Over the Hill and Up the Wall

By Todd Alexander

A heart-warming journey with parents of a certain age and a son who thinks he knows best

'A bit like David Sedaris without the tragedy, this is a book that will bring a smile of recognition to anyone with ageing elders, and hopefully to the elders themselves' Fiona Capp, Sydney Morning Herald

'Warm, witty, honest. With a healthy serving of humour, Todd Alexander has written a marvellous, touching and insightful book. You'll laugh, cry and hope your own kids love you this much. I'll be more patient with my parents after reading this' Better Reading

'Warm, witty and insightful ... Alexander has exquisitely depicted the experience of dealing with ageing parents' The Australian

'Funny, irreverent and very true to life' Blue Wolf Reviews

Of course, we love our parents. Even if they do so many things that drive us bonkers.

Like how a mother - for argument's sake, let's say mine - taps her fingernails on the car window whenever she sees a place of interest (seven taps for a regular haunt, up to twenty for somewhere fascinating). Or the way a father - let's call him Dad - practises deafness but can miraculously hear a suggestion of no ham at Christmas over the roar of cricket commentary. It might be the way your mum works herself into a tizz over a call from Azerbaijan one week and Nigeria the next. Or how your dad has an answer to everything (despite his information being forty years out of date) and 'a guy' for all fixes (if only he could find his Rolodex).

When do we stop being our parents' child and become their parent? After all, they did pretty well on their own for decades - why do they need our intervention now? And that tendency for them to drive us up the wall ... could it be because we are entering middle age and starting to recognise some of those traits in ourselves?

Over the Hill and Up the Wall is an affectionate, funny look at the frictions of taking a more active role in our elders' lives. It's a nod to every child who has waited three hours for a parent to fasten their seatbelt, and every parent whose child assumes they can't count to twenty. And, if your parents are just hitting middle age, it may well be a warning of things to come!

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
• Release date: Mar 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9781460715031

Todd Alexander

If he's not kissing his pig or brushing his goats, you'll generally find Todd at the computer writing, on the mower thinking, in the kitchen experimenting or in the foetal position trying to solve his parents' latest technological drama. Todd's bestselling comedic memoir, Thirty Thousand Bottles of Wine and a Pig Called Helga (2019) was longlisted for three awards for best non-fiction book of the year. It was followed in 2021 by another comedy, You've Got to be Kidding. His short story, 'The Great Easter Let Down' was longlisted for the Newcastle Short Story Award in 2021. Todd has also written two novels and feature stories for Nourish magazine and The Guardian. He lives in the Hunter Valley with his partner Jeff where they rescue farm animals and renovate properties.

Book preview

Dedication

This book is dedicated to the memory of the irreplaceable LD.

It’s also for Mum and Dad . . .

who may bear a passing resemblance

to the mum and dad on the following pages.

Contents

Dedication

One              Driving

Two              Yelling

Three            International Playboys

Four             The Devil’s Workshop

Five              Carry On, Doctor

Six                Site Supervisors

Seven           Two Vs or Not Two Vs

Eight             A Merry Little Christmas

Nine              Metal Detectors and Elephant Shackles

Ten                Rage against the Machine(s)

Eleven           Aside Salad

Twelve          Don’t Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before

Thirteen        More than Just Mum and Dad

Epilogue       Apples | Trees

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Copyright

Attention Twilight Waters Residents:

We invite you to attend the nuptials of our two oldest residents, 97-year-old Dulcie Heatherton and 102-year-old Albert Zolski, today at 10am in the Beverley Whitstock Memorial Hall.

Alcohol-free fruitcake will be served promptly at 10.05am.

We wish Dulcie and Albert a long and happy union.

Thank You,

Management

ONE

Driving

I’ve been sitting in a parked car in the driveway for what feels like six days and rivulets of sweat are streaming uncomfortably down my back. The dash says it’s thirty-eight degrees outside and, as I’m now swimming in a puddle of my own perspiration, I think it’s a fairly safe bet that inside the car it’s fifty-plus. I chose not to start the car to turn on the air-conditioning because I worried this would make my parents feel rushed and, once again, I find myself regretting the decision.

