Letting them cry is NOT exercise for babies

Well it's been one of those weekends.

One of those ones where you can't say much on the www for fear it may incriminate you.

But let me just say family dynamics are changing all over the place in response to the addition of a new generation. Family dynamics have been visiting for the weekend.

Lovergirl is exhausted.

I feel guilty.

But I did say 'No', once.

For that, I feel exhilarated.

Mad as a meat axe (how mad are meat axes?)

My brother Paul* and his girlfriend had their baby girl, Jaya, last week. We went down to visit them in hospital yesterday.

Paul is quite mad. He's never really what I would call on the same planet as the more mundane of us mortals but 36 hours of sleeplessness and the excitement of a new baby seem to have moved him to a new level.

He's found the solution to nuclear warfare. It's something to do with the twelfth dimension and Einstein getting part of the equation wrong when he split the atom. He hasn't showered for days and his teeth have a patina of old food built up on them. He smells like a homeless person - stale cigarette smoke, stale body odour and bad breath.

Melanie, his girlfriend, seems blissfully oblivious. She's one of those dreamy people who floats through life thinking the best of everybody. She seems to believe Paul's pronouncements about his brilliance and the imminence of his discovery by the scientific community. And, of course, she has the baby now.

Of course, he's not mad enough to be in hospital. Hospital, as you probably know, is quite difficult to arrange, as the person in question needs to be either an imminent risk to themselves or to someone else by virtue of mental illness (from which point we go into all the definitions of mental illness, which I won't here).

I've spent what seems to be a lifetime working in mental health services, and I'm painstakingly sloughing that identity, so I try not to mention it. (I went into mental health about fifteen years before my brother was diagnosed, so I hasten to point out that my career was not based on some codependent desire to find a cure for him). I've spent a lot of time doing rights stuff for people with mental illnesses. The right to make decisions, even if they are not the decisions that the rest of us would think are the most appropriate - decisions about how to live, how to dress, what to spend money on, other things the rest of us take for granted. The right to live a bit mad, without having to be medicated into agreeing with the majority consensus of the rest of the community.

My brother having a baby has been the biggest challenge to my right-on politics. Is my response merely privileged middle-class assumptions and class snobbery or a reasonable belief that every child should be nurtured and cherished, given the best environment possible? Maybe it's simply magical thinking on my part - some misguided belief that having a child would be enough to make him realise that he needs to change.

Of course it's not simply the delusions; not at this stage of her life anyway. What are a few wacky ideas, repeated over and over and over again in an enthusiastic tone, to a week old baby? It's the smoke filled house and the overflowing ashtrays and him holding her close to his appallingly smelly body. It's the way he gets angry if someone implies they don't believe him. The bile he heaps on Melanie for holding him back on his path to greatness. It's the strange way he stares off into space until someone tells him to do something specific. And of course it's the ever-present scotch, cigarettes and dope.

Mum flew up for the weekend to help out. Naively, she cleaned the house from top to bottom and left Paul a list on how to keep it clean from now on. A list of what to do in each room, once a week ("Wipe over venetian blinds with damp cloth. Rinse out rubbish bin and sprinkle bicarb soda in bottom. Wash sheets.") She also found the bong and threw it out, she told me in a defiantly shamefaced tone (That'll stop him smoking, I'm sure).

It's a problem of moral relativism: who am I to talk when all over the country there are people horrified that people like me plan to bring children into homes where there are blatant displays of lesbian affection? Many people would argue that my situation was worse.

Look at little Jaya, lying there, just completely trusting this world she has been born into.

*As always, all names have been changed

Upon reflection, perhaps fishermen's pants aren't such a good option for the pregnant figure

<--Lovergirl in fishermen's pants

Mikhela in fishermen's pants-->

Before we met him, Donor Dan had already successfully donated to another couple, Alwyn & Yolande, who live in Japan but are moving to England as I write. Yolande is Australian, Alwyn is German. Their son, Armand, is 18 months old. Recently they came to Australia for a couple of weeks to so Armand could meet Danny & James for the first time. He is exceptionally cute and a very happy little boy.

