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.

brrr

Its starting to get chilly in Melbourne. We’ve had a series of foggy mornings. The sun burns through by midday but the temperatures are getting lower. It was only 14 degrees Celcius yesterday.

I’ve rediscovered knitting. I’m wearing my new hand-knitted jumper as I write. Its toasy-warm and I feel super cuddly. I’ve pulled on my fleecy-lined boots purchased last year in New York City. I’m ready for winter. Bring it on!

The first time I put my new jumper on and looked in the mirror it hit me just how much like my mother I look. It was particularly noticeable in the hand-knit because my mum used to wear them all the time. Her usual attire were jeans, jumper and these cute little hand-made leather boots. I remember her practical dress sense which suited her purposeful movements and artistic endeavours. My hair at the moment is at her usual length and I’ve been colouring mine to my natural dark brown, which was her natural colour too. She didn’t have my dad’s genes to worry about. She’d only had a couple of grey strands at my age and not the little crop left of centre that I’d have if I didn’t cover it up.

I’m quite ok about looking like her. I really loved her you know. When I was little people used to call me “little Dawn” and this made me feel proud.

But I’m forty-five and a half. This is the age that she was diagnosed with bowel cancer. If I was following in her footsteps I’d only have eighteen months left. Thats a chilling thought! Well luckily I’ve promised my children I’ll live until one hundred. (And I’ve been having those horrendous check ups where you get to drink the vile liquid so a doctor can put a camera up your colon).

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

Parties for Old People

My father will be seventy years old this August. My sister, brother and I decided last year that we would put a surprise party on for him.

The last time we organized a celebration for my father was at his fiftieth. Twenty years ago in Melbourne, Thai restaurants were a new thing. A Thai restaurant in Brunswick Street, Fitzroy, was particularly well known as the place to be. The name of this restaurant was Patee Thai. Its probably still there. But like any good thing, there is now a chain of these ’same name’ restaurants around Melbourne. Just quietly, like anything I used to do in the eighties, I wouldn’t go there now. Been there done that… to death. If you’ve lived through eighties fads and fashions yourself, I’m sure you would understand the sentiment…

Anyway, in the eighties in Melbourne it was all the rage at Patee Thai to book the low tables at the front of the restaurant. The novelty was to sit at these low tables on funky, triangular cushions. From memory, the way you arranged yourself on a triangular cushion was to tuck your knees under one of the triangular corners and sort of kneel resting your butt on a flat edge. 

My sister, Heather, and I booked Patee Thai for my father’s fiftieth and invited a large group of his friends. His friends were all obviously around his age and some of them considerably older. Of the considerably older ones, none are still with us sadly. 

My sister and I were in our twenties. We considered ourselves fairly funky and with-it. We knew booking a party at Patee Thai was the hip thing to do. We never discussed it in this way at the time, but booking dad and his friends into Patee Thai for a sit down meal at low tables on triangular cushions felt like privileging the olds with (our) funkiness. In fact we were so absorbed in the funkiness of the situation to miss the obvious point that asking fiftty-plus year olds to sit-kneel at low tables for over two hours was a rather stupid thing to have done. It was a physical challenge to almost everyone there except my sister and I.  Many of them found the experience ranging from unpleasant to excruciating. Those who managed to sit for that long barely managed to stand after the experience. I remember Uncle Keith(rest his soul)’s large form, supported by two people either side, being hoisted back to standing. The sight reinforced just how low these low tables actually were. He was unsteady for some time either due to the stress of standing on his circulatory system or from the cramping in his legs or both.

Obviously we won’t be making that mistake again. The seventieth is going to be at my place. We’ll fire up the pizza oven and possibly hire a jazz quartet. Seating needs to be well thought out. This is a hurdle we haven’t cleared yet. It will depend upon the numbers. In recent planning discussions I realized neither my siblings nor myself knew how to contact dad’s friends. We’ve now put ’surprise party’ into the too-hard basket and decided to enlist dad’s help putting the invitations together. This is in line with the KISS principal of organisation (Keep It Simple, Stupid). 

Dad will still get a surprise: We have decided not to tell him that my brother and his family are flying down from Queensland to attend. 

