This is the eulogy my sister Alison gave for our mother at her funeral today. It is a word-perfect honoring of Mum’s long life. You can watch the video of the slideshow I made for the service on YouTube.

Edith Betty Ridge, nee Dykes, was born on May 8th 1928 in Enfield. She was the first born child and only daughter to Stanley and Grace and lived at home in Russell Lea until her marriage. Her brother Ronald “Ronnie” was born in 1931. Mum’s childhood was happy and carefree. Despite growing up through the depression years her family were comfortable as Stanley, Pa Pa to his grandchildren, remained in employment as a clerk with the Gas Company. Pa Pa was at the Gallipoli landings and his war service combined with his personality could make him prickly. This was balanced though by the gentle and loving nature of Grandma with whom Mum shared a very close relationship. Mum would always buy her Mother bunches of violets when they were in season. Mum also had a close and loving relationship with both of her Grandmothers and her Aunty Glad, Grace’s sister, and her husband Uncle Herb. Sadly, she had no memory of her Grandfathers. Her cousin Tom Treseder was extremely special to her. Mum and Ron were always great friends despite the fact that he could be a typically annoying younger brother. With her oldest friend Olwyn, Mum and Ron formed their own secret club known as The Gumnut Club, complete with passwords, certificates and minutes kept by Madame President which Mr Treasurer was to read. Mr Treasurer preferred to be pulling the wings off cicadas!

Family holidays and car trips to the beach and The Blue Mountains with friends were a regular occurrence, and one very special trip to Tasmania brought about a lifetime of wonderful memories. The family had a gorgeous red setter called Dookie who was adored adored and he gave Mum enormous joy. Growing up we heard so many stories about Dookie, it was almost as if we also knew him.

Mum attended school at Russell Lea Infants, Drummoyne Public and then Fort St Girls High where she told me she read every book in the library and would then go to the City Library after school. Mum was an extremely intelligent woman, but sadly her brain was, as my sister Judy succinctly described it, untrained. The Headmistress at Fort St was a Maths teacher and as Mum was not mathematically inclined she was placed in 4D despite good results in the Intermediate Certificate. Mum excelled in English and she enjoyed French and Latin, but could not pursue these in 4D. So she decided that she wanted to leave school. PaPa said if you get a job you can leave. Mum being Mum, head strong and determined, did just that. In 1944 she immediately gained employment as a punch card operator with the Sydney County Council and she remained there until her marriage 10 years later. Mum enjoyed her working life, and as a young woman stepped out socially with friends to the theatre, concerts and movies. She was an excellent knitter and dressmaker, and completed beautiful embroidery. Mum attended elocution classes with Miss Pilsbury and acted in a few plays, one of which saw her take top billing over the late Ruth Cracknell!!  Mum was always complimented on the beautiful way that she read, particularly scripture readings. She attributed this to reading stories to her children, but no doubt the elocution classes were a factor also.

She was a member of the Drummoyne Methodist Church and socialised with her friends there with picnics, playing tennis and “socials”. She scored at baseball games and looked after all the player’s watches, wearing them up her arm! She loved being a member of the Methodist Crusader Choir and performing in the Sydney Town Hall was always a big event. Crusader Camps were always a lot of fun. Mum was an excellent flower arranger and adored flowers. In recent times I swear that Mum spent more on flowers every week than she did on food! But they always brought her enormous joy and the home was always beautiful and welcoming. She was an avid crossworder, and her day did not begin until she had started the crossword in the Sydney Morning Herald. Up until her eyesight failed her in February/ March, she was still completing the crosswords. 

Mum was a good cook but I don’t think she particularly enjoyed cooking. It was tiresome trying to think of interesting food to prepare for 4 ratty kids in the 70’s! She did become quite modern and creative with Rice a Riso and a mince cabbage dish called Kye Si Min which we loved. Sunday roast dinners were special, macaroni cheese and chicken of the sea were family favourites and we loved her mocha cake particularly. Dave fell in love with Linda over mocha cake! Mum was able to move with the times becoming quite computer literate, and having an I pad has been her way to stay engaged and connected to the world via Facebook and emails. Unfortunately she also mastered the art of online shopping….. Sigh!

On the topic of shopping, Mum loved to shop!! She loved beautiful things be it pretty china, interesting pieces, jewellery, books, & music. As you all know she was always beautifully dressed with matching accessories. As a young woman she had immaculate taste and style. Over the years it has been a running source of family indignation that she was a shopaholic but she didn’t care! I would often quip that she was spending my inheritance to which she would reply, “That’s right”!! The last time we were in a shopping centre Mum picked up the latest Prouds catalogue & proceeded to pick out the items she was interested in. In the family we joked about “Mother’s millions”, her jewellery collection. Mum could be quite inappropriate at times, much to Dad’s dismay, and like her Dad she could be prickly. She was human. Mum had the most incredible and long memory. She had an amazing ability to recall names, places, dates. She could tell you where she purchased a dress, how much it cost, who was with her when she bought it and where she wore it! As I have been piecing together family history in recent years her wonderful memory was invaluable. Mum also had the most infuriating but endearing ability to tell a story. She would take you all around the world and there would be a cast of thousands in it, the relevance which was often a puzzle to us. Dad would say “Edith, get to the point” and she would retort “Oh Barry, do be quiet”. She would then happily continue on with her tale, gaily ignoring Dad, but she always came back to the point!

