Rebellious Daughters by Maria Katsonis And Lee Kofman

to New York City, to embark on my childhood dream of becoming a writer. To hell with them both, I thought. I was young and sharp and filled with longing. No sick men were going to rain down on me anymore, wash away my dreams. I took poetry classes, started a Masters in Writing at New York University, had an affair with a biochemist who also ran a dance company, went to hear Doctorow and Sontag speak, ate lobster in the back of a Buick driving up the coast to Maine. I felt I had finally started drafting a brand new pattern for my life, instead of recycling the same frayed material. I was happy, even though fraught with guilt.
    The call came in the middle of the night. My father was in hospital after a sudden stroke. I quit my studies and boarded the first flight home, intent on caring for him – which I did for a while, with home help and a nappy service, juggling my shifts back at the hospital. But the day I accidentally ran his wheelchair onto the road and he went hurtling out onto the tram tracks, was the day Irealised I just couldn’t do it anymore and decided to put him in a nursing home. I was only 26 years old then and even though I decided to stay in Melbourne and pursue my writing there while working as a doctor, I still struggled with the burden of being a dutiful daughter.
    Step 4: ‘Turning up the Hem’
    In 1991, I kissed my father goodbye and left him sitting in his wheelchair as he watched Jeopardy in the communal lounge room of his nursing home. I had just turned 31 and once again found myself running away from him. Two days later, I stood beside my Israeli husband, waiting for the train to arrive at the Champ de Mars. We were on our honeymoon and had just been up the Eiffel Tower to view the lights of Paris by night, and were en route to Haifa, the city of his birth, where we would make our home for the next ten years. Was it a complete accident that I married a foreign man?
    People crowded into the station, jostling each other as they escaped from the frosty evening air. Then an announcement over the PA system saw everyone disperse. Remnants of my high school French came back to me through the fracas: Attention! En arête tous les trains. Corps morts . A dead body on the tracks had us walking silently all the way back to our hotel. I left Paris with a sense of dread.
    The following day we walked through the door of ourapartment in Haifa ready to start a new life together. My husband, a tall and strong man, lifted me over the threshold. Just as he lowered me, the phone rang with the news that my father had died the night before. He was buried the next day, without me there to say goodbye.
    Step 5: ‘Individualising Stock Patterns’
    It is 1993, October 19th – my father’s birthday. Mine too. It is also the day I return to work, not long after my first child is born. I stab a curved needle through someone’s broken skin, pulling the edges of the wound together with blue, nylon thread, using delicate mattress sutures. I learned to sew like this in medical school. I reassure the patient that she is in good hands – after all, I am a tailor’s daughter.
    *Section titles from Mason, Gertrude, 1935, Tailoring for Women, A & C Black, Ltd

THE GOOD GIRL
    JAMILA RIZVI
    I’ve always been a Good Girl. Not a pretty girl. Not a brave girl. Not a cool girl. Not a nice girl. But a Good Girl.
    It’s a funny word, ‘good’. The adjective you were never allowed to use in high school English class because it was the lazy option. ‘Good’ lacked the requisite nuance or academic flair. Also syllables. Open a well-thumbed copy of the dictionary and the second listed definition for ‘good’ is exactly the one you’d expect. (I say dictionary because it sounds more highbrow but obviously you could just google it.)
    2. Adjective . Having the required qualities; of a high standard. ‘A good restaurant’. Synonyms : fine, quality, superior,