From mother to mother

“What advice would you give a mother about to enter teenaged years with her daughters?’

This question was asked of me last Friday morning. I was putting in my usual half hours voluntary work at the primary school’s uniform shop. One of my co workers had served a woman and her little girl that morning. The little girl was her youngest and due to start school next year. They had fitted her into a school dress, collected her a bag, sun hat, reader folder, and all the other things she would need for her first day of school. This took time.  Its not unusual in this situation for the mother to end up in deep conversation with one of us at the uniform shop. In this instance, I had overheard her say how much she was dreading the time when her three girls, who are close in age, are all teenagers together. “Tell me about it!” I chimed in. “I’m there already”.

She turned to me then and enquired after the ages of my girls. I smiled and reported that they were 10, 12, 14 and 16. Nodding she confirmed that her daughters were also about two years apart. Her eyes searched my face. I felt a gentle hint of camaraderie in her unspoken language and she appeared to be thinking deeply. It was then she asked the question.

I wasn’t taken aback but her expression occasioned me to pause and think very seriously before responding. Searching for a truthful reply, I was simultaneously monitoring the need to reply seriously at all. Her unhurried way and open expression reassured me that she had asked seriously. This is what I ended up saying:

“Learn how to help your daughters develop emotional intelligence”.

Somebody’s Sons

Kat sits on her hospital bed. Her sketches are displayed en masse behind her on a pin board. I scan them as I take the seat next to the bed. Its 7.40, twenty minutes before visiting hours end; the most usual time for me to visit. She types one more thing onto her computer and closes the laptop.

‘How’s everything at home?’ she asks without genuine interest.

‘Good thanks. I like your Sprite’, I say to liven the subject, ‘your new drawing’.

Its a crouched fairy in Autumn tones. It has perfectly shaped wings and looks up out of the drawing with intelligent eyes. Its naked body is hidden behind its bent leg and defensive arms. Around its ankle and wrists are stylized tatoos. It reminds me of a character my first boyfriend made up for me because he was into Dungeons and Dragons. He wanted me to join in the game. I never did. But the character was called Trinity. I don’t tell Kat this, because its not about me…

The sprite provides me with some relief. Its comrades on the pinboard range from skinny women on the catwalk dressed out of Kat’s imagination, to emaciated figures in various contortions of grief or depression, to horrific images of vicious half humans with crazed eyes feasting on human body parts. Kat herself is emaciated and sits on the bed in a crouched position, but her face is beautiful and she seems relaxed.

‘How come no one else in the family came today?’ she enquires. She is more relaxed than usual. She never usually enquires after her sisters. But a week ago we were in Queensland on a family holiday and although we had our tense moments (she rarely kept a meal down), the time away provided bonding time with her sisters.

‘Oh, they were all going to come after school but when dad rang you said you had other visitors’.

‘Oh yeah. Just one visitor. Ethan’.

‘Who’s Ethan again?’, I enquire.

‘Mum don’t you remember him? He was visiting me here once last time when you and Rosie came in. And then you randomly bumped into him at Nandos!’

‘Oh yes, I remember. I just forgot his name. Where do you know him from?’

‘He’s one of Jacob’s friends. I met him through Jacob’.

‘You seem relaxed. Was it a good visit?’

‘Yes he was here for two hours. The time went so quickly! He came straight from school and was here until he was kicked out at dinner time. He even looked at his watch at half past five and said Oh my god I meant to leave at 5 lol’.

‘Wow you met him through Jacob and now he visits you in hospital every time you’re here! Won’t it be nice when you can continue your friendship on the outside. Have you seen much of Jacob?’

‘Yeah I’ve been talking to him’

‘On the phone?’ I ask.

‘No, on facebook! He was the one I was talking to when you walked in just now’…

There are parents out there who I do not know, who have raised caring sons. These boys visit my daughter when she is in hospital for anorexia. Three times since March she has had to go in for her physical health. These boys have visited her and provided gentle support and light hearted company at a time when she needs friendship the most.

I can’t give my daughter what these boys give.

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.

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”.

laying an egg

Beach combing last summer, we found a sandy coloured stone that had been weathered by the ocean. It looked like a giant egg. 

monsters in the house

If you ever come to my place… be aware. Sometimes there are monsters in my house.

I’ve seen them. They look like giant larvae. There is a purple one and a bottle green one. Usually they slink along the floor the way larvae can. But sometimes they stand vertically and move by wiggling their tail end side to side. This is a much clumsier motion than slinking. They’re not very good at walking vertically. Sometimes they fall over. When they go down stairs they slide, bumpety bump. They usually don’t make much noise. Only the occasional giggling sound. But you can hear them coming because of the sound they make slinking or scraping on the floor.

The last time I found them in my house, they made it down to the kitchen. That’s where I discovered them. Guess what they were doing there…?

Cooking custard!

Compromise and Dignity

As you know, my sister and I are planning a ’surprise’ party for my father to celebrate his 70th birthday. What was to be a surprise party at my place with perhaps a three-piece jazz ensemble and home made-pizza from the oven (see pics) has spiraled into something completely different. We decided to involve my father in the organisation.We needed his input concerning who to invite. Once he was involved, his ideas had to be factored into the equation. The result was like a domino effect as all concerned exhibited their predictable traits, especially when in negotiation with each other.

Here’s what happened:

The players are my sister, my brother, my father, my brother’s wife, my children and me.

My sister had dad around for dinner to break the silence about the party plans, save for one surprise element.

