Ramblings of a Yidchick

Best Laid Plans

2007-10-18T11:13:00.000+10:00

What I didn’t know was that Bali was not to be mine, either. I understand the need to be heard. I seriously do. I understand that the less we are heard, the louder the noise we need to make. If you’ve ever lived in my neighbourhood and been forced to overhear a fight between my mother and myself, you will know this to be true. Shouting Loud and Gesticulating Wildly is my name translated into English. But I draw the line at blowing up people in order to have your voice heard. I know people who do this must be completely powerless and desperate. I know they are hopped up on the belief that a bomb blast will set them free. And weirdly, through my horribly middle-class every-point-of-view-is-valid eyes, I can empathise with the bombers. But not nearly as much as I empathise with the victims of these blasts. The Balinese waiters whose families no longer have parents. The football dudes having a drink who left the Sari club without their legs or their best mates. The mother whose toddler came home in a body bag. No voice needs to be heard that badly.

So my dad calls and tells me Bali has just been placed on the “high danger risk, do not visit” list by the Australian government. I laugh this off. “I’m sure most countries are on that list, dad. Israel and South Africa must definitely be and you travel there all the time”. I check the list online. No, just Bali and Zimbabwe. I add the two million and first tick in my Book of Times My Dad is Right and I Am Wrong. And just as I’m closing the book, another call from Dad. “Just thought you should know there’s a bird flu epidemic on Bali. Not that I’m telling you not to go, but basically everything you might eat if you were to go would stand a good chance of being fatally poisonous. How are the kids?”

And so I do something decidedly dull. I cancel our trip to Bali. If R and I didn’t have kids, we would take the chance. But we’re Responsible Parents now. The thought of my kids having to see one of those cloying pictures they use of smiling dead people in the newspaper is enough to put me off going. No Bali for us. No tropical sunsets, warm breezes and mild irritable bowel syndrome from eating street food. And no refund on the hotel deposit either.

But Cathy, lovely, wonderful Cathy, is at our service, so where else can we go that is inexpensive, warm, exotic with idolatrous locals? Three minutes on E-Bay tells us. Glorious Phuket! For only $150 total, we get a week in a four star hotel. Amazing! Take this offer up quickly or your kids will grow up and kick you out of the house before you ever get to wear a swimming costume again.

And we do. And all is not lost. And yes, a friend warns me there are old European men holding hands with fifteen-year-old Thai girls in Phuket but the optimist in me assumes those girls are really 25 and just have the beautiful Thai skin which makes them look younger. So we pack the bags. No baby bottles. No nappies. No organic snacks or wet-wipes or a change of clothes in case of ‘accidents’. We are adults. We will be travelling like normal people do. We will suppress our desire to lie on the floor kicking our legs in the air and screaming if the hostess tells us the chicken is finished and we’ll have to have fish. We are entering a tantrum free zone and it feels erotic.

But just as I'm about to pack the Kama Sutra, a call from Cathy. Darling Nanny-Bot made from all good Nanny parts Cathy. “I’m really sorry. My dad is unwell. I’m not going to be able to look after your kids”.

She is totally reasonable and within her rights. She has a sick father. I reassure her that we will be fine. If we don’t get to go away, there will always be another holiday. In another three years time. And I bid farewell to lovely Cathy.

And before I can help it, I am joining my kids on the floor and my feet are in the air kicking and I am shouting at R “WHY CAN’T I HAVE MY CATHY-DOLL? I WANT MY CATHY DOLL!”

And my husband sends me to my room.

So you think you can tell, heaven from hell?

2007-10-02T12:33:00.000+10:00

Witness the pendulum swinging.

Our first holiday as a couple in three years. I’ve been planning it for ten months. Requirements: inexpensive, warm, preferably exotic but anything where the locals worship idols will do. Did I say inexpensive? I meant Cheap. Because since having three kids, I’ve realised that no matter how much money either myself (not much) or R (a little more) makes, there will never be enough.

Bali, it is decided. We can use frequent flyers from the days when we used to be. And we’ll attend one of those horrifying timeshare presentations in exchange for free accommodation. This is what we do, because we are desperate to have an entire night’s sleep. Apart from being woken every few hours by children who in turn wake each other, we have the delightful situation of living through our neighbour’s renovation. They start drilling and tapping on my head at 7AM every morning, and stop only when I have finally decided to give up trying to go back to sleep. And they do it on Saturday morning too. Apparently it’s not only legal, it’s a guaranteed way of ensuring insanity in any Jews within a hundred mile vicinity. Day of rest, people. Day of rest.

So, The Holiday Plans. I realise that the only way it will be vaguely pleasant is if I am completely confident that the children are well looked after. I realise that asking my parents or my in-laws to move in is such a preposterously absurd idea that it belongs on an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. I realise that hiring a live in is not going to meet the Cheap requirement. But, as responsible as little O is, she is only two and a half and cannot be expected to look after her younger siblings without adult supervision. And so, I phone the Nanny Agency. This is a place where rich people get to ask for whatever their nanny-requiring heart’s desire. A live-in-sole-charge-with-a-nursing-degree? No prob. A-housekeeper-granny-who-can-cook-pizza-from-scratch-while-changing-nappies? We have ten of those. As long as you pay. And pay plenty. Some for the nanny, some for the agency, some for the government, some for the sheer joy of being able to make a wish and have it granted.

But I am good at pretending so I put on my best Rich Voice and ask for someone game enough to look after three kids under three. And a slightly belligerent dog who used to be cute but then grew an extra long snout and a bobbly bit in the middle that makes her look like a deformed cat crossed with a sewer rat. (No one believes me that the cat-rat cross is this season’s Shpoodle). And, without blinking, they send me Cathy. Glorious Cathy. She is fifty but has the energy of a teenager, she is friendly but firm. She has an incredibly glamorous CV. She worked for Russell Simmons and interviewed with Russell Crowe. She comes from country Queensland but has lived in the Queen’s Country, England. She is responsible but fun, affectionate and intelligent. And she will be ours. Oh yes, for the cost of a small car, she will spend the entire week devoted to our kids. She will cook them meals shaped like boats and giraffes, she will teach them to paint, she will toilet train them, she will have them speaking fluent French while doing the dishes by the time we return. In years to come, they will thank me. Merci, Maman. By selflessly bringing Cathy into our lives and going to Bali, you enriched us in ways we can never be grateful enough for. You are indeed a fantastic mother. Please, allow us to support you for the rest of your life. Will a villa in San Tropez do?

Yes, Cathy was beautiful and perfectly shaped. I should have known by that mere fact that she was never to be mine...

Is it my stop yet?

2006-12-04T22:09:00.000+11:00

Oh dear neglected blog. How often I have thought of you. How little time I have. How much is that doggy in the window?

Having three children under two is threatening to kill me. Or make me mentally ill. I suspect I am being throttled by the gods. Either that or my shower is broken.

I have no time. No energy. No, je ne regret riene.

I am also trying to balance three writing jobs (a feature film, a TV show, a documentary) and one producing job (the documentary). I told you I was mentally ill. But think how fucked up the people who employ me must be.

If you have a small, neatly wrapped pocket of time to give me, please do. I need nothing more. Languid, lay-about time. Let's-go-to-a-movie time. Time to read irrelevant articles about this summer's hair secrets. Time to phone my cousins. Time to eat slowly and not worry about dishes. Time to write for the heart not just the pocket.

And now, dishes, three nappies, two phonecalls to return and one exhausted, confused, mildly insane motherwoman to put to bed.

Nite.

Songs to Throttle a Cat to

2006-10-17T23:53:00.000+10:00

While driving in my horribly unsexy wagon with three children in the back, I happened to listen to the words of the song they were playing on the radio. It's called "Promiscuous Girl". They should just call the song "Let's Fuck". It would be subtler. The verses could go "I want to fuck you. You want to fuck me". Then the chorus could snap in with the incredibly complex "Let's Fuck".

Oh God. When did I get so old?

On matters sexual;

While R and I were discussing how hairy R's bumhole is (he is a descendant of Romany gypsies after all), he proclaimed, "I am ideally placed to use a bidet". We were both delighted at the prospect. Hairy bumholes are notorious collectors of little twirled up pieces of toilet paper. The lovely shoots of water on a bidet are the antidotes. If anyone knows of a charity who donates bidets to the hairy of bum, drop me a line. R also collects lots of little creatures in his belly button lint. Which spurred him on to the idea of creating a gourmet chocolate, churned entirely in the belly buttons of young hirsute men. Belly Lindt Chocolate.

This is the calibre of discussion two severely sleep deprived people engage in.

R and I were randomly discussing whether either of us had ever been caught masturbating by our parents as teenagers. I had to admit that my father once walked in while I was mid tonk. I was wearing a sundress, kneeling on all fours trying out a new position. (Young creative minds must be put to use, you know). ‘Twas as I found the right angle for much self pleasuring that my dear Pappa walked in, gasped “Oh God” and walked out again, shouting ‘sorry’ all the way down the stairs. Soon after this I immigrated. From now on, when people ask if it was the crime that drove me out of South Africa, I will have to admit that it was not. It was the thought of my father seeing my arse in the air as I brought myself to orgasm that did it.

And now for a community notice...

2006-08-16T21:57:00.000+10:00

I interrupt my self-imposed exile to give you some fantastic news. No, I'm not pregnant again. Thank the Goddess. My little O, the one they said may never walk, is walking! She's taken off and nothing can stop her. She's like a drunk energiser bunny and it's hard to catch her and she's making my life difficult in such a wonderful way!

And I'm working really hard and the children, all three, are doing so well. Apart from pooing in the bath and having episodes of gastro which are more like episodes of The Twilight Zone, they're settling in to the world.

And, by golly, I have to admit I'm, err, happy.

Don't tell the Goddess. She's sure to smight me.

Yidchick has left the Building

2006-07-05T21:43:00.000+10:00

Oh friends, my humblest fumbliest apologies for leaving you hanging for so long. I survived the reunion. My headmaster was smaller than I remember. Everyone was bald. It was surprisingly lovely.

The sordid truth is that I have taken on a work project. This means that when I'm not feeding, burping, changing I'm writing writing writing. Which leaves no blog time.

I will be back. At some point. Hopefully richer, thinner and less superficial.

Until then...

You are Cordially Invited...

2006-06-13T17:34:00.000+10:00

Then strangely, I received an invitation to my school reunion. Why strange? Because my school was in Johannesburg, South Africa and the location for the reunion was Sydney, Australia. Twenty minutes from my house. Even stranger, 800 people had registered to attend. An entire ghetto of South African Jews.

By ghetto I mean group of white middle class people called Kevin and Rolene.

The headmaster, a frightening man who once called me an anarchist, was flying over to attend the event. Being an anarchist, I’ve never been to a reunion before. In the life I had before I became a rampant procreator, I wrote an episode of TV about a reunion. One of the characters was reluctant to go to hers because it drudged up memories of her past as a teenage strumpet. Another was nervous to see the teacher she’d had an affair with. A third was anxious she’d be seen as a non-achieving loser when compared to her high school nemesis, a teen-queen who had fulfilled her promise of being the girl most likely. Yes, it was a tad soapy and yes it was based on my own teenage experiences (except I was a wannabe strumpet rather than a bona-fide one. I kept dating decent guys who refused to take advantage of me no matter how much I encouraged them). The experience of writing the episode convinced me that no good could come from revisiting one’s past at a school reunion. School ended sixteen years ago for me. In another continent, in another life. Why would I want to meet up with people who knew me in the eighties, when I thought big hair was, like, bodacious?

But, bugger me with a broomstick, I couldn’t get myself to throw out the invitation. I stuck it on the side of my fridge and thought of a hundred reasons not to go.

Reason number one: I am very fat now. Having twins is no excuse. I’ve put on more weight since they were born than I did the whole pregnancy. Seriously.
Why reason number one is silly: I was no bikini model at high school. The bonus of always having been tubby is that no one expects you to be thin. I’m portly. Large. Chunky. Was in high school. (Which, now that I think of it, is maybe why my dates were all so ‘decent’ when it came to nookie).

Reason number two: I’m tired. It’s cold. There’s a Big Brother eviction on TV. Please leave me alone.
I don’t need to point out the reason why number two is lame.

Reason number three. The real reason: I’m unemployed. I haven’t worked in a year and a half. Yes, I’ve had three children in that time but a more focussed person would have been able to knock out a great script or two on the side, wouldn’t they? At school people expected me to do great things. I was an achiever. I had endless potential. I was going to be a doctor, a lawyer, a lawyer who doctors things. I was definitely going to be a published novelist. What no-one, least of all myself, expected was that I’d become a fat housewife who sits at home changing endless nappies and reading “What to Expect when You’re Expecting”. Particularly when the book I should be reading is “What to Expect when your Life gets Sucked from You by Three Sweet yet Vampiric Entities who Spew and Shit on You but for Whom you’d Lie in Front of a Train”.

People constantly ask me when I’m going to get back to work. The truth is, I don’t know. I don’t even know what work I’m going back to. Every TV gig I’ve ever had is so totally full-on full-time full-load that I can’t imagine how I would balance that with three small kidlings. Who would look after them? Plus, I can’t remember what I care about anymore. I think I used to be passionate about social injustice. Either that or chicken casserole recipes. I forget which.

So the invitation stared at me. And I practiced telling people that what I “am” is a stay-at-home mom. And in a moment of abandon I dared myself to RSVP and pay for my ticket.

And just like that, I flung myself like a flubberous lemming into the sea of my past.

Stay tuned to find out if I drowned. . .

Is this the real life?

2006-06-04T12:58:00.000+10:00

Am writing this in the spare ten seconds I have between feeding, burping, settling, changing, playing then starting again. It's been relentless, to understate the point. We've lost our part-time nanny (she had to leave with no notice) so I've been doing it alone for a couple of weeks while desperately interviewing other nannies, a couple of whom let us down at the last minute. All very dull yet exhausting. So... would love to write more but just need to get this nanny fandango sorted, train a new person, get more than three hours sleep a night (I kid you not) stop wearing dirty tracksuit pants and catch my breath. Am hoping this will happen before 2007. If I haven't posted in a month, come in with industrial strength deodorant and fish me out of this mess!

Moments like these...

2006-05-30T16:36:00.000+10:00

And then I find myself in the children’s hospital again, all neon lights and bossy nurses. Little O has the anaesthetic mask on and is screaming, her eyes fixed on mine. Slowly, slowly, she relents to the drug. Her eyes haze over then close. This time it’s an MRI to check the progress of her spine. It’s over relatively quickly and we’re in recovery. Am half expecting shouts of “Norm” (from Cheers) from the recovery nurses who all recognise us. O is angry. Like me, she’s had enough of this hospital caper. She’s older now and can understand it slightly better and she wants out. And this time, she gets her way.

Three hours later we’re in the sunshine. And a visit to O’s neurosurgeon last week to discuss the scan. He has good news. The spinal cord hasn’t re-tethered. As long as she has regular checks with the neurologist he only needs to see her when she starts school. And suddenly we’re there. That point I was dreaming of when she was having monthly surgery. She’s okay. She’s more than ok. She’s bloody marvellous. And she hasn’t progressed from standing to walking but she’s learning each day.

So the twins may be driving me insane and I may have no life of my own but for this one moment it’s all peaceful and manageable. More than manageable actually. Bloody great.

Mothering 101

2006-05-23T16:35:00.000+10:00

When the water washes over me and I’m deep, deep under, the sky above and the liquid below become indistinguishable. And so it is that my Mondays become Wednes-Fridays and the weeks swoosh past me, a faint blur of nappies and tears and toothless smiles and endless excretions and ablutions and confusion. Not last week, however. Last week I came to an abrupt crash-hault. I was admitted to a family residential centre with my three bubs. The aim was to help all of us learn how to sleep properly. Disappointingly, without the aid of marijuana.