Mum made friends wherever she went, and once you were her friend you were her friend for life. Over the years she lost Olwyn, Elizabeth, Joan, Joy, Vonnie but their memories live on. Weekly chats with Norma continued until the very end, and Katie and Barbara, Lyn and Sue, Anne & Laurie, Judith & Jan, Christo and “my friend Pamela” have remained in constant contact. Friends made in more recent times have been a source of encouragement and support and she was so grateful for this. Her cleaner from Just Better Care, Grace, was very good to Mum and Mum was very fond of her. There have been many beautiful messages of love and support on Facebook, and people have been sharing special memories & thanking Mum. The word gracious was used frequently. We were particularly touched by several posts where people thanked Mum for the support and encouragement she extended to them after they emigrated to Australia. Thank you to all of you, so many and I don’t want to forget anyone, but you know who you are. Special thanks must go to Professor Ray Sacks, Dr Lena Reichardt, Dr Mark Fitzmaurice, the radiation oncology team at RNSH in particular Dr DJ, Dr Lisa Parker, and CNC Paula McLeod. Rev David Reichardt and Rev Bill Ives. Deepest gratitude to the staff at Bowden Brae nursing home who tended to Mum in her final weeks including the chaplains Tennyson & Frank. Extra special thanks to all the nursing, medical, auxiliary staff at Neringah Palliative Care Hospital & their community outreach team. Jo Manouk, pastoral carer, thank you so much.

Mum’s faith has been at the very core of who she is and what she stood for. When she was 14 she became a member of the Methodist Girls Comradeship and at the age of 16 she was taking Sunday School classes. Her lifelong journey of service all progressed from there. Her biodata (hold it up) reads like a Tolstoy novel and if I was to mention every committee served on, position held, job taken on, services conducted we would be here all day. Mum summed it up in one of the many talks she gave – she served 36 years in country and city circuits/parishes and was the leader of 36 fellowship groups. She served at Synod and Assembly level, district and national level. She was the President of Australian Church Women in both the ACT and NSW and is a Life Member, an honour of which she was aptly very proud. Retirement didn’t slow her down – what retirement? She was as busy as ever with various women’s groups, Uniting Church Adult Fellowship of which she was also a life member , Synod Committees and editor of several newsettes/handbooks. Australian Church Women and The Fellowship of the Least Coin were very dear to Mum and there is a collection box outside if you would like to make a donation to The Fellowship of the Least Coin. Due to illness and then Covid19 Mum was unable to attend church for some time, and this was a source of distress to her. Thank you to the Normanhurst Uniting Church community for faithfully and lovingly staying in touch.

Mum’s life changed when she made the move to Five Dock Methodist Church and commenced teaching Sunday School there. It was 1950. George Ridge, the Sunday School Superintendent, spotted her and immediately decided that she was the girl for his son Barry, who was serving as a probationary minister in the North West Mission, based at Boggabri. What a fantastic match maker Grandad turned out to be!! Edith and Barry met, fell in love, and the rest as they say is history!! They were married at Five Dock Methodist Church on December 4 1954 by the Rev C.L Connor, after a terrific thunder storm saw the beautiful bride unable to leave the house, making Dad an extremely anxious groom in waiting. Honeymoon spent at beautiful Jervis Bay, and then the newly married couple set off for their first appointment to Milton. Not before Mum had all of her teeth pulled in one sitting, as per the recommendation at the time due to a lack of country dentists. Mum & Dad were welcomed to Milton with a lovely afternoon tea spread of cheese and tomato on Sao biscuits. Poor Mum. You could say she gave her teeth for the church.

There was no training to become a Minister’s wife and Mum learnt as she went along. She was well supported by the older Minister’s wives, and as a couple Mum and Dad received loving Christian support from Rev Connor & his wife, Dr George Wheen and the Rev Stanley Bowyer Hayward (Principal of Leigh College where Dad studied) & his wife Kathy. After Milton they went to Gunning, Toronto, Katoomba, Auburn, Yarralumla in the ACT and finally Homebush-Strathfield. Mum and Dad were an awesome team and served the church faithfully. Mum learnt to make do with parsonage furniture and she shared Dad without complaint with the people and places that needed him. There were hard years, and disappointments along the way. God’s lemon drops are everywhere. However, there were also many, many fun times. Mum could do a wicked Nana Moskouri impersonation and she rather enjoyed some of Meatloaf’s music (whom she famously called Meatball!) When she wagged the finger or threatened to knock our heads together we knew we were in trouble or would soon be if we didn’t tow the line. Mum battled several major health issues over the years, but always came out on top until the final illness. Her strength of character and determination were incredible.

Mum & Dad were married for 62 years and were devoted to one another. Mum loved & respected Violet & George, her in laws deeply, and they always referred to her as their daughter & she called them Mum & Dad. Mum told me that she hit the jackpot when she married into the Ridge family, and she was loved in return by members of the extended family. Linda was born in 1956, David in 1959, myself in 1961 and Judith rounded off the family in 1964. We had several cats, 2 rabbits, fish and 2 budgies in the family at various times. We had wonderful holidays at our holiday home at MacMasters Beach, the deposit on which was supplied by Mum’s long service leave pay out. We watched family TV shows such as The Bobby Limb Show, Bandstand, Seekers specials, Happy Days & Countdown and ate saucepan cooked popcorn. We also watched Division 4 & Homicide! Surprising, I know! Mum famously said “No swearing in my kitchen” in response to some very tame swear words that were said on these programs. We saw live shows such as Godspell & Jesus Christ Superstar and went to lots of movies. We were not a wealthy family in money terms, but in every other way we were millionaires. One of my favourite memories growing up was sitting at the dinner table and talking about our individual day. Mum was always engaged and interested in our lives, our friends, our interests and our thoughts on the world. She loved us unconditionally and was always supportive, allowing us to make mistakes without judgement. Her standard greeting was always “Hello love” and these were the last words she spoke to me. Mum was surprisingly open minded and forward thinking for a woman of her generation and background. She believed firmly in women’s rights and had a very strong sense of social justice. She welcomed and loved our respective partners – Dave, Pauline and Bernard and made strong friendships with their respective families. Mum was a loving aunt to Margot & Wayne, and Elizabeth, and to Ron’s stepson Paul and his wife Liz and their children. It brought her so much joy when Margot reconnected with her.

