Robyn Murphy
About this author:
Robyn Murphy is an Australian-born Physical Therapist with an IT degree; a wannabe writer and proud mother of Savannah, 6, and a complicated beagle called Mr Howell. She has lived on and off in Marin county since 1989. Married to a southern boy who works in the film industry, she has travelled her daughter to far-flung locales. Mr Howell hopes that, now Grade 1 is nigh, she will settle in one place for long enough to nurture one of those ideas into a novel.
My Articles:
The Tao of Family Vacations
I can’t imagine a better place to spend my 43rd birthday than Kauai.
I warned my daughter and husband that this was to be a quiet, contemplative trip full of reading, meditation and healthy eating. Mostly because I had been sick with a sinus infection for way too long — and because I had just re-read “Eat Pray Love” and “A New Earth.” I wanted that kind of mind-altering transcendence but I was going to do it on a family vacation right next to the kiddy pool.
Soon after arriving at a Kauai condo, I was unlucky enough to trip and drop an unused compact, shattering the mirror. Thankfully, my daughter Savannah was out at the pool with her Dad and not at my side where she customarily resides. If it weren’t for my unfortunate bout of gastro-intestinal rebellion after the myriad of homeopathic remedies I had been imbibing, she could very well have been hit with a shard of glass.
Lucky. Continue… »
Boobs
I remember gasping when I realized my boobs were resting on my pregnant belly. If I riveted my shoulder blades back, my boobs rose like Aunty Lyn’s soufflé – magnificent for a nanosecond then half-mast from then on. My boobs must have gotten used to all that lolling about, or maybe they are still looking south for the belly they got to love so well. In any case, my silhouette is no longer what it was, and the camera knows it.
Every photo of me since 2003 seems to be a bottom-up or side view of slouchy me – changing a diaper, pushing a stroller, or worse still – in the bathtub with Savannah as she lay blissfully suspended from her chin. These were not moments where the extra D’s of childrearing added symmetry or grace. The bathtub photo, I told Kent as he was taking it, was “bad naked.” He actually said, “But they can do something about those, right?” - simultaneously reeling it in as he tossed it out. He caught nothing that night.
It is hard to believe that I was a strong contender for the ‘Raisins on Toast Award’ in my college days - even harder to believe that Kent stared at my breasts in reverent awe the entire second half of our first date. But I was, and he did.
The Half-Ass Club
Meeting an offbeat, grass-chewing Southern boy, and driving in his spluttering convertible around the streets of Santa Monica, was a hoot. Kent was unconventional, irreverent and lived a plane ride away — the perfect escape, a no-obligation bonk.
In the first year together I bought him a belt, a wallet and a watch: items he had not used in years. We went shopping for a suit and got him a financial plan. And though his 101 job-loss stories should have raised a red flag, one of those crazy days I tripped and fell sideways in love.
The day we moved in together, Kent told me that he “just didn’t clean.” He also admitted to handymanitis, regularly paying late fees, and pre-planning his sick days. This all seemed surmountable in the filtered light of true love. It wasn’t until we were married with baby that he told me about The Club.
I had always wondered how the homecoming king, senior student council president and rockin’ drummer (with the local heartthrob band ‘Hippie le Peu’ no less) had managed to slither into the background.
A Sentence or Two
The best way I can explain my long road back from postpartum depression is that I had to re-find my sentence. I love those people in my life that create a colorful sentence or two.
Create a sentence?
Like the bail-bonds owner, my bleach-blonde, blue eyed, petite and gorgeous Mexican ex-roommate and fervent Catholic, who re-paid a small kindness by moving in, paying half my rent for a year — while secretly owning several homes and a yacht in the Bay Area, staying occasionally with her ex-husband, and driving off on her once-a-week overnights with a tall, skinny guy in a black Buick.
One Lump or Two?
