Real life in the background
picture by mashroms
While I blog about people who’ve shaped me, that I’m forming new habits and ways I’m indulging myself, real life keeps ticking on in the background. It feels remiss of me not to mention what is happening so here’s a bit of an update:
Mother-in-law, who lives with us, has been in hospital for the past week after going a-wandering in the middle of the night a little over a week ago. A 6.30am rap at the door from the boys and girls in blue alerted us to her absence. She’d been found, by joggers in the very early morning, sleeping in a ditch on the side of the road. Apparently wandering is common in dementia patients. I had my suspicions there were previous midnight sojourns but no proof until now.
She was tranferred to the Royal Brisbane Hospital by ambulance where, that night, she had a minor heart attack. When I spoke to my husband later that morning he’d even seen the commotion on the side of the road at 5.30am when he left for work; saw the bundle under a blanket in the ditch and assumed someone had hit a dog. Terrible to think that, but none of us were any the wiser at that hour.
She has recovered physically from her ordeals but she is still immensely confused. We expect she will be discharged today or tomorrow. We won’t find out how much mental function will return until she’s settled with us again (she no longer thinks her place is ‘home’ so I don’t use the word with her anymore). Hospitalisation has reset the Aged Care Assessment process so now we have to wait another three months or more for her to be assessed for respite care and potential admission to a nursing home. Three months ago she was so much more functional than she is today. Three months from now, I have no idea what life will be like. The disease is consuming her so quickly.
Other unavoidable real life happening concurrently with MIL’s crazy business is a lovely round of autumn gastro in the family. I’m ever amazed at what I can deal with since becoming a mother. Where the maiden-Jodie would have recoiled from a drooly toddler’s wet finger, the mother-Jodie can continue to eat her dinner to the sound of gagging and vomit splashing into a bucket.
Mothers really are superheros.
April 29th, 2009 - Posted in gratitude, parenthood, grandparents, duty of care, health | | 5 Comments
Indulging myself
picture by jasoneppink
One of the delightful changes to have come out of doing The Artist’s Way is I finally gave myself permission to indulge in something for myself alone. Something I’ve wanted to do since I was a child. I started piano lessons!
I remember the piano in the living room of my Great Aunt Edna’s home. She used to play skillfully before her fingers became gnarled by arthritis. Even so, she could still manage a tune that struck awe in me as a five year old. She gave my brother and I open access to the piano when we came to visit. And she was generous with her compliments on our sonic inventions at the keyboard. Never a mother herself, I suppose we were the closest thing to grandchildren she had. Ever after, I have desired to play the piano.
But for my family, access to a piano was always the limitation. They’re such expensive instruments and they take up so much space! For my eleventh birthday, and with the best of intentions, a rich uncle offered to buy me an electronic organ. Yes, it would do. It would have to do. I learned to play it for about two years - long enough to get some confidence at the keyboard - but playing it was not anything like playing a piano. Everything from the sound it made to the touch of the keys was different. The only common element was the arrangement of the keyboard.
Many years and a half-lifetime on, my husband’s great aunt had a neglected classic upright piano in her tumbledown living room with nicotine stained wallpaper and clutter all around her. She would sometimes invite us to lunch (a danger all its own) and then play the piano for us, dreadfully out of tune. When Aunt Rita’s birthday came around I splurged $90 on getting her piano tuned. I thought she’d be really uplifted by playing a tuneful piano. But the tuner advised her he couldn’t tune it without new felts and some maintenance work. She agreed to it and two thousand dollars later Aunt Rita had a tuneful piano that she would no longer play. Within a year she was forced to retire to a nursing home. It was the most disasterous present I’d ever given anyone.
The piano was later moved to her sister’s (my mother-in-law’s) cottage, which happens to be the pre-existing granny flat on our property. Untouched, it bred several generations of cockroaches over five years while our family travelled and built the house we currently live in. We have lived here two years and only now are we daring to open the piano lid and have a fiddle. Such a shame to waste that piano!
With my mother-in-law so housebound, and needing someone around almost all the time, we seek purposeful reasons to interact with each other that are not centred around her dependency. I don’t think I’ll ever stop calling it Rita’s piano, or stop feeling guilty for inflicting a two thousand dollar fixit job upon her when she could least afford it. But the piano was already there. What did I have to lose?
