Sister-In-Law Surveillance

How this would affect Zayden as he grew up would be anyone's guess. If when the kids were teenagers Heaven and Neveah were complaining their brother was loitering around outside the bathroom when they went in there to use the toilet, or if Daniel and Sammi-Jo had to go to Zayden's high school for a conference after Zayden was caught hiding in the girls' toilets, then the cause of this behavior could probably be pin-pointed.

I looked at my brother, and Daniel just sat there texting on his phone as though his wife had been discussing the weather rather than her toilet habits. Again, I wasn't shocked. This pattern could be seen with all three sisters. As well as having been on reality TV shows when younger- Lori-Beth on some banal renovating show and Jamie-Lee and her husband on some equally dumb cooking show - Lori-Beth and Jamie-Lee were also married to professional sportsmen, Lori-Beth a footballer and Jamie-Lee a young golf professional which like Sammi-Jo made them WAGS.

Like Daniel their two husbands never did or said anything when their wives overshared either in person or online. They just seemed to bring in the money, and at home or out in public sit there and never question their wives. This was the same pattern of behavior observed with their parents, and while Mr. Maclean was not a professional sportsman he for the most part just sat there and said nothing as Hilary Maclean spoke for both of them and told him what to do and say and when to do and say them.

I had wanted to vanish into thin air at that stage, and wanted to do so even more when Sammi-Jo turned to me and said, "So Rachel, have you met anyone since we last spoke?"

I smiled. "No, still happily single."

"I've got just the right person for you," said Sammi-Jo, bringing up a picture on her phone. "This is Kate, she's a member of a mother's group and she lives down in Morphett Vale with her son and daughter. She's been looking for someone ever since she and her girlfriend broke up, and even though Kate's a girl lesbian and you're a girl lesbian too, I thought you might be a good match. Unless you want to date a boy lesbian, which is totally cool."

My face was flushing the same color as Fiona's hair at my sister-in-law broadcasting the fact that I was a lesbian to the rest of the restaurant, people looking over at me. I glanced at the screen, true Kate was very pretty, but I really didn't want to be dating at the moment. "Thanks Sammi-Jo, Kate seems really nice but I'm so busy at work at the moment, so sorry but no thanks."

"Have you tried a dating app?" boundary-challenged Sammi-Jo wanted to know. "There's lots of dating sites where you could meet the right girl?"

"No thanks, I don't date online," I said, still thinking about Sammi-Jo referring to feminine or 'lipstick' lesbians like me as 'girl lesbians' and more masculine or 'butch' lesbians as 'boy lesbians'.

Like Fiona growing up we were both feminine wearing our hair long, dresses and skirts, playing girls' sports and girls' activities, but somehow while Fiona turned out straight I turned out to be a lesbian. Today I still maintained a feminine look my, dark hair long and underneath my dress I wore a white floral bra and white floral bikini-brief panties. When I was in a relationship with my ex-partner Liz, I was definitely the girly looking part of the couple, although Liz had her hair in a pixie bob and usually wore female clothes. She wasn't butch by any stretch.

Still, it seemed pretty odd for Sammi-Jo to use the expressions 'girl lesbian' and 'boy lesbian' especially given she was friendly with some same-sex couples both male and female in her online activities. And she had a gay male cousin named Chris who she was pretty friendly with, so it wasn't like she didn't have much exposure to gay men and lesbian women.

The food arrived at our table and Zayden continued to sit on his mother's lap, Sammi-Jo multi-tasking by cutting up her son's food and spoon-feeding him, while eating her own food in between. Zayden was really too old to be eating in this way, contrasting with his older sisters who did okay for themselves and Fiona and Paul's kids, who likewise ate mostly without assistance.

While Zayden clearly was way too old to be fed like this by his mother and it attracted the attention of other people, at least it beat the bird-feeding where Sammi-Jo would chew up Zayden's food for him and spit it into his mouth, much like a bird feeding its chicks. Heaven and Neveah had never been bird fed when they were babies and young toddlers, but apparently Zayden had problems transitioning to solid food and therefore Sammi-Jo bird fed him.

The bird feeding could happen anywhere, frequently out in public where everyone could see it, but fortunately it had now abated. Unfortunately, its end only lay less than six months in the past.

"Good boy, eating all your food like that," praised Sammi-Jo. "Now how about some juice?" She picked up Zayden's sippy-cup, again something that he should have left behind himself by now.

