Life Wasn’t Meant To Be Easy
but it’s not meant to be this bloody hard!
Randy Pulley asks, “Is life supposed to be comfortable?”
“Life is not meant to be easy,” Malcolm Fraser said in 1971 — a phrase that haunted him throughout his political life.
But Australia’s third-longest serving prime minister yesterday set the record straight. (The Age, August 24, 2003)
“I often said at the time, whether life is meant to be easy or not, for many people, many families, many kids it’s not,” he said.
But the whole quotation is rather different. It’s the old man in George Bernard Shaw’s (Back to) Methusaleh speaking and he says: ‘Life is not meant to be easy, my child, but take courage, for it can be delightful.’
Well, I’ve misremembered the whole quote because I thought it was Paul Keating who said it in the early nineties. I added, “but it’s not meant to be this bloody hard!” And I can’t remember why I said it at that particular time.
Life was hardest for us from June 1987. My husband got the flick from Flick because he was too good at his job. He had commercial customers who only wanted him doing their pest control not other servicemen. Flick didn’t like that.
Rowan was a couple of weeks old and I had already decided that I wasn’t going to go back teaching. He was my fifth child and I had gone back to work after having all of the others and I wanted to stay home and enjoy this one who was my miracle baby. I had several gynocological problems that I was told to forget having another baby and be happy with the four I had. So I resigned myself to teaching for the rest of my life, took out. a second mortgage and put in a beautiful, large, black pool so it could be used year round with no heating.
My three older kids were swimmers and could train without going to the school pool every morning. The pool wasn’t even finished when I found out I was pregnant. We started our own business with word of mouth advertising from friends and family. We had to sell our lovely 4 bedroom house (and pool) and downsize to a smaller house and pay out both mortgages.
We now owned our house and van outright but we could get no financial help because we had started our own business, even though some weeks we earned less than $100. That’s what you get for being truthful. We could have received enough to live on if we had just claimed unemployment.
When Rowan was less than 9 months old and fully breast fed, I fell pregnant with another miracle baby, Keeley. With all of the financial stress, I don’t even know how that happened.
Life was indeed tough back in those days. Just writing this makes me wonder how we survived. But the business picked up and we could finally afford to get some pamphlets printed. Stacey and Liam delivered them to our whole suburb. Because we had a local phone number, the business took off and I could breathe again.
The habit of buying groceries when they are marked down has stuck with me through all of those years since then. You won’t find much in my fridge or freezer that’s not a “cheapie chuckout”. Keeley and Liam both have the “cheapie chuckout” philosophy in the DNA and get far better bargains than I do. The other four kids missed out and pay full price for everything.
People who see me travelling think I’m wealthy but what they don’t realise is travelling, even budget travelling, comes at a cost. I’ve sold my car since returning from Europe and share a car with Keeley. The money I save on registration, insurance, new tyres, servicing and fuel now goes into my travel fund.
So to answer Randy’s question, I don’t think life is supposed to be comfortable, at least not all of the time. If life was easy and comfortable, we wouldn’t appreciate the good times. If I didn’t have to share my house to help pay the rent, I wouldn’t appreciate my alone time.