So now it is freshly tuned and I’ve been taking lessons for several weeks. Life has presented me with an opportunity too good to refuse. There is no excuse for denying myself something I’ve always wanted to do. And my daughter decided to start lessons too so there is even more incentive to learn and continue learning. Now, every Monday afternoon my mother-in-law’s cottage is full of piano sounds. Not yet very elegant sounds, but she has been enjoying the extra visitors and having us over regularly to practice. Everyone wins. Why didn’t I do this sooner?
What have you always wanted to do but never done?
Now imagine yourself taking the first step.
Now imagine you’re doing it.
April 28th, 2009 - Posted in gratitude, nostalgia, grandparents, play, self-care | | 5 Comments
Becoming real
picture by svenwerk
Yes, I did delete the Fallout post. I realised I don’t need to indulge in navel gazing to feel integrated. ‘Noticing‘ was a worthwhile exercise but let’s get back to NOW: the only moment I have any ability to alter.
I’ve spent the past eleven weeks doing an emotional purge using the classic book Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way as a guide. I’ve been doing it online with a small cluster of friendly writers and artists. Some aspects of the course have been wildly successful. Others have not met my expectations (is that the author’s fault, the cluster’s fault, or mine?). However I’ve learned some good habits through the process of writing morning pages and keeping artist dates: rituals I intend to maintain after we finish the course next week. Rituals that any person can adopt to better integrate life and living, even if you don’t call yourself an artist.
Maybe it is a typical reaction to doing this kind of course, or turning 39, but in my fortieth year I’ve decided to take a lifestyle stocktake. I’m cleaning out the proverbial cupboards of my life; purging what no longer fits; what is old or worn; what is cluttering my mental and physical spaces. This process of evolving flows like the tide and currently I’m at a low ebb.
We’ve just been through an unusual rainy spell in Queensland and grey fuzzy mould is threatening to swallow the undisturbed corners of my home. It’s a clear metaphor for how my lack of attention has let the bad habits creep back over the past year. Exactly when did I start pouring an extra drink at night? When did I start skipping breakfast? And eating all this sugar? Domestic coffee machines - there ought to be a law against them! How did this once-spartan home get so full of clutter? And where did my regular yoga and meditation practice go?
Last November’s little break down gifted me a wake-up call. I had allowed my stressful circumstances to corrode my lifestyle just like the white fuzz growing on the disused leather goods at the bottom of my closet. Since then I have got those bad habits ‘under control’ but they still lurk in the background like a shadow. Be prepared for me to exorcise some of my ’shadows’ over the coming weeks.
This was a good time for me to have undertaken The Artist’s Way and, after the course finishes next week, I can continue to use artist dates and morning pages to stay authentic and honest with myself.
April 26th, 2009 - Posted in personal growth, ritual, wisdom, health, self-care | | 4 Comments
Domestic Haiku #11
hands in dishwater
mind in a far-away place
April 26th, 2009 - Posted in haiku | | 0 Comments
Noticing
picture by Jen Chan
Today I notice the people who have gifted me some of my greatest life lessons. None of them preached to me or dictated how things should be. All are role models who, in things they’ve done and the lives they’re living, show me how to be a better person.
Ultimately, there are more than five as I have put some significant people into categories together. I am naming names (for now) unless individuals have requested not to be identified. Therefore, as I gradually make contact with these people and they read my dedication here, there is the possibility I may have to remove names or content to protect their privacy. But for now, I sincerely hope that I am not breaching their trust by listing them by name.
In chronological order:
1. My inspiring highschool teachers: they taught more than twenty years ago now, but some of them are still teaching, some still at my alma mater. To Liz Lewis, who was my first feminist teacher, who adored travel, who inspired me to write and who, at times, pushed me beyond my boundaries (argh, Youth Speaks for Australia - no way!). When I think of why I pursued studies in arts and teaching, it was because of the foundation in learning you and others laid for me. I still read and write daily and will until I literally can’t anymore. To Ian McKay, a ‘hippy-dippy’ science teacher who, I later learned, had an accomplished life outside of teaching as a published bush poet, among other things. You remind me that we don’t live a mono-life and that we can wear many different hats at the same time - and still be a compassionate person too. I also notice Lyn Warren (as she was known then) for her humorous enthusiasm for mathematics - and willing tolerance of my limitations in that regard. When I attended our class of ‘88 reunion in 2003 it was great to see you all still teaching at the same highschool after twenty years or more. Finally, I notice Gary Bradley, for his brand of firm guidance, and a past life as a foster dad, which I greatly admire.