The adored grandchildren came along and Mum couldn’t have been a more wonderful grandmother if she tried. She played soccer with Peter which coined the infamous saying “Peter kicks, Grandma runs!It never ceased to amaze me how my children could get away with anything with Grandma – things she would not have accepted from me! Peter & Emelia, Heather & Cliff, Alice & Keaton, Emily, Lucy, James & Alex and Grace and Glen. Grandma was so proud of all of you and watched you grow and make your way in the world with deep satisfaction. She was keenly interested in all that you did and did her best to be there for you as much as possible. Thank you for your phone calls and visits, Mum was so grateful.

Just when we thought our lives couldn’t get any better along came the crème de la crème for Mum – the Great Grandchildren! Move out of the way everyone else. Nothing could compare to Bennett, Isaac and Zarahlinda! Boy, was she one besotted Great Grandma. She lapped up every snippet of information about them that came via Facebook or phone calls, and loved every photo and video. When she was able to spend time with them in person either in Coffs Harbour or when they came to Sydney it was a really joyous occasion. Ben, Zaccy & Zara know that Great Grandma loved you very, very much.

Mum faced her illness bravely with dignity and grace. She never said ” Why me?” She wanted to know exactly what would happen and she accepted it. Mum wasn’t ready to die; she had so much to live for. She had purchased a lovely outfit to wear as Grandmother of the bride for whichever of her Grandchildren was going to make the next trip down the aisle. But her faith saw her slip away quietly and peacefully.

Mum had a very distinctive walk – she could really stride it out with vigour in her younger years. You knew the sound of her footsteps before you saw her. I imagine that she strode home to God with delight and all the energy of the 16 year old Sunday School teacher. She is now resting in the Peace that surpasses all understanding and her earthly struggles are no more. To quote Dr George Wheen in a letter he wrote to her – “A little faith will bring you to heaven, but a great faith will bring Heaven to you.” 

Sleep well, our darling mother.

My father, Barry John Ridge, died in the early hours of 9 August 2017. He was 89 years old, and had been living with Lewy Body dementia for around seven years. This is the eulogy I gave at his funeral.

Growing up, the four of us kids were what’s known in the trade—the church trade, that is—as PKs. PKs, parsonage kids, we’re a tribe tens of thousands strong, across the country and across generations who share a common language and experience that is quite unlike that of most kids growing up. There are lots of assumptions made about PKs; we must be incredibly rebellious or else unbelievably sanctimonious and dull, and our parents, especially our fathers, must be strict, uncompromising, and our lives therefore confined and restricted from the freedoms and pleasures other kids enjoy. I’m sure there’s not a PK alive who hasn’t heard some variation on the question, “What’s it like to have a minister for a father (or, of course, mother)?”, the only answer to which is, well, I dunno. What’s it like to have a mechanic for a father? Our father was the only one we had, and our life the only one we knew. And how fortunate indeed were we to have Barry, our father—and Edith, our mother—and the life that they gave us.

Dad, as I am sure all of you who knew him will immediately recognise, was none of those things that our schoolmates assumed. He was neither strict nor boring, and while he had very clear ideas and a firm and unwavering sense of his faith and the values by which he lived, he was neither uncompromising or punishing in his dealings with people in general, and his children in particular. In his role as a Minister of the church, Dad viewed service to others his highest calling, and the absolute expression of his faith. For us, his family, his responsibilities to his parishioners, the broader community and the church meant that there was no such thing as 9 to 5, no reliable “quitting time”, and even his one day off a week was rarely left to him and Mum to share and enjoy without interruption. Perhaps we kids felt it the most on family occasions—only PKs know the peculiar agony of having to wait to open Christmas presents until after Dad’s second or maybe even third service of the day. But while Dad’s working hours may have been unconventional, when he was home—and that may well have been at 3 o’clock when we got home from school, only for him to disappear again after dinner for meetings or Bible study or marriage counselling sessions or youth group—he was absolutely with us in a way many, many fathers of Dad’s generation were not.

In the same way, Dad was a most modern husband in the way he took on his fair share of the housework. He changed our nappies as babies, he cooked and cleaned, he ironed, and he especially loved to work in the garden.

Dad was a practical and pragmatic man. He could turn his hand to pretty much anything; a true child of the depression, nothing was ever wasted, and he took great pleasure in doing up toys, bikes and so on for us kids and the grandkids; they never felt second-hand, but rather, remade with love. His grandson James remembers with great affection the hours they spent pottering in the garage, and the time they made a possum box for a family of ringtails in the backyard at James’s family home house. No piece of wood, no useful piece of rope, no nails and screws, no matter how rusty, were discarded unless absolutely beyond the pale (and not even then, often!). Council clean-ups were a challenge; while Dad loved finding treasures in other people’s unwanted items, convincing him to get rid of dried-up old mops and other things that “just might come in handy one day” was not so easy. He wasn’t miserly, but he was conservative about money, and he hated waste in any form.