Zayden shook his head. "Milk please, Mummy."

Sammi-Jo smiled and ruffled Zayden's hair. "Well as you asked so nicely, of course, how could I say no? Anything to keep my favorite little guy happy."

Again, people looked over as Sammi-Jo opened her blouse, unclasped her bra and exposed both of her breasts, allowing her three-year-old son to nurse from her. Fiona had weaned her two kids at a year old or so and this was also the case with Heaven and Neveah when they were younger, but apparently Zayden still required his mother's breast milk. I could see my mother's face and she looked most displeased, while Dad looked away as did Paul and Fiona.

With his thirst quenched, Zayden extricated his face from his mother's chest and Sammi-Jo clasped up her bra and closed her blouse. He then moved off his mother's lap as we discussed the rest of the plans, which unfortunately did not end with brunch. We were also taking the kids for a walk in the city, and then catching the tram to Glenelg.

Zayden did not interact with his sisters nor his cousins, but was more interested in playing with his mother's handbag, which he put over his own shoulder at one stage then went through the contents, extricating a square-shaped plastic packet with brightly colored stars on the cover.

"What's this, Mummy?" the boy wanted to know, holding it up like a prize and squeezing the soft feminine hygiene product within.

"That's a special thing for Mummy to wear when she has number threes," explained Sammi-Jo, taking the period pad and returning it to her bag. She didn't seem embarrassed at all, and why would she be? Sammi-Jo would often mention in online posts when it was her time of the month, a habit shared by her sisters.

As for their mother, Mrs. Maclean had a blog and on it one could find three very interesting stories about the days Lori-Beth, Sammi-Jo and Jamie-Lee all got their first periods at age 12. Her three daughters very much approved of the stories, and had left positive comments and likes against it.

If our mother had posted stories online for the entire world to read about the days when Fiona and I started our periods for the first time aged 12, I think we would have died of embarrassment much less liked and approved of them. Fiona and I looked at each other, and she discretely sent me a text; "Number threes?!?!'

'WTF?' I texted back. I had heard lots of euphemisms for menstruation - periods, monthlies, friend, Aunt Flo, the curse, on the rags, monthly visitor, surfing the crimson tide, having the painters in among others - but now thanks to my sister-in-law the next time I got my period I would be thinking, 'I've got number threes.' And it would stay with me until I went through menopause circa 2040. And Fiona was cursed - pun fully intended - to suffer the same fate as her younger sister.

Finally, the brunch ended and we were able to leave the restaurant where the only positive was that we had nice food, nice enough not to be put off our appetites when Sammi-Jo breast-fed her three-year-old son and talked about what happened when she went to the toilet and gave her son an origami demonstration with her loo paper before she used it.

"So, how's the cricket going?" Paul asked Daniel conversationally as we walked down King William Street, heading for the Rundle Mall.

"It's really good thanks mate, I'm going to Sydney and Canberra the week after next with the development squad," said Daniel, he and Paul happy to continue chatting about cricket with Dad.

I would have preferred to have discussed the cricket too, but as I was a girl, I was part of another conversation, that of Sammi-Jo showing pictures on her phone of Heaven and Neveah competing at a beauty pageant.

"Don't we look pretty Grandma?" Heaven asked Mum.

"Yeah, please say we look pretty," Neveah also implored.

"Yes girls, very pretty," said Mum. I could see that Mum was not happy at all about this given the clothes the girls wore in the pageant were not exactly modest, and I looked at Emma. She was walking with her cousins, but so much more reserved and intelligent than most kids her age. Given Fiona was an accountant and Paul a dentist, brains seemed to run in their family, Liam a bright kid too.

Heaven and Neveah weren't bad kids and they weren't stupid, but you could see that their superficial and shallow upbringing were becoming apparent, and the two girls pretended to be taking selfies as we waited for the lights to change at the corner of Grenfell Street, the old Town Hall behind us, the tall brown trapezoid-shaped bank building - Adelaide's tallest skyscraper - towering above it.

As for Zayden, I worried about my nephew as he had his mother's bag over his shoulder, Sammi-Jo now holding his hand as we went to cross the street. As kids, if Mum had asked Daniel to walk down the road with her handbag I think he would have run away and joined the unfortunate list of kids who had vanished without a trace from Adelaide over the years, never to be seen or heard of again. But Zayden had begged his mother to carry her bag over his shoulder, and skipped down the street saying how pretty he was. If this continued, I might get an emergency call at work in about 15 years to tell me that my nephew had ground at his eyes, blinding himself. Or he might just turn out gay or transgender, I couldn't be sure.