I really liked Alwyn & Yolande, and I'm keen to stay in touch. I think it will become important to all the kids, as they get older, to be familiar with those biological connections. The four of us were talking about how we would explain the kids' relationships to each other. I had some garbled spiel in my head about being 'like cousins' - I suppose a bit like I see Donor Dan & James as being 'like uncles' - but Alwyn said, 'You know, they are half-brothers and sisters.' For some reason that pulled me up short. That's a very close relationship. Our kids will have half-siblings that will probably never even live in the same country. I take our nuclear family structure for granted - it's really not that different to your average suburban family (except apparently two women are better at equally dividing household & childrearing tasks than a woman and a man - hard to believe I know). But there are so many important members of our family that don't have names.
What do you call the non-biological mother? (well, at least that's easy - mummy)
How do you label your relationship to your donor?
What do you call the other kids sired by your donor, but not to your family?
What do I call the parents of the other kids sired by our donor?

I call Lovergirl's family 'my in-laws' (or when I'm being not-very-funny, 'my out-laws'), which is easy shorthand that everyone understands. No one really cares that we're not actually married, and the emotional content of my relationship with them is the same as if they really were legally my in-laws. If I was talking about our relationship to Alwyn & Yolande's family, what would I say? 'The women who are the parents of the other family our donor donated to'?

I remember small snippets from Dale Spender's Man Made Language, which I read about fifteen years ago. She talked about the importance of having words to describe experiences and how the possibilities and limitations of language shape one's ability to think. You know, like the Inuit have twenty-seven (or whatever) different words for snow, while we have one, plus a couple of descriptors (powdery, slushy). So we don't see all the different gradations of snow because we don't have the linguistic capacity to distinguish.

Calling Lovergirl's family my in-laws is legally untrue but emotionally true for me. Conversely, for me the label 'half-brothers and sisters' doesn't really work for the relationship between kids of the same donor. Biologically it's correct - they have half the same genetic material - but being a brother or sister, or even half a one, implies a particular sort of relationship in my mind. It's an emotional term not only a biological one. I know we'll end up using it, and we'll adopt it and it will no longer seem unwieldy and inappropriate. But it feels kind of clunky - uncomfortable - and as we move into parenthood I find more and more concepts for which I don't have the language to describe my world.

Waving the rainbow flag

Mum's just been to visit for a week. She was immeasurably helpful, doing the dishes, grocery shopping, cooking, taking us shopping for twin prams. Last night Donor Dan and his boyfriend James came over to meet her. Danny and James were great, the epitome of charming and stylish young gay boys. My mother likes gay boys. I think she likes to have attractive young men around!

She did drive Lovergirl a bit mad. It was a week, in a tiny flat, with LG home studying for exams, me lying on the couch with my bucket, and Mum talking. A Lot.

All in all she seems to be coping quite well with the non-conformist family unit we are establishing here. Lovergirl and I have had a few conversations about how much more out one has to be when having kids. All those medical appointments and hospital bookings (booking a double bedroom in the private hospital!), and people asking about my husband, and negotiating with insurance companies and real estate agents and every-bloody-body. What I realised is Mum's having to make a lot of those decisions too. She's so pleased she's going to be a grandmother she has to tell everybody, but then she gets the Questions. Is your daughter married? Do you like her partner? what does he do?

Mum says, 'I don't have a problem with it, but I don't see the need to wave the flag all the time.' She's worked out a series of answers, and discovered that skill of avoiding the pronounwe same-sex-attracted types learn early. LG's name, when shortened, is gender neutral, so Mum has found that a handy way of dodging revelations about my family structure. Such as, 'No Mikhela isn't married. Her partner, L, is a psychologist.'

