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Not Drowning, Mothering.
I went to Veronica’s yesterday and watched Amy bounce on the trampoline as Vonnie pressed refresh on the bloggie’s twitter page.
I am thrilled to bits to be writing out a congratulatory blog post to the NDM, as her blog is well written and very funny. She writes about her life with humour and honesty and I find myself nodding along in recognition. You really should do yourselves a favour and go on over and check out her blog, I have no doubt you will add it to your favourites.
I had a small visitor for a couple of hours yesterday afternoon and together we went outside and played in the mud.
Then we went down and fed the pigs and had a bit of a chat about how delicious they are going to be.
We went and raided the fruit trees and Amy found that she didn’t like the furry skin on the peaches but was more than happy to munch away on the plums.
This year has been a really good year for most of my fruit trees, due to a wetter than average winter and spring. We normally struggle for water up here and I am really pleased with how much fruit my trees have produced. Amazing what a bit of water does for a plant.
The whole time that Amy and I were pottering around outside, Harry the dog was at our side. Harry loves the apple trees as he is sure that those green balls are just for him.
And finally here is a photo of my latest garden project. The spouse cut an old water tank in half for me. This autumn and winter I will be busily filling it up with sheep poo, mushroom compost and whatever else I can get my hands on. I am going to turn all the vegie garden into a series of raised beds over the next two years, as sitting on a milk crate and weeding is just so much more civilized that kneeling down on my dodgy knees.
Once Amy had gone home I went to turn my laptop on and found that my grand daughter had decorated it for me. That was my day yesterday, how was yours?
I can’t remember the last time I cooked two proper evening meals in a row. By proper I mean healthy and balanced.
In the last few months of Mum’s illness I was stretched really, really thinly as Mum had become less able to do all the stuff healthy people take for granted. Simple things like changing the sheets on her bed had become akin to climbing Everest.
Everything fell by the wayside, as the physical demands of caring for my Mum didn’t leave any time left over for secondary shit like my own housework or cooking. I am an indifferent housekeeper at the best of times and indifferent quickly turned to non-existent.
After Mum died everything became a major effort and for a couple of weeks I suffered a massive case of the couldn’t be bothereds.Cooking? Bleh. Housework? Who gives a fuck, shut the door. I just could not be bothered doing much of anything.
And then it started to rain and it rained and rained and rained. The dreadful grey wetness of winter nearly did my head in. Please remind me of that, when I have to buy water this summer and I am stressing out about bushfire.
Last week The Spouse was splitting wood and he developed a painful tightness in his chest. To cut a long story short, it wasn’t a heart attack as there wasn’t any of the hormone blah blah blah in his blood which indicates damage to the heart muscle,phew.
The Spouse is off to the cardiologists tomorrow for a stress test which will give us a clearer picture of what exactly is going on. His cholesterol levels were high at 7.8, which is enough to statistically give him the chances of 1 in 50 of suffering a fatal heart attack.
So now my control freak tendencies can really be let loose up on my family. The Spouse needs to lower his cholesterol and all the food choices he makes from now on will be supervised by yours truly.It is well past time that I dusted off the pots and pans and started cooking again. As soon as I hit publish I am going to make a large pot of fish soup for tea.
If I am honest with myself, I will admit that Ehlers Danlos Syndrome frightens the shit out of me. I try not to think too deeply about the long term prospects this disorder has for my children and my grandchildren. I am generally an optimist who doesn’t belive in worrying about things beyond my control.
But.
Some days an icy hand of fear just grips my heart and squeezes tight.
Some days the fear sits heavy inside my head pushing out all thoughts, except for the ones that tell me that I am afraid. I am afraid for my children, afraid of their choices. Afraid of the possible consequences of their choices, afraid of fear itself.
