A zebra pays a visit

My eldest is in hospital. We are lucky that the hospital is quite close to where we live. Its easy to pop in for short visits.

“Who’s coming with me to visit Kat?” I asked one evening recently.

“Me!” said Rosie. “I will”, said Emma and “Okay, wait for me”, said Sally,

Emma, Rosie and I assembled in the kitchen.”I’m freeeezing. I need to change first”, said Sally as she ran up the stairs to her bedroom. She’d been in a pair of shorts and a T-shirt during dinner. The night had indeed turned cold. Before long Sally reappeared with the warmest thing she could find worn over her shorts and T-shirt. She tied on her red cherry converse runners and off we went to the hospital. Here are some photos of our visit:

Waiting at the hospital lift.

Sally sitting on the bed with Kat.

Sally was warm and comfortable in the zebra suit. And she made us all smile.

There is nothing like the world of a nine year-old as counter-point to teenager angst.

Hampsterdam, here I come!

Next week I’m off to Amsterdam for a conference. ”Can we come to Hampsterdam with you?” my children asked. I’m not sure what they expected to find there, but Hampsterdam afforded them a lot of appeal.

Usually when I travel interstate or overseas for conferences, I choose to stay in a room by myself. I’ve said “No thanks” to many offers to share because I enjoy the space. It’s a contrast to my busy home life. But when my favorite Melbourne colleague, Chiara, asked me if I’d like to share, I deviated from my habit and accepted her offer. Her easy company and fun attitude to life will add to the travel experience I’m sure.

On her insistence, we booked our accommodation months ago. The hotel we chose overlooks a canal and has historical charm. It appealed to us by contrast to Australia, where we lack a sense of having been here for thousands of years.

I have official engagements such as presenting at the conference and attending breakfasts and dinners with colleagues but I also intend to balance these commitments with absorbing the rhythms of this famous city.

Chiara and I have put up a calendar at work and we’re crossing off the dates, counting down.

Ang Lee to the rescue!

I’m having a bit of an Ang Lee marathon. It started when I hired ‘Lust Caution’ and loved it. The tragic story and scenes from the movie haunted me for days afterwards. Its R rated because of the sex scenes, but these are not gratuitous. Without them the movie wouldn’t have been as powerful and the twist in the story wouldn’t have made sense.

Following this I remembered the first Ang Lee film I’d ever seen and had the desire to see it again (more than fifteen years later). I remembered it as a comedy of errors. I hunted it down online and had it shipped to home. I loved it, but its now outdated in a funny way and that made it enjoyable for different reasons. I’ve now lent that DVD to a friend who’s teenaged son is suffering through confusion about his sexuality…

This week I’ve been a couple of times to the video shop for Kat. She is going through a phase of watching horror movies. She’s trying to find one that actually scares her. This is something I do not understand. I find no enjoyment in the horror genre and avoid them outright. However, on our last visit I found  ’Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ in the World Movies section for weekly hire and picked  it up for myself.

I’ve been home nursing Kat this week and this includes sleeping outside her room on an camp mattress to deter her from raiding the kitchen during the night. After three nights of this I’m completely worn out. Needing a lift and a spot of relaxation, I have decided to watch ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ tonight. I am excited because I’ve heard its his best, and if its half as good as ‘Lust Caution’ it would still be amazing.

Looking Backwards and Forwards Through an Eating Disorder

My family are going through a difficult time. My eldest daughter is battling an eating disorder. It crept up on us slowly. The early signs (in hindsight) were her interest in buying low calorie and organic foods, beginning to want to eat differently to the family and over-exercising. The next thing I noticed were her sleeping patterns. She developed insomnia. The links I’ve included in this paragraph are to posts written in November and December last year prior to realising what was going on. She kept it quite secret that she was not eating at school and had begun purging after eating at home.

The pediatrician who we saw for advice about sleep picked up that she had an eating disorder in February this year. I had been worried. Over summer she lost more weight and her lack of food consumption became suddenly obvious. In March she became an out patient of a Melbourne hospital with weekly visits to a team of specialists for children with eating disorders. On her fourth visit she was admitted to hospital for two weeks where she ate strictly supervised meals and was allowed no exercise until she slowly regained her physical health.

Today she is going in to hospital for the second time. The first time it was a shock to her and to us. She resented being admitted, not accepting that there was anything wrong with her, eventhough her blood pressure was dangerously low. Since then she has been having cognitive therapy and we have been going to family counseling, learning how to best support her and at the same time allowing her to witness the impact her illness is having on her sisters. Can you imagine a therapy room with seven people in it? I have been very proud of my girls through this process. They have been honest and articulate. There is a great deal of love between them.

This time as she goes into hospital it is her choice. Although its traumatic for us on one level, its also a relief that she is now able to say, “I can’t do it by myself”.

Its a break-though but she still has a long way to go. This illness has a strong grip.

To women

I’ve written elsewhere that women are brilliant company but what I wanted to write about today was an overwhelming sense of women as wonderful support for each other. I feel lucky to be a woman and to therefore qualify as a recipient for this.

You know something about life when you embrace change. Change is a large part of life. Just when you think you’ve got a stage of life worked out, another stage is upon you. There’s nothing to bring this home more than being a parent. When I was a parent of babies, I looked towards them growing up as a time of reduced parental input. I’m not saying that reaching this imagined stage of reduced parental input was something I aspired to or held in trepidation, I’m just saying that it was an assumed given from the perspective of one who attended to the needs of small people.

Attending to small people was a significant adjustment to make. It was recognised as significant because support groups would spring up out of the community to help you cope. Play groups for example. (They are called play groups, but a larger function of these groups is social contact between women all making similar adjustments in their lives). There is a lot to learn as a new parent, and it helps when you don’t have to do it alone. I look back to the women I spent my play group years with an overwhelming sense of gratitude and connection.

Recently I attended a mothers day luncheon put on by my eldest daughter’s secondary school. I wasn’t intending to go. You know the feeling? Too much work on, not enough time, wouldn’t know anyone (Kat’s only been at this school a year). But as it happened, one of my colleagues (the L from this story as a matter of fact) has a daughter who has been at this school all the way through. She always attends the social functions and she convinced me to go.

The luncheon was a success. I met a few new people, but mostly L took me under her wing and  sat me at her table. Most of the women sharing L’s table had one or two children older than my Kat. They had all experienced (and survived) parenting teenagers. They shared stories of their survival and I was in awe.  My teenager is finding the years fraught with adjustment and difficulty. It was after sharing some of my current experiences that one of the women turned to me, placed her hand on my arm with warmth and reassurance and said, “why do we have playgroups when the children are little? Its when they are teenagers that we need the most support!”

Its true! When our children are teenagers, so much else is happening in life. Many of us have gone back to work. Our role as ‘parent’ doesn’t seem to warrant the same support. Its not an immediate topic of conversation. Yet it is a difficult parenting stage.

After the mothers day luncheon I fell bolstered and refreshed. The next social occasion is a cocktail party for the opening of the new library. This time I won’t need L to convince me to go. I’ll be there, I’ve found my new “playgroup”.