I found all this out last night when Danny courageously asked Mum how she felt about all of this (me & LG, babies, donors...mindblowing, really, when you think about Mum's childhood in 50's rural Victoria Creswick). She outlined her avoidance tactics - not with close friends, but with the more acquaintance-type people in her social circle. The ladies at Weight Watchers. People at work.

Initially I felt a bit offended - she's denying my family! But it's a big, arduous task being out, even for me. Often it's just easier to not correct assumptions, to avoid the double-take just before the person at the hotel desk/doctor's receptionist/client blinks and says, 'Oh, right, yes of course, of course,' sometimes adding, 'That's fine,' like I should be grateful that it might not be. Up until now it's been a personal choice, but now dodging the father question means denying Lovergirl's part in our family. 'Are you married?' 'No.' 'Oh, it's going to be hard bringing up twins on your own.' And so on.

Anyway I think Mum's going to find it harder and harder, as time goes on, to stay in the closet about her daughters.

D'oh

I feel bad about the last post, but reluctant to remove it. It's hard to know the right tone to strike with blogs. My favourite blogs are sassy comments on the minutiae of daily life, while there's a swag of people doing great stuff with political and cultural comment. There's not much point me adding my two bobs' worth of uninformed opinion. The only thing I'm an expert on (apart from psych0s0c1al rehab1l1tat10n pr1nc1ples and pract1ce and rec0very from l0ng-term m*ntal 1llness, a subject dull enough to stop the liveliest dinner party) is me, unfortunately; and having just moved from Byron where no fleeting emotion is too personal to go unplumbed I probably err on the side of self-disclosure. So I know, from the rousing chorus of silence (so different in quality from the usual silence of loving approval), that every single person who has read this entry since I posted it two days ago (I'm referring to both of you), thinks I'm a horrible, stone-hearted eugenicist and if I live a cold lonely barren life in poverty it will only be my just desserts.

I had a second conversation with my brother yesterday. He's sounding more positive, planning to stay home and look after the baby while Mandy goes to work. 'I just don't know why God would do this to me,' he said. 'But I'll just do the best I can'.

A good slogan for us all to live by, I suppose.

Stork poo on my head

I'm in Townsville and my hotel is directly opposite the Strand. The sun is setting and as you can see the sky is a fabulous inky blue. The little white square jutting out into the sea is the stinger net- you can't swim in the open sea over summer because of box jellyfish and irukandji (small fatal jellyfish) and a couple of others I can't remember. So people swim in these little netted bays - but not many people, and I haven't been game to. Queensland also goes in for artificial lagoons - giant beach-shaped swimming pools with sand and lifeguards and everything. I laughed when I saw the one in Brisbane, at Southbank, but Townsville and Cairns have them too .

My brother Paul is pregnant. Or, more correctly, his girlfriend Mandy is. Paul doesn't sound that excited. 'We haven't decided what we're doing yet,' he said. 'At least, I haven't. Mandy's got her mind made up.' They weren't trying - in fact they were told that Paul's medication probably meant he was infertile. Mandy's very excited. Paul doesn't feel the time is right, but is thinking he'll buy a computer so he can get his book about God and relativity finished before the baby comes. Paul's been doing a massage course, with the idea of turning the second bedroom into a massage room so he can supplement his disability pension. 'Of course, now Mandy's gone and done this, I can't do that any more,' he said.

Paul said he'd told Mum last night so I rang Mum. Poor Mum, she sounded very flat. 'Maybe it'll help him pull himself together,' she said hopefully. 'You know, give him something to focus on other than himself.' It's her first grandchild and with all three of us kids running out of reproductive time, I did think she'd be happy about that. 'Oh, yes,' she sighed. 'But I just keep thinking, I wish it was you and Lovergirl'. This from my previously hardline Christian mother who used to tell me I would go to hell if a boy every touched me 'down there' out of wedlock.