My arrival at the hospital-esque complex was inauspicious. They slapped a band on my wrist with a number on it, grabbed my children and did the same to them. Call me paranoid but we’re Jews. We’re naturally suspicious of anyone who rounds us up and whacks a number on our arms. Before I can say “Arbeit Macht Freiheit”, I’m separated from my babies and pushed into a small room with fluorescent lighting and carpets that were last washed when people wore Disney shirts without irony. The Admitting Nurse, who I’ll call Anna R. (for Rexia) explains the Regime. (An aside: have you ever noticed how nurses are either frighteningly skinny or alarmingly huge? There’s got to be something Freudian in there about having to look after everyone else without knowing how to look after themselves. Either that or they’re actually all ordinary sized but I have a visual disorder that only kicks in when I see nurses. Nothing Freudian in that).

Anna tells me the babies will be placed on a strict wake-feed-play-sleep routine. (And they’ll have fun when they play goddammit!). They will be left to cry for a certain amount of time so they learn to self soothe. (This is the equivalent of hitting someone to stop them from being violent. There’s nothing soothing about being left to scream). Anna talks me through the regimented routine, explaining I will need to be on hand at all times as they can’t hire extra staff for me. She reminds me I’m taking up the place of three women (surprisingly she’s not referring to the size of my arse - usually patients come in with only one child).

And so the Monday becomes a Wednesday becomes a Saturday and my three babies now hate me. I’m the person who leaves them to scream while I nervously pace outside examining the vomit-mustard carpet. I’m the one who comes into the room and pats them (a lame gesture they obviously find condescending because they scream louder when I do it). I’m the one who used to pick them up and rock them but who now mumbles “Shhh, shhhh” then walks out. I’m the nasty old bag who brought them into this cold, over-airconditioned hole so I could listen to the advice of strangers who wouldn’t know maternal instinct if it patted their bottoms in a heart-beat rhythm, held them close against its soft bosom and sung sweetly until they fell asleep when they were good and ready.

During one of these sessions in which the nurse forbids me to pick the children up, I am struck by how funny it is that I’ve come to a specialised home to study what is effectively how to neglect and ignore my children. Crack Whores have been onto this technique for ages. Leave a child to cry. Wander in occasionally without making eye contact. Pat them while looking the other way, not even bothering to pick them up. Mumble to them to keep quiet then leave again only to come back hours later.
This I need to pay someone to teach me?

It wasn’t all bad. No, let me rephrase that. It was all bad.

Needless to say, I discharged the family early. I’m sick of being told how to care for my children. I know how to screw them up by myself, thank you very much. My family’s been doing it for generations. Plus, the Learned Neglect Technique didn’t seem particularly effective. The twins still weren’t sleeping properly. O went totally off her food and starting having tantrums every time I put her down. I began to question why I came here at all. I was doing just fine with my own Overinvolved Slightly Inconsistent Irritable Mother technique. Sure it didn’t allow me to sleep. Or shower. But we were saving a crapload on water bills.

The in-house psychiatrist explained I was resisting change because I’m using denial as a method to cope with my extremely abnormal situation.
I’m not in denial.
What’s abnormal about my situation?
I’m not the only woman who ever had three babies in thirteen months, one of whom has had constant surgery and can’t yet walk, the other two who don’t realise that sleep is something they need to do for more than ten minutes at a time.
And, get this... she was wearing a jacket with padded shoulders. And pleats. And she’s talking to me about denial?

So for now we’re back to rocking and holding and endless screaming.
But all is not lost.
I have a Crack Whore called Muffy lined up for next week. She’s giving me a class on sleep and settling that I’m sure will be invaluable.

Don't Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows

2006-05-11T18:57:00.000+10:00

Achtung!

The member of the Parent Support Team who barges into my house should have been trained by the Apartheid Police. She is patronising, invasive and – I’m sure – a whiz with a cat-o-nine-tails. She proceeds to tell me everything I’m doing wrong. The list is extensive. It starts with relatively innocuous things like the way I’ve positioned the cots in the room (I asked for support not interior decorating). It goes on to include the fact that I let the dog on the couch, that I play inappropriate music to the children (what’s wrong with Black Sabbath?) and that I let O still use a dummy. But the kicker is this – she insists I’m underfeeding the twins. Despite the fact that they’re thriving, putting on weight and eating as much as the paediatrician recommended they eat, she tells me I’m starving my children. Then she asks me if I have a lot of play time with them. “Not as much as I’d like” I stammer. Wrong answer. She launches into a diatribe about how I’m not emotionally connecting with my children enough and not stimulating them, which will lead to horrific problems later on.

Then she asks if I’d like her to come back next week to ‘help’.

Did I miss something? The troll comes into my home and tells me I’m not feeding or loving my children enough. The two things a mother fears most. Then she wants me to invite her back? I asked for support, not a session with a dominatrix.

After she leaves, I load up the triple stroller with babies, I put the dog on her leash and I walk. I walk and I walk and I walk. I am Fury personified. I am Rage with a Mummy-Tummy. I am Rotund and Restless and Angry.

And half way between putting O’s dummy back in her mouth and picking up Pepper’s poo, it all clicks into place. This woman has done me a favour. When I was pregnant everyone told me if ever I was offered help I should accept it. Since I’ve had the twins I’ve been inundated with people ‘helping’. I’ve accepted every offer. But this help has often manifested in advice, always conflicting. Sleep them on their backs. Turn them on their sides. Sleep them Together. Apart. Together in the Day. Apart at Night. Feed them at the same time. Feed them on Demand. Feed them four hourly, three hourly, only so much, as much as they’ll take. Burp them sitting up, burp by patting backs. Hold them, don’t hold them, eat, drink, be merry but not too merry, go rapidly mad as people constantly tell you what to do… I asked for support, not a Bob Dylan song.

And then I realise these are my children. If there's anyone who knows how to look after them it's dazed, muddled, sleep deprived Me. They asked for a mother, not a spineless amoeba.

Wish them luck...

A Paradox Wrapped in Irony

2006-04-24T21:59:00.000+10:00

The problem with having a blog about being a mother of three children under 15 months is that I never have time to write. Crap. Was about to regale you with the story of my morning at the mothers' support group, but O is crying and R has gone shopping. Shit, there's D going off now. Thank G-d T's... oh no, he's started too. Is it irresponsible of me to hope that the sound of my fingers tapping the keyboard will remind them of my heartbeat and lull them to sleep?

Waaaahhh! Waaaah! Waaaaaaaah!
Can you hear me through this noise? No? I'll be back…

SEVERAL DAYS LATER…

Okay, let’s try again. At Karitane, the mothercraft nurse made me do a questionnaire to assess if I am depressed using the:

Edinburgh Post Natal Depression Scale (EPDS)
(J.L. Cox, J.M. Holden, R. Sagovsky, Department of Psychiatry, University of Edinburgh)

As you have recently had a baby, we would like to know how you are feeling. Please give the answer which comes closest to how you have felt in the past 7 days - Not just how you feel today.

I have felt happy:

My answer: Does it count if I’d had my third glass of wine by the time the happiness kicked in?

In the past 7 days:

1. I have been able to laugh and see the funny side of things –
If you think having newborn poo under my fingernails then sucking my finger to assess the temperature of the milk I’ve just dipped it into is funny then you’re sick. Neither is it funny that I tried to put my toddler in the newborn car seat and was repeatedly frustrated that she didn’t fit. Or the fact that I threw my car keys down the toilet because I mistook them for a poo-ey tissue. There is no funny side. What’s to laugh at?

2. I have looked forward with enjoyment to things -
Yes. Things like my children leaving home to make enormous amounts of money and support me for the rest of my life. Oh, you mean the near future?

3. I have blamed myself unnecessarily when things went wrong -
What do you mean unnecessarily? Everything is actually my fault. The fact that the kids haven’t bathed in three days can’t really be anyone else’s, can it?

4. I have been anxious or worried for no good reason –
I’ll give you three good reasons: My toddler, twin one and twin two.

5. I have felt scared or panicky for no good reason –
Define a good reason. If I wasn’t scared or panicky being left alone with three unsettled babies, I’d have to be some sort of German-engineered automaton. Or Keanu Reeves, who I suspect is a German-engineered automaton.

6. Things have been getting on top of me –
Three small things particularly. I barely have a moment where one of my darling little “things” isn’t lying on my chest.

7. I have been so unhappy that I have had difficulty sleeping -
You try sleep through the noise in this house. Seriously, if you can get two consecutive hours I’ll give you a blowjob. Although you'd probably sleep through that too.

7. I have felt sad or miserable –

I haven’t gotten out of my pajamas for weeks. It’s not like they’re sexy pajamas. You do the math.

8. I have been so unhappy that I have been crying –
Crying? Why stop there? I’ve taken to primordial screaming with low grunting moans. Sometimes it helps settle the kids.

10. The thought of harming myself has occurred to me -
Only with chocolate, alcohol and drugs. Does that count?

So, after I filled it out the nurse gave me the kind of Concerned Glance they teach in nursing college. We’ll have the parent support team give you a call, she said.

The Support Team (a group I could use when choosing bras) called and spoke in the kind of Concerned Tone they reserve for idiots and the terminally ill. They’re coming over next week to “sort (me) out”.

If I don’t write for a while, I’ve been taken away. Hopefully to a respite center in Hawaii where I can spend my days practicing kundalini yoga until my kids get rich and support me.

Aim for the heart

2006-04-16T21:01:00.000+10:00

Are people getting stupider or am I becoming more intolerant?

We had one hour yesterday when my mom took O and it was just R, the twins and me. First we went to a milkbar to buy any caffeinated cola drinks we could get our baby-smelling hands on. Whilst there a woman came in and asked to change the box of cigarettes she’d just bought. Not to a different brand. She wanted a different warning sign. She asked if she could give back the pack that said SMOKING KILLS in exchange for one that says SMOKING HARMS YOUR NEIGHBOURS. She then lit up in my face. I fucking love people.

Stupidly we then tried to go to a restaurant. (This involved taking shifts eating quickly while the other person held 2 screaming babies. The bubs had just eaten but all the restaurant patrons insisted on looking over angrily and telling me to feed them.) The waitress asked if the twins were identical. I explained they are different sexes. Great, she said, now you don't have to have any more. We already have one at home, I told her. Is he older or younger?, she asked.

Forgive me for not suffering fools but HOW THE HELL COULD I HAVE HAD ANOTHER BABY IN THE LAST EIGHT WEEKS? Have I not done enough to boost this country's flagging birth rate?
Younger, I said. She was born yesterday. (Well that's the James Frey version of what I said. What I actually said was "Do you have mustard?".)

I am a misanthrope. I am no longer in the working world, the world of the mind. I am thus forced to speak solely with idiots and palookas all day every day. Are these people on crack? I would gatecrash an English literature class just to hear some intelligent discussion. Hell, I'd even write someone's essay on eighteenth century literature if they'd talk to me about something other than my breeding capacity. I've become that nasty old pervert who hangs around intelligent people trying to listen in on their conversations in the way that sex-addicts hang around whores. Talk to me about God and Death, baby. Oh yeah, that feels good. Touch me on the iambic pentameter, just there, yeah...

Shoot me. Aim for the heart. It’ll be better for everyone. Especially my poor kids who didn’t choose to have a mother who can’t cope with being at home. And while you’ve got the gun in your hand, can you take down the waitress as well? She never did bring me the mustard.

It really does go on

2006-04-10T19:54:00.000+10:00

And now, life. O had an appointment with the neurologist today. She's still not walking or crawling like all the other 15 month olds around her. But she's discovering clever little shortcuts to movement, like bum shuffling. The neurologist said she'll go at her own pace and do things in her own way. Think of it as individualistic, she said. I like that.

And later today I put O to bed and heard her shouting for me. Not unusual. I went back into the room and she was STANDING. Leaning on the cot. Standing! In a dangerous way that meant she could have fallen out. And while I should have done the responsible thing and warned O of the horrors of leaning over the cot, I screamed with delight. So loud I frightened O and she plotzed onto her bum immediately. But she was standing! STANDING! On her legs! Without her splints! By herself!

One huge point for O and and a minus zero to those who said she'd never walk.

You watch her, she won't just walk. She'll fly.

Ashes to Ashes

2006-04-06T22:55:00.000+10:00

I’ve always been thankful that having a wake is not a Jewish custom. The thought of seeing the body, all made up like a Max Factor model, seemed macabre to me. And I couldn’t fathom the prospect of drinking and laughing when someone is dead. But some people lend themselves to that kind of celebration and Ashley was one of them. He deserved a party to celebrate his life. There’s nothing that could help us all deal with this more than just spending time together, with Ashley’s body, getting trashed and fucked up and telling stories about him, laughing at the things he did and said and crying at the no-tomorrow-ness of it all.

Instead we attended prayers and a memorial service for Ashley tonight. It was terrible and beautiful. There was a strong connection between all of Ash’s friends, we just hugged each other and let ourselves sob into each other’s arms. His girlfriend spoke and she was so brave, she made everyone laugh and cry. And then Ash’s father had to say Kadish for him. The Jewish prayer for mourners. The prayer that children know and fear and deny that one day they will have to say for their parents but that no parent ever expects to say for his child. And Ash’s father was not close to him. And the prayer mocked him. And he broke down in the middle. And we all cried extra hard for him because he never knew Ashley like we did and we felt crap. For him and the loss of potential. For the son he never got to know.

I keep thinking if I just give a good enough argument Ash will be given back to us. Why him? Why did he have to go? Why not take someone old, someone who was ready? I Can’t Won’t Don’t want to accept this. Who do I have to speak to to get Ash back? This is some sort of horrendous bureaucratic mix-up. If I can just talk to the right person, the Manager, maybe we can sort this misunderstanding out…

No Wake for Ash. And no sleep for me. I don’t fucking care if it was his destiny. I don’t want to hear how he lived life to the full. I just want him back.

He Chose Something Else

2006-04-01T20:03:00.000+11:00

Then God slapped me in the face and said to me, look somewhere else other than yourself for a moment. And he showed me my friend Ashley. Ashley walked into an O Porto Chicken Hut on Tuesday night. He made a phone call to his business partner, S. “The doctor tells me I need to admit myself to hospital tonight. I just finished what we were working on, I’m getting a bite to eat and I want to brief you on some stuff in case I’m out of commission for a few days”. S called back 90 seconds later. Less than two minutes. A young waitress answered the phone “Do you know this man? He’s just collapsed”.

By the time the ambulance and S arrived on the scene, Ashley was completely unconscious. He was pronounced Dead on Arrival at the hospital.

He had thirty-three years. That’s all he got. A massive heart attack at 33. Ash. Funny Ash with the most absurd sense of humour. He would have found it ridiculous that he died at a take-away joint. Now everyone knows he cheated on his diet. Ash who had recently met a woman he was finally prepared to commit to. He and I had a long chat about relationships. I’m scared, he told me. Because it’s real, I told him. This is it, he told me. She’s it.

Ash who looks like everyman. So much so that R and I had a way of spotting people who looked like him everywhere we went. We’d give each other points for each Ash-a-like we saw. Then we’d report the numbers back to the original Ashley. There seem to be a concentration of them all around me this week.

Ash who always wanted to make a movie with me. “Let’s make a movie” he said. “But Ash, you have no film-related skills”. “That’s where you come in” he’d tell me. Can’t fault logic like that.