Dad genuinely and clearly loved being a father. Fatherhood was so much more than mere duty; it was a pleasure, as well as a responsibility. He enjoyed playing games with us, be it tether tennis or Scrabble, Cluedo or cards (although only simple card games like Snap and Happy Families because, you know, Methodist…). Our strongest memories as a family are associated with music; Dad had a fine singing voice and he was a good pianist. Playing Mum and Dad’s record collection and singalongs around the piano are favourite memories for all of us kids. That piano, his childhood piano, has been lovingly restored by his eldest grandson Peter, in whose home it now resides, and I know Dad would be thrilled to think that Peter and Emelia’s children, Bennett, Isaac and Zarahlinda, will grow up listening to music played on their great-grandad’s piano, and perhaps playing it themselves. (That’s playing it, Ben, not sitting on it!)

I remember stories of he and Mum told of times long before I was born, when they allowed that new-fangled rock and roll music to be played at church hall socials, and the dust the young people raised dancing. Dancing in the Methodist church hall! I can imagine the raised eyebrows this decision caused. When I was 8, Mum and Dad took us to see the first Australian production of Jesus Christ Superstar. I think even then I had an idea of what this said about our parents; that they were interested in new ideas and ways of thinking about the world, and that their faith, character and intellect were strong and certain enough to be open to challenges, and not just musical ones (that rock and roll music again!).

Which is not to say they always liked the music we listened to, but they put up with great grace Linda’s period of mild acoustic guitar folk music led teenage rebellion, our collective Barry Manilow fandom, and endless Sunday nights watching Countdown and my seemingly endless obsession with ABBA. In my teenage years, they allowed me to take an overnight bus to Sydney from our then home in Canberra to attend an Elton John concert. They trusted us, they respected our choices, they never once attempted to censor or very rarely expressed disapproval, which is not to say they didn’t offer guidance when required.

Mum and Dad took us to movies and stage musicals from as early as I can remember, and there are many I cannot watch or listen to without associating them with Dad. I think we all remember the night they took us to see Sweet Charity at the Gosford Drive-In without realising what it was about, but to their credit, they didn’t leave, and again, I turn to the words trust and respect—which of course meant we in turn trusted and respected them.

The night after Dad died, I played the movie of Fiddler on the Roof as I wrote a notice about Dad’s death to share with friends on Facebook. David has since reminded me that Mum and Dad made a special trip with us to see Fiddler at the cinema in Sydney, as it wasn’t going to be showing in the cinema in Katoomba, where we were living at the time. They didn’t want us to miss out on a thing we didn’t have to, just because a.) we were living on a Minister’s stipend and b.) we were living what was then a very long way away from the city. Watching Fiddler again I was reminded again how the character of Tevye always makes me think of Dad; it’s without doubt both the unswerving faith in a loving and wise God, and a deep devotion to their children that makes me associate one with the other. Fiddler also has great songs, and Dad, as we know, loved to sing.

One of Linda’s early memories from the Toronto years is Dad along with one of the women from the Couple’s Club, dressed as tramps, singing a duet of Underneath the Arches and Side by Side. I wonder if in another life Dad might not have enjoyed amateur theatricals. He could be a bit of a ham; we remember fondly his appearances in musical reviews on stage at the Victory Hall in Auburn, including his turn in A Murky Melodrama and a pun-filled musical soap opera; I can still hear Dad singing “I’m a Lux Change Daily Girl” with Mum and Dad’s good friend Lynne Drabsch, who is here today.

And of course, none of us will ever forget his lovely voice leading the singing in church. Mum tells us Dad never joined a choir because he wasn’t quite a tenor nor quite a baritone, and he didn’t think he could sing parts. He could sing hymns, though, full-throated and heartfelt. In his later years, when the Lew Body dementia affected his throat muscles and he could no longer sing, it was for us all a significant turning point in his decline, and we missed, and miss, his voice terribly.

Dad always liked being around young people, and he truly enjoyed our company, at home, on Sunday drives, or bushwalks in his beloved Blue Mountains, and especially at the beach, Macmasters (Macs, as we called it), which was in many respects our family home. A small fibro shack when he and Mum bought it in the early 60s, our house at Macs redefined the word “modest”, but lovely as many of the church homes we lived in were, Macs was the only one that was truly ours. And while even on holidays Dad was always busy; building extensions to the house, clearing gutters, calling the snake man to come and relocate an unwelcome visitor, he always, always had time for us. I think we all have in our heads a clear image of Dad emerging from the surf, hair pasted to his head like Mo from The Three Stooges, laughing with the sheer pleasure of being in the surf, and more often than we’d have liked, at the sight of one of us kids emptying our togs of sand after being dumped. The photos where you saw Dad at his most relaxed in the slideshow were nearly all taken at Macs. He loved Macs perhaps more than any of us; his final ritual of every holiday was one last swim, just by himself, no kids allowed, before we loaded ourselves in the car for the trip home.

Dad was also genuinely interested in us as people; interested in our thoughts and interests and lives. Not in an intrusive way—Dad respected our privacy as much as he valued his own—but in an admiring and deeply respectful way. He never mocked us for our ideas or passions as children; as adults, he was always completely supportive of everything we set out to do, utterly and unconditionally proud of us and our achievements, and practical and kind when things didn’t go to plan.

As I was writing those very words, a video of Bennett, my great nephew, Dad’s first great grandchild, landed in my email inbox. The video shows Ben riding a pushbike on his own for the very first time, and in the proud, loving and encouraging words of his parents, Peter and Emelia, I can hear echoes of Dad, and the way he raised us to always give things a go, and of the unselfish, admiring pride Dad and Mum both have always taken in us, and subsequently their beloved grandchildren. Some of Dad’s last words were about his great-grandchildren, and I don’t think that’s any kind of accident. Family was everything to Dad, and in the last difficult years of his life, as the Lewy Body dementia began to take away his ability to engage with the world, his memories of his parents, grandparents, his adored Uncle Jim, his cousin Mavis and other family members were what brought him the greatest comfort and pleasure.