The numerous groans and grunts of my mum, as she heaves herself into the car while clutching desperately onto the back of the passenger seat, suggest she’s in a no-holds-barred wrestling match with Andre the Giant. Dad just throws himself into the front and hopes for the best. Going by the sounds he makes, you’d swear he’s had to fold his body into quarters.

Like it is for so many of our elders, for Mum and Dad, getting into cars the normal way just isn’t possible. No matter how many times we might point out the handles invented to help people get into such ‘impossible’ vehicles, they remain invisible to my parents.

Mum turns white at the mere thought of getting into a car ‘twenty feet off the ground’. Her preferred tactic is to climb in headfirst towards the rear, then struggle to turn her whole body around to face the conventional direction. This often means her matronly bum is shoved awkwardly into the face of whichever unfortunate soul has drawn the short straw of sitting next to her. Usually my long-suffering partner, Jeff.

Meanwhile, for those like my dad, the seatbelt is the world’s trickiest invention. After settling himself into the front seat, Dad takes another twelve minutes to crack that mysterious code and plug the belt in. Even though sweat continues to pour down my face as we wait in the driveway, I refuse to give him the satisfaction of seeing me booked for driving with an unbelted passenger. I would never hear the end of it, despite the fact that, of course, it would’ve been his fault.

Dad’s belt locks up and, after twenty-five repeated attempts to rip it out of its holster by sheer force, it still refuses to yield. Why. Yank. Won’t. Yank. This. Yank. Bloody. Yank. Belt. Yank. Come? Yank. Got him!

Meanwhile in the back, the click click click of Mum trying to fasten her own belt is met – once Dad is safely secured – with sly comments from him because he certainly didn’t take that long, and never would. ‘Hang on, Todd, wait for Mum!’

With all our attention now focused on Mum, her stress levels rise and the challenge becomes insurmountable.

‘You got it yet, Nina?’ He teases her further by using her mother’s name. It is a truth universally acknowledged that an ageing woman in possession of a good ego must not be in wont of comparisons to her mother.

‘Oh shut up, darl! You took longer than me.’

‘Eh?’

‘YOU TOOK LONGER THAN ME!’ Mum screams, though not because she’s angry.

‘Bulls!’

‘You did, darl!’

‘Did I? Did I, darl?’

‘If you two keep going,’ I say, cutting their argument short, ‘there’ll be no road trip for either of you! It’ll be straight to Twilight Waters if you aren’t careful!’

For years, I’ve been threatening to pack my parents up and house them in an aged care facility. In our family, we call it Twilight Waters, an imaginary home. I don’t think I could ever follow through on my threat but I’ve also been known to insist that Mum get a one-way ticket to live with my brother Glen and his husband, James, in Canada. Dad, on the other hand, will move into the granny flat behind the Central Coast holiday home of my eldest brother Grant and his wife, Bec. Oh yes, I have it all very carefully planned out.

Like many of us, I don’t recall the exact moment I stopped being my parents’ child and began the role of parent to my more vulnerable mum and dad. I suppose it’s been a gradual role reversal, not some ‘wake up one morning in different bodies’ Hollywood switch movie. I’m the youngest of their three sons so I always assumed my brothers would step forward and take on parental management. But then, I hadn’t factored in Grant’s expertly feigned ‘bankrupt emotional intelligence’ or Glen chasing true love and running off to Canada. It’s as though he got out his ruler and measured the furthest point on the map from where Mum and Dad call home.

‘Toronto!’ I imagine him proclaiming triumphantly. ‘That ought to do it!’ Just in case, he then chose to live two hours north of the city in some rural backwater that, in winter, can only be accessed by treacherous, icy roads.

