Christmas 2024 felt foreign to The Mrs. She was actually looking for things to do, dishes to plan and cook, perhaps even gifts to buy and wrap. Finally, she was told to do absolutely nothing.
“Nothing?” she asked Aye.
“Just enjoy! I’ll take care of everything,” Aye said with bright twinkling eyes and a smile sweetened with Confucian respect and duty.
Aye is their First Son’s partner. From snippets of stories about Murray, their cute and loveable dog, the Old Man gathered that Aye had been around their son’s life for quite many years. She was even around when Murray had his balls snipped off. That was some five years ago when he was forced to wear that Victorian collar so he couldn’t lick his missing balls, seeds necessary to germinate his next generation. A week ago, Murray had to wear the Victorian collar again – this time, the vet had to snip off a couple of grass seeds that were germinating in his front right paw.
So, The Mrs did absolutely nothing that Christmas. No turkey to roast, no leg of ham to baste with honey, no Christmas tree to decorate, not even gifts to buy and wrap. Not that she ever did any of that. She was no good at cooking traditional Christmas dishes. They use too many pots and pans and saucepans, she used to say. Traditionally, the Old Man would buy a cooked lobster, some Spencer Gulf king prawns and a box of cherries to supplement her salads, whilst others would chip in with baked snapper and ribeye steaks. Growing up, their three sons loved Christmas despite having to help in their parents’ auto parts shops during the marathon trading hours; the consecutive twelve-to-sixteen-hour days would raise their parents’ spirits, as the burgeoning tills promised their business would survive another year. Jingle bells, jingle bells, the carols would blast in the shopping malls, while their tills go ka-ching and the coins go jingle-jangle. Their auto parts shops were in name only, car parts weren’t in their inventory, ordered in for customers only when required. They mostly sold accessories, known in the trade as the “shit and glitter” for cars. Their customers used to be rough as guts, but those early days of attracting petrol heads hellbent on drag racing were long gone, once the state government deemed car hoons were goons and banned drag racing in South Australia.
The Mrs was the one who made the decision to go into the auto parts business. The couple’s twin boys were ready to join their brother to attend Highbury Primary, and so The Mrs felt the need to resuscitate her career in the world of accounting and funds management. Her selfless sacrifice lasted seven years and by the time she stepped back into the corporate world, technology had introduced the facsimile machine into Australian offices and the office computer had become ubiquitous. Back then, she was still lining her kitchen drawers and wrapping veggies with old newspaper. It did not cross her mind that one day her Old Man would stop buying newspapers and that there would be none for her to use. Soon, people would not understand why they were also called fish-wraps. The Mrs, the ever so confident woman in her prime, suddenly felt inadequate when told she was expected to use Excel spreadsheets. So, in a way, it was difficult to fathom why it wasn’t daunting for her to dive into owning and running an auto shop at a time in her life when she thought all car aerials and wiper refills were universal fitting.
The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance – it is the illusion of knowledge
Stephen Hawking
The first customer she encountered wanted a needle and seat for his Holley. She didn’t know what a Holley was, so she went looking for a needle and thread set for a seat cushion.
“Did she come home in tears?” the Old Man was asked. She knew there would be books to tell her the part numbers of car parts needed for her customers but she did not consider that product catalogues were sorted by car brands, not by car models. She realised she had a big problem when she could not tell a Cortina was a Ford and a Torana was a Holden and how she couldn’t hide her blank look when car enthusiasts were telling her the legendary tales about Peter Brock and his latest win in the 1987 Bathurst 1000 with his VL.
“What’s a VL?” she asked.
The Mrs was no quitter. She delved into the world of coolants, additives and oils. She learned about oil viscosity, ethylene glycol and PTFE in engine additives. The Old Man would not have blamed her had she decided to simply give up and give away the business. After the initial profits when it was run by their ex-business partner, the business probably owed them about $20,000. In 1989, it wasn’t a small sum of money but it also wasn’t an amount big enough to cause them much grief. It represented less than a third of his annual salary; he was quite prepared to write it off as a bad investment and for The Mrs to treat it as a bad experience but to his surprise, she wanted to carry on and prove to herself that she could make it work. And she did. If the auto parts business did not suit her, she simply changed it to a car accessories business a year later. She knew about fashion and style. Instead of selling blow off valves, cv joints and tie rod ends, she got rid of them and stocked her shop with seat covers, steering wheel covers, sunshades, floor mats and dash mats instead. She did a roaring trade that year, doubling their profits from adding air fresheners, globes and car stickers to their staple – enough to lure the Old Man away from his cushy executive job to open up a second store. Theirs were the first auto shops to sell neon rods and flashing LED lights to decorate the cars in Adelaide. They imported them directly from Hong Kong despite the agent describing their first order as “small potatoes”.
It seemed like the good times would last a long time but of course, if it’s too good to be true, it is not true. South Australia soon after banned flashing coloured lights in cars and introduced extended trading hours. Saturday morning trading became nine to five Saturday trading and Sunday being the day of rest as delivered by the Good Lord delivered double time pay rates for workers instead. The much-treasured Christmas holidays were no more. Christmas holidays became just a day of rest for the family and their Christmas Day parties were always held at someone else’s home. The Old Man and The Mrs were simply too exhausted to plan let alone hold a party at home.
Twelve years ago, they closed their last remaining store in Adelaide. The Old Man reflected on that on Christmas Day. So, this is the sum of their lives in Adelaide, selling auto parts and accessories from 1987 till 2012, standing behind shop counters, sweeping and mopping floors, copping abusive language and even physical threats from the public, watching out for would-be shoplifters, slaving away seemingly forever, so long as their business did not go bust. All that and more, for exactly a quarter of a century. They reduced themselves to become slaves of their business but the real outcome was they managed to raise their fledgling family and gave every one of their kids a good start to their own careers.
The Old Man peered out from the door of his study. It was a nice French door, made from cedar or perhaps it was maple. Ageing rapidly, he no longer trusted his own memory. The Mrs was out there in the courtyard, tending to her wall garden, her latest endeavour to beautify. The sun shone brightly from the mostly blue sky but did not warm the day enough for her to do without her jacket. His failing eyes checked her out from top to bottom. She was his lover, his wife, the mother of his children. His lifelong partner. A dazzling beauty in her younger days, she still attracted him; the growing patch of grey and white hair at the back of her head did not detract. She stood still, entranced by the prettiness of her wall garden as she allowed her eyes to embrace the beauty around her. She seemed distant, in her own world, a universe or two away. Although retired for fourteen years, those tortuous days of hard yakka in her shops still gave her the occasional nightmare. In recent times, she had found sleep hard to come by. Their two younger sons had long flown away from their nest, far far away. One in Glasgow, the other in Singapore. First Son remained, close by, and with Aye around, life offered a glimmer of hope of better and easier days ahead.
“Merry Christmas to The Mrs,” the Old Man said softly, but too softly for her to hear.
Urghhlings 