Alison remembers with great fondness her and Dad’s shared love of baseball and softball, and the hours Dad spent with her practising pitching and hitting. Dad played baseball as a kid, and this was a unique bond Alison and Dad had—that is, until she had a son of her own who also became a baseball player. Dad loved going to watch James play, and I think was quietly chuffed about the continuity across the generations.

Some of my own fondest memories are of having serious conversations with Dad about politics and social justice, feminism and other issues dear to my heart. It wasn’t until very recently that I discovered that Dad held his own intellect in fairly low esteem, but I think he was wrong about that. To me, the mark of intelligence isn’t just about formal scholarly achievement, but about having an agile, open and curious mind. Dad proved over and over again in his lifetime that he had both the capacity and the willingness to change his mind and to accommodate new ideas, while remaining true to his most deeply held principles.

I think in many ways this is the aspect of Dad’s character that I admire and hope to emulate the most.

Dad was also funny, sometimes surprisingly and wickedly so. He was patient, organised to the point of intractable, slow to anger, but righteous in his anger if the cause arose. He was, it has to be said, stubborn, and could therefore be, as Mum has said from time to time, a most infuriating man. But I think it’s the kindness, the compassion, the patience and the good humour that we will all remember most.

We have many stories about Dad we’ve been sharing this week; here are just a couple.

Linda says that, being the eldest, Dad had to learn on the job how to be the father of a teenage girl. She remembers the discreet flicking of the outdoor lights, and the “ahem” of milk bottles being gently rattled—Dad’s way of saying “time to come inside now” when he felt she’d spent enough time saying goodnight to the boyfriend of the day.

Dad’s compassion when we faced heartbreak and disappointment was constant and consistent. Alison remembers, after a personal heartbreak when she was a young woman, that Dad came and sat with her, just sat quietly as she grieved, not speaking, just stroking her forehead and being there loving her. Alison says she thought of this often when, at the end of his life, she reciprocated his loving care, sitting with him in the nursing home, no words spoken, stroking Dad’s forehead and just being there with and for him, loving him.

In the days since Dad’s death, the family have received many messages of love and respect about Dad. The words that keep coming up about him are these:

Generous
Decent.
Kind—and as Dad’s friend Pamela once said to me, kindness is not to be undervalued as a virtue.
Wonderful.
Special.
Wise.
Gentle.

Many have spoken of Dad’s guidance and mentorship; my friend from my teenage years, Sally, wrote “I had some of my most important and life-defining conversations with him and loved his mix of kindness, humour and genuine care.” Others have spoken of how Dad supported them in their ministry; others still simply spoke of what a good man Dad was. There have been many more similar messages, and it has helped us all so much to know how much our beautiful dad was so important to, and so loved by so many. He was indeed a good man; he was without doubt the best man I have ever known, and ever expect to know.

I would just like to finish up by reading a passage from a book that informed a great deal of Dad’s ministry and faith, and also reflects exactly who Dad was. It’s one of my most treasured possessions—Dad’s copy of Your God Is Too Small by J.B. Phillips. Early in the book there’s a section called “MEEK-AND-MILD”, several passages of which Dad has marked; they clearly contained ideas that resonated with him. The section is essentially a critique of the child’s prayer Gentle Jesus Meek and Mild, or rather, what it suggests about the character of Christ. Phillips objects to “the impression of a soft and sentimental Jesus (supported, alas, all too often by sugary hymns and pretty religious pictures)” that the words conjure, reminding us that Jesus was a man who did not hesitate to challenge and expose the hypocrisies of the religious people of his day, and who was considered a danger by the authorities. A rebel, and a radical, in fact; not the first things we associate with someone described as “meek and mild”.

Now, Dad wasn’t a boat-rocker in the obvious sense, but nor was he one to stand down from what he believed to be right and true. I think there’s a danger in mistaking gentleness—and Dad was indeed a gentle man—with indecision, weakness or passivity. Dad was none of those. He tempered determination with caution, justice with compassion, and passion with pragmatism.

Phillips concludes:

There is a further offshoot of the worship of this false god which must be mentioned. It is the sentimental Christian ideal of “saintliness.” We hear, or read, of someone who was “a real saint: he never saw any harm in anyone and never spoke a word against anyone all his life.” If this really is a Christian saintliness, then Jesus Christ was no saint. It is true that He taught men not to sit in judgment upon one another, but He never suggested that they should turn a blind eye to evil or pretend that other people were faultless. He Himself indulged no roseate visions of human nature: He “knew what was in man,” as St. John tersely puts it. Nor can we imagine Him either using or advocating the invariable use of “loving” words. To speak the truth was obviously to Him more important than to make His hearers comfortable: though, equally obviously, His genuine love for men gave Him tact, wisdom, and sympathy. He was Love in action, but He was not meek and mild.

And that is our Dad in a nutshell.

We love you, Dad, we are grateful to have had you for as long as we did, and we will always miss you, but we are glad for your sake that your troubles are behind you. Rest well, dearest Dad, and thank you for everything you did and everything you were.

Somewhere filed away are the first drafts—rough, meagre things that they are—of my first attempt at writing a thesis for my Masters degree. I was in my late 20s, newly married (though not for long), and desperately in love with the books I was writing about, and the field that I had entered into with all my heart and passion. Like a starry-eyed reality TV contestant, I had thrown in my day job (as a secondary English teacher) and set my course on the wild seas of children’s literature.

And it was all, more or less, because of Diana Wynne Jones.