I figured out some time ago the world was not about fair distribution of babies but still I'm feeling a bit deflated.

Addendum, next morning:Walking along the Strand this morning, I started thinking about how middle class and judgemental this post sounds. And as a person in the mental health field, I'm supposed to support the right of all people to have children, regardless of susbstance use and mental state. I know I'm jealous. I just wish he sounded a bit more excited, rather than that it's something Mandy has deliberately done to throw his plans into disarray. But I'm sure Mandy will be a great mum.

Here we go again

Email from Mum

Hi Mikhela,

I have been awake since 3.30 and cant go back to sleep.

How are you and L settling in to your new life in Brisbane.

Paul [my brother] doesnt sound too great at the moment. He was going to ring you to have a chat. He rang to ask me if he could prove God exists should he do it. I said that people have been trying to prove that for years. He thought that they were trying to prove that God doesnt exist.

I said that they were trying to prove both things. God is telling him it is time. The queen wants to be in heaven, she doesnt want to die but she wants to be in heaven. Paul needs a meeting with R1chard Brans0n to explain how to stop the Greenhouse emmissions from cars. Run them on water. (steam cars were invented years ago. I suppose these would be different)

Anyway, I asked him to go see his Doctor, GP, which he did. GP told him to rest. I have suggested that that is a good thing but if he still feels like he is, that he may need to see "THE PROFESSOR" as Paul calls him. That I dont think he should leave it too long as the chemicals in his brain seem to be out of balance. I have tried to talk to him without upsetting him, hope it worked. I suggested that he should try to be on top of the chemical imbalance before it gets on top of him. He is against going back to hospital. I suggested that it would be better to do it now, if necessary ,as it would be a shorter stay than if he lets it get worse. He was agreeing with this. He sees it all and no one else does. Mum is god again, no. not god but a god. I suggested that he needs to sort out the imbalance so he will be well to go to Bali. He said yes, god is telling him he should go to Bali.

I am going to take out insurance for his trip as he may not be well enough to go. I should never have tried to have a family trip. I thought it would be great to have something to share while I am able to do it.

Sorry to do this to you again. Just want to warn you Paul may ring you.xxxxxxoooooo Mum

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas

<-- A festive blanket of hail covers the ground.

Mum's not talking to Dad, or Aunty R, and barely to my sister Zephyr.

Zephyr's distressed; she doesn't want to spend her annual holidays in Bali with Mum, me and our dope-smoking National party voting brother (What's the word for someone trying to light a candle in a sleet-driven gale? Mum's foolhardy gesture of a present is a family holiday).

Aunty R, the Sunday school teaching evangelical eccentric maiden aunt with the weatherbeaten weatherboard house stuffed to the brim with old newspapers, old toys and old photograph albums, hasn't talked to Lovergirl before today. Her Christmas card, addressed to me (alone), says, 'God put the CHRIST in CHRISTmas'. Lovergirl made a concerted effort and had her charmed by the end of breakfast.

Aunty L drops in with Uncle C in tow. He stands silently where he is parked, swaying ever so gently. She's on her way home from mass and has to leave before he wets his pants. He's gone downhill even more since last year; I didn't think that possible.

Aunty P has a livid black eye from tripping over an electric power cord. The black bruise drips down her face like tears. She sucks on oxygen tanks in between cigarettes as she's dying of lung cancer. I agree, why give up now?

Cousin M isn't talking to Aunty P because Cousin M doesn't like Aunty P's new boyfriend D.

Aunty R gives Mum (and me, and Zephyr) crocheted flannels. Mum doesn't mention them, and they are still folded neatly under the tree when she leaves. I swipe them - you can't have too many crocheted flannels.

Dad's ladyfriend Joan has been boycotting the Myer windows for the last five years because 'they're not allowed to have Christmas themes anymore, because of the Muslims'. I say I saw the Myer windows, an interpretation of a Mem Fox book in which Australian animals put on a nativity. Lots of Virgins and angels and wise men. Joan doesn't believe me. Someone told her, therefore it's true.