* * *

Who would have thought that it’d be the seatbelt challenge that would push me over the edge? The event reaches fever pitch when it appears that, today, Mum will remain entirely incapable of strapping herself in.

Despite my best efforts to remain calm at all times, I snap. ‘Oh, for goodness sake, how hard is it to plug in a seatbelt? Haven’t you had about fifty years of practice?’ I say, channelling an impatient primary school teacher.

‘Toddy, the buckle’s missing . . .’ Mum sheepishly pipes up.

I open my door, blood boiling, and stamp around to Mum’s side of the car, but then I suddenly realise I’ve accidentally left the buckle tucked under the seat when I laid it down to transport the latest goat from an animal shelter to our farm.

‘Why didn’t you tell me that twenty-three minutes ago?’ I mutter a few indecipherables under my breath. But let’s face it people, the scores are on the board and it’s Mum 1, Todd 0.

Five minutes later, I’ve made both Jeff and Mum exit the vehicle, lowered the back seat, retrieved the clasp from deep inside the crevice and got Mum set up properly. It would probably be easier if they invented seniors’ safety seats and made it my responsibility to buckle them in nice and tight.

Taking deep breaths, I walk back to the driver’s seat and gracefully lower myself in.

Bodies contorted into car seats? Check.

Seat belts miraculously fastened? Check.

Could we actually be ready to go? My fingers are wrapped around the key, breathtakingly close to ignition (and air-conditioning!).

‘Wait! My water!’ Dad cries from the passenger seat. ‘Did you remember my water, darl?’ he asks Mum.

‘No, I didn’t, darl!’ Mum says incredulously, as though he’s just asked if she’s ever flown a jumbo jet.

Dad’s face crinkles. ‘I’ll be back in a sec,’ he says.

I wish, I almost say aloud. My fingers drum on the steering wheel involuntarily.

When your kids are young, they come attached to a whole plethora of add-ons like toys, a change of clothes, safety blankies, teddy bears and carefully prepared snacks for any drive longer than twenty minutes.

As my parents have aged, I’ve noticed there’s a similar vibe. Their anxiety levels rise if they forget anything deemed essential for travel.

No matter how brief the drive, Dad will not leave home without his bottle of water. For as far back as anyone in the family can recall, ancient plastic bottles have been used, topped up again and again. The original product stickers are long lost, but the label residue remains. Should you ever reach for a bottle of water from their fridge, your hand will be glued to it just like magic. As well as the obligatory bottle of water, Dad must also take a snack as if he’s expecting the drive to induce hunger pains. For Mum it’s her precious mints. My parents are so well known for these travel accessories that, like a rideshare driver who provides a charge port and cold drink, when they’re missing you can’t help feeling a little disappointed. Drove with Jude and Pete today and they failed to supply mints and water. Disappointing. Three stars.

* * *

To exit the vehicle, Dad rocks himself backward and forward repeatedly, gradually building up momentum, muttering along with the effort. A one, and a two, and a three, and a four . . . and he’s sliding down the car doorway then he’s up on his feet!

He shuffles, millimetre by millimetre, towards the front door, then struggles with the keys. The smallest key is for the screen door, but it would appear he’s never once let himself inside his own home and doesn’t know that. Flabbergasted, I finally twist the key in the ignition to relieve the three of us who remain in this sweltering box from some of the late-December heat. Dad casts a disapproving glance at me over his right shoulder. He is running his own race, with very specific rules that require him to never lift his feet off the ground, never discern housekeys by instinct and he is not to be hurried.

I am immediately calmed by a blast of cool air (and the lingering scent of goat fur).

‘Him and his water,’ Mum says. ‘Honestly, sometimes . . .’

‘Well, you should have brought his water, shouldn’t you? Shouldn’t you, darl?’ I counter.

‘I’ll give him frigging water!’

‘You could have brought me a flask of tea, actually, Jude,’ Jeff helpfully suggests from beside her.

‘And a five-course picnic for everyone,’ Mum says, and throws in a little sigh.