I’ve written and spoken many times over the years about how Diana’s novel The Magicians of Caprona changed my life. I’m not going to repeat that story here—you can read all about it in this paper (in fact, I’m going to assume you have), which I gave at the conference dedicated to Diana’s work, held in Bristol in 2009.

This post is being written as part of the memorial activity for the first anniversary of Diana’s death, on March 26 2011. Sharyn November, Diana’s great friend and American editor of recent years, has organised a blog tour and this tumblr in order for those of us who loved Diana, and her books, to share our memories. And so this is my contribution to that memorial, a(nother) tribute to the writer whose work has meant more to me than perhaps any other in my life.

So it’s the early 1990s, I’m in my late 20s (just), I’ve just got married, and I’ve chucked in my teaching job and am spending most of my days deep in the related worlds of Diana Wynne Jones. Actually, I’m sitting at a tiny desk in front of an early model Apple computer (one of the ones, if memory serves, where you have to keep swapping the software disk with the write-to disk, so it’s slow and cumbersome work). I’m in a sun-lit rooftop flat on the top of a glorious old house in the Sydney suburb of Gladesville. Outside there’s a camphor laurel tree that’s grown taller than the flat on the top of the house—and the house is towering, enormous, so the tree must be more than one hundred years old. (We know it’s a feral plant, the world’s hugest weed, but we love it anyway, because it gives a home to possums and brings in a daily cacophony of rainbow lorikeets.)

The flat itself is an add on. For the few years before I got married and moved up here, I’d lived in a bedsit in the same house—it was a room of the original house closed off with a kitchenette and the world’s tiniest bathroom stall, and lord knows how even then I managed to fit myself, my books, my boyfriend and my cat in, but manage I did. The house where bedsit and rooftop flat were is a magnificent Sydney California Bungalow, but twice as big as the average suburban Californian, rearing out of the garden on huge Sydney sandstone foundations, looking out, like an anchored and squat Castle, over an enormous, tiered garden and wild parklands that run down to the Parramatta River.

I have so many stories from that house—stories of cats and possums and a rottweiler called Rommel, there on Her Majesty’s Pleasure until the landlady’s son was released and able to reclaim him.* It was in this house I learned the magic of the garden; where I learned that herbs love to soak the sun down to their roots;  that tomatoes self-seed, and that you can break off an impatiens and stick it in the ground and it will continue to grow. It was here I first had total and complete responsibility for another life, or perhaps nine lives—my cat Bridie, rooftop dancer who lived to be almost 20, despite encountering in the next house after this her very own Throgmorten. Here that I started to think I was becoming an adult. And it was here I started to imagine the story of my own life—and without knowing it, at the same time, was growing away from the life my new young husband had imagined for us.

People think that the books that shape you the most are the books you read in childhood. I am sure that’s true, I believe that to be true very sincerely, but it’s not true that it can’t happen also in your adult life. Because side by side with the stories I was living, were the stories of Cat and Janet and Gwendolen, of Tonino and Angelica, of Nan Pilgrim and Charles Morgan and Brian Wentworth and those girls with their dank-coloured knitting. And of Christopher Chant and The Goddess—Chrestomanci and his beloved Milly—and all the related worlds they—and I—inhabited. And though I didn’t know it at the time, they were to make all the difference.

One of the most important aspects of writing a literature thesis, I think, is choosing a text (or texts, or author) that you can live with for a very long time—live with, read and re-read and never tire of and still find something new in it to exclaim over and ponder and then, at the end, to come out of the experience loving it as much, if not as more than you did on the very first day. The more time I spent with Diana’s books—I was also working on The Time of the Ghost and A Tale of Time City, trying to find an elusive thread between temporality in those books and Chrestomanci’s related worlds—the more time I wanted to spend, not just in Diana’s books, but in children’s books generally, including what we were only then just starting to call ‘YA’, absorbing them into my being, understanding them and the place they have in the world, and then bringing them back to the ones for whom they were intended.

Of all four of the Chrestomanci books then written (this is a good decade or more before Conrad’s Fate and The Pinhoe Egg) that I was hoping to include in my thesis**, Charmed Life in the one I most clearly remember reading over and over again. In many ways, and despite the importance of The Magicians of Caprona for me personally, and no matter how much I love other DWJ books—The Time of the Ghost, Howl’s Moving Castle, Fire and Hemlock, that Chinese puzzle of a novel—I think if I had to choose a favourite Diana Wynne Jones book, then Charmed Life is it. It’s the one book I remember returning to over and over as I tried—and ultimately failed—to write that thesis the first time. It’s a book that now, if I pick it up, I can open at almost any page and find the words sing out to me as familiarly as my own voice.

Everything you need to know about Charmed Life, and everything that will make you want to keep reading, is contained in its opening paragraph:

    Cat Chant admired his elder sister Gwendolen. She was a witch. He admired her and he clung to her. Great changes came about in their lives and left him no one else to cling to.

Then comes the Saucy Nancy disaster, the loss of Cat and Gwendolen’s parents, and the first of those many ‘great changes’ that come about.

You don’t need me to recap the story—three pages in, we know that Gwendolen is a force to be reckoned with, potentially dangerous and without a shred of kindness in her.

But if you have by chance forgotten, it turns out that Gwendolen is not, after all, much of a witch, but she’s smart and venal enough to have figured out that Cat is in fact an incredibly powerful nine-lived Enchanter, and she’s been sucking the magic out of him his whole life. She may indeed be the most purely, and deliciously, evil character in all of children’s literature—largely because she is still a child herself. Bad seed, indeed.

