Jemima was going to be six. Mia talks about what they will do. Freddie pretty much leaves it up to Mia and says she will be there. Mia knows she will either be very helpful or very drunk.  

Freddie takes Jemima out in the car with the dogs – they let Mika out at the top of the gorge road and she runs effortlessly alongside the car. When they get to the beach Mika runs after the seagulls and circles back for sticks. Snow walks slowly but she seems happy to be out – she sniffs the air and barks to Mika and the waves.  Jemima scribes her name with her stick and says she is wondering if her father will send her a birthday card. 

Freddie knows about Bruce from the time she broke into his house and stole back Mias clothes and sewing machine and photo albums. She knows he was young like Mia when they met and that he was just as unable to create a family life he’d never known . But he was 17 and with two years up on Mia she’d trusted him to pay the bills and be there and when he wasn’t…. 

When they get back to the house Mia is struggling with the kindling – they are both bad at it. She has made macaroni cheese and Jemima’s brother Dan is already sitting at the table with a bowl full. Freddie has a half hearted attempt at splitting the wood while she tells Mia about the birthday wish.

After the kids are in bed they get talking again. Mia supposes that Jemima got thinking about her Dad because of the kids at school. Freddie says it must be something the teacher said because she hasn’t seen any Dads down there. They laugh but then they talk about it some more – would it be so bad to send Jay a card from him? 

Mia says: She might get the idea he could love her.

Freddie says: Well maybe he does?

Mia says: What I mean is – that he might help her, that she could trust him, she has to expect that she looks after herself. 

Freddie wonders why Mia let Jemima believe in Santa if she’s not so keen for her to believe in her father.  

On Jemima’s birthday she wakes Freddie to say that her dog is doing a poo in the lounge. Freddie strides in yelling but finds in fact she is having her puppies. Freddie once saw her friend having a baby in hospital – all nurses and monitors and drugs and yelling.  Snow looks surprised as, paws first, a perfectly formed diver arcs from her body.

The pup is still encased in its sack and Freddie remembers the one book she read after discovering Grant Whetton’s German short haired pointer had gotten in to her bitch. She moves it to Snows muzzle and the dog’s instincts take over as soon as she smells her baby. She is cleaning her first born when the second arrives but when she is done she turns to the next and then the next and her strong tongue brings each to the final stages of life.  

Mia makes tea and provides an old blanket for the apple box which they shift the dog and eight puppies into half an hour later. Freddie scrubs the carpet and rings the pound to see if they know if eight pups will be OK for the dog to manage.  

An hour later they leave to blow up balloons at the community centre. Kids and Mums start to arrive a bit later. Grant Whetton comes in with his neighbours Tina and Mark and their daughter Hannah. A huge parcel of fish and chips takes centre stage before the cake and then a treasure hunt.

Jemima opens her presents and comes across an envelope with $5 in it and a note: Happy Birthday my beautiful daughter, Bruce.  

Jemima says: Who is Bruce?

Mia says: Bruce is your Dad.  

Jemima momentarily strokes the note; she puts the money in her pocket and then moves on to the next present. Mia looks over at Freddie and Freddie mumbles that she’s off to the pub now. Grant falls in to step with her as she starts down the road.  

“Reckon you owe me one of those dogs since my Chester is the father Fred.”

Freddie says she reckons her owes her a bundle since she’s probably wasted her dogs best litter on a bird dog. Being a father is more than putting it in there mate – its making the nest and keeping them safe.  If I get anything out of those dogs its got nothing to do with you. But you can shout me a few beers I reckon. 

Down at the Cross they rack up the balls and Freddie recalls Grant has a child somewhere.   

Every cohort has something that makes them unique and sets their experience apart from people who came before them. For my generation it was the experience of unemployment. Overnight the idea that women could do anything, that you could choose a career, that you could afford to leave home – these ideas for one in four of us became problematic because we were unemployed before we’d ever been properly employed.

What did it do to New Zealand? Whole towns shut down as businesses folded. Banks left places where there was nobody to lend to and the only job of tellers was handing out cash on tuesdays and thursdays to people on the dole and the dbp.

There was a stigma about being unemployed. It worked well. Politicians kept up a steady rhetoric about poeple needing to prove they were looking for work. New Zealand had suddenly become a place with backsliders and bludgers. If you had a job it was an easy line to believe – your hard earned tax dollars were going on young people more interested in surfing and smoking and sitting out.

That was the 90s. High interest rates and share market crashes, divorces and devolution, employment contracts act and work schemes. The trickle down effect they told us meant eventually we’d all feel good from Rogernomics. But very few kiwis did.

My stories are about that time. Stuff I saw and stuff I imagined.

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