I want to give the whole game away that this trip isn’t exactly what they’ve been told it is, if for no other reason than to reassure them these ‘necessities’ won’t be required, but despite my rising frustration, there wouldn’t be any fun in that.

Finally, the sound of Dad’s shoe-shuffle breaks through the noise of the car engine and air-conditioning. He opens the rear door, hands Mum back the house keys, then reaches over to place the water in the cupholder in the front (because he couldn’t possibly fold his body in quarters whilst simultaneously holding a plastic bottle). Mum’s expression as he leans over her suggests she considers the experience on par with being stuck to a spinning wheel and having a blindfolded magician throw very sharp knives at her.

Dad’s water bottle will remain untouched for the rest of the journey.

Finally, plonked back down in his front seat, Dad blurts out in panic, ‘My sandwich!’

My hand had been hovering excitedly over the gear shift but I let it drop back down to my knee.

‘Darl, did you pack my sandwich?’ He asks desperately.

‘I’ll get it!’ Jeff interjects from the back seat, and he’s out of the car with Mum’s house keys, running as fast as his feet can carry him to their front door.

Jeff’s decision to step in saves my parents, both of whom are out of breath and gasping for air. They have, after all, achieved the stupendous dual feats of getting into their seats and plugging in their seat belts. Poor Dad sounds like he’s had to run a marathon. I suppose he has: he’s achieved the miracle twice in as many hours.

‘The news!’ Dad cries out excitedly between gulps for air.

I turn the radio on and watch Dad struggle with the buttons rather than asking me to tune in to his favourite station for him. He touches the screen a number of times and, by luck, gets to AM, then uncannily uses the manual tuner to find the station he’s looking for. Or nearly finds it. He chooses to stay 0.1 hertz off the station so mostly all we can hear is static. It has the overall effect of a tiny fairy inside your head scraping your ear drums with very coarse sandpaper. Knowing the pre-set stations, I push 3 on the screen and the static immediately disappears.

Dad looks utterly amazed. ‘How did you do that, Skeet?’ he asks, using a nickname I’ve had since I was a baby. Skeet is the shortened version of Amos-Quito. I think Amos is what he wanted to name me but, as usual, Mum won out.

‘Magic, Dad,’ I say as Jeff returns, devon-and-tomato-sauce sandwich in hand.

Dad’s now got his water, his news bulletin and his sandwich (which has hopefully been cut into triangles for him, or there’ll be hell to pay), the gear stick is in reverse and we are moving!

‘Anyone want a mint?’ Mum offers before we’re even out of the driveway. Unlike her husband, she has remembered to bring her safety blankie with her this time: an old plastic beetroot container she’s refilled with mints countless times. Aside from its initial rinse, this container has never been cleaned or changed. It dates back to the 1970s, which I know for a fact because I’ve had it carbon dated.

Mum doesn’t offer the tasty, chewy Minties or Mentos that are universally loved, but rather some form of protomint the size and texture of pool chlorine tablets, of a brand she was loyal to for years until Aldi made exactly the same kind of product . . . only twelve cents cheaper.

Jeff happily accepts one – he’s the only person on the planet who likes Mum’s mints – but given it now feels like a hundred thousand years since I ate breakfast, I’m sorely tempted myself.

As the eleven o’clock news finishes up with a weather forecast, I reach to turn it off.

‘Not yet!’ Dad casually brushes my hand aside.

He lets it go for several minutes past the end of the news, so we get to sit through forty-seven ads for furniture and appliances. In his own car, Dad would prefer even the tinny, static-laced radio over the silence that often accompanies one of our road trips together – which is fine for him, since he adeptly employs selective deafness.

In summer he’ll request a regular check of the scores, usually cricket. I may as well be ten again, trapped in the back of the car in forty-degree heat with both of my brothers’ bare legs sticking to mine like a weird skin Velcro, Mum’s hand wildly slapping over the back at random as she tells us to ‘cut the rot’, her term for any sibling disagreement. Mum’s rogue hand-slaps were feared more than Dad’s empty threats of ‘If I pull over, you’ll know it’ or his insistence that he would ‘Do the chewy’ if we kept it up.