A Day of Baking

We are at home over Easter for the first time. Whilst Kat is in hospital we want to stay near by. I’ve cancelled my trip to San Diego. Instead of presenting at the conference, a digital version of me (filmed yesterday at the last minute) is on its way to San Diego with colleagues as I write.

Having been caught out by Good Friday (no shops open), and having not planned ahead to have bought hot cross buns from a bakery, I decided to make them myself. I had never made them before and found a recipe in my outdated Good Housekeeping cook book. I had to make do with the ingredients in the pantry. This occasioned some omissions (nutmeg and currants) and substitions. Instead of mixed spice I used garam masala. But I did have yeast! 

The mixture took ages to rise.  What better excuse to curl up on the couch with a book (currently reading Autograph Man by Zadie Smith). Gentle rain fell outside. Emma helped me roll out the shortcrust pastry for the crosses. 

We set them to rise again before baking. A gentle aroma of spice filled the air. They were ready to eat by three in the afternoon. Delicious!

Multi-tasking: Myth or The New Zen?

My family were trying to work out what to do over the school holidays while I am in San Diego. We were seated for dinner. ”Lets have a family meeting”, my hub suggested.

“Oh great. I’m glad we’re having the meeting during dinner time. It means we can multi-task”, said Sally beaming and proudly anticipating the beginning of the meeting so that she could “multi-task”.

This reply came from our nine year-old! How had Sally come to value multi-tasking as an end in itself? Is this practice widely acknowledged by modern children as worthwhile? I’ve been thinking about Sally’s response and brought it up as a topic of conversation recently with other parents. The result was a circular conversation, the logic of which went something like this:

Is the skill of multi-tasking a worthy aspiration? As an example of an alternative way of thinking, buddhism would emphasise the importance of being present in the moment. If you are sweeping the floor, then you are only sweeping the floor. You’re not also on the phone and cooking a batch of muffins and checking your emails. Being present in the moment, which I’m interpreting as doing one thing at a time, is the pathway to happiness and enlightenment. Only through being present in the moment can you achieve a state of zen.

Is it relevant that Sally is female? Has multi-tasking become something girls in particular have come to identify with and aspire to?

The myth goes like this: women can multi task and men cannot.

But this is just a myth, like any other myth. There are hundreds of myths and stereotypes that circulate unreflected upon in our common discourses. For example, the myth that all men ever think about is sex. For a start, why can’t women think about sex as often as men? And secondly, this cannot even be true. If all men ever thought about was sex, how could Bill Gates have created Microsoft, or Rupert Murdoch his media empire?

They could have been multi-tasking, I suppose…

Gastronomic Anticipation

My annual conference trip to the US approaches. This time I go with a sense of slightly more pressure than other times for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I’m presenting. Its quite an achievement (I’ve been told) to get on the program. And secondly, I’ll be missing easter with my family for the third time and feel the pull to stay at home.

This year its in San Diego. I’ll be there for six days. Already I have dinner dates at the following restaurants:

el Agave, apparently the best Mexican restaurant in the Old Town. I have also been told it has an amazing variety of tequila. I’ve already posted about my tequila learning experience. Prior to this I thought tequila was a clear liquid, end of story! Now I know the Mexicans know tequila like a Melbournian knows wine. 

de’ Medici, an Italian restaurant. I haven’t heard anything about this one yet, but the name Medici is infamous. This I discovered on my relatively recent European holiday during a guided tour of the Uffizi Gallery.

A reception aboard the Berkeley Ferry Boat at the Maritime Museum of San Diego. I’m not sure what to expect of the meal here but I do anticipate live music and dancing. The consortium of universities that hold this reception annually have musical staff members who provide the entertainment for the evening. Two years ago I attended the reception in Chicago, danced the night away and was inspired to write about meeting a self-taught pole dancer.

Rama on Saturday night.  Candelas on Sunday night. Both of which I know nothing about (yet).

And two breakfast dates. These are at Cafe Choe and Bondi Australian Beer and Food. I’m looking forward to experiencing how the people of San Diego do “Australian”.

Action in the kitchen

My daughter Sally, who is nine, has a terrific little cookbook that has been inspiring her in the kitchen.

Lately she’s been flicking through this book and ‘independently’ making stuff. On Friday after school I found her sitting at the bench with her apron on. “I’m going to make garlic bread!” she announced.

