Quantum Shenanigans

I’m the oldest of 7 children, but before the rest of the brood hatched, I was an only child, and had an imaginary friend to keep me company. His name was Jerry Narkovitch. 

While Mum was in hospital, my paternal grandmother came to Tasmania from the mainland to look after me while Dad was at work. Grandma often heard about Jerry Narkovitch when he was blamed for my shenanigans. Who spilled the juice? I’d say; “Jerry Nakovitch did it!” Who changed the the telly from Grandma’s Mario Lanza movie to Warner Brothers cartoons while she made herself some tea? “Jerry Nakovitch!“ Having raised a long line of children herself, Grandma knew a fictitious scapegoat when she heard mention of one. However, she was unaware that this particular imaginary friend was unique, in that it had a flesh and blood alter ego. Yes, Jerry Narkovitch was actually a real kid, and the son of my parents’ friends. Which either shows that, at the age of 4:

(A) I grasped the quantum superposition of Jerry Narkovitch, and that he was both real and imaginary, depending on whether he was present & observable, or UNpresent & UNobservable (after all, it wasn’t long ago that I’d been 100% unpresent & unobservable myself).

OR

(B) I had an utter lack of imagination (with a side dish of laziness) as imaginary friends are typically 100% imagined by their child-creators. I’ll let the physicists (& psychiatrists) decide that one, but the important thing here is that Jerry Narkovitch was both real and imaginary. Schrodinger’s Pal.

One day Grandma was looking after me, sitting in our front room and reading the newspaper, while I played nearby at the open front door, excitedly jabbering at the imaginary Jerry Narkovitch. I heard the squeak of our front gate, and looked up to observe the real Jerry Narkovitch. In that instant, fantasy became fact, Toddler Metaphysics rotated, Quantum wave functions collapsed, Schrodinger’s box opened – and the real Jerry Narkovitch entered our front yard with his mother, carrying a meal she’d made for us. Grandma was still reading with her back to the door, as I eagerly brought the Narkovitchs across the threshold, yelling, “Jerry Nakovitch is here!” Grandma was by then thoroughly tired of hearing about this phantasm; “Oh, for God’s sake! You and your Jerry BLOODY Narkovitch!” as the boy himself (the real one) stood in the doorway with his mother (also very real) affronted by this singularly crotchety welcome..

When Grandma realized her faux pas, she hastily sent me outside to play with (the real) Jerry, as she apologised profusely to (the really outraged) Mrs Narkovitch, caulking cracked civilities with copious pots of tea & Iced VoVos, I expect. This is perhaps typical of memories of Grandma from my early years. She was irascible old thing, who could go from twinkle-eyed hilarity to clench-jawed crankiness very quickly. Tough on her own children, she softened as a grandmother, and I have fond memories of her from my early childhood, when she was often the comedic foil to unwitting toddler hijinks by myself. 

Around this time (perhaps on this same visit) Grandma made it stridently clear that she didn’t approve of my moptop haircut – No siree – preferring the short back & sides that my mother abhorred. Grandma repeated her opinions on my kiddie coiffure so loudly & often that Dad asked her to keep them to herself. The word ‘cross-grained’ describes a contrarian and stubborn person, which fits all in the Baker clan to some degree, but none more-so than Grandma. She set her jaw.. and simply sneaked me to a barbershop for a buzzcut anyway. So there. Needless to say, this did not go over well with my parents.. As a tiny child, I was not able to decode adult showdowns, and blissfully unaware that I was the political football in a few, so other peoples’ retellings are what I remember of these, rather than my own memories. 

The episodes I actually DO remember myself, and fondly, often involve cheeky teasing between us, like two bantering scallywags, and Grandma gave as good as she got, pranking me to the great hilarity of us both. As a 4 year old, my hiding places for games of hide & seek were often poorly chosen, with exposed legs and elbows, but the theatricality of the searching itself – the searcher calling out and teasing the searchee; “Hmmm.. I wonder where that cheeky rascal could be?..” and trying to get a giggle from them – was part of the fun.. Riffing on this, I got guffaws from Grandma by teasing her when she took her bath, bantering at her from behind the locked bathroom door. She enjoyed the retellings of this story, and other such tomfoolery, for years afterward. Though she was often stern, Grandma was not above bending the rules now and then, letting me stay up past my normal bedtime when I saw episodes of the 1960s British TV series THE AVENGERS, and fell in love with Emma Peel. 

As a tiny child, I had a strange feeling watching Mrs. Peel.. she was my first ever crush, many years before I had any idea of what a crush even was. My standard bedtime was eventually enforced by my parents, and I could no longer see ‘that pretty lady’ bash the bone-marrow out of all the bad-guys. I made a huge fuss – “Waaaugh!” – and a chastened Grandma tried to make amends by helping me write a letter. With notepad and pencil, she took dictation of my pleas to Mrs Peel, requesting that she put her TV show before my bedtime. I doubt that the letter was ever sent.. (after all, Grandma knew that Diana Rigg had zero pull with Tasmanian TV scheduling) but at least writing it had calmed me down, until Grandma went home (and my toddler tantrums were again somebody else’s problem) while I’d catch up with Emma Peel a few years later, in reruns.