Ash who gave R a job when he was retrenched. R quoted him a price and Ash refused. You’re worth far more than that. R kept suggesting appropriate salaries and Ash kept bidding him up. What a mensch.

Ash who used to travel a lot for work. If an air hostess asked him if he had baggage to take on he’d smile “Oy, do I have baggage!”.

Ash who just gave us the most generous gift when the twins were born. Ash who taught the Rabbi’s son to cheat in cards. Ash who would have been the most fabulous father. If he’d only had time.

Ash who had only just started.

Ash. Gone. And my stupid complaining about shopping malls is an empty ball of fluff because an entire universe died with Ashley.

So we’ll never make that movie together. And you’ll never be a father. And you’ll never ever be replaced. And wherever you are, sweet Ashley, I’ll keep looking for you in a crowd. I’ll keep belly-laughing at the way you saw the world. I’ll keep you close.

Choose Life

2006-03-29T02:35:00.000+11:00

I could have lead so many lives. In one version I’m still living in South Africa. I've put my law degree to good use and am working in a major firm. I’m rich. Obscenely. But I’m nervous. And I smoke Marlboro Lights and drink a little too much and can’t sleep at night. I’m dating the director of an IT company and we work mad hours and party on the weekends with our similarly wealth endowed friends. We have a holiday house in the Wilderness. We go on game safaris. We have servants. It’s all a little unsettling so I give lots of charity to make up for it.

In another version, I’m still living in South Africa. I've put my law degree to good use and am working in a small legal aid centre. My clients are desperate people struggling with HIV, lack of access to education and, of course, poverty. I’m not wealthy but compared to these guys I’m loaded. I smoke Camel Plain and drink a little too much and can’t sleep at night. I’m dating a black drummer. I work mad hours and get to hear the most fantastic music on the weekends. We have a coffee-coloured child who makes me laugh until I spit. One day I’m hijacked with my child in the car. It’s a little unsettling so I suggest immigrating to the US. We land up in LA where I write a screenplay about a South African lawyer. It doesn’t sell but my boyfriend gets gigs playing Drums for a host of eighties bands on reunion tours. I get Botox.

In the version I’m currently living it’s two oh two am and I’m still recovering from the horrors of the day. I tried to take all three babies out. Apart from the logistics of getting them all in and out of their car-seats, the sheer intensity of being stuck in a car with three screaming babies is something that I wouldn’t wish on anyone except Hitler and Celine Dion. Those bony Survivor contestants have nothing on me. I have an idea for Mark “Big-Wig Producer” Burnett. Try locking your cast in the car with three shrieking infants and see how good their endurance is then. Survive that, publicity hos! Survive endless days that merge into each other so that the only thing that helps you distinguish Mondays from Thursdays is that Desperate Housewives is on one of them and Lost is on the other. Survive completely losing your identity while your former colleagues keep asking you if you’re ever going to write anything again. Survive not earning a cent and having to rely completely on a man you once convinced would never have to support you because you’re not into traditional gender-based roles. Survive being vomited on and pooed on as your brain shrinks while your bum grows in direct proportion to each other.

And my babies are six weeks today and I keep wondering when I’m going to have time to notice them. They’re funny looking. I like how they smell, greasy and just hatched. I wonder when I’ll stop being horrified at the banal exhaustion of my daily life enough to get to know them.

And poor little O, who was an only child for such a brief moment. She’s still not walking. Or crawling. Today a passer-by watching the freakshow that is me and the 3 bubs on an outing asked me how old O is. When I said she’s 14 months the woman asked me what was wrong with her, why wasn’t she walking? “My boys walked at ten months”. I moved quickly away without answering.

I could have lead so many lives. But in this one I got to give birth to 3 amazing children in a year. Shouldn’t that be enough to make me happy? Why can’t I shake that thunderingly loud sucking noise I constantly hear as I watch myself being pulled into a whirling torrent of endless excursions to shopping malls and blurred days of baby-tending and laundry and conversations about feeding schedules. Why isn’t The Miracle of Birth enough to stop me craving Benson and Hedges Special Mild, an entire bottle of Scotch... and an entirely different life to the one I lead?

I know how Brad and Angelina feel

2006-03-21T22:51:00.000+11:00

I always thought celebrities had to be thin, but here I am, flubber and all, a real life neighbourhood star. My newfound status is only conferred on me when I take the triple stroller out for a walk (usually with all three babies in it. Walking it babyless would illustrate the fine line between celebrity and certifiable insanity). I am stopped every thirty seconds. The people who aren’t stopping me are pointing at me, staring, laughing, taking photos on their mobile phones. I am not feeling my most glam, you understand, but I’m being forced to interact with every good old Aussie digger and excitable tourist my sea-side neighbourhood thrusts in my face. The things they usually say to me:

Oooow, triple trouble! (My polite answer: Triple the fun!)
You’ve got your hands full! (Better full than empty)
Do twins run in your family? (They’re running now)
Are they identical?

The last one is the most puzzling to me. T, the boy, is fair-skinned and has a lot of blonde hair. D, the girl is bald and dark. They look so different the doctors were amazed they were born out of the same womb. There are moments when I wonder if I’m actually the victim of one of those hospital baby mix-ups that were so common in eighties soap operas. But let’s assume my neighbourhood is filled with blind people. When I answer that the one is female, the other male, you’d be amazed how many people press the question again “yes, but are they identical?”. It’s only when I say “no, one has a penis” that they shut up.

A confession: I’m becoming a not very nice person. There are only so many times I can smile and say “better full than empty” to well-meaning passers-by who sodding tell me I’ve got my hands full. So I’ve come up with a cunning counter attack.

Tomorrow, when I head out with the triple stroller, I’m going to walk up to random strangers. I’m going to shove myself in their faces and shout in a quick stream:

Ooow, triple trouble I’ve got my hands full yes twins run in my family no they’re not identical yes we understand how to use contraception no I don’t want any more children can I go for my walk now thank you?

See who’s pointing and laughing then.

Reasons I wish I was a Man

2006-03-18T23:55:00.000+11:00

1. I could go to work instead of staying home with three babies. I know if I really wanted, R would stay home and look after the bubs so I could work but R is not cut out to be a stay at home mom and I’m a TV writer for God’s sake. In the country that brought you “Neighbours” and “Prisoner”. It’s not like I’m doing anything important.
2. Niggling Insecurity. I know it’s facile to say men are less insecure than women but I know if I was one I would be a cocky, big hairy balls kind of guy. I’ve become such an apologist since I moved to Australia (being told to ‘tone it down’ enough times will do that to a girl) that I feel like a bit of the reverse-TransAmerica surgery might be what I need to get my guts back.
3. Men tend to overanalyse and overthink less than women. Again, huge generalisation. Verging on sexist. See what an apologist I am?
4. I suck at being a girly girl. I don’t do make up or dresses or bikinis. I hate shopping. I prefer sex to talking. I abhor going to the hairdresser. I like big chunky Doc Martens. Chick flicks bore me. I don’t think Alicia Keyes is the messiah.
5. Men can get away with not explaining themselves. (I'm deliberately not going to elaborate on this one in an attempt to not explain myself).

What brought on this wallowing in a puddle of self-doubt episode? I caught up with a work colleague today; P. He’s dating a woman who’s a well-known writer. Co-incidentally she was hired by the Film and Television Office to read and comment on the script I wrote but whose name I dare not speak because I haven’t looked at it for eons. The notes she gave me were mostly valid but presumably because I have a dirty foreign first name which she'd never seen before, she assumed I was male. Today P reminded me of that episode and was at pains to point out how experienced and brilliant and high achieving Ms Writer is. He mentioned all the film and TV parties he’s been going to with her. I thought of how much I hate those events and how I haven’t stepped foot in one for ages. Apparently Ms Writer is also Ms Congeniality. She knows everyone who’s anyone. She loves The Scene.

After we said good-bye I had a yucky feeling in my tummy (you can’t tell I’ve been hanging out with kids, can you?). The feeling’s stuck with me and no amount of chocolate or TV has quelled it. (To be fair, the chocolate I had was Nutella and the TV I watched was Parkinson interviewing Madonna. She looks oddly ridiculous in her disco gear singing a song she stole from Abba, talking about how Kabala has made her a better person. It alienated me even more when the audience gave her a standing ovation. Am I the only person who finds her phoney? Can I honestly tell myself if I was in that audience I wouldn’t have stood and cheered too? Are all people shells or is it just me?).

I wonder if those drugs they keep emailing me about (Viagra! Cialis! Cunnilingus! Cheap meds online) can take away this feeling? It’s a feeling of fear and unworthiness. I am suddenly horrified to think I may never finish that blasted script.

And an unearthly silence has suddenly fallen on my house. All three babies are sleeping. And if I was a man I’d do the clever thing and sleep too, like R is. I might even snore like a man, one hand clutching my big hairy balls, like R is. But I’m a woman so I’ll sit here and feel gutted and write this and try to think of:

Reasons I’m Glad I’m a Woman
1. Tits are rather nice.
2. Umm, tits?

Barenaked Jews in Suburbia

2006-03-14T22:44:00.000+11:00

Such is a night in our house these days:

As soon as R comes home I hand him one screaming child. I feed the other and try to spend quality time (actually, guilt time) with O, posting items into other items and pretending to delight in repeating this action. Oh joy! This plastic bit fits in this plastic thing! Then we put O to sleep while juggling twins. The twins then usually have what the baby books refer to as a “fussy period”. If my period was that long I’d be suing my gynaecologist. The fussy period goes on and on as R and I slowly start to go batty. Eating dinner now requires tremendous dexterity and usually involves heating up a ‘mystery brown’ – something that’s been sitting in our fridge so long it is a generic colour and texture. Like space food, which is apt because my brain is definitely on another planet, having tea.

At a certain point we give in to all the screaming and feed the twins again. This is usually before the recommended 3-4 hour gap. We’re weak. Our parents were baby boomers. Blame them. Then I usually take all my clothes off in the hope that this will mean I get to shower soon. In an attempt to mark his place in the shower queue R then disrobes while burping a twin on each arm.

We usually remain naked for some time before we actually progress to the bathroom. I am always half way there when O wakes up / the twins vomit on the floor / a domestic banality strikes me as suddenly important and urgent. It was at this moment last night that I spotted a basket of washing that needed folding. I put the basket on my head, South African style, and proceeded to carry it towards the bedroom. At the front door, which we’d left open due to the heat, I bumped into R trying to settle a twin. Our naked bodies squished past each other. The piercing scream that followed was my own. A face was staring at us through the fly screen. Silence and then an embarrassed cough followed by a high pitched voice “Chag Sameach”. R and I stared out. “Chag Sameach” said R, his naked googlies dangling for all to see. I couldn’t imagine why some pervert was giving us the traditional greeting for a Jewish holiday. A scampering followed. I grabbed a towel, R covered his essentials with a baby or two and we opened the door. The owner of the voice ran away, leaving behind a parcel of cookies and a note wishing us Happy Purim from Bnei Akiva !, a youth movement that I never belonged to because they didn’t condone dope smoking and sex before marriage. Also, they used too many exclamation marks in their pamphlets. Join us on Sunday nights for Shmoozing! Eating! Same Sex Dancing in Denim Skirts!
What are random Jews doing late at night delivering Purim parcels? Why do Bnei Akiva want us to eat their candied treats? And more importantly, after seeing R and I naked with baskets of washing on our heads and babies in our arms, will this poor Bnei Akiva girl ever want to have sex, before or after marriage?

Must run. I’m topless but R already has his boxers off and is heading towards the shower with a look of ruthless determination.

It's okay with fish cos they don't have any feelings.

2006-03-07T23:21:00.000+11:00

I once had a semi-boyfriend who was so out of my league he was in another stratosphere. Let’s call him Sh. I tend to not do things lightly so I threw myself into him like a car crash. He had the most sensual lips I’d ever dreamt of licking. We’d met briefly when he lived in South Africa (a drunken night after the school dance, he, myself and the slightly inappropriate but terminally hip music teacher shared a half-jack of Scotch at a nightclub called Idols, a fitting tribute to eighties hedonism). I found him compellingly sexy but he was heavily involved with the only non-Jewish girl at his Jewish school. Can’t get cooler than that.

I re-met him two years later when visiting Melbourne with a girlfriend, C. He’d moved there with his family. C had been given his number by her ex. We were house-sitting for C’s wealthy cousins. He came to the door. My first thought: ‘I wonder if I’ll sleep with this guy tonight’. The words that came out of my mouth were less sexy: 'The people who own this house are so rich they use triple ply toilet paper'. It was an inauspicious beginning, but I had just turned 21, Kurt Cobain was still alive and each moment was sizzling with possibility.

We went to The Espi, a Melbourne establishment. I was thin and my jeans fit really well. I met his girlfriend. I am blessed and cursed with incredible hearing. It’s almost bionic. Amidst the garage band noise I heard her say to him 'shine your love on me'. It was pretentious and needy enough to annoy me and I was openly pleased that it seemed to bug him too.

That night he and I stayed up talking and listening endlessly to The Lemonheads. Don’t want to get stoned, but I don’t want to not get stoned. We did get stoned. And laughed. And decided we both wanted to market a product called Fake Face. It comes in a can and you can spray it on just before you go out. It’s very Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock. Prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet. I wanted to kiss him more than drunken hillbillies want moonshine but I was involved in a creamy debacle with a man I had just discovered was married with two kids. And Sh had a girlfriend. And she was having her wisdom teeth out the following day. And the thought of her swollen faced and chipmunkesque delighted me. It also meant I had 2 whole days with him while she was incapacitated. It’s amazing how sadistic you can be when you’re in a sexual and metaphysical frenzy. In the other room my girlfriend C discussed Nietzsche with a man she met that night. He is now her husband and they’re expecting their third child. But Sh and I had a different path ahead of us.

I went back to Sydney and he sent me a tape of music he’d mixed. He drew an album cover for it, an advert for Fake Face. It was one of those tapes that ripped my guts out and made me want to cry and fuck him at the same time. I didn’t know how much to read into it but I did know that boy-men don’t make tapes unless some part of them – maybe an unconscious part, let’s call it their penis – wants to make love to you with their music.

I was rapt. I was captivated. I was really excited when we went up to Byron Bay and he was waiting there for me with a colour-in book. And his girlfriend, who was exactly the kind of girl-woman I would have fallen in love with had I been going through my bi-curious phase (that came later).

Conveniently, she had a cadetship journalist job that she had to be back in Melbourne for. I found myself unwittingly counting the days until she left. While she was there I had a dalliance with an odd, slippery-tongued boy who was in a band named after a vegetable. And I toyed with a nerdish lawyer who is probably very wealthy right now. But those were distractions. Anything to keep me from thinking about those lips and the way his skin would feel if I was allowed to touch it.

Which I did. The night his girlfriend left we lay under the stars on the damp lawn and I touched his face and lips and we both pretended it was nothing sexual and merely an exploration of friendship. I’ve never had a friend whose face I’ve examined so closely with my hands and heart and mind but pretending was safe and it bought us time.

So he invited me and C to come camping with him and his Nietzsche-loving friend. C was excited – a chance to explore her relationship with her new love. I was freaked out. I invited a buffer friend along, L. Just before we were leaving for the trip Sh cleverly picked a fight with L. L refused to come. It was going to be the four of us.

I don’t think I’ve ever had a more idyllic or lust-driven holiday. I had no idea where we were. We had no agenda other than to find forests to hike through, rivers to swim in and good weed to roll into fat joints to smoke at fireplaces. C and Nietzsche boy were clearly in love and Sh and I were… we were talking through the nights and playing intellectual games and trying desperately hard not to jump each other.