“Great, we have half a baguette left from yesterday. How much butter do you need?”

“One hundred grams”. Sally took the butter out of the fridge and placed it on the cutting board. She took a paring knife out of the drawer. 

“Do you know how much one hunderd grams is?”

“Yes. This much”. She indicated her estimate with the knife and tried to cut the firm block of butter”.

“Perhaps only make half the recipe”, I suggested, “we only have half a baguette”.

“Yeah, great idea”.

“So fifty would be there. Would you like me to cut it?”

She moved back and allowed me to cut the butter for her. She expressed her relief. It was quite solid just out of the fridge. 

With the precarious job of cutting over, I decided to let her work independently. I knew she’d call me if she needed me. I flicked the oven onto preheat and went back to my study.

A little while later, she called out to me from the kitchen. “What colour is garlic?”

I keep the garlic together with onions and shallots in a wooden bowl in a drawer. We had red onions. The shallots are red.

“The garlic is in the drawer with the onions”, I replied.

“Yeah I know, but what colour is it?”

“White”. 

This was all the information she needed and things became quiet in the kitchen. After a few minutes I decided to go in to help her with the garlic press. I found her microwaving the butter. She was reading the instructions aloud. “On high for forty seconds”. She was engrossed and busy. I picked up the clove of garlic and while I sliced off the excess skin asked her if she’d like me to show her how to use the crusher. She looked confused. 

“Oh, I didn’t know you had to use that part of the garlic”, she said.  I suddenly noticed little flecks of white garlic skin in a bowl that she’d carefully peeled off the bulb and desiccated. “Ah Sally, this is the skin!”. I demonstrated to her which piece of the garlic is of interest and placed the skin in the compost. I showed her how the press worked and demonstrated the removal of the skin from the inside of the press. She watched me with a serious expression on her face but said nothing.

“Well, you learn something new everyday!” I said, jollying her with the cliched expression. She replied with a half-smile,”No, I don’t! Not everyday”.

She watched me crush the garlic into her melted butter, then she stirred the mixture vigorously. I hung around because the next step was to slice the bread. 

“Don’t slice it all the way through”, I advised.

“I know that. It says so in the book!”.

I watched her use the bread knife. 

“Just use a butter knife to spread on the mixture”, I suggested. 

With the butter knife in her hand she hesitated over the runny mixture. I suggested that she spread it on both sides and demonstrated it quickly. I went to leave, but she said “I just need that paper stuff to wrap the garlic bread in. Where’s it kept?”.

“Don’t you mean foil?” I corrected as I opened the drawer.

“No! Its a microwave cookbook mum. I need waxed paper because you can’t put foil in the microwave. That’s the point of the book! Its all microwave! Kids can do it all by themselves! All the recipes are safe! No hot oven!”. 

“Oh”, I said, standing corrected. I handed her the roll of waxed paper and turned off the preheating oven. 

She finished it off by herself and called me and her sister into the kitchen when it was ready. She had placed it on the table and put out three plates. It was actually delicious. I was most impressed and so was her sister. Sally puffed up with pride.

I’m pleased because we often have day-old baguette that ends up in the compost. Now we have a handy solution to prevent waste and a willing little cook.

That was Friday. On Saturday her sister made Brownies. On Sunday Sally was back in the kitchen again. She had begun making marmalade from her microwave book before I was aware of any action in the kitchen. She called me in to help when she needed to use the blender. She was in her apron and she’d already peeled and sliced carrots, chopped oranges and a lemon.

I showed her how to operate it safely and prepared to give her a demonstration, but the blades seemed to get stuck over the slices of carrot and in the skin of the citrus. It was with much frustrated effort that we worked out that it wasn’t the size of the pieces she’d cut that was making the blades stick, but that the motor in the blender was broken. 

My plans for the morning were forgotten as I took out my cooks knife and resolved to be her “blender”. I have a wonderful new knife (from the Japanese range ‘Global’). The work of chopping was strangely satisfying. I ran the knife quickly over and back through small portions of fruit and veg she’d already cut into small pieces. These I scraped into her mixing bowl in increments making room on the cutting board for the next small portion. As I worked Sally watched, half mesmerized. 