"I've been so busy lately I hadn't had time to post these yet," said Sammi-Jo. "These are Heaven, Neveah and Zayden at their cousin's princess theme birthday party."

She showed us her phone. Heaven and Neveah were dressed as princesses which was perfectly normal, but so was Zayden, wearing a pink dress and a blonde wig with a tiara in it.

"I'm was a pretty princess, wasn't I?" declared Zayden proudly.

The conversation was enough for Dad to leave his discussion about cricket with his son and son-in-law and turn his attention to this.

"You were a princess?" Dad asked Zayden, and I could see him smiling to hide his worry and uncertainty. "But Zayden, you're a boy."

"Boys can be princesses too, Grandpa," said Zayden.

"Really?" asked Dad, my father laughing nervously. "In my day, boys didn't dress up as princesses for fancy dress parties, we went as superheroes, pirates, cowboys, Red Indians or animals like elephants, bears, tigers or lions. Not as princesses, that's for girls."

"But I really was a princess, I love being a princess. I'm a princess, aren't I Mummy?" Zayden asked. "And I'm going to be a fairy too!"

"That's right, you were the prettiest little princess, and Mummy loves you so much," said Sammi-Jo, giving her son a kiss on his forehead. "And next month, when your playgroup is going to have its fancy dress day, you'll be the prettiest fairy there."

'Yay!" exclaimed Zayden, as Dad looked dismayed and Mum's lips pursed tighter to the point I thought she might lose them altogether.

In the Rundle Mall, with its historic shopping arcades there were plenty of interesting things to look at, such as the four iconic pig statues which the kids always loved and the 'Malls Balls', two large metal spheres on top of each other. The mall was busy, full of locals and tourists alike enjoying the sights. Dad however was clearly a bit concerned about his grandson, and not Liam.

"So Zayden, what do you want to do when you grow up?" Dad asked. "Bet you want to be a professional cricketer like your Dad, right?"

Zayden shook his head. "Uh huh."

Dad put on an exaggerated look of disappointment. "No? What about when you go to school? Don't you want to play cricket then? How about football? When your Dad was in high school he won so many cricket and football trophies I had to put up more shelves."

Zayden looked worried. "No, I want to be a cheerleader like my Mummy."

Sammi-Jo laughed. "Zayden just loves seeing photos of me when I was a cheerleader in high school. So much so I had this made up for him."

To the dismay of my parents, Sammi-Jo brought up another photo on her phone of Zayden's bedroom, and beside her son's bed stood a life-sized cardboard cutout of herself as a teenager, dressed in her cheerleader outfit.

"Zayden absolutely loves it, he always kisses cheerleader me goodnight when I put him to bed," Sammi-Jo declared. She then lowered her voice and spoke to Fiona, Mum and I as Zayden became distracted skipping around with his mother's bag. "The other day I saw Zayden trying to look up under the cheerleader's skirt, so funny and cute. He doesn't know I saw him, I don't want to embarrass him."

Again, Fiona and I could only look at each other in despair. Again, if in 12 or so years' time Daniel and Sammi-Jo had to go to a conference at Zayden's high school after he had been caught up-skirting girls, then we would know how this came about.

Across the way was a kids' clothing store and it was playing kids' friendly songs, one of which Heaven and Neveah seemed to particularly like, so much the twins started dancing to it. Sammi-Jo was very impressed, immediately raising her phone and filming her daughters and giving them encouragement.

"Dance really good girls, shake your hips, thrust a bit more your other Grandma is going to love this video," Sammi-Jo squealed, her high-pitched voice and broad Australian accent filling Rundle Mall as the girls followed their mother's direction.

I stood feeling most uncomfortable by what I was seeing. If dancing was measured on a scale of 1-10 and 1 was dancing appropriate for 5-year-old girls and 10 was twerking, then the girls were way closer to 1 than 10. But still, there was something about the way my nieces danced and the way that their mother encouraged them that set my teeth on edge.

Across King William Street from Rundle Mall lay Hindley Street, Adelaide's nightclub strip and if Heaven and Neveah were over 18 and dancing like that in those clubs, then this was all well and good. But these girls were in pre-school, this just did not seem right. Then again, what did I know? I had no children and perhaps I was just some wowser out of touch with raising modern children?