I wanted nothing more than to completely possess him. I wanted to feel him inside out. I wanted his body, his spirit, his mind. I found it increasingly hard to be near him and not touch him. He was driving me into an insane flurry of desire and then he’d phone his girlfriend and I’d feel sick.

And even then I knew the relationship was not long for this world. We couldn’t be. We were too similar. We would have destroyed each other. It was too intense and euphoric and nonsensical and beautiful to be real.

And the night it all came together we were at a quite camping spot somewhere peaceful. We met a woman whose boyfriend had gone out for a pack of cigarettes and never come back. Despite the fact that he’d left her with two kids and no cash, she was most bitter that he’d taken the good camping gear with him. Sh and I sat around the campfire with her and her kids. And I think he played guitar and I looked at him with the fire dancing on his exquisite face and I had to go back to the tent because I was going to explode with wanting him.

When he came into the tent he pounced on me and I pounced back and we began the slippery slide downwards.

After that I became utterly obsessed. I felt like he was made of pure magnet. The harder I pulled away, the closer I sprung towards him. We had a wild, joyous, intense time together. We asked strangers for condoms because we were burning up so quickly we couldn’t wait. We drank and smoked a lot and played at pretending that this wasn’t destined for disaster. I was totally consumed with him. I couldn’t eat. I’m Jewish. And I couldn’t eat. You understand how far off its axis my world must have been spinning.

It ends how you expect it to end. The night we say goodbye he finally tells me he loves me. I’d been waiting for it the whole time. It’s an admission that I’m not dreaming the whole thing up. I tell him I love him. We plan to meet in Israel six months later.

I go back to South Africa and proceed to date a series of unsuitable men. I talk to them endlessly about Sh and explain I can never love them because I’m waiting for him. They fuck me anyway. Sh and I speak regularly. He becomes increasingly distant. He tells me he’s taking a lot of drugs. He tells me he told his girlfriend about me and they broke up. She’s angrier than the colour red. She dumped all his things on his driveway in a garbage bag. On his 21st birthday I ring Sh and tell him I’ve been sleeping with someone else but it means nothing.

He rings me back two hours later and politely tells me to get fucked. And he has no intention of meeting me in Israel.

I go to Israel anyway and sleep with an amazing array of soldiers. They smell like sweat and uniforms and aniseed flavoured Arak and it’s bloody marvellous. But I pine for Sh in a sick to the stomach way. He won’t take my calls and I start feeling like he’s been brainwashed against me. Then I feel like a stalker. I later discover he’s seeing a psychologist who’s telling him to get back together with his girlfriend. And I think it took me about five years and many many sweaty men before I ever really let go of the idea that I had business I wanted to finish with him. Preferably bent over backwards. Repeatedly.

But because our connection was always more than physical, we’ve remained friends and I genuinely like and respect the person he is. I’m interested on his take on the world. This may sound a bit inbred but I sort of feel like he’s a cousin I grew up with. You know the one who always laughed at the same jokes as you?

I recently got the invitation to his wedding. And I’m genuinely happy for him. His fiancé and he seem to be a perfect fit. They have a gorgeous little girl. They understand each other. They have a calm that he and I never had. And my beloved R and I have been married for ten years and we have something more deep and real than I could ever have had with anyone (as I write this he has a twin feeding pillow strapped to his waist as he feeds both kids at once. That’s dead sexy). So I’ve been wondering why this wedding has brought up all these things for me and it’s 2.19AM and I wake up realising the obvious. It’s not the relationship with Sh that I’m mourning. It’s the me I was then. Thin and young and carefree and erotic and erratic and impulsive and completely devoid of responsibility. And powerful. I felt like I could make anything happen. I was f r e e.

And here I am caring for 3 babies and craving sugar all the time and desperate to have some sense of power or control. I’m going for a blood test on Sunday to be a potential bone marrow donor for people with leukaemia and I’ve started rehearsing a scene in which I’m having the marrow drawn out of my hip and I’m holding hands across the operating table with the car salesman father of four whose life I’ll be saving. All the doctors are telling me how noble I am and I’m being faux humble and telling them I just did it so I could get a good deal on a second hand car. And then I wonder why I suddenly want to be a marrow donor and it’s clear that I’m desperate to have some purpose, to be something other than a breeder.

Today is my official due date. My babies are three weeks old. If these fucking hormones don’t move along and leave me alone, you’ll be hearing more about my other ex-boyfriends soon. Like the one who had crooked teeth and dreads and the most amazing tongue I’ve ever had the pleasure of exploring, or the guy with the broken nose and darkest blue eyes who is now in a Canadian jail on drug charges or the Argentinean misogynist who asked me to dress more like Gabriella Sabatini… Trust me, you don’t want to get me started…

Come sweet sleep...

2006-02-27T23:09:00.000+11:00

I have a horrible secret power. When I look at people - strangers usually - they trip. Sometimes it’s just a small slip and they regain their balance. Other times, when I’m in a really dark mood, they fall completely over. I first discovered this power when travelling to school on the bus. Every time I looked out the window and stared - just so - at a pedestrian, they would trip. This was apartheid South Africa and there was usually a policeman prodding them with a baton and a rather unfriendly Alsatian, but the tripping still seemed only to happen when I looked. I don’t know the statistics on how many people are tripping at any given moment in time, but I would put money on the fact that there’s a concentrated amount around the times when I’m staring intently. On a visit to India it was worse than tripping. I would look out the window and dogs would projectile vomit, mothers would maim their children, young men would pee in the gutters.

I know for sure that this stuff never happens when I’m not looking. Otherwise I would see it. Which is good. Because while I’m busy stopping my life to breed, I am reassured that the world will simply wait for me. I don’t have to worry about the fact that I haven’t earned a cent in the last year and my ability to do so is currently impaired by the fact that I don’t get more than 2 hours consecutive sleep. I don’t need to be concerned by the giant gap in my CV or the worry that I may never be able to write a script again without being interrupted by crying children. I needn’t give a second’s thought to the tick-tick-ticking away of my life while I change nappies and feed and burp and shovel chocolate in a desperate attempt to fill the enormous hole that’s left now that my belly is empty and my life-giving purpose complete.

Someone offered me a job making an interesting doco with a good budget today. It’s not even 2 weeks since I’ve given birth. I want to scream and run away and also I want to do it so badly. I haven’t responded yet. I’m paralysed because I can’t say yes but I don’t want to say no. There is something so small and banal and shell-like about living according to a feeding schedule. But the babies are amazing and perfectly formed and needy. And this is their lives and I’ve brought them here so I can’t run off and make docos right now.

And I’m going for a walk and I look at myself in the reflection of a car window and I can’t recognise that person, that stranger. And before I can think about how saggy my tummy looks I’ve tripped.

And I’m lying on the floor laughing because I may be a hormonal, morose old hag with stretch marks, no sex life and a gaping nothingness where my career used to be... but at least I have a horrible secret power.

Don't know my arse from my elbow

2006-02-23T23:08:00.000+11:00

In a second pregnancy, you always “pop out” earlier than in your first. With twins, you tend to burst out, rather than pop. When I was around four months pregnant, I noticed that I could feel twin one’s head and spine. R and I marvelled at this. As I grew, I started to show friends and interested parties where the body bits were. They would touch the little vertebrae through my belly and marvel – isn’t Mother Nature wonderful? Isn’t life a miracle?

Soon after I gave birth I felt my belly, saddened that I would miss the familiar feeling of that little head and spine, poking into my ribs. To my astonishment, I felt it. Still there. . Fearing there may be a triplet they’d left inside of me I asked my doctor “What’s this – this hard bit here?”. “That’s your bowel” he explained, “It’s distended and full of gas so it feels really hard”.

For the best part of nine months people have been feeling my bowel and cooing at it.

Isn’t Mother Nature wonderful?

It's a Boy! And a Girl!

2006-02-23T21:43:00.000+11:00

They're fine! They're alive! They don't have any congenital abnormalities (I made the doctor check six times)! Hell, I can't tell yet if either of them have the tree-trunk legs but I have to admit I couldn't give a flying fuck either way. Did I mention they're fine?

Apologies for not getting this up sooner - we just got home from hospital on Monday and then had a small bris and naming ceremony yesterday (with a sleepless night in between) so have only just surfaced. The ceremonies were very moving and emotional and difficult (circumcision is barbaric, don't let anyone convince you otherwise). We felt totally surrounded by love, which was amazing. R made a suitably inappropriate joke about using the mohel's services for a vasectomy, we over-catered - all was well in the universe.

Wow! To those people who said having three children in thirteen months was ludicrous, I have this to say - bugger me, you're right! If the last couple of nights are anything to go by (one wakes, screams for 3 hours, finally settles, the second wakes, screams for two hours, finally settles, but not before waking O, who screams for half an hour, finally settles just as Pepper starts barking...) we're in for a long, hard road.

But they're fine. And there aren't any surgeons I have to see every week. And so what if I haven't slept in days and I called R my brother's name earlier and the chances of us ever having sex again are slim - THEY'RE FINE!

Exxx-haaaa-lllle.

Two more sleeps!

2006-02-12T20:02:00.000+11:00

I'm teetering on the edge here, looking into a deep morass of colour and light and shade and the deepest, densest Unknown. Fear and excitement are twirling together, playing catch with each other and all I can think about is the health of the twins and the sweet sweet pethidine that will hopefully follow their births.

Goodnight friends. I may be some time in the abyss but I hope to emerge with good news for you. If I don't get a chance to post for a while, I will ask my friend Ova Girl to pass on the news.

On your marks, get set...

Best Laid Plans

2006-02-08T21:57:00.000+11:00

Two hours before the Brazilian I have a fantastic idea. Emla cream! The numbing cream I use for O when she has her inoculations! Oh, the sheer brilliance of it makes my innards warm. To venture to Brazil pain free. Why isn’t every vain porno star as much of a genius as I clearly am? Two problems: 1. I need to procure the cream and apply it one hour before the ‘procedure’. 2. I can’t see my hoo-hah let alone reach it - I need a co-conspirator to help me apply said cream. Which is where my poor mother comes in. A desperate phone call and dash to the chemist later and my mother is crouched beneath my belly asking me how low I want her to apply it. I have clearly lost all self-respect. The last time my mother touched my nether regions was when she was changing my nappies, but here I stand, legs sprawled apart, as she applies the source of all my hopes to my la-la.

It starts to burn at the core of my womanliness. I want it OFF. My mother urges me to not do anything hasty. She grabs two wads of cotton wool and shoves them in my innermost sanctum. The pain stops. See, this is a brilliant plan.

I arrive at the wax buzzing with excitement. The cream’s only been on for fifteen minutes but I’m convinced it’s a winner. I don’t want the waxer to know what I’ve done because I feel like it’s cheating, plus I don’t think you’re meant to put cream on your skin before you wax. So I gently ask where the toilets are and take the emla patch off my snatch, securing it tightly in my purse. (This is my actual purse, you understand, not a euphemism for my poonda).

I waltz (ok, waddle) into the room, brimming with confidence.

Gentle friends. No matter what anyone tells you. DON’T. EVER. HAVE. A. BRAZILIAN. WAX.

This is not pain. This is a zone beyond pain, fear, hurt and torture. This is a cruel, violent place I have seldom been to and to which I hope never to return. This is a place where a woman I barely know asks me if I would like her to “do my lips”. And she’s not talking about the ones I speak with. What sort of barbarism does our society condone? Who are the people who do this regularly? Who am I? Why am I lying on a bed paying a grown woman to rip out my pubic hair as we chat about whether twins run in my family?

As for my astute plan to circumvent the pain, the good people at Emla should be sued for their promise of anaesthetising me against this horror. (To be fair, they don’t actually list ‘Brazilian waxing’ under the ‘Indications’ section). I am ashamed to tell you I made it only three quarters of the way to Brazil before the journey abruptly stopped. The waxer chucked me out just short of the border. The evil masochist in me asked her to please take me all the way, but fearing litigation, she explained that she’d taken off enough for them to do the C-section. Apparently I was sweating so much she couldn’t get the wax to stick anymore. And telling her to get the fuck away from me or I’d throw hot wax on her head also did little to encourage her to go further.

Yes, I’m a brave woman. And on Tuesday a group of men are going to slash into 7 layers of my fat and muscle with sharp knives. This, I can handle. But by God, if anyone so much as tries to get a piece of wax near my Velvet Underground ever again, I’ll be forced to return the favour. Strip by vicious strip.

Things Not to Do when About to Give Birth to Twins

2006-02-06T22:19:00.000+11:00

1. Have a full leg, bikini, eyebrow and Brazilian wax.

Yet this is exactly what I have booked for tomorrow. I have never had a Brazilian. I just missed out on Generation Porn. I came of age in the eighties when bushy was beautiful. But I figure I have to have my mattamabobbamahubbamahoo shaved for the C-section, so I'd rather pre-emptively wax it. I had to get R to trim the pubes tonight and even that was too awkward and frightening for me to handle. Not sure I'm going to make it all the way to Brazil. May land up getting off in Argentina.

2. Take Your Landlord to the Tribunal

What choice do I have? The FuckShmuck is being belligerent and has served us with a notice of claim for $1640.00 to resand the entire house floors because there were a few scratches on them. Our attempts to placate him with polite letters and offers to pay for part of the wear and tear were unsuccessful. So Tribunal it is. Which I feel like as much as I feel like ingesting raw worms dipped in gang-rapists' saliva.

3. Have 6 doctors appointments lined up for your daughter in one week

This one I couldn't have avoided. Better this week than next, when, hopefully, I'll have three children rather than one.

4. Attempt to pretend you're not ashen-faced-terrified of what's about to happen

The amount of times I've heard myself say "I'm fine" in the last two days is evidence enough of how clearly un-fine I am. Sources of fear:
a) will the twins be born at all? (After my sister-in-law birthed a stillborn baby last year, I take nothing for granted) .
b) will they be healthy? (I remember the chilling words of the doctor ten minutes after O was born - We've found something wrong - and I dread hearing those words again).
c) will they inherit my family's legs or R's? Okay, this is a fickle one, but my foremothers and I all pride ourselves on our strong, shapely legs. R's three sisters and mom have stubby, shapeless trunks. No calf shape, no ankles, just flubberous tree trunks. Slap me across the face for being shallow, but could you love a child with your mother-in-law's flubberous trunks?
d) Trunks or not, how will I cope with three babies under 13 months?

If you don't hear from me for a while I'm either in Ipanema with a man named Felipe, or I'm wearing a state-issued white coat and repeating the word 'trunks' incessantly as I bang my head against a padded cell.

He only comes out at night

2006-02-02T23:28:00.000+11:00

My beloved R has gone nuts. The combined pressure of holding down a job as general manager, moving (did I mention that our former landlord won’t give us the bond back because he claims we scratched the wooden floors?) and coming home to a colossal, exhausted wife and frustrated, teething baby has flipped his hard drive into full scale crash mode. How has this manifested? Last week I criticised the way he was folding the baby’s clothes (folding is a euphemism for what he was doing. Clumsily Bundling with Menace would be a more apt description). He responded by calling me a Cunt.

Cunt.

A word he has never called me in ten years of marriage.

I responded equally calmly. I took his glasses off his face and broke them in two. And I delighted in the activity. He’s needed new glasses for years and the thought of him having to live with some impediment for a few days pleased me. I’m living with a belly so large I can’t even see the pants I’m wearing right now. Why should the fucker get off scott free? ‘Sides, he looks good with contacts. It highlights his Big Jewish Shnoz, which is meant to be a sign of a Big Jewish Shlong.

We screamed and shouted for a while, then took the baby and went swimming in the sea. When we returned I told him I would like to officially change my name to Glasses Cunt if it pleases him. He apologised profusely and swore to never use the word again.