Lovergirl has two new books and is suspiciously engrossed. Fourteen year old Darcy is likewise occupied with new playstation games. 'In this one you're an assassin, and have to go around killing people.'

If only.

More dad-isms (with the greatest affection)

<-- Dad & I spent the day in the Daintree. I can't tell you how tedious and awful it is to have to travel so often...

After a rough trip out to the Barrier Reef:
Me: 'Did you feel seasick?'
Dad: 'I was a bit skirmish, but not really sick'

Conversation over coffee with the Saturday morning papers:
Dad: 'The bubonic plague was started by Mormons, you know.'
Me: 'Mormons?'
Dad, 'Yes, from Asia.'
Complete puzzlement. I peer over his shoulder at the Australian Magazine to find that the plague was initially spread by marmots.

The things you do for love - a photo essay

You go to the RSL for dinner and while you are there an appropriately plump Elvis impersonator starts up, crooning flirtatiously to the elderly ladies. You have the roast as it's the cheapest thing on the menu and it's Dad's shout. Dad pulls a plastic takeaway container from his manbag and frugally saves the leftovers for tomorrow.

After dinner you go upstairs to the hall for the Saturday night dance. You can't do any of the dances - except a dimly remembered Pride of Erin from your high school deb. Dad insists on dancing every dance with you anyway. Your feet get blistered and you look like a troll, tromping and stumbling around as the other couples glide by.





Dad wows all the ladies with his Mediterranean charm. Also there are always more women dancers than men. You finally convince him you will not die of loneliness if he gets up and dances with someone else.







You make a cup of tea. 'Is there any milk?' you ask Clara, who's sharing your table and has already offered some mixed lollies. She looks at you oddly. 'Yes,' she says. 'Where will I find it?' you press. 'We don't put it out until it's time for tea,' she says, in a voice that implies you were obviously not taught correct manners. No tea on demand? What restraint! In your immersion in the creed of instant gratification, you find this most odd.At nine-thirty precisely supper is served. Two sponges, a plate of egg-and-lettuce sandwiches, some butterfly cakes and a chocolate slice.

The Queen looks on from her royal box, high on the wall, next to the Honour Roll. She is most amused.

Amid glass bottom boat tours over coral reefs and rainbow fish, spectacular waterfalls, trips on chairlifts through tropical rainforest and accommodation in a luxurious hotel, it's the highlight of Dad's week.

Time waits for no man

<--Skyrail, Cairns Every time I see Dad, he seems older. Is he deteriorating suddenly, or is the picture of him I hold in my mind one of his younger days, strong and feisty and vigorous, so that every time I see him I am struck afresh by how doddery he is becoming? Apart from physically - and he was always a handsome Maltese man, not unlike Elvis, I used to think when I was younger (and so was he) - he seems so much less sharp, cognitively. I find myself repeating myself, several times. He tells me how to get into his safe 'if I'm not around', and where he wants his ashes scattered (off Malta, out to sea - past the breakwater). He hasn't decided what song he wants at his funeral but not Frank Sinatra. He's very healthy, considering he's 70 - he was a labourer from the time he arrived in Australia at 17 until he retired in his early 60s, so he's always been fit. He does Tai Chi and ballroom dancing and has many lady friends, has just finished a tour of Europe with Joan. He's not depressed by any means, just - planning his future I guess. Getting his affairs in order.

I love the way Lily Brett describes her Polish Jewish father in 'You Gotta Have Balls' and the one before that (title escapes me).

'I bought some Savlon,' Dad said last night, in a conversation about our culinary adventures. 'I am going to try to cook with that.'
'Savlon?' I said.
'Yes, Savlon, what the Asia people use. Is more expensive than gold.'
'Oh, saffron'.