It’s testament to Diana’s powers as a writer that we see all this through Cat’s eyes—he is the closely focalised third person narrative subject of the book, to go all thesis-y on you for a moment—but Cat doesn’t know it, doesn’t feel it, doesn’t understand it, until the final chapter of the novel. He’s the perfect, and perfectly drawn,  naïve child protagonist, and Charmed Life is as an perfect example of how third person protagonist-focalised narrative can be as unreliable as any common or garden unreliable first person narration you can think of. Cat doesn’t get what’s happened to him—who he is, who Gwendolen is, what the implications of all of that are—almost until the very last page of the novel.

And if you’ve forgotten the last page of the novel, just take a half hour and go and read the final two chapters. You might have forgotten some of the minor characters, and incidents, but don’t worry—you’ll be surprised how easily they come back to you. The final two chapters are set in the forbidden, magical garden outside of Chrestomanci Castle. Cat and Janet, the girl Gwendolen has displaced from a related world who everyone except Cat appears to think is actually Gwendolen (you understand—you’ve read it) have gone to the garden in a last desperate effort to return Janet to her own world—and for Cat to escape his miserable life and go with her. They’ve stolen dragon’s blood—Cat’s most daring and dangerous act—which will open the gates between worlds. It takes them ages to even enter this forbidden space—eventually, they have to stop looking directly at the place they’re aiming to be and come at it at a kind of an angle: “Try keeping it in the corner of your eye and not going straight to it,” said Cat. And when they do finally make their way in, the garden seems to spin and turn around them, through time and the seasons and space itself, as they move towards the gates at the centre of the garden, where Cat casts the dragon’s blood and the final battle (and yes, I use that phrase deliberately) begins, and eventually, ends.

Of all the chapters of Charmed Life, the last two were the two I spent the most time going over and over, reading and re-reading when I was writing that first attempt at a Master’s thesis. And every time I found something different, something new, something surprising, something that made me understand this story in a whole other, deeper, more exciting way than the last time I read it.

I’ve already alluded to one of the books that this final chapter has resonance with—The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, of course. There’s the sacrificial stone and plenty of Christian allegory lurking around (when I put this to Diana in the interview I did with her in 1993, she exclaimed, Dammit! I’m turning into CS Lewis!). It’s rich with allusion and allegory—bread and butter for a youthful wannabe academic—but as I return to re-read the chapters now, I find it’s the mastery of the writing that impresses me.

Diana’s writing is a bit like Cat and Janet’s journey to, and through, the magical garden. You can’t always come at it front-on—not if you want to really get to it, and get the most out of it. It’s not that her stories are inaccessible—though some are more opaque than others, and plenty of nervous adults have thought them too difficult for children. But they’re not easy, either. As Sharyn says, you have to have your brain turned on when you read Diana’s books.

I think what I’m trying to get at is that Diana deals in her work with the unexpected—and so too is her writing frequently unexpected, and all the more thrilling for it. How many times have you read a story by Diana and thought you knew what was coming next, only to have your expectations completely overturned—and yet been delighted by the utter rightness of her narrative choices? How often have you found yourself laughing aloud with delight and surprise at a sentence that you never saw coming? (And never ever let us forget how just completely funny Diana’s stories are, even when they are as serious as murder.) Here’s one of my favourites, again from Charmed Life. It’s from Chapter 14, when Janet and Cat have broken into Mr Saunders’ rooms to steal the dragon blood, and discovered that the mummified baby dragon is anything but… This is after they’ve made friends, more or less, with the creature, said goodbye and leave the very much alive dragon looking “like a dog whose master has gone for a walk without it”:

    “I think it’s bored,” said Cat when he had shut the door.
“It’s a shame! It’s only a baby,” said Janet. She stopped on the first turn of the stair. “Let’s go back and take it for a walk. It was sweet!”
Cat was sure that if Janet did any such thing, she would come to herself to find the dragon browsing on her legs.

I’ve never forgotten that phrase—browsing on her legs. How perfect, and yet how perfectly unexpected.

How often, for that matter, has a DWJ character surprised you—surprised themselves, indeed, but surprised you, the reader, and who they turned out to be. Take Gwendolen, for instance. We know, as I’ve already noted, that she’s a bad’un from the start—but who would have predicted, in a children’s fantasy novel that is in so many respects so quintessentially English, that this wicked child would turn out, in fact, to be a sociopath who is completely willing to kill her own brother not once, but nine times over. (She’s already killed her parents, of course.) Who would expect that? And who would dare write it?

Anyone who comes to a novel by Diana Wynne Jones thinking they’re knowing what they’re getting on any level is in for trouble. She destroys the arrogance of the good reader, by being better. Better at story, and better at knowing people and what they are capable of—their capacity for casual wickedness and stupidity as well as their capacity for great love, kindness, forgiveness and intelligence. Diana didn’t suffer fools, not gladly, not at all, and neither do her books.

It’s not just that Gwendolen is allowed to be fully and completely evil—and get away with it. (Get, indeed, rewarded for it—she goes back to the related world where she’s a liveried queen, carried about by servants, or more likely slaves, bestowing largesse and punishment with equal arbitrary callousness.) No, it’s the end to Cat’s story that has always fascinated me.

Cat has gone almost the entire novel without having the first clue that he is one of, if not the most powerful enchanter in the world. Worlds. You know what I mean. He finds out in the very final chapter of the book, when he and Chrestomanci have been captured by the pack of rebellious witches and warlocks, determined to destroy them so they can use their magic untramelled, to be as wicked as [they] want. It’s a crisis of unimaginable magnitude, and on Chrestomanci’s urging, Cat at last feels his magic—the magic he was looking for head-on his whole life, expecting it not to be there (Try keeping it in the corner of your eye and not going straight to it)—and there it is. It’s a stand-up-and-cheer moment; he releases himself and Chrestomanci, the forces of good from Chrestomanci Castle are summoned, and the battle is on—and won.