Halfway through the process the door bell rang and her grandfather (my father) entered the kitchen. He’d been on a cycling tour in country Victoria. His impromptu visit was on his way home from our local station. He sat at the bench in his cycling gear and had a cuppa and spoke of his trip whilst I chopped. Sally supervised the growing mound of chopped stuff in her bowl with satisfaction. Her grandfather took an interest in what she was making and asked if she had enough jars. She’d found one she told him. He offered to drop a couple off for her, which he did an hour later.

I watched her as she added the sugar to the chopped ingredients and followed the cooking instructions, which included stirring after an initial blast in the microwave on high. Finally the mixture had to cook for thirty minutes on medium. “When its cooked, Sally, don’t take it out without supervision, will you? It’s going to be very hot”.

I’m pleased to report that it was another cooking success. She scooped the marmalade into the jars after it had cooled. I tasted some on bread and it was delicious. I told her so and had a second piece. “Try some”, I offered, holding out my piece of toast for her to bite.

“No. I hate marmalade”, she admitted.

“Why did you make it if you hate it?”, I enquired, laughing.

“It was the only thing in the book without butter”, she said matter-of-factly. (We’d run out because her sister had made the brownies with the block that was left).

Sally was proud of her work. She made labels, set one of the jars aside for her grandfather and informed him by phone.

A Day of Good Omens

What do you make of your life when a vacant parking space in front of a terraced house (converted into specialists rooms) at eight thirty in the morning on a rainy Thursday after a stop-start journey in on the freeway whilst time ticked too closely for comfort to your appointment time of eight thirty signals a good omen for you? 

You pull up to the vacant spot and think to yourself, ah this is going to be a good day!

Well, actually, you don’t just think it, you express the sentiments to your sixteen year-old who is sitting in the front seat next to you (its she who the appointment’s for). You turn towards her and express your almost spiritual belief in vacant-spots-as-omens as you complete a perfect reverse park, and note that its not even a metered site. The parking gods are shining down on you.  It will therefore be a good day. She grunts in reply and you realize she has her ipod earphones in. But she takes them out because of the look on your face. “What?” she asks in a voice drained of life. Her expression is your antithesis at that moment because your face is lit with the light of a believer. “Its going to be a good day!” you repeat. She rolls her eyes. “Whatever”.

The specialist is a sleep specialist. She prescribes a special hormone tablet for sleep for your daughter and gives you the address to go to. You wonder whether to go before or after driving your daughter to school. The two places are in opposite directions. Your daughter says to go before, because arriving at school at recess makes more sense than half way through lesson two. So you reach for your new Melways (which you are thankful for because your old one wouldn’t have a Docklands address in it, and it so happens that your hub had only put it there for you last weekend).

On the way there you take a call from your friend on long service leave and arrange to meet later in the day for a movie and lunch. 

You arrive at Docklands and its still raining, but you find the place easily. You turn into the narrow street and there is a parking spot right out the front of the place you have been sent to. Fifteen minutes (no coins required). Beside yourself at the double omen, you express your delight to your daughter. She doesn’t reply to you, but a smile escapes her lips this time. 

Back at the car you notice  she doesn’t reconnect herself to her ipod. Driving from the Docklands to school she begins to chat. She talks about her recent good grades for English. “If I can do well eventhough I’m drained then I’m starting to think that I must be smart”. (She has insomnia). “I’ve always said you’re smart! Didn’t you believe me?” She says that she didn’t believe you, but that she’s decided to “do a reality check” on her belief that she was dumb. She’s understanding concepts in psychology, she’s getting A’s in her assessments in most subjects…

She tells you that when she gets back to school there is a meeting at recess for all of the arts students who applied to go on an art tour of Central Australia over Easter. She handed in her application last Friday. They’re only selecting a small group to go. They will announce the successful applicants at the meeting.  She is super keen to go (not just for the creative inspiration). “I want to establish myself in art at the school and get to know the art in-crowd”. “Great idea”, you tell her because you and she have already had a discussion about making a career in art and the need to make a name for yourself. 

