Mum's the Word, Dad's the Trick

My gorgeous man and I have been together now for about 4 months, and my parents – located 800kms away in another city - have started suspecting there’s been a major shift in my life.

Eventually I let on about the new love of my life, but my inner sense of self-preservation warns me against divulging many details. I tell my parents his name but don’t indulge them when they request his CV, and I artfully dodge their leading questions – What’s his profession? Where is he from? How old is he? They would deny this emphatically if they were to be called on it (I have tried this, in the presence of a professional mediator) but past unhappy experiences have taught me that my mother’s preconceived mental mould of who she deems to be a “suitable” partner from me deviates wildly from my actual personal preferences. Moreover, letting on to her that I’ve made yet another life choice that falls short of her expectations (be it in regard to relationships, career, lifestyle, attire, or the colour and length of my hair) is tantamount to sticking my head in a lion’s mouth and then getting upset when I end up with teeth marks around my neck.

My mother’s work colleagues must have discovered this too, as the office once gave her a cartoon with “Agree with me now; it will save so much time,” which she obligingly pinned up on her office wall.

So I let sleeping lions lie. Lying by omission, perhaps!? Well, they say that “it's better to beg forgiveness, than ask permission,” particularly when it comes to (those who imagine themselves to be) authority figures. So the topic of Climber Boy’s passion for precipitous rock walls, and my new-found pastime in scaling them with him, is never broached.

That is, until I discover, alas – too late – yet another of my mother’s well-camouflaged spies, who I have naïvely befriended on good ol’ Facebook.

I’ve managed to stave off several attempts by my mother to open a FB account over the years. As it turns out, however, this (now ex-) Facebook friend of mine has been her FB proxy on numerous occasions. This time she has noticed my change of relationship status and has gone off and reviewed my beloved’s profile. Facebook’s privacy algorithms never cease to bewilder me. CB has his FB account adequately protected, to be viewed by authorised friends only, but FB still displays his profile image to the world at large. And since CB has no reason to hide his outdoor love from anyone (blessed soul), his FB profile image shows him happily harnessed to the side of a vast slab of steeply sloping granite in mid-space, surrounded by ropes and protective climbing gear, and looking for all the world like he’s reclining in his lounge room.

“So,” my mother ventures on our next phone call, “he goes rock climbing!? C… told me she saw the photo on FB.”

This pointed question - as much a statement as a query- followed by a pregnant pause. Apparently it’s now my turn to fill in the gaps.

The game is over. My mother knows me waaaaaaaaay better than to be led to believe that I’ll stand idly by and watch someone else indulge in the excitement of a new adventure without jumping in boots and all.

“Yes, he’s a rock climber,” I stammer warily. I’ve said too much already; I’ve put it in general terms instead of simply portraying it as a once-off activity undertaken at some previous time and therefore not likely to be repeated. The tone of my reply leaves ample room in my mother’s panic-disposed mind to extrapolate to future activities involving me and mortal danger. She knows better than to say her piece right now, however; her modus operandi for gaining adequate control of a situation is akin to water dripping incessantly on stone, by her own admission. For now she holds her tongue … only just … but I can hear the mental cogs turning and the catapults being aimed at some future opportunity to speak her piece.

My father, by contrast, holds a remarkable surprise for me that quite blows my mind. I discover that he himself has done a good deal of rock climbing in his younger years, both in the Italian alps in the ‘50s and ‘60s and in the humble Brindabella Ranges in the ‘60s and ‘70s, where CB and I now hang out.

Monte Argentera (3297m ASL) - the highest peak in the Alpi Marittime range; it's formed by gneiss (a widely distributed type of metamorphic rock of glittery appearance) and local outcrops of granite.

In fact it’s not at all out of character for him to have done something so adventurous in pre-married life, nor for him to never have mentioned it to me before now. Like me, he has learned to maintain his silence when within earshot of my mother. And given that she monitors his every word to me when we’re talking by phone, interjecting regularly when she considers him to have erred (at least once in every sentence), there’s never much opportunity for him to share any of his inner workings with me. Our phone conversations are commonly restricted to a formulaic pattern that rarely deviates from a brief exchange of pleasantries.

Scaling the sides of Monte Argentera, c1950.

I ask him about his climbing experiences and he describes day-long rocky ascents in the Alpi Marittime with his boyhood mates, wearing hob-nailed leather ankle boots and (only occasionally) a “safety” rope tied around their waist and joining the climbers together. Theirs wasn’t climbing for its own sake like ours largely is – their aim was to gain high vantage points from which to enjoy spectacular views across the rooftop of Europe. When they camped overnight, they availed themselves of the rifugi alpini (mountain shelters) – basic but well-equipped mountain resorts made of rough stone and/or timber, generally comprising a bathroom, kitchen, bedrooms and a dining room.

Rifugio Pagarì & La Maledia peak (3061m ASL), c1949.

Climbing school at Maiano, c1953.

Likewise in the Brindies – dad’s hob-nailed leather boots sufficed equally well on the granite slabs as on the sheer faces of the alps, and he and his Italian climbing buddy Lazzaro scaled several routes that are still to be found in current-day climbing guides.

Lazzaro's Staircase - a Grade 16, 20m crack at Booroomba Rocks, Namadgi National Park - was first climbed by my dad's friend Lazzaro Bonazzi (with Peter Aitchison) in 1969.

I can tell from the ever-so-slightly raised pitch in dad’s voice that he’s impressed with my newly acquired hobby, in the same way that he was when I took up motorcycling several decades ago. There’s no such thing as an ex-motorcyclist, someone once pointed out to me, and I believe this to be the case with any passion.