Happily Ever After_ - Benison Anne O'Reilly [2]
Having said that, there was a young man recently who called me Eleanor for completely different reasons and I found I quite liked it, so perhaps it is time to embrace my real name and the maturity that goes with it. We’ll see.
I am, at the time of writing, thirty-five years old, the middle child of Dianne and Trevor’s three. I also have an older brother, David, who’s the family’s brightest star. At the tender age of thirty-eight, he’s a leading heart specialist in Adelaide, married to a GP, and the father of three bright little kids. As children we lived an ordinary middle-class existence, but David was always the one who seemed destined for bigger things. Dad spent most of his working life as an engineer with the Department of Main Roads, a solid, dependable guy. Mum worked as a combined teacher/librarian at the local primary school. They’re both retired now. We didn’t have a fancy lifestyle but things were okay. Mum and Dad still live in the same family home that we grew up in - a three-bedroom brick bungalow in a suburb so obscure that even most Sydneysiders ask, ‘Where?’ when I mention it.
I work in marketing: pharmaceutical marketing to be precise. I’m the girl that sells the pills that dear old granny and grandpa line up to pop every morning. Or rather, I was that girl until a few weeks ago. I had to resign from my job to move to Hong Kong so I suppose I am officially, at present, unemployed. Apart from the few months after Isabel was born, it’s the first time in my married life I’ve ever been a stay-at-home mum. Ask me again in six months how I feel about that.
And how would I describe my looks? Well the nitty-gritty is: average height, average weight (although fluctuating), brown eyes and blondey-brown hair (aided by six-weekly visits to the hairdressers). I have a small smattering of freckles across my nose and, by general repute, a nice smile, but that doesn’t give a proper picture does it? It’s a bit loaded, commenting on your own attractiveness. You don’t want to sound too full of yourself, but then again it’s also no place for false modesty. As I have a background in science I think I will describe myself graphically - on an attractiveness scale it would be something like this:
So definitely not bad, but remember that there are millions of girls between me and the genetically-blessed Ms Jolie and on a bad day I seem to see them everywhere. There have also been a couple of periods where I have moved down the scale: notably during that awkward stage commonly known as puberty and before and after the birth of Isabel, although there were extenuating circumstances there.
On that topic, why do parents always decide it’s a good time to get professional family portraits done when you’re at the absolute pinnacle of your hideousness? Emma is several years younger than my brother and me and when she was a baby Mum and Dad thought it would be a good idea to capture the family on film for posterity. They enlisted the services of a professional photographer and thus we were immortalised: Emma, the gorgeous blonde cherub; David, the gawky teen; and me, the unfortunate twelve year old with what looks suspiciously like a home-job fringe cut and a healthy layer of puppy fat laid down in preparation for a growth spurt that hasn’t happened yet! Even worse, I have these tragically unsupported little breasts. Didn’t think to buy me a bra for the occasion, Mother? And because they spent so much money on those bloody photos my parents insisted on hanging them throughout the house, helping to scare off any potential suitors. They’re hanging on the walls even now. When I think of those photos I marvel that Tony ever thought it would be a wise idea to marry me.
Conventional wisdom would suggest that a woman’s attractiveness declines slowly from age twenty-five or thereabouts. Maybe for most people it is that way but for me it’s been more up and down. I’ve recently lost a bit of weight and am currently enjoying an