The lost art of nattering
being mauled by multiple young children who were seeking attention or were tired or complaining about their siblings or cousins.
The conversation could be as mundane as the increasing price of bread, milk or tea. It could be about a distant cousin’s misfortune, which would always prompt a “there but for the grace of God go I” from Nanna.
These women shared, at that table, breastfeeding wisdom and conducted a perpetual swap meet involving children’s books, uniforms and shoes.
In that room I grew up. I learnt things about what it means to be kind, to be a good friend, the importance of family.
I learnt things that can only be taught by the sage wisdom possessed by career nurses about humanity that frankly, once heard, can never be unheard.
There were tears and support and love and community in that room. The nattering bound them together.
Today, when people use the word natter, they use it in a disparaging way. They use it to describe a useless or purposeless form of conversation, usually involving women and often a collective of elderly women. Nattering is not useless. It is incredibly important. It is an art form that, with busy lives and smaller families and all of us watching our screens rather than each other, may be dying slowly — and with it our connection to community and informal support networks.
Recently I was grocery shopping with two of our children. By the second trolley load they were no longer vaguely interested in the task at hand and were in part walking and in part wrestling while in the fruit and veg section.
I was clearly exasperated by their behaviour and found myself apologising to a woman in her 60s as our children’s WrestleMania had missed colliding with her by centimetres.
She smiled and said that, while her children were now grown up, she remembered clearly the days of supermarket WrestleMania. She called me “Love” and we stood talking briefly about children and life.
Another woman joined in and I found myself engaged in a wonderful natter with two strangers.
In those few minutes they both had suggestions for me about keeping WrestleMania at bay while doing a two-trolley shop. They were kind and wise and, if they are reading this, they should know that I have used their wisdom with success. Thank you.
While the content of the natter may be trivial, the natter itself is not. It creates bonds between families and friends and even strangers shopping on a Saturday afternoon.
It shares folklore, imbibes people with a sense of tribe and belonging, builds businesses through word-ofmouth referrals and brings us closer through conversation and a sense of community.
And, if my recent nattering experience tells you anything, if you are lucky, a natter may even give you some tips about managing WrestleMania in the supermarket. Surely, we all need those tips from time to time. Rachel Schutze is a principal lawyer at Gordon Legal, wife and mother of three. (Ed’s note: Ms Schutze is married to Corio MP Richard Marles.)