The Hurling-Cunt-Epithet incident was a precursor to a far more worrying display of his recent onset of insanity. The 4AM This Morning Wanker Incident has made me fear I may need to bring in the men with white coats.

I’m sleeping. A rare event for me nowadays as it requires me to be in a position where my uterus isn’t being crushed by the two large beasties who have annexed it. Plus it’s been the hottest summer in Sydney since forever and it’s unusual for me to find the balance between dripping with sweat and being able to breathe while the fan blows incessantly in my face. Nonetheless on this very morning at 4Am I was happily asleep.
R shakes me angrily.
Me: What is it?
R: (agitated) I NEED to masturbate.
Me: What?
R (growing angry to the point that I fear the C word may emerge) I NEED TO MASTURBATE!
Me: Okay. Maybe you should go to the bathroom?
R: What?
Me: It might be easier in there.
R: (stirring from sleep) What are you talking about?
Me: Wanking. Tonking off. Beating the Jerkey. Go for it.
R: (Extremely angry) Why did you wake me? What are you on about? Don’t you know I’ve barely had any sleep in the last week?
Me: But you said you NEEDED to masturbate.
R: Is this your idea of being funny?
Me: Goodnight.
R: I love you. Don’t wake me again unless you’re in labour.

What frightens me about the whole thing is:
1. His subconscious is so polite it uses the official word ‘masturbate’ rather than the more casual ‘wank’. Is he repressed?
2. My response was to relegate him to bathroom, a not very sexy part of the house. Am I am a prude? Why do I equate seminal discharge with ablution? I’ve always thought of myself as sexually open and adventurous. Have I been fooling myself?
3. We last had sex when I could see my toes and we officially have to refrain from it for 6 weeks after the birth. If the man’s subconscious is waking him up now demanding that he spank the monkey, can you imagine the chronic case of blue balls he’ll have by the time I’m ready for rompy-pompy again? He’ll leap upon me like an ornery bull on a phere-moaning cow and my recently sewn together bits will rip at the seams.
4. I never managed to get back to sleep.

I’ve encouraged him to spend some time alone tonight. In the bedroom. Hell, I may not be able to offer him a hand at the moment (the carpel tunnel syndrome associated with pregnancy doesn’t make for light flickering of the wrists) but I’ll whack on the Barry White and sprinkle some rose petals if it works for him.

Sometimes I forget I’m not the only one in this house carrying a heavy load.

So much. So much. So much.

2006-01-30T13:12:00.000+11:00

People always tell me it’s never the things you worry about that turn out to be the things you should have worried about. I’ve developed a corollary for this. If you’re worried about something, be sure to worry about it even more. Focus all your attention on worrying. That way you’re giving it the best chance of not being something you had to worry about. By way of example:

O’s renal scan last Friday. All the sage doctors I’ve encountered this year warned me that children with tethered spinal cords often have kidney and bladder problems. Also, every single time O has been subjected to a test they’ve found more than what they were looking for. So I was super worried.

The scan itself was heinous. I had to hold O down while she bucked and screamed, her eyes never leaving mine. She’s had enough of being held down on white-sheeted tables while I sing Twinkle, Twinkle in a vain effort to calm her. I’m probably creating some horrid association in her mind with the song.

When it was over, there was waiting. And a physio appointment and a quick check-up with the neurosurgeon and then The Results.

Nothing. They found nothing wrong.

I thought I was hearing incorrectly. The relief drained all the adrenalin from my body and I felt suddenly exhausted. Finally, they found nothing.

And the new house is a mess and my dad now has pig’s valves pumping blood through his body. And he had to be re-admitted to hospital to drain three litres of fluid from his lungs. And he became so depressed that he wouldn’t even let me cook him dinner. (Not sure if that’s a sign of depression or just good taste). But a few weeks ago I went over there and he criticised my mom for not sitting down while she ate. I joined in to have a go at her so he turned on me. He’s better! I thought. He’s back to his old self.

Little O continues to struggle to move. We now go to the physio twice a week but O is wise to the fact that I’m trying to make her muscles work in ways she doesn’t want to. She’s developed a loud squeal (not unlike the one the sow they killed to save my father must have made). The squeal is so ear-poppingly horrendous that it’s hard not to give in to it. But I press on, my now gargantuan belly never stopping me from getting on the ground to facilitate O’s exercises.

Two weeks until my due date. Two weeks until my life changes irrevocably. Two weeks until I become the Freakshow people stare at in the park as I waddle past with my triple stroller.

And kindness. I haven’t said anything about kindness and there is so much to say. This year has been an incredibly challenging one, but at the same time it has exposed me to the most giving, generous people I have ever encountered. People I barely know have been dropping round with food for us and clothes for the twins. Our friends have been incredible. The Jewish community has kicked in in a way I never anticipated. When I’m just about to implode from exhaustion and frustration and fear, I have a feeling of being enveloped in love and support by people who are giving so much to us through this period of flux and challenge. I hope that I can someday do the same thing for other families.

At the very least I can tell them to keep worrying about the things that really worry them, so that those will be the ones they never needed to worry about.

Time, time, time see what's become of me...

2006-01-02T15:06:00.000+11:00

Wanted to let you know that I'll be off the blogwaves until late January as we are packing up house (finally found a place to rent that will take dog, three babies, dodgy looking dad and mildly insane mom). Also am trying to spend some time on the dreaded script. Sending you big warm love things for 2006. XX

Tread Gently...

2005-12-26T20:33:00.000+11:00

My father is strong. As an indigent child growing up in a fatherless immigrant family (7 boys, one very unfortunate girl), he was riddled with disease, had no teeth and was taunted for being a ‘menuvel’ – a Yiddish word which makes ‘ugly’ seem like a compliment. When he was 12 he realised the only way to escape the ‘menuvel’ jeers (which, incidentally, also came from his own mother) was to be tougher, bigger, quicker. He took up boxing. From that day on he exercised every day of his life, doing gym, weights, running. He adhered to a menacingly strict diet. No salt, no sugar, no fun. My father, unlike my portly self, has literally never had an inch of fat on his body.

Also unlike my dad, I grew up in an incredibly secure environment. (Emotionally secure, that is. The fact that I slept with a panic button in my hand had more to do with apartheid politics than my family dynamics). I knew that if I ever got myself into some terrible situation, my tough, strong, clever father would extract me from it. This is a very spoilt position to be in. It gives one the freedom to behave like a dilettante. At fourteen, I hitch-hiked home from clubs in dangerous areas wearing short skirts. I went on holidays with friends without organising anywhere to stay (what eighteen year old boy refuses a few eager fourteen year old girls his spare bed?). I drank and smoked and swore at policemen and felt invincible. Having a granite-solid father means you never have to grow up.

Today, I walk through the horribly familiar hospital ward, searching through the hacking, spluttering patients for my dad. I thought children’s hospitals were tough. In the cardio ward of an adult hospital there are no colourful paintings, no visiting clowns, no outward signs of hope. My dad is hard to recognise. He is small and frail and has a series of gashing stitches down his chest and on his neck. He survived the six-hour operation, something we were all secretly fearing he may not. So there is relief. The doctors are happy with him – being in such general good health will definitely help his recovery. But there is no simple three-act structure here. He is not heading back to the gym any time soon to a cheering audience. Rehabilitation will be long. And boring. And tediously difficult. And right now as I kiss my dad’s leathery face he looks harrowed. And I want to ask him what I could do about the ligament pain I’m getting. And discuss his thoughts on whether we should take a house we’ve seen in a suburb we’re not sure about. And speak to him about trying to help me get an earlier appointment for O’s renal scan. But suddenly I am forced to find the answers myself. And instead I ask him if he would like some cold water and if I can massage his stiff shoulders and whether he wants me to read him The New York Review of Books. And he nods, tired.

Everyone told me that the moment I became a parent I would be forced to grow up. This year, of a baby with physiological problems and a twin pregnancy and hospitals and doctors and hospitals and doctors and tests and tests and tests has been my year of growing up. I’ve resisted it. I’ve resented it. I’ve tried hard to rail against it. But now, as I bend to kiss my father on his head, I am suddenly an adult.

My father grew up when he was 12. I’ve been allowed the luxury of waiting until I’m 33.
But is still hurts the same. Like a deep, open pit of pain that no-one can rescue me from but myself. But there’s something else as well. A freedom. A growth. A feeling that from now on in, I’m going to hold my own hand.
Tight.

Has anyone seen my toes?

2005-12-21T12:53:00.000+11:00

So I’ve moved from hurt and anguish through anger to action. I’ve seen the physio again and we’ve devised a rehab program for little O. It’s only a few days into the program and already she’s taking more weight on her pudgy little legs. Particularly if I distract her by singing inane songs and making absurd faces. Before I was a mother, I had something resembling inhibitions. Now, I have no shame. If singing Baa Baa Black sheep while imitating a ferret helps little O walk, I’m your black-sheep-singing-ferret-faced girl.

And then I paused before my dad went into hospital to take a long awaited call from my script editor. He’s just finished another screenplay and finally has time to meet with me to discuss the next phase of my script.

Script?

Am I writing a script?

Oh slam a barge pole into me and remind me I once used to be professional. Arsehole doctors I’m learning how to handle, but now I’m expected to wrangle my script as well?

Have a meeting set up for the new year which means I’m going to have to find time to actually read my work and fathom where I want to take it. Taking it to the garbage tip seems like the cowardly option.

And in pregnancy news my lower back has decided to refer pain to my quadricep. I’d really rather it referred it elsewhere. Like to the shmuck of a doctor who told me O won’t walk.

Off to visit my soon to be part-porcine father. Surgery tomorrow. Babe, Pig in the City next week.

You Can Choose Your Friends...

2005-12-19T22:30:00.000+11:00

Synchronicity can be a beautiful thing. She’s the big, fun sister of Coincidence. Usually, she’s benevolent. She helps you find a great book on a bench just as you’re bemoaning the lack of something interesting to read. She facilitates an accidental meeting with the man you’re madlusting for just after you’ve had your hair done. She ensures your sister-in-law has finished having her children when you start having yours so you inherit an entire wardrobe of lovely baby clothes.

Usually, Synchronicity smiles on me but today, the day I’m due to take O to the Spina Bifida clinic, she’s pissed off. The morning starts at 4AM with O screaming her guts out. She’s in pain, uncomfortable and tired. We spend four hours consoling her then R has to leave for work and I’m left trying to contain her pain while my back aches from the pressure of the ever-growing twins. An hour later, I bundle her into the car and we’re off to the hospital for the dreaded Spina B appointment. The first face I see as I’m entering the waiting room is the angry boy (now man) I used to look after ten years ago. Sydney isn’t that small of a city. There are at least ten hospitals with spinal wards. Why would I be confronted with the one person I know who has a neural tube defect in this entire town? He’s still in a wheelchair, the hump on his back even more pronounced than I remember it, but his face has changed. He looks peaceful. I greet him. He recognises me, is polite, charming even. I note the easy way he jokes with the doctors and nurses who minister to him. I know I should feel happy, relieved that he’s less belligerent, at peace. But something about his ease is making me terribly uncomfortable. He’s accepted his fate, I realise. He’s not fighting anymore. He knows he’s lost.

I don’t have too much time to dwell on my placid friend before Doctor Loud Bowtie grabs my hand, squeezes O’s cheek and welcomes us to the clinic. He’s irritatingly friendly as he explains O will be seen by several doctors this morning. It’s the team approach that helps “these kids” get proper treatment, he claims. A good theory, but with O and I both utterly exhausted from the morning’s shenanigans, the prospect of seeing seven doctors in a row is as appealing as having my teeth removed by a Nazi with a bleeding gum fetish.

First up is a neurologist. He’s young. And cocky. He tests O’s reflexes and pokes her with a sharp implement in various body bits, all the while making me repeat her entire medical history to him. When he’s finished, he smiles paternally. Yes, he says, she has diminished sensation in certain parts of her legs and buttocks. You do realise there’s a chance she May Never Walk.

He said it.

The thing I’ve been fearing and hiding from and praying no-one ever says.

But she moves her legs, I tell him, quickly. Like I can eat up the words his said if I just talk fast enough.
Yes, he says, but does she take weight on them?
No, I stammer, but she’s recently had spinal surgery and she’s been in hospital six times in ten months and she-
He stops me. It’s a matter of wait and see, he tells me. The urologist will see you next.

I stumble through 5 more doctors, scarce hearing them as I repeat O’s medical history with less and less coherence. All I can think of is the neurologist’s flippant words.
She May Never Walk.

I manage to gather that the urologists will order a scan of her bladder and kidneys. I’m not sure I want to know why. The orthopaedic surgeon examines her and says he doesn’t think she’ll need orthopaedic surgery but will reassess her regularly. The neurosurgeon examines the scar on her back and mutters something about being lucky the cord was tethered low rather than high. And the rest, I’m afraid, is a blur. Until we get to the final medical professional – the physiotherapist. She takes one look at O and comments on how lovely her leg movements are. That’s all is takes, someone being nice. I start to cry the tears of a mentally unstable woman (they’re huge fuckers, these particular tears, and they come with an unnaturally guttural heaving noise which resembles a cow in labour). The physio quickly draws the curtains around us and tries to console me. I explain what the neurologist said. She shoots a dagger glare his way and reminds me that doctors are often trained to give you the worst-case scenario. Yes, O will need help learning to walk, but it can’t be said that it won’t happen. She tells me she won’t do an assessment on O now, I should come to the clinic in the New Year and we can do it then. When I feel better. It doesn’t even bother me that she’s using the tone I’m sure she reserves for schizophrenics and small animals.

I stagger away. Dr Loud Bowtie puts his arm around me and tells me he hopes my first visit to the clinic wasn’t too traumatic. He’ll get “the girls” to make me another appointment for January. You’ll get used to it, he assures me. It’s all a lot to take in the first time. The more he talks, the more panicked I become. I don’t want to get used to it, I don’t want to ever have to come back, why don’t these people and their tests and their invasive implements and predictions about my daughter just leave us alone? I feel myself slip so far off the precipe of rationality I almost reach New Zealand.

But it’s the final words that Dr Bowtie hurls at me that push me into a new dimension of madness.

Welcome to The Family, he says.

And no matter how far away I push O’s stroller, I can’t help but fear we’re going to be forever related to these people in ways I haven’t even begun to imagine.

How Jewish is he?

2005-12-13T21:09:00.000+11:00

And because there is always something to laugh at, I give you this:

We recently found out that the valves my dad will be implanted with to replace his leaky ones were formerly owned by a pig. Or perhaps two pigs. The cardio-surgeon wasn’t clear on the specifics. (He also balked at my question of whether the pigs were male or female. For some reason the idea that my dad will soon be part sow makes me smile). You must understand that my father is the Jewishest man you could ever meet. His DNA is in the shape of a magen dovid. If it wasn’t against the religion to tattoo yourself, he would definitely have JEWBOY inked across his face. He can use the word Jew ten times per sentence and never tire of it. The man’s a Yiddeshe Pappa of the Yiddeshest kind. And he’s about to become semi-porcine.

Being a medical man, he wasn’t as shocked as I was to discover the close DNA link between our chubby pink friends and ourselves. But he’s still deeply disturbed by the idea that an animal his people shuns is soon to save his life. I jokingly ask him if he’s told my Rabbi brother that he’s going to have a Chazah heart. He reminds me that my brother tore out all the pages of his daughter's copy of Old McDonald’s Farm that had pigs on them. Best I don’t mention it, then.