"Daniel, could you please watch Zayden for a minute, while I run to the loo?" Sammi-Jo asked when the song finished and the girls stopped dancing, turning to head towards one of the shopping malls.

Zayden's reaction made it seem like his mother had announced she was going to move to Canada permanently. He burst into tears, and clung to his mother's skirt. "Mummy, Mummy, please don't leave me!" he sobbed.

Sammi-Jo laughed and ruffled her son's hair. "Zayden, it's okay, Mummy only needs to go to the toilet to do number ones, and she'll be back in a minute."

Sammi-Jo's voice as usual travelled, informing everyone in Rundle Mall and no doubt the adjacent Grenfell Street and North Terrace too as to what bodily functions she would performing in the toilet. She then reached into her purse and pulled out Zayden's dummy - again something that should have been left behind a year ago - and handed it to him, Zayden putting it in his mouth and sucking on it. Dad looked at the Mount Lofty Ranges in the distance, while Mum looked like she was sucking on an unripe lemon or lime.

The pacifier certainly seemed to pacify the boy, and Zayden stopped crying and stayed calmly with his father and sisters as he sucked on his dummy while Sammi-Jo went into the mall and the ladies' room. People looked over, and 4-year-old Liam looked most puzzled as to why his cousin just a year younger would still have a dummy, but this was nothing unusual.

When Sammi-Jo returned from the toilet, the next part of our day out was the tram trip to the beach. We were about halfway down there and just going through the Glandore light rail station when Zayden, who was sitting on his mother's lap complained, "Mummy, my ear hurts."

"Oh, that's no good, let me take a look at that," said Sammi-Jo. She looked into the problem ear. "Oh, I see what the problem is, you've got wax in there. Mummy will fix that."

Sammi-Jo reached into her purse and extricated a cotton Q-tip, scraping it around the inside of her son's ear, removing the wax. "Feeling better now, Zayden?" she asked.

Zayden rubbed his ear. "Yes thanks Mummy."

"And wow, what a lot of wax," commented Sammi-Jo, holding up the cotton bud so everyone on the tram could see.

It was indeed a lot of wax, especially for a young child, a thick wet brown sticky glob that looked like Christmas pudding. Heaven and Neveah seemed pretty interested in their brother's earwax, looking at the Q-tip. Daniel was talking to Paul about cricket again, and had not noticed his son's wax problems.

Sammi-Jo giggled. "I bet Grandma's pussy cat would like to eat that, but he's obviously not here, so he'll have to make do with regular cat food today," she said, wrapping the Q-tip in a tissue for disposal.

Fiona and I exchanged a glance, each of us remembering what Sammi-Jo was referring to. One of her videos on her parenting vlog showed Sammi-Jo, then heavily pregnant with Zayden at her mother's house. A lump of earwax had fallen from Sammi-Jo's ear, and her mother's cat had eaten the dry, flaky wax with gusto. Mrs. Maclean and Sammi-Jo had laughed, her mother explaining how the cat loved to eat earwax. Heaven and Neveah, then toddlers had been fascinated by this, and their grandmother and mother had used Q-tips to remove small amounts of wax from the girls' ears which were then fed to the eager cat to everyone's amusement and the cat's great satisfaction.

The tram reached its destination at Glenelg, and we disembarked at Moseley Square. On any fine weekend Glenelg was always packed, and today was no exception. People milled everywhere around outside the Town Hall, the streets, the museum, the shops, cafes and restaurants, the parklands, the pier and the beach itself, the dark blue waves of the Southern Ocean rolling in constantly.

Seagulls flew overhead screeching, and other birds such as cockatoos, magpies and crows could be seen in the many Norfolk Island Pines and palms that grew around the area, other birds on top of the high-rise hotels and apartments. Out in the ocean, some people were surfing the waves, yachts were sailing further out to sea and it sure was a beautiful Sunday.

There were ice cream shops aplenty to be found in Glenelg, and we went to one to treat the kids, and ourselves. I purchased a cone of my favorite flavor and noticed something interesting as Daniel and Sammi-Jo's kids ate their ice-creams. The three kids were sticking their tongues out at each other, and I noticed that while Zayden could roll his tongue, Heaven and Neveah seemingly could not. It was a reversal of the situation of Fiona, Daniel and I, where Fiona and I could roll our tongues, but Daniel was never able to do so. Zayden must have picked this up from his mother, and the girls taken after Daniel.