Cairns is hot and gorgeous - green and damp and bustling with tourists. Dad's come to join me, so this training trip is really quite a touristic experience. We met at the airport on Tuesday night - him flying in from Melbourne, and me from Townsville. Yesterday we took the skyrail to Kuranda and the train back - frightfully expensive, and Dad slept all the way back, through 'Australia's most spectacular train journey'. I forgot about the need for an afternoon nap, in my itinerary planning.

There's something a bit unsettling about those experiences that are designed specifically for tourists. Vast hordes of us, all following the 'Guide to Cairns' to the letter. Kuranda itself felt odd; a small sleepy mountaintop village, encroaching rainforest on all sides, overrun by tourists, all of us wearing our neon-bright stickers that indicated which combination of skyrail up/train down or vice versa we were on. On one side of the street were bright friendly Aboriginal people playing didgeridu and dancing and stall holders exhorting us to buy corocodile skin purses and mango champagne; on the other side of the street in the unreconstructed pub, old white men in singlets watched the horses on sky TV while the blackfellas played pool. I felt like I was at a zoo. And there's an assumed lack of creativity - the commentary on the train, narrating on points of interest, says, 'And on the left we are approaching Bill's Falls, where the cascades tumble for a hundred metres...You will find the best vantage point for a photgraph is just after we pass the falls, looking back along the train.' A thousand tourists obediently wait until we pass the falls, and all take exactly the same shot of the waterfall.

It's the McDonaldisation of touring. That said, I have discovered that this is simply the best way to travel with an elderly person. Dad loves it. He loves the crowds of people all from exotic other locations, and he loves the sanitised history, with nothing confronting to tarnish the memories. Aboriginal people are a fascinating culture with a proud history chiefly made up of dancing and didgeridu-playing. Australia's role in war has been to send off brave young men who selflessly fought for what they believed in. We went to see 'Children of Men' at the cinema last night, set in a grotty dreary future London of 2027 - rubbish on the streets, air heavy with smog, hot and drizzling. On the way home, he said, 'Bit far-fetched that movie. The government would never let it get like that.'

The developmental task of old age is consolidation (sorry I can't remember the theorist - Klein?) - looking back over your life and deciding on the whole you've done a good job. Making sense of it. The alternative, the theory runs, is that elderly people succumb to depression, an overwhelming feeling of pointlessness. I suppose as you prepare to leave this planet, you have to assume that you are leaving it in reasonable condition, otherwise you are leaving your children in the s**t.

Beware - Family Rant

What is it about families that makes them uniquely able to really get you riled up? Or me riled up - maybe you are the very model of placidity around your family.

Today's target is my brother. We went to Dad's dance class tonight. None of us want to be there of course. And dance class goes from FOUR pm til TEN pm, can you believe it? It's a whole social thing. Of course retired people have great slabs of time just waiting to be filled in, and they're all insomniacs and they have little naps before they go. I am exhausted after six hours of dance lesson. Not to mention dancing with about a zillion old men. I couldn't sit any out, as soon as I sat down someone would come and ask me to dance. It was a really stupid idea for me to take up dancing, now everytime I come down dad wants me to come dancing.

Anyway brother got cranky because he wanted his dinner, and threw a tantrum. I didn't see it, he would have thrown it at his girlfriend who is just exactly the sort of woman who gets into a domestic violence relationship and stays there. Not that my brother is phycially violent, he is just incredibly self-centred and gets cranky and starts yelling. I mean, we were at a CLUB for gawsake - you know, with the doorkeeper where you sign in, and pokies and of course a RESTAURANT section with greasy chicken schnitzel on special for $3.99 on Tuesdays and a $5 roast on Fridays. So if one was hungry you would think one could go and get one's own self a bowl of chips at the very least. No, no, instead he has to do the baby act and stamp his feet and rant and of course girlfriend runs after him and says 'it's because he hasn't had his medication yet.' Bipolar disorder does not make you an ARSEHOLE. I only found out about it afterwards and Dad said, 'He's upset because he hasn't had his medication yet', and I said, 'No, he's upset because he is being a PRICK and his condition does not make him have angry outbursts." I mean, now of course that he is SICK Mum and Dad really have permission to explain away any nasty behaviour as 'not his fault'. OOOOH it just makes me so cross (clearly). He is just so abrogating responsibility "oh I am having a tantrum because I have a mental illness' and he always has and Mum and Dad run around placating him because it's not good for him to have a tantrum. Embarrassing? Or were they just fearful of the potential damage? (plaster walls with fist holes through them, possessions smashed from being flung about the room, and so on.