So last week, I’m at the hospital and I get an attack of the voracious hungers that I’ve only ever experienced when pregnant. It’s a hunger that makes you understand how those footballers stranded in the Andes ate their goalkeeper’s leg (he may not have actually been the goalkeeper, but goalie is the crappest position on the team so I figure if anyone was going to be dinner it would be him). I head off to the dreadful hospital cafeteria and discover I’ve missed lunch hour. The only thing left over is a solitary veal schnitzel. I’m not a veal eater but I reason that it won’t push my blood sugar too high and my twins can do with the protein.

The first bite and I’m struck by how fatty and salty the meat is. I persevere. The second bite. There’s something not right with this veal. I press on to the third bite then examine the pinky insides. A sick feeling floods my previously pork-free body and I rush to the counter, stammering - is there p-pork in this?
That’s veal cordon bleu, love, replies the weather-beaten lunch lady
Veal, ham and cheese.

And suddenly it makes perfect sense. We’re in the hospital – they use the heart for valve replacement surgery and send the belly down to the canteen for veal cordon bleu. Greed has stolen my pig-ginity from me. I have just eaten from the same God loving pig who sacrificed her sorry pink life to save my dad’s. I’m an evil daughter. I’m a bad Jew.

Worst of all, I have a hankering for one more wafer-thin slice of Yummy. Fatty. Greasy. Pig.

Do you really want to know?

2005-12-12T17:34:00.000+11:00

Cynicism is the last refuge of the idealist.

Not sure who said that first but I remember realising when I was a teenager that to be cynical you need to have expectations that are disappointed. To have expectations you need to be idealistic, to believe people won’t let you down, that things will ultimately be ok, that Michael Jackson isn’t actually a paedophile. He’s just a very friendly daddy.

So maybe I was a sucker to expect this would be the last of O’s operations. That it would end here. Closing the colostomy is meant to be the simple part. That dreadful, nasty poo bag would finally be gone. That had to be good, right? At first it looked like it was.

A week in hospital. A long week. A hot week. The hottest recorded this year in fact. Walking up and down with my heaving belly from the dingy motel to O’s hospital room, telling myself that at least when this is over she’ll never have to set foot in a hospital again.

But doctors will be doctors.

Just when you think they’ve pulled everything they have from the Nasty Surprise bag, they whack out a monster with five heads and one squinting eye.

As the surgeon is about to discharge O he tells us he wants to talk to us about the pathology report. The rest of what he says is something that R and I may debate till the day we jump off the world together, but it definitely involved the words ‘abnormal intestinal cells’ and ‘neuronal intestinal dysplasia’ (that one I wrote down) and finally ‘no actual cure’. Leaving us gobsmacked, he shakes hands with R and wishes us a Merry Christmas. I hear myself mumble a non-denominational seasonal greeting and then the words ‘neuronal intestinal dysplasia’ shit themselves onto my brain.

One and a half hours to drive home and try recreate the conversation. R says he thinks the doctor said O may have it but isn’t sure. I’m pretty convinced he said she does have it. Neither of us are clear on what ‘it’ actually is. What’s clear is that O is in pain.

As we get home we leap onto the Internet. Various sites tell us Neuronal Intestinal Dysplasia is an incurable bowel disorder which can have horrible social and emotional effects and has been known to cause depression and suicide in sufferers.

This is where I feel My Self, my Strong, Coping Self, tumble into the abyss.

I read about NID KIDS (a cute name that won’t make the disease any more palatable) who have to be escorted to the toilet by their teachers. Imagine the humiliation? The social stigma? I read reports from despairing parents who are desperate to find a cure. And then I stop reading because the room is swaying from side to side and I’m heavy with grief and loss and shock.

I insist that we phone the doctor back, even though it’s a weekend. We call but get hold of the registrar. He’s non-committal. The kind of man who tells his mother he sort of got his semi-girlfriend a bit pregnant. He tells us there are support groups we can join and we should call the doctor directly on Monday. Two days to wait.

I feel myself crumble. All the strength and calm and stability I’ve been projecting for the entire year slips into a shadowy heap. I cry and cry and cry. The whole weekend. Friends phone and text to ask if we’re back from hospital, if O is on the mend. Some comment that it’s great that this was the last of it and now everything is ‘fixed’. I don’t call anyone back.

O continues to be in pain, crying out, waking every ten minutes. She’s not used to having to use her bowel and she strains and pushes and screams. She's constipated. Even removing part of her bowel hasn't helped that.

My back and legs go into spasm and keep me up the whole night. The twins inside me kick and punch and knock about. I suspect they’re angry with me for ignoring them. I check my blood sugar. Dangerously high. I give myself a hit of insulin, wishing I could follow with a chaser of smack. Just as I drift to sleep, two cats start fucking outside our window. Deathly screeches. I remember that a cat penis has claw-like glands in it that dig into a female cat’s vagina so she can’t escape his clutches. I think about a recently invented anti-rape device in South Africa that women insert into their vaginas. It clamps into any penis that enters. Then the words ‘no cure’ and ‘suicide and depression’ leap into my consciousness.

And it’s Monday morning. And I don’t even remember what happens before I speak to the doctor but he’s angry. We shouldn’t have called the registrar. No need to panic. Yes, there are abnormal cells associated with NID but that’s not a conclusive diagnosis. In fact, he thinks the cells are more a function of the bowel not being used for so many months. He very much doubts O has NID.

WHY THE FUCK DIDN’T HE SAY THAT 2 DAYS AGO?

She’ll still need ongoing treatment and management with diet and medicine, but he doesn’t see any more surgery necessary.

WHY THE FUCK DIDN’T HE SAY THAT 2 DAYS AGO?

I’m so relieved and confused that I start crying but have to fake composure. Nothing can lose credibility with a doctor like open crying. We say goodbye and I think I wish him happy holidays again. I may even mention Kwaanza and Chanukah. I have to keep my credibility in tact, you understand.

Then I realise I’m late for O’s appointment with the neurosurgeon.

This appointment I’m not worried about. He’s just going to check the spinal wound to see it’s healed. Then he’ll tell us to come back in a year for an MRI. Just routine.

But doctors will be doctors.

After he’s checked the wound, he casually mentions that he’s concerned about O’s bladder. We’ve never had it scanned and children with bowel and spine problems usually have associated bladder problems.

What? No-one’s mentioned that before.

He asks me if she has bladder control. Now call me ignorant, but do you know any ten month old with bladder control? She wees in a nappy for Christ’s sake!

I ask him how I’d be able to ascertain her bladder control. He tells me there’s no real way for a layperson to tell. Which is why he’d like her to attend regular sessions at the Spina Bifida clinic.

The Spina Bifida Clinic.

I once looked after a teenager with Spina Bifida. He was incontinent and angry. He had a large hump on his back that had to be constantly drained. He would have murdered someone with glee – possibly my good self - if he could have moved out of his wheelchair to reach the knife.

The doctor offhandedly tells me O’s condition falls broadly into the category ‘spina bifida’. He’s never mentioned this before and I immediately tell him I took folate months before she was conceived and continued throughout the pregnancy. He nods. This is one neural tube condition that doesn’t respond to folate, he says, handing me a referral for the clinic and ushering me out of his office. Don’t worry, he attempts, it’s not the serious spina bifida. Before I leave I hear a thin voice lurch out my throat “She will walk, won’t she?”. He pats me paternalistically. Most of them do, he says.

Most of Them.

Things I want to change in the world this week:

1. The fact that my father has to have double valve replacement heart surgery next week.

2. Medical training. Teach doctors the power of the words they casually fling at people. Test their empathy levels before unleashing them on the public.

3. Set a limit to how many doctors one patient can see in any given month. Limit this to one. The amount of doctors I have to see each month is currently:

For O:
Gastroenterologist
Bowel surgeon
Neurologist
Neurosurgeon
Stoma Nurse (thankfully I have my last post-op meeting with her soon)
Physiotherapist
Spina Bifida Clinic urologist
GP for immunisation

For me
GP for referrals
Obstetrician
Endocrinologist
Diabetes Educator
Nutritionist
Chiropractor

I suspect ‘Psychiatrist’ and ‘Lobotomy surgeon’ will be future additions to my list.

You're only a day away...

2005-12-05T22:28:00.000+11:00

Packing for hospital for O’s surgery tomorrow. I’ve packed Panties, Anticipation, Fear and Hope. Hopefully I’ll only need the panties.

My parents spent yesterday waiting at the airport to be finally given the last 2 seats on the plane. My mom asked if they could supply my dad with a wheelchair. The attendant asked which team he was with – Australia or New Zealand. He didn’t think football alliances ran so deep. Then he noticed 30 paraplegic men wheeling themselves towards the departure gate in airport wheelchairs. What are the chances of my dad being denied a wheelchair because he happens to be on the same plane as the veteran’s paraplegic basketball team? Apparently he asked one of the larger players if he could sit on his lap. Can’t keep a good man down.

He managed to walk slowly onto the plane and is now home in bed, awaiting his appointment with the cardiologist.

And we are off to the hospital on the other side of the universe, so I’ll be off the blogosphere for a week. But your warm fuzzies will follow me all the way into the ward, surrounding little O with their lovely fuzzines, helping her heal.

Anyone who had a heart...

2005-12-02T15:31:00.000+11:00

It’s mildly amusing that I now have to add cardiologists to my list of doctors to see this week. By amusing, I mean to say horrendously frightening. I often get the two mixed up. My dad is still stuck in South Africa unable to get a flight back for the surgery. He is on stabilising drugs so they’re keeping his heartrate down, but they want him to be operated on as soon as he gets back here. Ultimately it’s all about money. If he had it, he could pay for a flight. Or for surgery in South Africa. Given that he flew on a frequent flyers ticket, the airline whose name shall not be mentioned but who is the only airline to start with a Q, will not issue him a ticket. He’s on a couple of standby lists so they expect him to turn up at the airport daily, hooked up to oxygen, to wait for ticket cancellations. Compassion and making money seem to be natural adversaries.

So I’m doing the rounds of the cardiologists, trying to set up appointments for him without knowing when he’s getting back.

Me: He’s on standby so it could be any day now.
Cardiologist’s secretary: We can’t make an appointment until you know when he’s back.
Me: It’s an emergency. Can we book something provisionally?
Cardiologist’s secretary: We can’t make an appointment until you know when he’s back.
Me: He’s back on Wednesday
Cardiologist’s secretary: But you just said…
Me: I was confused. (Awkward giggle)
Pause
Me: Hello? Hello?
Engaged signal.

And after speaking to 4 gastroenterologists and surgeons we have decided to agree to the bowel resection for O on Tuesday. One of the doctors thought it was the worst thing we could do, an insanely cowboyish action on behalf of the surgeon. The other three said we'd be negligent not to do the operation. I’ve laboured over the decision and realise that I need to be guided by the majority of the doctors, something I find frightening. By frightening I mean FUCK WHAT IF WE MAKE THE WRONG DECISION AND CAUSE OUR LOVELY CHILD TO BE INCONTINENT FOR LIFE??? I often get the two mixed up.

On the plus side, I thought I was having contractions but it turned out to be a bad case of Indian food. See, things could be worse...

It Freaking Pours

2005-11-29T19:35:00.000+11:00

I always get an omen before something major happens. This time it’s an oddly weird one. I wake up on my birthday. It’s bashing down with rain. O is screaming. R’s voice booms from somewhere outside “Fuck!”. I peer out of the window of the holiday apartment (a free weekend we got from one of those dreadful timeshare presentations) and notice R, three stories down, looking particularly dishevelled, fossicking about in the bush. R has the ability to grow hair faster than anyone I know and in places on his body that mean he may technically be classified as an animal. I watch his hairy back and face dipping in and out of the shrubbery for a while before making contact. He looks pleasingly Neanderthal. Perhaps this is some bizarre Austro-Hungarian birthday ritual he picked up from his relatives. He must be burying a lush treasure for me to find. After ten minutes of watching him hopelessly forage, I call out to him. He is startled and immediately looks guilty. “Sweetheart”, I start, empathically, “what exactly are you doing?”. “You’re not going to like it” he responds, always a terrible thing to say to someone. Particularly as it’s the first thing he’s said to me on the morn of my 33rd birthday. He then hesitates for a long moment. “Remember how you put your swimming costume on the balcony to dry?”...

Let me interject momentarily. I never put my costume out to dry. The aforementioned costume is somewhat of a luxury item. It’s tailor-made to women having twins and it allows a lot of room in the belly area, but at the same time is supportive and comfortable. I bought it at a maternity shop as a birthday present to myself. It was overpriced and it’s only going to be used for a very short time but I love swimming almost as much as I love self-administering pethidine and my non-maternity one was starting to strain horribly.

“You put it out on the balcony” I remind him “I thought it was a silly idea”. “Whatever” R responds, “the point is, it blew away and now it’s gone”. I consider shouting but am afraid of what I'll say. Instead I pop my head back inside and tend to the screaming O.
This is going to be a fabulous birthday.

The details of the rest of the day are unimportant. They involve the worst torrential rain the seaside town of Port Macquarie has ever seen and an incident with a restaurant manager who insisted on charging me for bringing my own diabetic-friendly bread to his smug yuppie eatery. I hate using the word ‘discrimination’ about myself because it always drips with irony given I grew up white in Apartheid South Africa, but I heard myself telling said restaurateur that he was discriminating against me because of a medical problem. Sometimes I wish I’d never studied law. It brings out a particularly prattish side of my personality. We end up paying the surcharge and suspiciously inspecting our food for any signs of spit.

By 6PM, I am tired of waiting for R to give me a present so I ask for it. He looks guilty again and then admits he ordered it online and it hasn’t arrived yet. Cake? A candle? I venture. R explains cake will just push my blood sugar levels too high and ultimately upset me. He's right, but it feels miserable not to have cake on my birthday. R makes up for it by giving me the most fabulous hand-made card and indulging me in some of the best birthday sex I’ve had since I turned 22 at an army base in Israel (dark, horny men deprived of female company can be intensely satisfying). My day is almost salvaged when the phone rings. My brother in South Africa. He’s talking quickly in euphemisms and I know something is horribly wrong. Finally - it’s dad. He’s gone into heart failure.

Everything is blank for a second. My father is a strong, stoic man who has refused to see a doctor about a leaking valve he’s had since childhood. He’s also a fitness freak who does weights and runs every day. He seemed to be getting away with it. My brother tells me that ever since Dad arrived in South Africa for the holidays he’s been under the weather. Finally my mom forced him to see a doctor. He will require valve replacement surgery as soon as possible. As my parents are no longer insured in South Africa, he’ll have to come back to Australia for the operation as soon as he’s fit to fly. Doctors are saying next Monday. Which means little O will go in for her op the same day as my dad, but at hospitals one and a half hours away from each other.

I desperately hold back my tears as my dad’s weak voice leaks through the phone. He’s trying to wish me happy birthday and convince me everything is ok but he starts crying. My father is a man who never cries. He has to hand the phone to my mother because he is openly weeping. I hold in my own sobs until I get off the phone.
He’s going to be okay, I keep telling myself. He always is.
Sometimes it’s better to Anthony Robbins yourself into believing.

And O’s surgeon has suggested she have a more major op this Tuesday. It was meant to just be a reversal of the colostomy so that she’ll no longer have to wear a bag (hoorah!) but now he’s suggesting a bowel resection, which involves cutting part of the bowel out. It’s a controversial operation but when it succeeds the results are fantastic. We’re unsure what to do. I’m madly trying to get my hands on any publications that deal with the surgery.

