A NEW DAY HAS COME//CELINE DION

Secret: I love Celine Dion. And I don’t mean in the ‘likes to belt out the Titanic theme song when drunk’ way, I mean in the ‘when I listen to Celine Dion very specific memories from my childhood are triggered’ way. 

When I was younger, I spent a lot of my time in Hong Kong. My parents and I would fly there during the majority of my school holidays, and we would spend two blissful weeks staying with my Aunt in her 5th floor apartment. At first, there was no real purpose to these trips. But there was a period when Dad worked in China, so Hong Kong was a meeting point, and Mum and I would be back in Hong Kong whenever the opportunity arose. 

Which meant that there was a lot of Celine Dion. My Aunt, God knows why, loved Celine Dion more than any other artist. But this meant that all our car rides revolved around the A New Day Has Come album. 10 years later I could probably still recite you 10 of the tracks on that album. 

Having said that, I can’t pretend I don’t love it. Hell. I went to the Celine Dion concert in 1999. No, I’m serious. I used to think I had just dreamt it, but one day when I asked Mum if we had maybe, just maybe, been late to a Celine Dion concert that took place at the old Hong Kong airport and resulted in us running up and down aisles trying to find our seats, she laughed at me and said “Wow I didn’t think you’d remember that!” Gee, thanks Mum.

Occasionally I will go back and listen to A New Day Has Come and pretend that I am cruising around in the back seat of my Aunt’s Mercedes Benz, (again, someone will need to explain to me why a woman without a driver’s license owned a Merc) singing along with Celine, not a trouble in the world. A New Day Has Come reminds me of the dirty and crowded restaurants we would have dinner at, so filthy that we would wash the chopsticks ourselves with the boiling tea provided. The hours, days, weeks, I would have spent in Times Square shopping. And fuck! I know I spent a massive amount of my childhood agonizing over which smelly pens I wanted to purchase at City Super. 

Just writing this post is making me really sad. I haven’t been to Hong Kong in almost 3 years, and that was just a stop over. The last time I properly stayed in Hong Kong and did all the typical Hong Kong things would have been at least 5 or 6 years ago. I miss my Aunt. She is one of the most beautiful and dedicated people I know and I used to admire her so much for all that she achieved. And she used to love me too. But then as I grew older she noticed a change in my attitude and said that it really disappointed her seeing me the way I was. And I hate that I let her down. I keep saying that I want to go to Hong Kong but I still haven’t acted on it. Once I graduate, I’m going to actually go. Go and give my Aunt a huge hug and tell her that I love her, because people don’t say that often enough. This is me promising myself that I will.

I know this was quite a random post but one day I’ll forget little things like this, and I don’t want that to happen. These little memories are my favourites. 

THE BABYSITTERS CLUB

When I was younger I’d often accompany my mum to the shopping mall, and while she would do grocery shopping, I would make my way over to the Carine-Duncraig Book Exchange to buy a new book (for 50 cents! Such a bargain) and then walk to the other side of the mall and buy a Paddlepop or a Calippo ice cream. Such was the ease of my 7 year old life. Since those days I’ve moved interstate, but if I do ever make my way back to Perth, I would make it a priority to head back to Carine Shopping Centre and see if the book exchange still exists. In all my years in Melbourne I have yet to come across something quite like that book exchange.

Anyway. My favourite part of the shop was the back right corner, where the junior fiction lived. My main interest was The Babysitters Club, although Babysitters Little Sister provided just as much entertainment in the form of Karen Brewer. When I first got reading glasses in Year 5, it wasn’t so bad, because Karen had two pairs! She had everything I didn’t have, multiplied by two. That lucky bastard. I was even jealous of her wedding with Ricky, and I can honestly say that I have re-read my copy of #15 Karen’s in Love too many times to count.

But the actually Babysitters Club girls were so much cooler. I wanted to have a club with my friends. Did we actually have to babysit? Hell no. Did we have to meet up three times a week? Sure. But that never actually happened. By the point in time when such a thing was feasible, all my friends and I were hooked on TV shows like Popstars (The drama that unfolded in our Year 3 Talent show - 2 groups performing the same Scandal’us song! The horror! - is a whole other story,) and the BSC became guilty pleasure late night reading. Actually to this day I have never babysat for anyone in my life (No one trusts me with a child, and I can understand why) so those 13 year old girls (plus 11 year old Mallory and Jessi! Wouldn’t dare forget them) really were everything I aspired to be. 

One of the very first blogs I would check regularly was What Claudia Wore. Unfortunately it’s not updated very often anymore but it’s a genius idea, which resulted in me pulling out my rather feeble collection for old time’s sake. I can remember reading so many more, but here they were, no more than 20. Holding my pathetic set of books, it dawned on me that the majority of the ones I had read are all (hopefully) still sitting in my primary school library. Which is devastating. 

So, this winter break, I’m going to go and find some more copies. I don’t even know what I’m going to do with over 130 books, but I just want them in my bedroom. Is this my first great pang of nostalgia? For Ann M Martin (and her countless ghostwriters) no less? For that infamous second “and these are my friends and that one’s diabetic and that one’s shy and she likes ballet!!” chapter that I would inevitably skip each time I’d devour a BSC? I think it might be. I almost want to wear different coloured buttons for earrings.

I’ll report back periodically to let you know how the progress is going. 

(image source)