This is my 40th birthday speech and tells plenty about me and those and love, and to whom I am grateful...
Thank you so much Richard – You are beautiful and I will come right back to you in all of this.
Thank you so much Richard – You are beautiful and I will come right back to you in all of this.
Show me the child at seven and I’ll show you the woman.
On my communion day when I was seven my Dad, stood me on a chair after the lunch and asked me to make a speech. I looked out at the family. I loved them all and I was so grateful for the year in Italy – that enchanted world we lived in –the beauty in the Gallerie with the renaissance art that I still love, the gondolas, Roman ruins and 3 Popes in a year, la citta’ nobile di ‘Pietrasanta’, where we baked bread on Wednesday’s, in the oven where my grandmother and great grandmother before us had baked, where school finished at lunchtime, where we walked over the mountains between the villages, drinking water from natural springs on the way, where we had this bella famiglia– the Zio’s and Zia’s, hordes of cousins and so many people who adored my sister Marla and I. I looked out at them all and I just choked. I couldn’t put my gratitude and sense of wonder at it all in to words, I burst into tears.
So in celebrating my 40th Richard and I wanted to have a big lunch, like the one on my communion day – where we all came together to eat, pray and love. And this time, I wanted to be able to thank all the wonderful people that make my life so rich and fruitful. I wish Bec Rose and Ken and Jill Allen and my New York
My first task, is to pay tribute to my dear parents - that mad-capped duo, who my friends from school still call “the Libby and Gino show”. Its been quite the long-running soap opera - full of laughter, friends, family, dramas and huge amounts of love. Three weeks ago – Mum and Dad celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary. That’s right – 3 weeks before I was born. In fact, when I was little and found their wedding certificate I asked my Granny how it all worked and she replied quickly “you were premature dear”.
So forty years later, they are still great mates, devoted parents, they go on adventures, they sit on the back porch together of an evening and talk for hours. And mum told me that on their anniversary, they even had a waltz around the kitchen. Despite the odds, they’ve crossed cultural barriers and many other challenges that strong families survive, and here they still are:
I would like you to join me in raising a toast to Libby and Gino and 40 years together.
To Mumma and Babbo, Libby and Gino and 40 years together.
I could tell hundred stories about my Dad but they will have to wait until his 80th birthday in February. Dad came to Australia in 1952, to Melbourne and worked on the railways, on the Snowy Mountain River Brisbane in the 1950s handsome young Gino was invited to a party held by some very posh people. There was a visitors book that the guests signed as they entered– Dad read all of the entries on the page - “Professor this, Managing Director that, Honorary the other”…etc . And then, he thought about it and then wrote “Gino Pasquini – Professor of Fantasy”. That’s our Babbo!
I also want to tell my little sister Marla how I could not be more proud of her and Jonathan and their little family. Marla you are such a brave person. You have grown into a beautiful woman and mother , a wonderful listener, friend and sister. And as you all know – my love for La Zucchina D’oro – Felicity – knows no bounds.
Lest you think this is an Italian show, a few words for the Australian co-production partners. My Mum and her family. Mum is a Kennedy and a Torr, still a canny tennis player, has loads of friends, could go in the Guiness book of records for writing postcards, and is a great supporter of the Australian Labor party and its Kenwick and Armadale representatives. We are a bipartisan family. We call her the ‘social networker’. Her family has a footprint across this vast state. No matter which west aussie town we visited as kids – there were always one of mum’s cousins or uncles or aunties waiting with a cold beer. And her brothers and sisters and their kids were a big part of our life and still are – Keith, my Godfather - and Pat, Ivan and Thea and their ever expanding broods. Aunty Pat deserves a special mention for being the one to stimulate our creativity with music, painting and dancing, and also for taking me to Church as a child where I fell in love with the stories in the stained glass windows, prayer and sacred music.
Their mum, my Granny, was the third defining influence in my life and someone to whom I owe so much – certainly my love of enquiry and thought. We lived with Granny until I was five and by that time, I had personally autographed every book she owned – I couldn’t read them, but I wrote my name in every single one. And my mind and how it works bears her signature and always will. In a lovely kink of history, this strong, clever woman was a cleaner for many years in the Economics Department at UWA where I now work and intend to complete my PhD.
I promise I won’t go year by year through my very fortunate life. But I will say that there are a few experiences everyone should have. One of these is being a Catholic school girl. You just have to do it – so much fun. Happy years at Mercedes: choir and drama, debating, history, poetry, truancy. Wonderful friends for life: Bec, Janey, Jonica, Sasha – and Christian Porter – Ferris Bueller and honorary Mercedes girl, and white knight who saved me from my youthful socialism, and Dion, Trinity Boy in Chief - It is great to live real life as grown ups with the people that you grew up with.