Dad rang me a week later to discuss his own plans. He had been to two other seventieth parties, one at Sky High on Mt Dandenong and the other at a suburban RSL club. He’s the sort of person, who takes a good idea on board and thinks its the only way to go.  As far as he was concerned, his party would be either at Sky High or a suburban RSL.

The surprise element was my brother John and his family’s attendance at the party, down from Queensland. But my brother’s wife, Kaz, emailed me to say her folks would come up from Tassie for the party. She asked me to suggest accommodation for them. Dad often likes to put interstate visiting relatives up at his place. I gave him the option, and in doing so unavoidably “spilt the beans” .

A day or so later, my sister phoned me to tell me off. “Did you tell dad John was coming down from Queensland for the party?” was her accusation.

I explained how it came about but my sister continued her tirade. She was not happy. She did not approve of dad’s preferred venues. “I’m not going to an RSL club”, she ranted. And she did not approve of dad hijacking the organisation. “If dad wants to do that with his friends, he can. But as far as I’m concerned thats up to him. We can do a family thing separately”, she determined.

In the past I may have become cross with my sister. This time however, I explained to her that it was a special occasion for dad and that it would make him happy to have his family and friends together (perhaps for the only time), a seventieth was a special occasion and she wouldn’t have to stand around chatting to his friends because there would be enough family there for our separate table. I told her that she didn’t have to do anything. That I would work with dad to get the invitations out. I promised we wouldn’t go to an RSL, but that I’d booked Sky High for a buffet lunch on the Saturday (his actual birth date) and it would all be okay.

She calmed down. She said she wanted to go for a family drive and lunch at a winery perhaps at Kinglake to survey the township recovering from the fires and support local businesses there. I agreed this was a good idea, especially with our interstate guests staying for the weekend, and suggested we could do that as well, perhaps on the Sunday.

I spoke with dad after getting off the phone with my sister to confirm with him that a buffet lunch at Sky High was booked, and immediately my arrangements were blown ’sky high’. He expressed his preference for their function room, which he had found out could  serve finger food from two until five in the afternoon for twenty dollars a head. I expressed my preference for a sit down lunch (I was considering two things: 1. the boredom factor for my children; 2. Seventy-plus people standing around in a cocktail situation. And I sensed EPIC failure). I expressed my reservations to dad and he agreed to reconsider it.

A state of limbo lasted for about two weeks after which time I phoned dad to give him the hurry on. “Have you decided what you want to do yet? We need to get on with the invitations! Its only seven weeks away”. Dad re-expressed his preference for the 2-5 time slot, assured me his friends were all fit enough to mingle in this way. I told him to book it asap, cancel my lunchtime booking and get the contact list to me so I could start phoning for people’s email addresses (dad doesn’t have a computer). Dad expressed such deep gratitude that I had rung him to basically manage him into getting a move on that he almost cried. “You’re a great daughter”, he gushed.

Anyway, he sprang into action. He bounced into my place last weekend with his contact list, reporting that the Sky High was booked. He apologised that there were over double the number of people he originally thought he’d invite. He’d grouped them into categories: Bushwalking Club, Cycling Club, friends, Family and had found himself thinking of more and more people as he wrote.

The contact list was written in his familiar draughtsman-style neat and precise handwriting. I’ve been making calls to the hundred or so on the list. “Hi, I’m jenne, Bill’s daughter”. “Oh is Bill alright?”. “Yes, I’m helping him organize his seventieth birthday…” etc. My kids have reacted to my activity in various ways:

Emma, “Are you ringing Poppy’s Pals again?”. (I laughed so much that I wrote the heading on the list, “Poppy’s pals”).

Rosie, “That must be the most boring and tedious job, talking to old people all day”.

Kat, “Don’t expect us to ring all of your old friends when you are seventy, mum”.

I finished contacting every one after two days. I sent the email out last night and have seven letters to post for people not connected to ‘the net’. I’ve called for people from different aspects of dad’s past and present to make speeches on the day.  My brother was the first to be nominated (by his wife), and I’m looking forward to securing other speakers as the rsvps come in.

With a sense of achievement I reflected on the process of compromise. Originally my sister and I would have taken all the organisation out of dad’s hands. What has been achieved now is a party for my father which he feels as though he has organised  by himself. Its reaffirmed him as an agent in control of his own life. I’d forgotten something about him: he organises weekly cycling trips for his riding group, and leads bushwalks for his walking club. He is a very capable organiser in his own right. Usually with his daughters he steps back (and often he grumbles from the side-line). Not this time! Isn’t that great? I’ve learnt that he doesn’t need to be treated like a child. He needs some support. But he doesn’t need to be stripped of responsibility.

Five things about motherhood…

Hi there. Kit has tagged me in a meme set to traverse the blogosphere mum by mum. Five things I enjoy about motherhood are:

1. the grounding it gives me. There is nothing more important than this.

2. the privilege of watching young children develop and make sense of their world. Being their mum privileges me to their inner -most thoughts. They share them as though talking to themselves. Its delightful.

3. the company. I had a girls-night-in with daughter 2 the other weekend. We made soup together, got cozy and watched a chick-flick in pyjamas. I didn’t have to go anywhere or organize anything to have a fun evening.

4. the pride: being in awe of their talents as they mature. 

5. the laughter. Children keep humour alive and well.

And now I tag earthpal, misslionheart, Kate, Lilalia and DJ Kirkby. (DJ, I used to blog as Bindi at epossums xx).

Stories on motherhood I’ve written in the past include:

In Love with Peposo  

Child of Mine

Traveling with Children

A Little Ray of Sunshine 

Lessons in Morality 1

Lessons in Morality 2