Okay, so that was cheating, but I can’t limit it to just one teacher.
2. My soulmate and life partner: who has forced growth in me, in every aspect of life. You taught me I am lovable - by proposing several times, and that persistence has its rewards, when I eventually proposed to you and we entered into our unconventional marriage. You showed me that I have talents, that I’m only limited by choosing limitation. You knocked me out of a heavy depression with logic, observation and feedback. You enabled me to take greater personal responsibility, to bite off more of life than I can chew, but to then savour it, one small, achievable morsel at a time. You are a great father who cares deeply and a great provider who never lets us want. From time to time I might criticise your tendency to over-achieve, your passionate work ethic and your single-mindedness but only because such qualities are weaker in myself. You keep me a healthy kind of humble.
3. My financial and intellectual mentor: ‘Uncle’ Dave Fisher. My husband and I both met Uncle Dave (as we called him - he mentored many) while living in Tokyo in 1996 when we were in our mid-twenties and he, his mid-seventies. He was an ex-WW2 fighter pilot for the US air force responsible for dropping bombs on Tokyo, which he later adopted as his home. Despite advancing age, he displayed a youthful passion for life and learning, and an uncommon humility and chivalry that betrayed his genteel southern heritage. When the company my husband worked for was released to the stock market, all the staff were investing for profit, except us - newly out of the debt that sent us to Japan in the first place and without a yen to our names. Uncle Dave wouldn’t have it, gave us $10,000 interest free, to pay back at our leisure so that we could participate in the buy-in. This display of trust changed our lives and laid the foundations for a financially secure future. Uncle Dave saw his money back within 6 months and when we eventually sold our stock two years later we made five times the invested value - after tax, it was enough for a sizeable home loan deposit back home. We still remember Uncle Dave fondly but have since lost contact. All things going well, he will now be in his late 80s. I hope Tokyo is treating you well Uncle Dave!
4. My first mama-friend: Miranda Redwood had the model labour, turning up at the birth centre ten minutes before pushing her daughter into the world. She made mothering look easy and she didn’t give two hoots about how other mothers fulfilled their task - she had her own way of doing things. She was raised unconventionally and her childhood stories were complete contrast to my own. Eight years younger than me, she knew her own skin better than I and she always saw beyond skin to what resides inside others, including me, who felt like a mother with failed instincts in the first year of my child’s life. She reassured me that I knew my baby better than anyone else. Miranda broke all the rules about what I thought mothering should be and her example assisted me in breaking out of my self-imposed box. Her house wasn’t tidy, her habits weren’t ideal, her relationship: imperfect. And having her for my first mother friend sent me off on a unique learning curve of my own, from which I have never looked back. Miranda, I think of you more often than you probably realise.
5. My mentors in activism: Bruce Teakle, Melissa Fox and Jo Smethurst, I continue to learn from you, even now that I put aside any aspiration to assist Maternity Coalition in achieving birth reform. You always approach the issues from a rational platform, abstaining from judgement and maintaining the integrity to form your alliances for the long term. You are willing to make progress in increments in order to attain the ultimate goal - however long that might take. You demonstrate that impatience serves no one, and anger is almost always misplaced. When dealing with bureaucracy you all display exceptional restraint. I adore you and your families and I only wish I still had the right stuff to work alongside you - but I don’t - though I am always following your progress. I’m still willing to be at your beck and call, if there is any way that I can be useful to you.
I will post an update further down the track to report if my noticing these people has lead to any further consequences. Forgive any post-publication edits that may take place as I have not consulted these people about using their names. I hope they are pleasantly surprised.
Come, join in. Who would be in your top five? Can you share one here?
April 24th, 2009 - Posted in gratitude, nostalgia, wisdom, friendship | | 8 Comments