I'm also cross because i didn't do anything about it. What would a wise person do? I mean, I didn't see the tantrum. I'm often on the periphery - I hear when they have just happened but I don't actually see them. So I don't feel like I can say, 'Get your shit together and take responsibility for yourself'

now of course he is back to being completely charming.

What WOULD a wise person do?
Yesterday he raised his voice to Dad and I told him to stop it. He wanted to go out to lunch, Dad was saying he shouldn't spend the money. So he gets into argument about it. I said, 'Stop responding to Dad. If you want to go to lunch, go.' He's like, 'Yesterday i wanted to buy a CD, Dad said no, it's a waste of money. When I was in Malta I wanted to buy some gold jewellery, dad said no it's a waste of money. Today I want to go to lunch, Dad says no, it's a waste of money.' I said 'Who cares what Dad said, just do what you want,' He said, 'But dad always says not to.' I mean, how old is he, five?? JUST GO AND DO IT.

Sorry to dump on you like this. Family is always going to get you in the end, isn't it. I think (here we go with the self-psychoanalysis) it really taps into how unfair it felt when we were kids that there was one rule for Zedd (my sister) and I and another rule for brother so as not to upset him. And his girlfirend's role is so scarily like my mother's, rushing around placating him.

I don't know if he would ever be physically violent but it's definitely the same dynamic. Any discomfort he is experiencing is her fault.

Well, that feels better. Thanks for listening (even if you did skim-read).

Imminent disaster

This is my loungeroom but unfortunately I'm not there. I'm in Melbourne, it's Saturday afternoon and I'm having a small panic about tonight's dinner party.

It's Dad's 70th. I wanted to hire a hall and a band and get all the ladies to bring a plate but Dad wanted 'something small' so instead I am doing a sit down dinner for fourteen. WHAT WAS I THINKING?

We have bought all the ingredients - I'm doing a roast which shouldn't be a big deal - but Dad wanted to take me to the Vietnamese market that has sprung up since I lived here. Little Saigon, it's called. It's fantastic, all sharp bitter smells and elderly Vietnamese ladies picking over piles of lumpy alien vegetables. But the meat, I have realised now that I am home, looks like no roast meat cuts I have ever seen. We have bought pork (yuk) and beef - but I am used to the roast cuts looking like - well like roasts. Kind of leg shaped with fat on the outside. These do not look like this. Should I go out and buy more meat, put this in the freezer?

Oh my God it's all going to be a disaster and it will be all my responsibility!

Young love for the old

Dad's in love.

I've just come back from Melbourne and yesterday I met Joan, his new 'dancing partner'. Dad and Joan are about to dance their way around the world - they're going to England and Wales and Ireland and Malta and Dubai for six weeks.

Joan seemed lovely. Considerably younger than Dad, who's about to turn seventy. I suppose she could be early sixties - there certainly seems to be a great difference between sixty and seventy in the sprightliness stakes.

Dad cooked us lunch for the grand occasion of us meeting. Corned beef and a potato bake thing I think he concocted himself, and mixed diced vegies from one of those convenient fresh-frozen packets, and a trifle he made himself. 'It's got no added sugar in it,' he said proudly. 'What about the cake?' I asked. 'Yes that has sugar I tink,' he confessed. 'and what about the jelly?' I asked. 'Yes that has sugar also,' he said, and we all laughed.