But in all the action, Cat doesn’t get a minute to draw breath and absorb this new truth about himself. The last we see of him, he’s sitting on the grass, everyone has been enjoying the Blytonesque picnic that is, after all, the very English spoils of war, and the final conversation has been had that wraps up all the unanswered questions about who knew what when (with a nod to that other great English storyteller, Agatha Christie). And everyone else—with the possible exception of Janet—thinks everything is explained and fine and let’s go on to the next thing. But poor Cat—even in the very last sentence of the book, Cat is almost in tears—still a little lonely and fearful—and not understanding very much at all, really, about himself and what he’s just discovered and what his life is going to be like from now on.

Really, what happens, is that Cat’s story only begins at the end of the novel.

And I think that’s true of so many of the truly great children’s books.

The great children’s novels gets the child through those high and wild narrative seas, fraught with danger and fear, and delivers them safely, but on some equally wild and rocky shores, safe but uncertain, hopeful but going into the unknown. In the great children’s novels, there is supper waiting for them (and it was still hot), but it’s not the end of the journey, as it was for Sendak’s (much younger) Max. The heroes of the great children’s books end their journey at the start of the new—adolescence looming, with all its terrifying promise of adulthood beyond. For the lucky ones, there are still adults there who will help them through; there’s family, if not the one they were born into, and friends, including siblings, whether real or Related…. The great children’s novels get the protagonist to enough knowledge of themselves and to the point where they are just equipped enough to embark on the truly wonderful and difficult journey to eventually separate from family.

This where we leave Cat—a long way from adolescence, much less adulthood, but at the first step of that journey. This is where Diana’s great friend Neil Gaiman left Bod at the end of The Graveyard Book. Harriet M. Welsch. Matilda. Mary Lennox. The children of Narnia. Skellig‘s Michael. Tom, from the Midnight Garden.There must be many more.**

In all honesty, I’d never really thought this about children’s books (In my end is my beginning) before I started writing this post, and it’s a thesis I’m going to have to think about and test more over the weeks and months to come. Let me know what you think. Am I right, or did I just make it up?

Huh. See what Diana did there? She made me turn my brain on.

So whether or not I’m right about this, this I know I am right about: Charmed Life is a perfect children’s novel. I don’t think it’s a difficult book—it’s in some respects no more difficult than the succession of great 20th century children’s novels that come before it, none of which may be much read by the average reader, but are still cherished by what Farah Mendelsohn calls The Reading Child*** today as much as they ever where—but it does repay a thoughtful and intelligent reader. It is completely deserving of classic status, and is as simultaneously typical and marvellously ground-breaking an example of the great children’s novel as you could hope to find.

I never did finish my thesis on Diana’s books. I kept working, kept trying to configure my brain to understand at the level I wanted to, and I was getting there… and then that young, short marriage ended and I gave in and filed away those rough and meagre chapter drafts and I concentrated for a while on surviving getting up every morning, and then on making that life in children’s books that, frankly, has given me more joy and satisfaction than I could ever have imagined.

I did eventually finish my thesis, and graduated with my Masters, but it was a different writer and a different—although, dare I say it, related topic. I never thoroughly clarified my ideas about Diana’s books; in all honesty, I think I was too young! I was really interested in the question of the child at the age of 12 finding out about his or her hitherto unknown magical abilities. I was interested in time—as I mentioned, I was also trying to include Time of the Ghost and A Tale of Time City in the thesis—and I think now I was confusing the nature of thee related worlds in the Chrestomanci books with my lifelong passion for time travel stories. I can see now that they were two mostly different areas of consideration—and now I’m properly grown up, one day maybe I’ll go back to both of them, separately or maybe even find what that elusive thread of time that I thought was running through all the books was, or if it was there at all…

If you read the full transcript of my interview with Diana, you’ll see many traces of the areas I was interested in then. I still re-read that interview and am amazed and astonished by how generous she was, with her time, her thoughts and her imaginings. How lucky I was to have met her. How very much I miss knowing she is there.

I confess that when I started out to write this post, I thought that it would be much more personal—a reminiscence of the time I actually met Diana, when she was here in Australia. That was a very precious experience for me, as was the occasional correspondence I had with her in the year or two after her trip here, and then, so sadly, in the months before her death. But I can’t claim an unusual personal relationship at all (although I often wonder if she did ever wear the marcasite dragon I sent her to thank her for the interview…) and really, in the end, as for most of us, my true relationship with her is through her books. And that’s about as personal as it gets—and I mean that very sincerely.

Thanks again, Diana, for the books, and for this life. You will never know how far your legacy extends. Vale.

_______________________________

* (See that bit of loose wall cladding in the rooftop flat? That’s where Lexie, our landlady, reefed it away to toss the clothes her drug-addicted son was wearing the day he held up the TAB, to hide them when the police arrived to arrest him. They’re probably still there, mouldering away, although Lexie is long gone, alas, struck down by a car; Rommel also long since given over to the kindly ministrations of the vet after years of not being disciplined properly led him, an otherwise doleful and kindly creature, to bite a passer-by. I don’t know what happened to David, he of the hidden clothing, but he was a good man, all in all, and well-recovered from his demons when I met him, so I hope all is well with him.)

** (And for those of you who know the classic Australian children’s novel Seven Little Australians, this is why Judy had to die at the end of that novel—because at that time and place and society, there was no way that particular child could separate from her family and be who she truly was meant to be.)

*** Diana Wynne Jones: Children’s Literature and the Fantastic Tradition. Farah Mendlesohn, Routledge, New York, 2005