You ask where she wants to be dropped off and she directs you to the closest point to the Art building where her meeting is to be held. As you pull up you ask what time her meeting starts. She tells you ten twenty and both of you look at the digital clock in the dashboard saying “10:20″ and smile. At this point both of you have a good feeling, but neither express it in words. You feel connected and you notice it because it doesn’t happen all that often these days. You ask her to text you if she makes it into the tour. You think that she will make it because it is a day of good omens. But you don’t say it just to be safe.

The rest of the day is unusual. You meet your friend, catch a movie together, have lunch and you forget about the stress you have been feeling about the paper you have been writing for an upcoming conference that your supervisor has already critiqued and that you have almost rewritten. The movie was The Reader and you enjoy it immensely. You’d read the book but couldn’t remember everything about the story. You felt transported.

In the car again you turn on your phone and a text from your daughter comes through. “I’m going on the art tour”. You drive by her school on the way home from the movie just in time to give her a lift home. You get home and reflect on the day and write this post. What are you to make of your life when good days happen like this, foreshadowed by vacant parking spaces…?

When somebody loves you

I have memories of Melbourne when it was a much smaller city than it is now. The place where I grew up, Lower Templestowe, used to be refereed to as “the sticks” because it was on the fringe. My family and I rarely went into the city, even though it was only a fifteen kilometre journey. The rare occasions were at Christmas time to see the Myer windows and when our father took us into his work substation in Carlton (he worked for what was called the Tramways Board back then).

There was no direct route from Lower Templestowe into the city back then. You had to drive through Kew and Richmond. Past the factories in Victoria Street Richmond the Skipping Girl Vinegar neon sign and Coppertone sign showing a dog pulling down a girls knickers were highlights of the drive. 

It was a big deal when the Eastern Freeway was built. It was massive to Melbourne standards. Four lanes each way and a good six kilometers long. I was fourteen when my friend Kaz and I decided to ride our push bikes along the freeway prior to its opening. We entered at its starting point off Bulleen Road, with no real plans about where we were heading. We took packed lunches. 

The freeway was smooth to ride on, quiet and pretty. It’s flanked by golf courses. We rode for a few kilometers before deciding to have lunch. We parked our bikes and hopped over the low fence onto one of the golf courses. Not knowing anything about golf, we chose a lovely mown circular patch of grass for our picnic. 

Kaz’ mother had a knack with oranges. She had a tool that cut the peel around its diameter. It was then possible to peel the oranges in two half circles. It was like magic really. The skins just peeled right off and retained their shape. You could put them back together again and it looked like a whole orange. Or you could put the half-oranges inside your top and it would look like you actually had tits! I can’t remember who did it first, but I do remember rolling around on the green laughing until I cried when Kaz paraded around with one inside her bike shorts against her crotch.

Now days, the freeway extends way beyond Bulleen Road and Melbourne extends so far beyond the suburb of my childhood that it is just about metropolitan. A lot has changed. Kaz left school to become a dental nurse. She married, had two daughters and moved to the country. I stayed on at school and went through uni. 

Despite only seeing Kaz a couple of times after we both had children, she sent me a christmas card every year. My kids don’t remember Kaz. They only know her as ‘the one who sends mum a Christmas card every year even though she never sends one back’. This is no reflection on the way I felt about Kaz. I just sucked at writing cards. When my kids were younger and before I went back to work I made the effort, enlisting the kids’ help like a production line. But I haven’t written one for years. The kids have wizened up and they have their own to write. Sometimes I send out group emails for Christmas but I didn’t have electronic contact details for Kaz.

On Saturday morning I received a phone call from one of our mutual friends to inform me that Kaz had passed away. “What? How could this happen?” I asked, possibly naively but definitely out of shock. After I listened to a description of the diseases that ended Kaz’ life, the caller and I shared an emotional moment. “She loved you Jenne”, I was told.

The first day I found out about Kaz’ death I was in shock. I had no way to express my grief. I was agitated and confused. On the second day, I was less emotional and felt a sudden renewed awe for life. On the third day (today) I bought a beautiful bunch of twenty mixed roses from the market spontaneously. “They’ll last longer in the heat if you cut the stems every few days and put ice in the water”, the florist told me. As I arranged the flowers at home I thought of Kaz. I don’t know how to grieve but having the flowers there as a representation seemed to help a lot.