My fears which are the normal fears of a parent are magnified by the loss of my Mother and by the challenges assosciated with living with Ehlers Danlos. This post written by Achelois, gives me a glimpse into a possible future for my daughterVeronica and whilst it scares me witless, I know that Veronica is a strong young woman who will cope in her own indomitable way.
My son David had a dentist appointment yesterday. Pre-EDS, Dave would have just walked to the dentist from school, had his fillings and then gone back to class.
Post-EDS it is a whole different ball game.
David had to be assessed by a senior dentist in Hobart to see if it was safe for him to be treated at the small local dental clinic. The senior dentist needed a copy of Davids echocardiogram report and so it took nearly four months of to-ing and fro-ing before it was decided that yes, Dave could be treated at the small clinic which is attached to his school. But, he needed to have a preventative dose of antibiotics an hour before his treatment.
I don’t know exactly why David needs the antibiotics before his dental work, it is something to do with either his heart or his lungs. The Spouse took the phonecall from the dentist and didn’t ask why, he just wrote down Dave’s appointment times.Gah.
David’s Echocardiogram shows that he has mild pulmonary hypertension and the right hand side of his heart is enlarged. He is fifteen.We have an appointment with a cardioligist in September and I am trying not to think too deeply about the implications for my son until then.
But again that icy hand of fear is giving my own heart a bloody good squeeze.
As I was sitting in the waiting room of the dentists, trying to ignore the crap on the tv, I was quietly worrying about my son. I was hoping that the dentist wouldn’t accidentally dislocate David’s jaw.Possible scenarios and implications of a dislocated jaw played through my mind, all I needed was a brunette mournfully wailing for Heathcliffe and the melodramatic scene in my head would have been complete.*Sigh* I have a very vivid imagination.
David’s jaw didn’t dislocate but it became very clicky during his treatment and they want a senior dentist to have a look at it, at Dave’s next appointment.
I know that Veronica has her own fears, regarding the health of her children but at least she is spared the soul destroying doubt and disbelief, shown to me by the medical profession as I struggled to convince someone that my daughter really was ill and not faking.
Since Veronica’s formal diagnosis of Ehlers Danlos Syndrome earlier this year everything has become much easier,well much easier within the medical system at least. That little piece of paper from the geneticist means that Veronica doesn’t have to fight to be taken seriously.Her children are being closely watched by the paediatric team at the hospital and there are protocols being put into place for them. YAY.
Isaac’s E.C.G showed a lovely, perfectly healthy heart. Perfect perfect perfect. That is one less thing to worry about and I can prise back one of those icy fingers.
Tired, I am tired today. Tired of worrying about my daughter. Tired of trying to keep my shit together. Tired of being strong. Tired of being nice. But mostly I am tired of cowardly fuckwits like anyonetoblog.
Anyonetoblog says:
Hmmm am amazed that you cant write 40 words yet you can type till the cows come home…. is this just writing for profit or just a sympathy blog………..god only knows
For fucks sake arsehole, if you actually read the post it is glaringly obvious that Veronica isn’t after sympathy. But of course self centred dickheads like you only see what they want to see. Leaving a nasty,anonymous comment is a cowardly, low act and tells me all I need to know about what sort of person you really are.
Achelois, a lovely English blogger has written about trolls in her latest post The Internet Bully & A Request her post is well worth reading.
I hadn’t really thought about trolls being bullies. I had just thought that they were a shadowy sub-species, sort of a cross between Gollum and Dr Phil. Full of useless advice and observations delivered in a slithery tone of voice.
“Oh yessss my precioussss you is not broken. You issssss pretending.You neeedsssss to get a real job and sssstop writing on the internetsssss.”
I have written a formal comment policy for my blog. It is up there at the top of the page. So in keeping with my current policy I will now edit anyonetoblog’s comment to amuse myself. Even though the comment wasn’t left on my blog, they harassed my child and as such only deserve my contempt. Veronica’s father’s feelings are quite unprintable.
