It’s not looking like an Eight Is Enough moment is on the cards in general. Silence and a good observing eye feels like the best strategy to take — any 7 year old worth their salt knows this. Stay quiet, see how the land lies, watch everything, don’t draw attention to yourself and then use your manners and intuition until the time to get the hell out presents itself.

But that time just never comes.

It doesn’t come when schizophrenic, toothless and wrinkly Phillip* is caught giving hickies to Janine* (who has that same look as the kids in our special class at school) in his bedroom and everyone is sitting in the lounge room yelling out to them ‘Enough, you guys, you’re not even supposed to be in there together, man! Come out here with us, man!’.

Nor does it come when Patrick* and Paul*, the massive gang dudes who seem just like the uncles of the cool kids in my class at school — when they talk they sound like chickens clucking and pecking — are sitting around the kitchen table looking up at the black and white TV high on the wall, each with a lazy arm bent with an elbow on the table, 34th cigarette of the day topping up nicotine stains on tattooed fingers (letters L, O, V, E on each finger… I can’t see what’s on the other hand), watching Smokey Robinson sitting in his convertible singing Cruisin’ Together, at No.1 again on the charts, their own voices sounding as good, if not better than Smokey’s because it’s in their genes, and they’re looking hard but sounding softer then a dew drop falling on a butterfly’s wing and the looks on their faces are purer and softer than any I’d ever seen coming from a human being let alone a man let alone a gang member.

The time doesn’t come when Richard* the armed robber (so he probably dresses just exactly like the McDonald’s HamBurglar when he’s outside the house), who has reddish hair and freckles, just like me, so he must get called names too, is on breakfast duty and shows me how he has perfected the art of creating a vat of dull, watery dishcloth-grey-brown porridge, enough for everyone in the house to share their first communal meal for the day in each other’s silence, pondering wearily over the scheduled events ahead — court appearances, family group counselling sessions, victim impact statements, supervised child access meetings, etc.

It doesn’t come when Manu* takes me away from the house. We walk to the bus stop and catch the bus into the big city where I’ve never been allowed before and we walk through the noise from the bus terminal to the picture theatre. I take his big hand as we cross each road and we wait outside until the very last minute while he has his 12th cigarette of the day before we go in and see Neil Diamond in The Jazz Singer. I see the stares from the people outside and inside the picture theatre as they all hysterically point at the tall, slender guy with the massive ‘fro, reeking of nicotine, rancid enough to strip your nostrils — sitting casually in the theatre, first in the stark light then in the dark — sitting alone with the little girl with freckles on her nose. I’m the only kid in the theatre. No one comes near. It’s like a standoff and everyone holds their breath. It seems that even in our small city in our small country, in 1980, people didn’t expect to see a little girl watching a grown up movie like The Jazz Singer.

I don’t know what Manu did to deserve getting into the halfway house but I had him all to myself for a bit over half a day and he was beautiful and I was in love with him in the innocent way a 7 year old girl gets to be in love with a beautiful boy/man exuding warmth and self-awareness and style and controlled charisma and manliness and womanliness and he held my hand when I was frightened of traffic and of people and he introduced me to the legend that is Neil Diamond (and Neil the actor, too, not just Neil the singer) and didn’t roll his eyes when I told him about my Barbie doll and how I had expected to get a blonde Barbie with a sequined frock but, instead, got Hawaiian Barbie with an ukulele and a lei and, even though it wasn’t a real Barbie, I now liked it almost as much as my wooden train set. He liked it that I had a train set.

Fact 3:

Manu is Fa’afafine and I guess, technically, he’s my first love.

Then the time does finally come.

The Eight Is Enough moment. The moment I remember vividly which never grows dull with age.

The perfect take-in-breakfast-in-bed-on-Sunday-morning moment. Sun shining, new day dawning, in I waltz — no longer trying to keep a lid on the long-dormant 7 year old enthusiasm that had resurfaced within just one weekend in the house — a tray with two bowls of the porridge Richard had taught me to make, beaming as I present them as a ‘thank you’ to Lisa and Tracey for having me. The hesitation on their faces when I go to hand the porridge to them while they are mid-sudden-get-up-quickly and I’m watching them as they try to hide the fact, but I’m fully aware that they are hiding something and then it all becomes startlingly apparent: the porridge is gross and no one’s going to eat it and, nice gesture, but it’s not going to happen. They know it, I know it, so they don’t eat it and nor do I but I can see they are tearing up, which is unexpected because they are so staunch looking, one with a severe mullet cut and the other larger than life and what Mr Barnes next door would call ‘built like a brick shithouse’ but I see also that she has nice skin and moles on her body, and I’m watching them looking at each other and then looking at me, then at each other and I see love and hardness and unity and tiredness and gratitude and I feel something in the room like the feeling I got during my half day with Manu. I see in their faces a fleeting moment of softness in a long line of harsh moments.

Fact 4:

Unlike in my house when dad was home, there was no booze and no drugs around. It’s a halfway house. They are on probation. Still, this mishmash of people were laughing real laughter together, at one stage to the point of get-on-the-ground-holding-your-stomach howling and crying tears of laughter. I’d not seen this before in my life.

Fact 5:

No one felt scary. Not one of them was a cream puff, of course, but they were all fairly relaxed because they didn’t have to prove they were worthy of being there. It’s a halfway house. The real world was coming up and that was going to be the hard bit. This bit was paradise, the calm before the shitstorm, the ‘me time’ before release day when they would have to get out of bed, bend over and pull on the reputations they’d have to wear convincingly once again. They may have been rehabilitated but the society they would soon be integrating back into wasn’t.

Fact 6:

There was respect. Everyone respected each other as they were. You could sense it — or, rather, you couldn’t sense an ounce of disrespect. The men didn’t grab the women’s breasts — first cupping lovingly, only to twist around slowly until a stifled yelp was awarded. The women weren’t afraid to speak and, when they spoke, they did so quietly and didn’t need to yell or raise up an octave or two to be heard and everyone leaned forward to listen. There was no leader or followers. There was nothing to fight for, nothing to push, no rights to be spoken up for. Gender was apparent but it just was as it was, without one ‘1st’ and then everyone else — gender was an adjective. Race was apparent but just was as it was, without one ‘1st’ and then everyone else — just an adjective.

Fact 7:

The resident/prisoner who was kept on the outer of the entire group was the armed robber.

Fact 8:

Eight Is Enough. I learned more about the world in one weekend from these 8 people in that shithole halfway house than any TV show, ad’ campaign, award-winning documentary, LGBT march, corporate values poster, diversity speech, social development thesis, anti-war demonstration, race relations manifesto or political debate could have taught me. I’m fucking glad my parents had no choice but to chuck me in there for the weekend while they tried to sort their shit out. I was exposed to something really worthwhile at an early age before it could be urinated on by white noise from a society that has louder voices and enough money to become silent predatory partners.