My grandmother made me cups of tea in dainty flowered tea cups. Always with a matching saucer, these cups were no match for the macho coffee mugs that lined the desk in my college dorm.
Tea time lasted all day at Nan’s house. Too early in the morning, the kettle’s obnoxious whistle would hail round one. Nan measured the loose leaves carefully, (two and one-quarter spoons), then poured the hissing water into the silver tea pot, proudly black inside from years of service. A hand-crocheted ‘tea cozy’ (like a tea-pot beanie) kept the pot warm while the tea brewed – but only after the pot was turned three times clockwise then two times anti-clockwise. The tea was then passed through a strainer placed over the rim of the teensy cups, poured with a ceremonious rising of the spout. We both had our tea ‘white,’ which meant with a dash of milk.
“One lump or two?” my Grandmother asked each time, grabbing the sugar cubes from the refrigerator. This was my moment of reckoning. One lump made it taste good enough to want two. But in that small cup, for me, two was sweet enough to send me early to afternoon slumber under a ceiling fan. Most often, I chose one.
Confessions of a Serial Play Dater
By 2002, it had been 14 years since I was “fresh off the boat” from Australia. Halloween was my favorite holiday, I ate pancakes with bacon, hosted a dog party, TiVo’d the Super Bowl, even registered for gifts. I was employed, acclimatized and smugly assimilated.
Any of life’s puzzling issues were conveniently attributed to a small-town upbringing and my not-so-small town California life. Then came the journey to new-parent land.
No passport required.
A Serial Play Dater
By 2002 it had been 14 years since I was ‘fresh off the boat’ from Australia. Halloween was my favorite holiday, I ate pancakes with bacon, hosted a dog party, TiVo’d the Super Bowl, even registered for gifts. I was employed, acclimatized and smugly assimilated.
Any of life’s puzzling issues were conveniently attributed to a small town upbringing and my not-so-small town California life. Then came the journey to new-parent land. No passport required.
This land came with confounding limitations, and a whole new vocabulary. With time, I learnt to embrace ‘tummy-time,’ ‘Ferberizing,’ even ‘transitional objects,’ and ‘time-out.’ It was the social mores, in particular the enigmatic ‘play date,’ that stumped me.
The Mouths of Babes
Should we write down those little things our children say? I would say put them in a time capsule for eternity, but most likely it is only the genetically linked who would consider them darling or funny. That said, there have to be some gems that would make any parent go “ah.”
But I wasn’t so sure.
So, last night I decided to troll through years of e-mails from and to my college roommate, Andree. Fortunately, we live parallel lives — two involuntarily globetrotting Aussies with ankle-biters in tow.
- Anjie Reynolds
- Anne-Christine Strugnell
- Annie Yearout
- Avvy Mar
- Beth Touchette
- Cathy Burke
- Cindy Bailey
- Claire Hennessy
- Cynthia Rovero
- Dawn Yun
- Dilyara Breyer
- Dorothy O'Donnell
- Eliza Harding Turner
- Gloria Saltzman
- Hyla Molander
- Inga Wahl
- Jennifer Gunter
- Jennifer O'Shaughnessy
- Jennifer Taekman
- Jessica O'Dwyer
- Kaitlyn Gallagher
- Kimberley Kwok
- Kristy Lund
- Laura-Lynne Powell
- Laurel Hilton
- Lauren Cargill
- Li Miao Lovett
- Lianna McSwain
- Lorrie Goldin
- Maija Threlkeld
- Maria Dudley
- Marianne Lonsdale
- Marilee Stark
- Mary Allison Tierney
- Mary Beth McClure
- Maya Creedman
- Mindy Uhrlaub
- Patricia Ljutic
- Paula Chapman
- Pru Starr
- Robyn Murphy
- Ruth Scott
- Shannon Matus-Takaoka
- Sheila McCormick Whitescarver
- Sho Sho Smith
- Svetlana Nikitina
- Tania Malik
- Tina Bournazos