Other memories from this time involve misunderstandings, that got one (or both) of us in hot water. A perfect example is being at a supermarket with Grandma while she was engrossed in grocery choices for dinner.. Later I’d be very interested in the meal that she made but, at that particular moment, dumb old vegetables didn’t interest a 4 year old, and I looked around for something else.. ..and spied a huge corral of cardboard boxes near the cash registers.. “WOAH!” This was actually for customers to pack their goods, but when you’re only 2 feet tall, a mountain of boxes 5 feet high is clearly a play paradise intended just for you. I dived into it happily, exploring fantastic worlds made of cardboard.. Meanwhile, in a supermarket back in Hobart, Grandma had made her vege selection, and turned around to discover… that her teeny grandson had disappeared into thin air. She could not know that at precisely that moment he was happily hurtling on a cardboard rocketship to outer space, mere feet from her side. Likewise, the swashbuckling space captain had no conception of the anguish of his own grandmother on the other side of the galaxy. 

Poor Grandma frantically searched the store, scurrying from end to end. Her son & daughter in law had entrusted her to watch their first born, and she loses him! Employees were quickly marshaled into a search of the aisles and immediate surroundings of the supermarket, to no avail.. The child had simply vanished.. Meanwhile, the child himself was now inside a cardboard castle, repelling the assaults of a cardboard dragon.. before it morphed into a cardboard submarine. Eventually, even such exciting stuff becomes boring, especially when tummy rumbles remind the intrepid adventurer of the REAL reason for the Grandma/Jamie away team.. “Wasn’t Grandma making food for me? hmm..” 

I tumbled out of the pile of cardboard boxes to excited cries from store employees, who rushed me to Grandma’s side, by then an absolute sobbing mess of anxiety and tears. Her relief at finding me alive, and her hugs of sheer joy were intense and heartfelt.. before she did an emotional 180° turn and became angry. This sudden pivot, from being warmly hugged by Grandma, to having my hair blown back by her blast of fury, flabbergasted 4 year old me, having no idea of the drama I’d caused. Grandma told me many years later that after intense relief, her next emotion was fear. I was a notorious chatterbox, and she was terrified that I’d cheerily tell all as soon as we got home – “Mummy & Daddy! Grandma LOST me! tee tee!” – and Grandma would never be trusted with a child ever again! 

She immediately flipped the tables, bluffing that she’d tell my parents what I’d done! “Oh, your parents will be so angry at you, Jamie! Wait till I tell them!” Swept along by her melodramatic portrayal of parental anger at my downright dastardly deeds, I became distraught and begged her not to tell; “Oh, Pleeeeease, Grandma!” Outwardly, she feigned the attitude of a cop grudgingly letting someone off an expensive traffic ticket, while inwardly unclenching with relief that her reverse psychology had worked. My constantly jabbering motormouth would be silenced, on this subject at least.. Much much later, Grandma confessed the truth to my parents, and often recounted this story (very amusingly told too).

I now understand the context for some of these early memories of Grandma, and perhaps why she feared my parents hearing that their infant son was even briefly missing, on that particular day. Grandma was minding me after tragedy the previous year, when my baby sister died. Rachel lived for just 8 months in the year I turned 3, and memories of her are my earliest that can be dated. I remember her last day too, and not knowing not what it meant. The swirling currents of grief were opaque to a 3 year old but, in the many years since, I’ve often pondered this time of unspeakable sadness for my young parents. Grieving the loss of their infant daughter, they’d soon learn that Mum was already pregnant with my brother, Jo. News that must have brought joy, tangled with fear that tragedy might strike again. 

Decades later, they had 6 kids, and now lived in my father’s hometown with his extended clan, including Grandma. She briefly looked after us kids when our young mother fell terminally ill. After the taxi dropped Grandma at our house, I carried her bags inside, sloshing heavily with her favourite tipple of Three Roses Sherry and, at the age of 17, I understood why she’d need the fortification. No longer an oblivious 3 or 4 year old, I was myself buffeted by cross currents of familial grief, and those undertows pull at me even today. 

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She has been gone for decades but I perhaps understand Grandma better than ever, now that I’m roughly the same age as she was in these infant memories. By then she’d already lost her own first born child (who I’m named after) and recently a grandchild, with more heartbreak yet to come. Grief is the background radiation of huge clans.. The longer we humans live, the more tragedies strike our loved ones & ourselves, and that accumulation of wounds takes its toll, but I maintain that we owe it to each other to resist despair or bitterness. 

My Grandma contained many simultaneous contradictory states, as such cross-grained people always do. Crankiness & sentimentality. Harshness & softness. Dourness & wit. Sternness & shenanigans were all quantum entangled within her. A crotchety old curmudgeon homebody, she nevertheless took on the delicate mission of child minding in our grief stricken family. Twice. Grandma gave me fond early memories from tragic times in my infancy, and I will always love her for that.

Mary “Mollie” Baker (née Bayley) 1913-1988