Acts of Love

On Wine, Roses & Giving It All Away

Here’s a tale of wine & roses.

A couple of weeks ago at my Sydney book launch at Berkelouw in Paddington, my husband Aden noticed the wine had run out before proceedings even started, so he kindly went to the pub next door to buy some more … The Rose… which was still being renovated but the new owners were there working. They heard his tale of woe and invited him in, and insisted on giving him four bottles of wine to take back to the launch, even though they had no way of charging him yet. They said come back when we’re open and fix it up. So last night we stopped in to repay our debt. The owners weren’t in, so Aden told the bartender his story and said he was there to pay. He pointed to a bottle behind the bar and said he thought it was that one.

‘Ohhh’ she said ‘are you sure?’

Turns out that particular bottle was $145.

‘Ohhhhhhh’ we said ‘OK.…’

The bartender called the owner to double check and they spoke in hushed tones for a while as we looked at each other in horror… then she told us the owner said she’d given him a different, far cheaper wine and to consider it a gift to celebrate the book launch - to come back and have dinner some night! What amazing generosity from a stranger! The tapas menu looks fantastic, they do $20 paella on Sundays and the pub is gorgeous - highly recommended!! I Googled so I could add a link to this lovely pub but all I could find was an article from 12 years ago about the former owner and his ‘parade of paramours’ including a casual relationship with the woman who did his laundry, another with the co-owner of the pub, a fruit fly researcher with whom he had enjoyed champagne and hot times the night before his death, which occurred on the day he went to meet the woman he considered his true spiritual partner in Byron Bay. Then I had to Google ‘fruit fly research’ and discovered its called drosophilia and is an incredibly popular field of study yielding six Nobel prizes over the years, in part because the human being and the fruit fly share 60% of the same DNA. It’s thanks to the humble fruit fly we know that genes are strung like beads on a string on chromosomes and about the molecular mechanisms of circadian rhythms and other incredible insights into gene mutations and disease. They only live a couple of weeks and all they want to do is feast on ripe fruits and mate. I digress, but truly, how could I resist? These are the kinds of facts the Internet was born to share.

The Fruit Fly: “Time flies like an arrow but fruit flies like a banana” (Groucho Marx)

I went to sleep thinking about generosity and woke up thinking about the Melba Montgomery number 1 hit country song from 1974, ‘No Charge’. It was a favourite of my beautiful mother in law who is no longer with us on these earthly plains, and we often had a giggle about it’s schmaltzy charms. As a nurse and a mother of five, I’m sure she could relate to the words within, which ring so true despite the mawkish sentiment. The songwriter, the great Harlan Howard (inventor of the term ‘three chords and the truth’ and classic songs ‘Busted’ ‘He Called Me Baby’ ‘The Chokin’ Kind’ ‘I Fall To Pieces’ & ‘Streets of Baltimore’) said ‘I've never written a song that moves people so much. I've had guys tell me they almost wrecked their truck when they heard it 'cause it made them cry’. It’s the kind of song that makes people say ‘It’d bring a tear to a glass eye’. See for yourself below when Melba revisits the song for a live television audience on Country Family Reunion in 2010 and leaves them all fighting back tears.

At the end of the song, there’s a little Q&A and Melba asks Jan Howard, Harlan’s wife, if she lived that song and Harlan watched it? She replies ‘I told those first words to my son Jimmy, and Harlan was sitting there. It’s like, be careful because there’s a pen and a pencil waiting….’

Here’s to pens and pencils, wine and roses, acts of love, country songs, nurses and nurturers and mothers.

And also here’s love especially to those who who don’t, can’t or won’t buy into these thoughtless Hallmark prescribed holidays or who find today challenging for any reason.

The full cost of my love is no charge.

Today I give to you my lovingly curated playlist ‘Me & your Mama’, full of weepers and keepers and put you to sleepers… enjoy!

NO CHARGE

My little boy came into the kitchen this evening
While I was fixing supper
And he handed me a piece of paper he'd been writing on
And after wiping my hands on my apron
I read it - and this is what it said

For mowing the yard - five dollars
And for making my own bed this week - one dollar
And for going to the store - fifty cents
An' playing with little brother, while you went shopping 
Twenty-five cents
Taking out the trash - one dollar
Getting a good report card - five dollars
And for raking the yard - two dollars
Total owed - fourteen seventy-five.

Well, I looked at I'm standing there expectantly
And a thousand memories flashed through my mind
So I picked up the pen, turning the paper over,
This is what I wrote:

For nine months I carried you
Growing inside me - no charge
For the nights I've sat up with you,
Doctored you, prayed for you - no charge
For the time and the tears.
And the cost through the years, there's no charge
When you add it all up.
The full cost of my love is no charge.

For the nights filled with dread
And the worries ahead - no charge
For advice and the knowledge
And the cost of your college - no charge
For the toys, food and clothes and for wiping your nose
There's NO CHARGE, son
When you add it all up,
The full cost of my love, is no charge.

Well, when he finished readin'
He had great big old tears in his eyes
And he looked up at me and he said,
"Mama, I sure do love you."
Then he took the pen,
And in great big letters
He wrote: "Paid in full."

When you add it all up
The cost of real love is - no charge.