I think my dad's great. I've always gotten along with him. He has a good sense of humour and he's very easygoing. It's probably his fault too - he's always been completely unambitious. I remember Mum and him having a screaming match - one of their few, I can only think of about three during my childhood - over him not wanting to go for the job of foreman. He was always happy to stay as just one of the labouring crew. As he also didn't want Mum to go to work, I can imagine it was incredibly frustrating for her to see him pass up opportunities to make life a bit easier financially.

Dad's got a bit of an allergy to money, which I think I've inherited. We both think there's something evil about it. It doesn't do to pay much attention to money, or want material things. 'They are not happy, these rich people,' is one of Dad's favourite themes for a conversation.

Back to the love story.

Lying around at Dad's was a scrap of paper. This really was lying around, I didn't snoop through any drawers or anything. This scrap of paper was on the kitchen bench where I had set up my laptop in order to check the www was still out there. The scrap was entitled, 'Song for Joan', and it went something like, 'You make me feel like a child again. I know you are not mine but I hope that we will spend lots of time together.' It was so incredibly sweet. And I had one of those flashes of my father having a life that was entirely independent of his existence as my parent.

So Joan seems nice. I wondered at one point if she was nervous about meeting me, or whether it's no longer an issue, if so many older people are separating and repartnering that adult children no longer feel compelled to defend the jilted parent by being nasty to the interloper (by the way a. Mum left Dad and b. it was about 15 years ago now)

The garden doll at the top of the page is from dad's garden. He has been collecting a very odd array of statuary - mushrooms and lions and chinese men with baskets and dogs and scarecrows - no theme.

sand, surf & Mum

Phew, I've finally finished the training - I've only got one more day and then I'm finsihed for six months.

I've been trainng a bunch of people on the Sunshine Coast (Queensland, Australia) for the past two days and it's really felt like hard work. Mybe because I'm changing jobs in two weeks and won't be training for a while, and I'm looking forward to having a break from it.

Coming up here has been good though. I invited Mum to come with me so she flew up from Melbourne to have a holiday on the beach while I work. It's been very good to have the company as usually I am just mooching around by myself. No matter how gorgeous a place is, it's kinda a slog to just hag around by myself for a couple of days, eating in rastaurants alone and seeing the sights.

It's been a really good way to spend time with Mum -we go for a walk before I go to work, then she entertains herself all day, then we go for a swim and find a restaurant in the evening and hang out in the very nice apartment, listening to the ocean. I've gotten much better with her. About a year ago we had a bad year - I only see her about twice a year anyway, as we live 1600 kilometres apart - but that year I went through a stage of wanting more from her. I wanted a 'closer' relationship. I don't know what got into me. i wanted her to be someone she wasn't. Too much listening to the hippies of the North Coast maybe, I thought I could have a 'deep, real' relationship with my mother. It was really hard on her because i kept trying to steer the conversations places she really does not want to go. Like whether she has any goals, and what she feels the purpose of her life has been. And I was constantly asking her not to do all the mother things, like clean my house and weed my garden and do my washing whenever she is in my space. I'm sorry Mum! :) I think I have gotten much better at accepting who she is. She is not one of my 'deep personal' friends but she's pretty good for all her foibles.

She's very supportive & eager for Lovergirl and I to have a baby. When Lovergirl interviewed a bunch of non-biological lesbian mothers for a research project last year, she found that their most discrimination came from their mothers. Lovergirl expected people to talk about social discrimination, or from medical services, but people just sailed through that. It was most devastating when their own mothers couldn't accept that they were the mother of this child that came from their partner's body.

I've found a whole heap of other bloggers on this blogsite about lesbians trying to get pregnant. it's very reassuring. Although some have gotten pregnant dishearteningly easily.

I wanna have a go! It's very hard to stand by, getting older, while Lovergirl tries.