Grandpa

When you write, what do you consider 'pure’ or 'authentic’ about your cultural background (including 'Aussie’ culture, mixed heritage, hybrid backgrounds etc.) That need explanation?

How do you think ‘cultural contamination’ has informed your writing practice? 

This piece is a look at my grandpa and how he has shaped my cultural background. A rough draft as it is, it's at 988 words a bit over the 500 - 800-word count. 

My grandpa is a weird guy, he's honestly a trooper I tell you. Every year he'll tell us it's his last year with us that he’ll die sometime this year, but each year he comes back and he says the same thing. He'll tell random people his life story, anyone who'll listen to him really. But he's strong on tradition and I think that's where I get it from, he's quite Australian, as Australian you can get. Of course, he's not dressed up head to toe in gear of the flag or the fact that he's a white Australian (so maybe not as Australian). But my cultural background is my grandpa, he has influenced a lot of my feelings on Australia as a kid. 

He lives in Tatura which is a good 2 hrs and 15 min drive from the CBD. So it's very much a country town, the closest train station is Shepparton, which you still have to catch a bus to if you want to go there to/from the city. Every couple of months I would visit the home my father lived in for all of his life, even sleep in the same bed that he did as a kid when the visits would turn into sleepovers. My grandpa is a kind man but very confusing I might add, he mentions that I’m related to Queen Elizabeth the second down the line, that a Taylor gave Queen Victoria her Bible, and that I’m Australian, English, Irish, Scottish, French and German. All countries with that ancestors that equals one thing, I’m white. 

I would often find him gardening, he tends to his plants a lot, the house itself I’ve been so often I can visualise it in my head, there’s a driveway with a gate, outside the house is a paper tree (after Googling I find out that the tree is called Melaleuca quinquenervia, I call it the paper tree because the bark it sheds resembles parchment), the front yard is quite large, lots of flowers of the like, walking up the pavement you can go two ways, through the front or the back, if you go through the front you walk up some steps and open the door to a hallway, to your right through the stained glass doors is the living, filled with a piano (I think now there’s no piano), millions of photos of their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren plastered on the walls, a heater, two chairs and a couch with thousands of pillows, a VCR player, a DVD player and a TV. Staying in the hallway to the right is my grandparent's bedroom, photos of their grandchildren on the vanity, including a photo of me from one Christmas where I met Santa. Walking up the hallway to the left is my Aunt Kerry and Heather’s old bedroom, Kerry lived in the house until her 40s, that’s when she got married. 

Taking one more step is the antithesis of the house, I can remember feeling the plastic of the protective mat against the carpet floor. Dad and Uncle Mickey’s (George Jr.) bedroom, it became the spare where a lot of the board games and puzzles held, and the computer with Windows 95 on it and the only game I played a Lego game (might be LegoLand). Back into the hallway and if you’re looking dead-on with the kitchen, to your left is the bathroom, taking a step is the pantry, taking another step is the laundry, toilet and backyard, another step are more pantry cupboards and another step you find yourself in the kitchen and dining room, there’s a door that leads to the living room. 

Walking outside is where a majority of my childhood was spent, there’s a veranda area, where I banged my knee against the back door and gained the scar on my right knee, they have a large greenhouse I think was built in my late childhood to early teens, and a large backyard, a little area for the roses and a seat and there was a swingset that my cousins Sarah, Alison and my sister, Rhiannon, and I would play on whenever we were together. There are two sheds (which leads to the driveway), many old things were found in there, even an old car of grandpa’s. 

The life my grandpa lived, and his home feels pure and authentic to me. He wanted to serve his country during WWII but couldn’t due to a toe injury, his brothers were able to fight as well and they both made it back but died before I was born, he’s lived in the same house for over 50 years now. I’ve taken his sense of tradition, his sense of nationhood and his sense of self - him and I are too alike, both stubborn and argumentative, I remember there was one time I, along with my whole family, found ourselves in an argument with him about ‘sampling grapes’ from the food stores. 

I don’t think there’s anything in my background that needs to be explained, I’m a white Anglo-Saxon Australian, my mother is Australian born, my father is Australian born, my step mum is Australian born, my maternal grandparents are English born, my paternal grandparents are Australian born. I come from a majority of white ancestry, (at least as I know of, I don’t doubt there’s a small percentage of Australian Aboriginal, Asian, African, etc.) but for the most part, I’m white. 

However, if I was to introduce someone to my family, I would need to explain my grandpa. George Sr. Taylor. The man who can never die, the one who helped me shape my views of religion, who might not agree with my sexuality and gender, but he was the one who calmed me down when I had a fight with my grandma on the validity of where my dad met my stepmum. He is what is pure and authentic about my background.