey through this hatch in the cinema stage, which led down via a ladder into an underground passage which wound its way towards a pit where the organ slept, beneath the stage. The click and pull of a few buttons and levers, which seemed to me at the time to be like the secret control room of the Wizard of Oz, awoke the organ in a flood of lights and mechanical whirring. The organist lady invited us then to sit next to her on the organ's seat, and with that we rose, like the phantom of the opera, up a brief shaft and out on to the grand stage. She let us touch the keys and have a bit of a play, experimenting for an invisible audience. It was an awesome moment.


I’ll never forget the days spent helping mum out at that cinema. It was a kid’s dream come true. The manager there, Stuart, who was Michael’s absolute favourite person in the world, let us sneak into the downstairs section of the cinema whenever a movie was on that we liked. No one upstairs could see us and I remember that when “Jurassic Park” screened, we watched every session that was ever on while we were there. I think we must have seen it about fifteen times, and every time, no matter how much we both tried to prepare ourselves for it mentally, Michael and I jumped when the raptor screeched (the scene where the raptors are being fed a cow in their large, electrified compound).


To make it even better for a child, for all the school holiday mornings we spent there, we were also allowed to help ourselves to the drinks in the candybar. Basically unlimited drinks. I can still remember the selection: Schweppes cola, pineapple, orange and lemon mineral water, lemonade, chocolate and strawberry milk boxes, and – my favourite – ginger beer. I spent all day sipping one can of ginger beer, letting the fizzy, spicy liquid swish around in my mouth and make my tongue all tingly. It was child heaven.


In the early mornings, when the place hadn’t yet opened, we’d follow mum up to the second floor and help her clean the cinema. For us, this basically involved picking up discarded cans and lining them up on the balcony banister or wherever we could find a space. It was like a treasure hunt and you’d never imagine how many different places the cans could be hiding. Michael and I turned it into a competition: whoever got the most cans was the winner. He always won, by taking all kinds of shortcuts I couldn’t be bothered to learn. I think it made the job much easier for mum. We’d race up and down the rows insanely, collecting cans as though they were Easter eggs. At the end of our collection spree, we’d take the cans, put them in a garbage bag, and unload them in a staff room downstairs where we emptied any remaining liquid into the sink and put them in the bin to be recycled.


I can also remember helping with the sweeping, and the smell of Domestos when mum was cleaning the toilets. It was quite an experience to venture into the unknown world of the male toilets and wonder at the curious, round, smelly yellow soap things that made the troughs smell nice.


Each time we came, there was something new to explore: down in the catacombs where the organ lurked; behind the scenes in the projection room; selling tickets from the ticket booth with the manager. At times, Michael and I would get bored with a movie we were watching and we’d decide to go on an adventure. One time, when we knew mum was putting the rubbish out the back, we got down on our hands and knees and crawled slowly down the left aisle towards the curtains bordering the projection screen. A movie was screening at the time and I kept saying to Michael: “The people upstairs will see us!! They’ll see us”. He didn’t care of course. We eventually made it to the curtain and managed to slip quietly behind it without ruffling it too much. It felt like I was Alice in Wonderland when I saw Michael pushing open this tiny hidden crawl-space door, revealing a small, bare space behind the screen, where metal supports jutted overhead and a weak light poured through a few high windows. It was like going behind the scenes of the making of our world; a clandestine glimpse at higher designs. A god-space, unintended for witness.


During the quiet times, I’d practice my Gymnastics routines in the upper foyer (I was a little gymnast in those days), picturing myself as a star and humming the tune to which my well-practiced floor routine was timed and judged. The quiet of that place early in the morning was incomparably soothing. Only the gentle hum of traffic could be heard outside and as I turned cartwheels and slid gracefully down the staircase banister, I became wholly indulged in the childish fantasy that this was my palace and I was the princess ruler of my own kingdom, where peasants came from far and wide to view motion pictures made in the faraway lands of Hollywood.


The first movie I ever saw at that cinema was the sequel to “The Never Ending Story”. Ever since then, the place became for me imbued with its own magic, its own sense of timelessness. When I stepped inside, I stepped into a universe which stood apart from the world outside; apart in time and in context. For Michael and me, it was our own universe; a place where kids ruled and adult patrons were outsiders. New cardboard cut-outs and posters for upcoming features appeared each visit. I can remember the cut-out of Tom Cruise and other cast members from “A Few Good Men” standing stalwartly beside the staircase, as if guarding entrance. I can remember posters of “Fried Green Tomatoes” and “Jurassic Park” and “The Piano” lining the front doors. The smell of popcorn occasionally wafted from the candybar when business was firing up, but even with all this adult activity and evidence thereof, it never seemed as though anyone else was really there besides Michael, mum, myself and the manager. Everyone else was just a fleeting apparition from some ‘other’ world.


This, my friend, is why that period of my life is precious to me: it was the time when I truly was a kid.