Another thing everyone should do is choose a wonderful family to marry in to. When you get married young, you get another round of parenting and I had great wisdom in my choice here. Dearly departed warm and loving, Ian Douglas – fixer extraordinaire, packer and monitor of up to 17 banana boxes for trips to Rottnest. We miss you so. And Beth: It is said that humans are half beast and half angel –in the Pasquini family we call Beth ‘the angel’. Everyone who knows Beth would agree, she is as close to an angel as any human can be. And Gavin is another almost honorary Mercedes girl and brother who has like any brother endured me at times, and loved me at times, for two decades – so thank you and you Pru.
Another thing everyone should do is make films and go all expenses paid – several times - to the Cannes film festival and talk your way into every glam party and not bat an eyelid whether you’re talking to Catherine Deneuve, Martin Scorcese or Naomi Watts who’s sleeping in the bunk bed under you in the cheap hotel on the Rue de Cannes. Thank you Melissa for sharing the journey of both making films, and pretending to make films, and many things beside, with me. Richard deserves a mention here– he did all the legals for our films, and some of the financing, and I was once so cross with him once, that in a fit of pique I left him off the credits.
I am also very grateful for those five years we spent in New York . They were hard working years – much tougher for Richard than for me – but such an education for us both, and we had a wonderful American family experience there as well . There is an Italian proverb which says “le due cose piu’ belle che possiamo dare ai nostri figli sono le radici, e le ali” (the two most beautiful things we can give to our children are their roots and their wings). And this is so true of Australians overseas who still call Australia home but who, with our fine education, absolutely flourish overseas. Advance is now a community of 20,000 Australians overseas and it continues to grow but when we started it, we had an excel spreadsheet with the contact details of 150 Australians. And we grew it to something that is now the routine vehicle which Prime Minister’s, Treasurers, Universities, and innovators use to source connections and talent overseas.
Now this brings to me my life now here in wonderful Perth and all of you splendid people.
Firstly, what fantastic parents and uncles and aunties you are. How lucky these beautiful kids are to be growing up surrounded by your love – thank you for bringing them all into the world and sharing them with us today. Perth will always be a special place because we do such a good job of raising kids. But there are still islands and communities that aren’t part of the circle and if we want to keep this place as special as it is, we have to find ways to reach our arms around them too.
I am very grateful to the University and to the Vice Chancellor for allowing me into the UWA family and letting my 1000 flowers bloom. I knew when I was overseas that on my return, apart from looking after Rich and having babies, I wanted to help Perth have a much bigger picture conversations about its place in the world, reinvigorate the not-for-profit sector by getting govt out of its way, and see if there was an intelligent way of bringing religion back in to the public square.
Thank you to all of the people I get to collaborate with every day on these projects. Sheer joy to work at the Business school with you Tracey, and all the smart generous people like Sharon and Jo and Melissa, Larissa and Kylie. And of course our In the Zone adventure crew, Tim, Shaheen and Sonia. Don’t you love it when you hear people telling other people “you know that Perth’s in the same timezone as 60% of the world’s population….”. Andrew and Michael and Religion & Globalisation colleagues – the best is yet to come. Watch this space, 2011 promises to be quite the year with our Seek Wisdom series, The Tony Blair visit and our mad plan to have 10,000 people ZUMBAing at Langley Park on the eve of CHOGM (Mike sort of like a World Summit for Children Candlelight Vigil but with better dance moves).
I want to especially thank my precious Mercy Now and Catherine McAuley Award gang for nurturing my spirit. It has been a joy to return to Mercy and Italian roots and create our little community and to eat (a lot), pray and love the world together. Debra, Rosa, Suzie – you, your husbands and children, are flowers in the garden of our life.
And dear Anne – you’ve been there for me in times of sorrow, and listened to me bounce off the walls with ideas. Thank you for your wisdom but most of all, your listening. Everyone should have the experience of being listened to as you are able – free of judgement, full of love and allowing of the soul.
Finally – there is noone to whom I owe as much for the shape of my adult life, as my love, my friend, my teacher, my tax adviser, my husband, Richard. Yes, he is the Petit Prince, sometimes even ‘bubble boy’, and the fact that two of his best friends have flown across the country for his wife’s birthday suggests they think I deserve some kind of an award. But I don’t think there is a soul in the world who could have taught me more.
In each of us there is something that is broken, and it is only in embracing each other that we can be healed.
We’ve travelled the globe, ridden out many storms, learnt to forgive, held each other through sorrows, and we still have many challenges to face. But we’ve learnt so much together. It’s been the best twenty year long seminar ever. Every morning we pick up where we left off, we test ideas, dissect the world, recite poetry, and he does hilarious impersonations. We consult the internet, or the Bible or the Economist, or all three, and argue cases, and sometimes, I even win.
As Sr Anne says, “Life is a long apprenticeship in learning how to love” and we’ve been apprenticed to each other for nearly 20 years now. This has been the juciest experience of my life.
So that’s it. Show me the woman at 40 and I’ll show you the child.
Thank you all for growing me up. For making my life so full of joy, purpose and promise.
I am still the same girl in the photo. Someone who delights in being part of a big family - everyone with a different piece broken, but that together becomes whole. Still reaching for beauty and striving to hear and understand the languages of love: human and divine.
Grazie.