My life never used to be an episode of General Hospital but I fear I’ve become the tragi-comic character the show’s writers secretly despise. I can see them in the writers’ room “Let’s chuck in an ailing father for Yidchick this week. We’re getting bored with all this sick baby stuff”. Thing is, if someone pitched me a character having twins who gets gestational diabetes and also has a baby who constantly has to have surgery, a father in heart failure and a chronically underpaid husband who’s frequently mistaken for an Al Quaeda operative, I’d tell them they were stretching believability. No one will buy it, I’d say. You can’t burden one character with all that melodrama. That would never happen in real life…

Four days til I get old

2005-11-23T22:33:00.000+11:00

This is sad. I’ve started doing fantasy shopping. I go to exclusive online maternity stores, choose a whole lot of gorgeous clothes, put them in my basket and never check out. It’s tantric consumerist porn - I get rough and ready, tease my credit card out of my purse then… withhold. I suspect I am punishing myself for being about to turn thirty-three. Bloody hell, how did I get here so fast? I’ve reached the age that Jesus was when he carked it and I'm yet to perform a miracle. Have been keeping an eye out for Romans bearing crucifixes heading intently in my direction. Not to compare myself with Christ. He had much foofier hair and far sexier sandals.

And before I alienate all Christians out there, a moment of context. I’m rambling because I’m nervous. We meet with the bowel surgeon tomorrow to find out when O’s bowel surgery is. She’s recovering well from the spinal surgery but I’m not sure if she’s ready to go back into the cutting room again. Surgery is scheduled for ten days time, so we’ll see what he says.

And just when I need them, my parents have jetted off overseas for a month. They selfishly persist in being independent. They have careers, friends, interests outside of me. What’s the point? Why have kids if you’re going to treat them like adults instead of living in their pockets, pandering to their every whim?

It drives a girl to online shopping. Maybe this time I’ll actually consummate.

So you're having Twins...

2005-11-17T23:03:00.000+11:00

One of the things I love about living in New York, as I did a few years back, is that no matter how esoteric or freakish you are, you’re bound to find a group of people who share your whimsy. If you’re a Zoroastrian armpit fetishist (a group I identified with briefly while dating a wrestler), you’ll find ten others just as hyped about underarms as you. It was in New York that I started to enjoy joining groups. I joined a group of Jews Opposing Racism, (and was nearly tempted into joining a group of Racists Opposing Jews when they showed me the free SS boots you get in the start-up pack. Man, those Nazis knew how to wear shoes). I joined the NYU Screenwriters’ Association and went to a couple of meetings of the Africans in America society. Although I was the only person with an African passport there, I was ostracised for being white. Nonethelss, every group I joined, I found people I could really relate to, people who shared similar experiences or feelings to myself. I felt validated in the knowledge that I was not the only freakish Nork on the planet who felt the way I did. So it was with great excitement that I recently went to my first Multiple Birth Association meeting.

A group of women as large as myself waddled through the door of the exquisite, spacious house with their world-weary partners in hand. We all plopped down on couches and chatted politely. Two, three or four? How far are you? Are they identical? Are there twins in your family? (This last question is very thinly veiled code for ‘Was this an assisted pregnancy?’ and it carries a tacit judgement with it that annoys me. Even though my twins were not conceived through IVF I almost feel like telling them they were just to get the smug looks off their faces).

The convenor, a gorgeous woman in immaculately stylish clothes, introduced herself. Her name is A and she has identical twins boys who are eighteen months. She shows a picture of the delightfully cherubic lads, and we all smile and breath sighs of relief as we notice that neither of them seems to be 'special' in the mentally or physically disabled way that twins sometimes are. She insists that we help ourselves to the delicious spread of cheese and dips while she shows us a video. I'm just starting to think that this is all going to be a breeze when the la-dee-dah middle class charade ends. The ‘video’ (henceforth referred to as The Horrorshow) opens with a couple screaming at each other while two newborns cry incessantly in their arms. It goes on to follow the pregnancies and births of four women carrying multiples. By the end of the pregnancies the women are so gargantuan they look like ten of Pamela Anderson's breasts have been pumped into their bellies. Then they show the births. Seeing one alienoid head emerge from a vagina is disturbing enough. Watching two should be grounds for a compensation claim for Post Traumatic Stress. A few of the babies are horribly premature and have to be kept in intensive care for months, with thousand of tubes hooked up to their birdlike translucent bodies. If you’ve ever seen newborn mice, picture them pinker and smaller and you have an idea of what these premmie twins looked like.

The couples who do get to take their babies home seem worse off. They’re constantly feeding, burping, changing, settling the babies. At a certain stage the man invariably returns to full time work and the woman is left at home staring at a wall while the babies scream. Each mother describes the horror and endless exhaustion of having multiples. None of them end their quotes with anything that approximates a hopeful or positive angle. I keep waiting to hear that ‘it’s all worth it’ or ‘I wouldn’t have it any other way’ but the Horrorshow starts to become so bleak I feel like I’m watching a Ken Loach film. Ken Loach if he spent two days in a prison cell with Mike Leigh while taking downers. Finally it ends. Our lovely hostess smiles sweetly and asks if anyone has questions.

Silence.

Then the fuckhead next to me puts her hand up. I expect her to ask if there's a way of terminating the twins at 32 weeks, but instead she wants to know if The Bugaboo Frog is the best stroller to get for twins or if the Mountain Buggy is better.

Does she not comprehend what we just witnessed? Has she no internal organs?

R and I stay for a half an hour but are forced to leave when another Knobhead wants to know if a foam rubber breast-feeding pillow is better than the rubber blow up ones.

Denial and Consumerism. The only way we multiple-carrying-humanoids cope with the crushing reality that we’re about to embark on a feckin tough journey.

Am thinking of popping the twins out then rushing back to New York to join the Mothers Who Deserted their Families Opposing Reality Association.

Anyone want to join me?

Lard, cheap lard for sale...

2005-11-16T20:59:00.000+11:00

And in the midst of being swept away in relief and joy, I realise there is the small matter of me being hugely overpregnant. I say overpregnant because, although I am only 24 weeks, the doctor is measuring me at 33 weeks. It’s quite normal for twins, he assures me. My body disagrees. There’s nothing normal about the fact that, for once, my arse is not my biggest appendage. Also I have a spot of gestational diabetes. Probably more a large splatter than a spot. This is common amongst twin pregnancies. And fat Eastern European Jews. And members of my family. So it’s not like I wasn’t expecting it. But it means I have to prick myself four times a day to check my blood. And I have to avoid most carbohydrates, tropical fruit and men with moustaches. Will you think me sick if I admit I actually enjoy checking my blood? There’s something quite satisfying about seeing the effects that food has on my body. R and I now have a tipping competition where we each guess what my blood will be. The closest gets to eat a diabetic lolly. God we know how to party.

The Type A competitive elements of my personality also enjoy the fact that I’m constantly putting myself to the test. At this stage of the pregnancy I’m mostly passing. Any blood glucose reading between 4 and 7 is acceptable. I feel good about fives, but slightly nervous about sixes. When O was in hospital I had one or two nines. I was astounded at the impact stress has on blood glucose levels. I did a few little tests where I’d eat nothing, ask R to give me a big fright, then test my blood. Once, it got to ten with two frights and no food. Fuck, my body’s dumb. If only I could trick it into making me thin, we might have a working relationship.

Phwyoooo! Feels great to return to my old neuroses and plague myself with something other than tethered cords and the impact of morphine on an infant.

Elevated

2005-11-15T16:14:00.000+11:00

We're home! Am so exhausted I can barely lift my fingers to my keyboard, but little O is doing amazingly well. She's sitting up and playing and laughing and being her funny self. The relief has washed me away, I feel like I'm a black and white (or grey, more accurately) cardboard person. I truly believe that everyone's good wishes and prayers helped O and R and I to get through this. Now if all you wonderful people could come over and play with her for an hour so I could sleep, I'd be truly grateful.

More, much more, later.

Letter to my Daughter

2005-11-08T22:01:00.000+11:00

My darling O,

I hope you will read this on a day when you have been running and jumping and stretching and rolling around. A day when you will be amazed to hear that you once had a spinal problem. And I hope you will feel the joy and amazement that I am feeling now. I am so relieved the operation is over. Now you can start to heal and grow, unhindered.

You are so brave, my precious girl. When the doctors poke and jab and examine you like a specimen in their Petri dish, your patience astounds me. Each day you bring us so much happiness, but today you have truly humbled me. Your spirit and purity and innocence give me the strength I need to endure the endless hospital hallways, the incessant beeping machines, the garish fluorescent lights. The torment of seeing you in pain. You came out of surgery and still managed to smile for me as I sat by your side. Each moment, I watch you become yourself. A self so beautiful, so lovely, so pure that it sometimes startles me.

Velvet child, you have taught me to feel with a depth I had no idea I could experience.
Love.
Always.
Mom.

It's On

2005-11-07T20:55:00.000+11:00

Long day at the hospital. Thankfully, they've deemed O fit to operate on. Surgery scheduled for tomorrow. Warned me again about potential paralysis and leaking of spinal fluid. Also told me more details about the surgery that are a bit unsettling. Too tired to elaborate but am feeling so unsure. R couldn't be there as he had to work. Ironically, while O was being investigated by the neurosurgeon, R had to host a meeting of international neurologists. You'd think for all his dedication he'd be on a decent salary but he's earning a third less than I earn as a script editor. But that is a subject for an entirely different conversation.

Have been inundated with lovely messages that make everything a lot more bearable.

G'night.

Attack of the Soppy Hormones

2005-11-02T21:51:00.000+11:00

I won’t tell you about the last two days spent waiting in doctors’ offices because I can’t bear to drag you through the tedium. Okay, maybe one sentence. Baby-O-still-has-a-temperature-new-round-of-antibiotics-goes-against-my-every-instinct-will-she-be-better-for-surgery-no-one-will-say.

Something else now. While this whole medical shenanigan hullabaloo has been going on, I’ve tried to have one activity a week with my little primate-esque bub that doesn’t involve doctors or the word ‘colostomy’. I take her to music classes with other bubs her age. A has-been folk singer who has been on the turps for too long strums cheesy guitar songs while the kids clap their hands. Then they’re given drums and maracas to play with and the mothers are encouraged to join in. It’s all very Stepford Wives, but at least no one mentions ano-rectal or spinal anomalies.

Here’s the thing:
All the other bubs are crawling and standing up and my little O can’t even sit yet. I know this shouldn’t hurt, but, because of all she’s gone through, it does. It forces me to admit that her frequent hospitalisation has delayed her development, that she’s missing out on the ordinary, fun, exploratory things her first year of life should entail. I feel like it’s my fault. I see all my Yiddishe Mama ancestors shaking their heads at me – for what you punish the child by always sending her to doctors? You want she should be normal? Leave her alone for five seconds!

I have six close friends who are currently having problems conceiving children (!). It is so ironic to me that I - the girl who doctors assured would never have children - am not in the same boat. I feel like I stole one of their tickets and soon someone will figure out the mix-up. I was dreading telling them I am pregnant, with twins no less. It didn’t seem fair. Each one of them admitted that they cried soon after I told them. One of them pushed me away physically. I understand this so well when I see baby O struggling to sit while her contempories are crawling and standing. Especially when the other mothers look at O with pity dripping from their faces.

There’s an Afrikaans word for pain. Eina! It can be used as an exclamation (like Ouch!) or to describe a wound. I feel like my heart is Eina sore. It’s leaking sadness (sadness, not pity) for little O. And for Ova Girl, and LB and NG and NS and DJ and AI, whose babies are all somewhere in the Universe, just a smidgeon out of our reach... waiting to meet their wonderful mums.

Felix, Come Home and Have your Lobotomy

2005-10-31T21:21:00.000+11:00

The first thing you learn in screenwriting 101 is that each scene should contain conflict. It can be external (eg: with another person, a force of nature, George Bush) or internal - with your inner demons (who look suprisingly like George Bush). A traditional story should follow a hero trying to attain a goal while hurdles are placed in his way. As a fledgling writerlet I remember thinking it would be difficult to find enough conflict and hurdles to fill an entire screenplay. That was before I had to deal with doctors on a daily basis.

Baby O was admitted to hospital today to prep for her spinal surgery tomorrow. After a lot of prodding and poking, the resident (an unqualified medical student who recently lost his milk teeth) pronounced her unfit to operate on. Her temperature was high, so he wasn't taking any chances. He sent us home and promised to call within the hour with an alternative surgery date. That was six hours ago.

You may see a news story about a crazed pregnant mother who goes on a crime rampage against doctors. If a policeman calls asking if you had prior knowledge of the crime, you can tell him that you know the woman well.

Her name is Felix Yeomans and she deserves to fry.

A Note from Felix Yeomans

2005-10-30T21:42:00.000+11:00

So Tomorrow little O is admitted to hospital. I’ve been quiet on the blogosphere the past week as Bub has kept us up every night screaming. I’d like to put it down to the fact that she’s psychically gifted and knows she’s about to have her back sawed into, but the doctors tell me it was the result of a bad ear infection that landed up bursting her eardrum. Now call me pushy, but I was under the misapprehension that the Universe would give O a break on the usual childhood nasties while she’s having her innards constantly surgically reworked. No such luck. It’s been torturous. She’s been in hideous pain and I chose this as my moment to have a minor personal meltdown. I came face to face with the frightening fear that I may not be able to return to work for a very long time. I worked out the cost of having three babies in full time childcare. Then I worked out how much I could earn full time as a script editor or in-house writer on a TV show. After tax, I would take home a total of two hundred dollars a week.

Two Hundred Dollars. That’s about enough to buy a half decent meal in Sydney.

My friends used to envy my TV salary. Yes, I worked for an evil empire of pernicious little megalomaniacs pretending to be Storytellers, but fuck me, it paid well. That was before I turned into a breeding factory and had to give nine tenths of it away to daycare centres…

An aside.
I am not a good looking person. My husband is attractive. Dark, swarthy, perhaps a little on the crazed terrorist side, but attractive. Yet it’s my bloody Lithuanian Jewish Peasant genes that have inflicted themselves on innocent baby O. And I fear I’m growing two more pale skinned little proletariat porkers. God, if you’re listening (I bet you’re a wicked blogger), please can R’s genes get a look-in? Actually, it’s specific genes I’d like to perpetuate. Can we have his lovely olive skin, but avoid that flabby stuff under his chin? Thanks.

And if you’re wondering what the heading of this post refers to... Just as I have an identity and career crisis of chronic proportions (I even yelled at my father ‘why didn’t you tell me not to bother getting three degrees if all I was going to become was a fat housewife!’), my kitsch little personalised notepad rebels against me. Remember I have a weird name? Remember that lovely R ordered me three personalised notepads so that, for the first time in my life I had something cute with my name on it? Well, on page three of my Note from Yidchick pad, I came across a frightening site.
A Note from Felix Yeomans.
I flipped through the pad and found that, interspersed with my name was this... This awkward, mass-murderer conjuring name that was not mine at all. Felix Yeomans sounds like the boy in your class who picked his nose then ate the snot. Felix Yeomans is the kid who once crapped his pants during choir rehearsal.
I AM NOT FELIX YEOMANS!
I am a fat housewife with three useless degrees and a daughter about to have her most major operation yet. And I’m crapping myself senseless.

Can you tell?

Warning: adult themes

2005-10-22T21:30:00.000+10:00

And in the midst of all the madness, I manage to remind myself what an odd palooka I am.

I make an appointment to have my legs and bikini-line waxed. This is me making a concerted effort at moments of normalcy between the hours of insanity that my life has become since giving birth. Usually I have the luxury of showering before my appointment, but today I am too busy rushing to doctors to manage it. So I do what wise streetwalkers have been doing for generations. I spurt a bit of perfume on my knickers so that my hoo-ha doesn’t hum when the waxer is doing her thing down there.