We cruise along the street and, as the car slowly picks up speed, it is filled with a dull thumping sound.

‘Has someone got a window down?’ Dad snaps. ‘That’s killing my ears!’

Jeff dutifully closes his window without a word. Dad might be immune to radio static at full volume but the sound of fresh air makes his ears bleed. (Though, I have to concede, it was bothering me too. If there’s anything that gives my noggin a floggin’ more than a solitary open window in an otherwise closed car, I’m yet to come across it.)

‘Where are we going again?’ Dad asks.

I usually make the plans with Mum and then hope they get accurately relayed to Dad. I’m sure we’ve already been through the whole point of this little adventure, but I decide to give him the benefit of the doubt.

‘Gloucester,’ I say, hoping to trigger some recently buried memory in his brain.

‘Where did you say?’

Several months previously, we’d had Mum and Dad over to our place to break the news to them that we would be selling up and moving. Ever since then, we’d been informing them of potential properties we’d seen online to include them in the process and alleviate any of their concerns that we were going to move too far away from them.

About nine years back, Jeff and I uprooted ourselves from our inner-city lifestyles and did what could charitably be called a ‘tree change’ – if by ‘tree change’ you mean selling our two-hundred square metre inner-city terrace to buy a hundred acres in the Hunter Valley – and learned, among other things: that electric mowers aren’t really efficient enough to cut a grassy area the size of the Vatican; that 12,500 high-maintenance grapevines make around 30,000 bottles of wine . . . every single year; and that opening tourist accommodation involves a lot of cleaning toilets and changing soiled sheets.

Our tree change did also result in the purchase of my beloved pig Helga and the rescue of several goats and other animals; the creation of our award-winning wines when our original plan had been to simply bulldoze the entire crop; the production of our own olive oil (easily the best tasting oil I’d ever tried); and not to mention our successful accommodation business that had lately been running at around 95 per cent occupancy. But over the past year or so, the challenges of drought, bushfire, failed crops, falling wine prices, near bankruptcy and the devastating impact of Covid on tourism had all conspired to make us feel that, as we’d accomplished our dream well before the ten-year goal, perhaps it was time to start a new, less stressful adventure – particularly as there was apparently an opportunity for financial freedom with the property’s sale in the lava-hot post-Covid rural property market.

‘So . . .’ I said to Mum and Dad over a cup of tea that day, while we looked out over our beautiful vineyard. ‘Cain, our real estate agent, called and advised we could expect almost double what we thought our property was worth!’

After eight years of running Block Eight, Cain’s call had surprised us. Until then, we’d toyed with the idea of selling but financially it just wouldn’t have worked for us. This surge in the property market Cain identified had the potential to set up Jeff and me for the rest of our lives. Besides, we couldn’t deny we were just a little tired of being chambermaids. Well, I certainly was. Jeff has somewhat more patience for menial labour.

I wasn’t expecting Mum and Dad to metaphorically break open the bubbly when I broke the news to them that day. Perhaps it hadn’t been the best idea to tell them while overlooking the vines they’d backbreakingly helped prune.

When you step into your parents’ very settled lives and convince them to sell their home of twenty-five years to move closer to you so you can help ‘look after them’ and then, three years after they make the momentous move, tell them you’re moving . . . well, I can understand why it might have been difficult for them not to take our news personally.

But with the successful sale a few months later, Jeff and I had slowly eased them into the idea while we waited for settlement to happen.

I answer Dad’s question in the car. ‘A town called Gloucester, it’s —’

‘I won’t be moving,’ Mum says firmly, not for the first time. ‘Gloucester is hours away!’ she reiterates, as if to remind Dad of their joint dismay at us leaving to live over eighty