Hmmm I am amazed by you. you cant write 40 words without falling apart, dont worry writing is overrated as evidenced by my own pathetic attempt. you can type away till the cows come home I adore you.….you should be writing for profit have you considered a career in journalism. just a sympathetic word or two from you will be enough to make me happy……..god only knows i couldn’t manage like you do.
There now, that is a much nicer comment.
Now on to some happier stuff. My friend Robin took some photos of my work and I have added a ceramic gallery to my blog as well. The photos are all thumbnails and you can click on them to make them a bit larger. The images are only a small selection of my work and I will be adding to the gallery as I find the time to photograph any new work.
You might remember that I was having an exhibition at the Lady Franklin Gallery in October. Unfortunately I had to cancel that in June because I just didn’t have the energy to think about an exhibition at that point in time. I have been invited to take part in a group exhibiton tentatively planned for November.Yay. So I have enough work lined up to keep me busy for months.
Remember the platters that I was working on last month? I have fired two of them and I am pleased with the results. They are gutsy pieces with a raw energy that make me feel a tiny bit hopeful.
These handbuilt platters allow me the freedom to just chuck some clay around and have some fun as well as giving me a large surface area to experiment with a range of different glazes. If you want to know what any of the glazes are, or how I got that interesting crawling just ask me in the comment section and I will share the recipes.
I will finish up with a piece I made for my Mother. Mum loved this little vase and it will now be my inspiration for a series of its own.
I don’t know how many times I have answered the question,” Where is Veronica or where is David?” with,”Down at Mum’s.”
Easily a gazillion times.
As I am writing this, if I straighten up in my seat I can see Mum’s house. The house has been dark for a long time now. It has been empty for two months and I am still nowhere near ready to sell Mum’s house. It is hard.
We shared a boundary Mum and I. The children grew up having free run over the two properties. It was always easier to walk down the bush track to Mum’s rather than walk the half a kilometre it is by road.
When the children were smaller we would swim in the dam in the summer and try and crack the ice with rocks in the winter. David learned to stalk a wallaby and identify animal tracks down at Mum’s.
Veronica would take a book and sit in the clearing halfway down the hill and read for hours, then she would invariably end up down at Mum’s
There were countless weekend phonecalls, from the children saying, “We are at Nan’s,we are staying for tea and can we sleep the night please?”
This photo was taken this morning from my back verandah.If you look underneath the text you can see Mum’s house through the trees at the bottom of the hill.
When the new people move into Mum’s I will be able to see them from up here. I will be able to hear them talking. I will have to drive past them every fucking day.I will have to watch as they change Mum’s house into their house.I will have the country woman’s fear of bushfire because all newbies light a fire and have it escape from them and if there is an escaped burnoff it will run up the hill to us. *sigh*
Then there is Mum’s tree. A magnificent ancient stringybark below the house. A family of sugar gliders live in that tree.Will they chop it down? What will happen to the proteas that Mum planted? Will they shoot the Bettongs and the Potoroos that Mum loved? Will they have dogs that bark and drive me nuts? Will they make me sadder than I already am?
Veronica wrote a beautifully poignant post about how hard it has been to pack Mum’s life away into boxes.
We are going down to Mum’s again this weekend to pack up more of Mum’s things and possibly move out the last of Mum’s furniture. Veronica and I just get down to work and let practicalities take over. David mopes around aimlessly, muttering to himself, “This fucking sucks” and I snap at him for swearing, whilst at the same time silently agreeing with him that, “Yep this fucking well sucks big time baby.”
The only thing that is stopping me from digging my heels in and flat out refusing to sell the house is the fact that Mum and I had talked about it so much in the months before her death. Mum was adamant that I had to sell the house.
“You have to sell it Kimmy” was always her response to me saying I didn’t want to,” It will be my legacy to you.”
Mum’s legacy to me is so much more than the money the sale of her house will bring.
I am the woman that I am, because of my Mother. That is Mum’s legacy to me.