Wipe that look off your face. A girl likes to be fresh, you know.

Unfortunately, I can’t find my perfume so I use R’s deodorant. It’s some sort of Power Uber Sports stuff and it leaves a dreadful white stain. No matter, I think, I’m sure it will be absorbed in the ten minutes it takes me to drive there.

As I drive I think of the spinal surgery O has coming up. I worry that it won’t be simple or painless. I fear the recovery will be long and difficult. I question whether they’ll find yet another problem lurking like they did the last time they operated. This has become my default thought, constantly sitting at the back of my head, waiting for a moment to rear up and spit itself at me. Then I feel a burning sensation. In my punda. At first I think it's my own fear, eating me from the inside. Then I realise the fecking Uber deodorant has leaked through my undies and is giving me a feeling I last felt after a particularly dirty weekend with a pervy microbiologist.

I scratch. It makes it worse. I race around the corner and park outside the beautician’s house. I pull my jeans down, use an old tissue to wipe the deodorant from my vujak, then spit on my fingers and start to wipe the stain off my panties. I’m wiping up and down, enthusiastically making some progress when I notice a shocked face staring at me through the window. J, the woman who recommended the beautician to me, has finished her appointment. And she thinks I’m masturbating in the car before mine.

I do the only thing I can. I fish my finger out of my crotch and wave at her. She grimaces back, waves quickly and dashes into her car. I notice her pick up her mobile phone and stare out of the corner of her eye at me as she talks.

Fuck it, I think. Maybe I should take to wanking in the car. It’s a stress release, it beats listening to the ads on the radio, and best of all, it will give people like J something to talk about other than my daughter’s medical problems.

I'm feeling frisky already...

News, news, more news

2005-10-18T14:42:00.000+10:00

I should have known it was going to be one of those days when I woke up and stepped in dog pee. Our beloved hound, Pepper, has been toilet trained since she was six weeks, so I rechecked the smell three times. Definitely urine-de-canine. Already late for doctor number one, I rushed into the kitchen to get some roller towel and was met with the entire contents of the garbage bin on the floor. Vegetable mush mingled with nappies and Indian take-away. Seems Pepper tipped the bin, which then blocked the back door, thereby cutting her off from her en-suite in the garden. I cursed my heightened sense of smell and started cleaning up.

Rush. Rush. Rush.

An hour and a half of driving to get to Westmead hospital where the surgeon tells me he will schedule O’s next (and hopefully final) bowel operation for December 6th. Only 2 more months of the dreadful colostomy bag. Hoorah ! (Bizarre that I have now started looking forward to the surgery). He also said he may cut a part of her bowel out, to help with the constipation problem. A quick call to my dad put an end to that idea. Dad quoted me something in Latin about doing the least amount of harm. I agreed, then quoted him something off a Marlboro pack – Vini, Verdi, Vice.

Drive back to Prince of Wales Hospital for neurosurgeon. Realise I have half an hour to spare so pop to the local real estate agent and peruse their three bedroom rentals. (Throughout this medical ordeal, we’ve also been house hunting. We need a bigger place as O can’t share a room with the twins. Each house makes me feel like I'm visiting murder scenes. I describe them to R according to the type of murder. Stabbing on the Carpet, Death by Boredom, Asphyxiation in the Kitchen. I almost convinced myself that Suicide in the Study, one of the less offensive places, was worth taking). Nothing suitable so I head back to the hospital. By this stage O is ready for her afternoon sleep but there’s no chance of that.

She fills the waiting room with loud screams. I rock her, hold her, feed her, dance with her (note to parents: ‘Thriller’ is not a dance that comforts babies). She won’t be consoled. My dad joins me. An hour of waiting and the neurosurgeon sees us. A lot of technical jargon while I bounce O on my knee. Something about tethering at the L2. Something else about the difference between a normal spine and O’s. A lot about the risks of the operation – leaking cerebral fluid, infection, possible paralysis if they get the wrong nerve. Sounds horrific so I ask whether the risks outweigh the benefits. He tells me leaving it is not an option, then lists more horrible possibilities if it’s left. Permanent nerve damage, muscle wastage. Then, with the words ‘permanent nerve damage’ and ‘possible paralysis’ still ringing in my ears, he says – how about two weeks tomorrow? Sure, I nod. Zombie like, I take the paperwork and leave.

It’s good. It’s better than waiting, I tell myself. It’s for her benefit.

I was never a person who courted catastrophe. I realise now that most people aren't. The events of our lives find us, wherever we hide, and play themselves out, however they need to.

Get out Your Raincoat...

2005-10-16T19:45:00.000+10:00

I am Puddle Woman. I melt to driplets of water if you touch me. People are being exceptionally kind to me and it makes me feel strange. I find it difficult to be a Taker. My close friend K told me she’s sourcing second-hand equipment for the twins. She wants me to have everything in place for when they’re born so that I don’t have to spend money.

Drip. Splat. Puddle.

I’m so looking so forward to a time when I can give again. Giving is a privilege reserved for the powerful.

Tomorrow is a 3 doctor day - for hors de oeuvres we’re seeing the surgeon who performed the bowel operation, the main course is the neurosurgeon who will tell us more about the severity of O’s condition and when he wants to operate and dessert is my obstetrician, who will look at the scan I had last week and tell me if the twins are doing okay.

And little O has sprouted a second tooth, which she’s using to chomp cucumbers with. She also waved for the first time today. She’s a little trooper.

Splish. Splosh. Puddle.

The Diagnosis

2005-10-13T21:50:00.000+10:00

There are some people who just shouldn’t be nurses. Nurse Panic, who rushes up to us as we approach the ambulatory care ward is one of these people. We’re checking our daughter in for an MRI but Nurse Panic is already shouting that we’re late, they’re calling for our bub, we’re going to mess up the entire day’s schedule. I don’t get a chance to explain we’ve been waiting in an admissions queue for an hour because she whisks O out of my arms, dumps her on the scale and shouts to the anaesthetist that the baby weighs 6.5 kg. I gently ask Nurse Panic to weigh her again – she weighed 7kgs yesterday, and I don’t want them to get the amount of anaesthetic wrong. Nurse P hasn’t taking her anti-freak-out pills, so she screams at me about wasting time. I plop O on the scale and point to the 7kg flashing in front of us. Oh, she says, and shouts at the anaesthetist to change the weight.

The funny thing is, Nurse Panic is a welcome distraction from the fact that we’re soon going to find out what’s wrong with O’s spine.

The general anaesthetic routine is now very familiar to both O and I. The anaesthetist puts the mask on her, she screams and looks at me with confusion. I feel the guilt of a thousand Jewish mothers, the guilt of my ancestors and their ancestors who all know that a baby shouldn't be put under this kind of stress. O falls asleep. I go back to the waiting room with R. We pace for an hour, talk about the shopping list, and rush into recovery.

Only this time she won’t wake up.

The nurse shakes her and puts water on her face. I have a sudden flash of being 14 and drunk outside Zanzibar nightclub. Andy Hirschberg, a girl on my outer circle of friends, is slapping me across the face and dousing me with water. Cunt, I thought then. Which is what I think of the nurse now. I stop her and say I’ll take over. I gently try to rouse O. She won’t wake up. I wipe some gauze in water and R and I take turns gently rubbing the gauze on her face.

Finally, she stirs. I pack out crying.

R gets the MRI scan and we stare at it. Nurse P explains that the report will be sent to our doctor, and we’ll have to wait until Monday for the diagnosis. We’re unbelievably frustrated and I start to second guess what the scan means. I point to the base of the spine – this bit looks stuck, I say. Nurse Panic shouts at me for jumping to conclusions. R has to go back to work so I’m left in the ward with a scary nurse and a semi-conscious baby.

Just then, my father shuffles in.

He takes the scan and comes back half an hour later. In his amazingly quiet way, he manages to get directly to the man who performed the scan. There’s no doubt about it. The base of the spine is stuck to the back. Our fears are confirmed. She has a tethered cord.

She will need spinal surgery. How much and how soon, we don’t yet know. How effective the surgery will be is also unknown. There is only one known in my mind at this moment. I’m taking all my hurt and pain and fear and I’m shoving it aside. My baby needs me to be strong. That’s what I’m going to be.

Two minutes later, Nurse Panic has her arms around me as I weep inconsolably into her chest.

Rather Me than You

2005-10-10T21:07:00.000+10:00

When the frig did I become the person other people are glad not to be?

It’s awful. A few pseudo-friends have said that every time they start complaining about how their kids won’t eat/sleep/perform on demand like circus elephants, they think of me and are grateful for what they’ve got.

Seriously.

Today it reached a new low. A pseudo-friend told me her child is forever complaining, so to put the child in her place she tells the child she should count her blessings she’s not like little O, who has to go to hospital all the time and whose mommy is going to have two more babies before little O even has enough time to enjoy being an only child.

Fuck you very much, I thought. Glad I can be your worst-case scenario. I hope your child finds horrible new ways to make your life difficult.

One of the reasons I was initially reluctant to tell anyone about O’s bowel condition was because I didn’t want them to pathologise her. Yes, she has a medical problem but she also has a wicked laugh, beautiful knowing eyes and the sweetest nature. Plus she’s clever and funny and lovely. And has big monkey ears that hear all. But people are starting to look at her with poor dear eyes. All they see is a girl with a bowel problem who may also have a spinal problem.

I’ve been thinking lots about the shaven headed kids I see every time I take O to hospital. Even from a distance they seem to have CANCER written on them. How crap must it be to constantly be identified by your disease? I hope their parents never run into my pseudo-friend.

And today a real friend told me she’s pregnant again. She has a daughter O’s age. My internal reaction – is she nuts? That’s so soon! So I guess that means I am officially in Denial-ville about my impending brood.

Come in.
It’s safe and warm here.
And I can’t hear anyone telling me they’re glad they’re not me.

When is a gift not a gift?

2005-10-06T19:15:00.000+10:00

And then, just as suddenly, it leapt onto us. We got a call from my dad today to say he’s managed to get an appointment for O’s MRI even sooner than expected. That’s brilliant! How soon? Tuesday. Four days time.
Slap me across the face for being weird but suddenly I’m crapping myself.
The end of November – the previous date for the MRI - felt too far away, but there’s something safe about distance. Little O will have to go under yet another general anaesthetic – her third this month. The good thing about the MRI is it will tell us if she has a severe spinal problem. The bad thing is. . . the same.

In South Africa, I know a lot of people who suspect they are carrying HIV but refuse to get tested. They reason that if they’re going to die anyway, why live the rest of their days knowing? This logic has always struck me as preposterous, absurd and selfish. Denial is weak, I thought. But there’s a part of me that suddenly understands the desire to not know, to be able to pretend.

I want so badly for the MRI to tell us that, although the anomaly the surgeon spotted when he operated exists, it is benign, innocuous, even character giving. I want to think of it like the bump on my nose, or the way R’s toes seem to stick together in a little furry clump. A funny little physical trait that distinguishes you from the person next to you, but that doesn't mean you have to be sliced up and put back together.

I don’t want him to tell me she has to have spinal surgery.
I don’t want him to tell me she has to come back in another few months for another MRI.
But I have a horrible feeling he might.

Baby Been Bad

2005-10-05T19:17:00.000+10:00

I had five straight days without a doctor and then I had to ruin it today by going to see an obstetric specialist. I’ve been referred to her because my pregnancy has been deemed High Risk. For once, this is not because of my lack of fashion sense or the fact that I tend to blurt out the first thing that comes to mind. (I once suggested to my delightful friend B that he looked like a paedophile. It was the way he was smiling smugly next to a small Mexican boy, and I swear for that moment he looked like he’d just had some little boy action.) Anyway, apparently having twins, combined with my family history of diabetes, makes me someone they need to poke, prod and point at a bit more regularly. So off I trot to Ms Dr Powerbabe and she tells me I’ve been very bad. I ask her to use a word that doesn’t have a value judgement attached. She tells me she’s judging my behaviour, not me. We somehow get into an argument that involves me calling on Descartes (I think, therefore I am), quoting Shakespeare (If you prick me, do I not bleed?) and reminding her that Dr Atkins, of the Famous Atkins Diet, died of heart problems.

I suspect I have become an annoying prat who badly wants to put my English literature degree to some use, so I shut up as she weighs me. She mumbles something about me being bad again, but this time I gravely agree. Then she realises I’ve actually lost a kilo and suddenly pronounces me good. I restrain myself from leaping through the window to my fat death.

And in happy news, little O has surprised us all by secretly sprouting a tooth.

Lesson to all parents – don’t be so busy looking up your child’s bumhole that you forget to look in her mouth.

My name is Yidchick and I'm a doctorholic

2005-09-29T21:44:00.001+10:00

Yesterday. Day 3 of my doctor binge. This time it's the paediatric gastroenterologist. He’s pleasant, smiley. Perhaps too smiley. He tells me nothing I don’t know but he says it in a way that makes me feel a lot better. He also weighs and measures little O and tells us that she is still in the bottom tenth percentile for height and weight, but that her head remains in the fiftieth percentile. This pleases R and I for some absurd reason. We are both large-noggined folk and we find it amusing that our child is similarly endowed. Then a horrible thought flashes – her large cranium isn’t encephalated as a result of cerebral fluid build up? – I ask, trying to thinly disguise the neurotic overtones of a mother who has done too much research on spinal conditions. No, he assures me, her oversized catroon-like skull is inherited from her parents. We laugh in relief, and all point and touch O’s ginormous head. There is some talk of buying giant sized hats. Do they make bicycle helmets in super-large? someone asks. More laughs. Then he charges me $150.

Today. It’s 9.45 PM and I haven’t seen a doctor at all. I’ve been tempted a few times but I’ve withheld. I nearly drove to the hospital out of habit. Am trying for a doctor free day tomorrow. Hold thumbs I make it.

You want me to wait how long?

2005-09-28T21:54:00.000+10:00

When God made doctors she only got half way through when she ran out of crayons. She’d already done a batch that was coloured in perfectly, making them full, caring, intelligent and giving. But with the remainders she just outlined, leaving the insides empty. Dr Charmless, the neurosurgeon, is definitely one of the latter. He kept us waiting an hour, hurried us in and told us there was nothing he could do until he saw an MRI of O’s spine. Under my insistence he examined her. She weed all over him. (She’s a great judge of character, my girl.) He appeared disgusted and complained bitterly about the mess she’d made. I hurriedly cleaned up and tried to throw the wet tissues in his bin. He pushed it under the desk - it’s full, he said, there’s one outside. The bin was completely empty. The man works with blood, sinew and bone and he gets freaked out by a bit of baby piss? Not a good sign.

He ordered the MRI, told us there’s a waiting list of two to three months and kicked us out. Then his secretary billed me for $150.

Two to three months?

How can we wait that long for a diagnosis? What if it’s urgent and starts causing all the symptoms I read about - muscle wastage, nerve damage, a large swolen head reminiscent of cheap B movie aliens? And how can he determine if it’s urgent or not if he doesn’t even know what it is?

His secretary called this morning (I’m expecting her to bill me for that too). She told me she’s arranged the MRI for next year.
In March.
That’s 6 months away. And two weeks after I’m due to give birth to the twins.

I Oh-my-godded and huffed about being put on a cancellation list but she remained stubbornly unmoved. So I did what Jewish girls always do in a crisis. I ate a tub of icecream. Then I called Daddy. He spoke to the radiology department at the hospital where he works and within ten minutes he’d bargained them down to late November. Two months away.

Which led me to wonder what people who aren’t related to a doctor - most people – do. I suppose they wait. Getting sicker. With large swolen heads reminiscent of cheap B-movie aliens. While fuckwits like me jump the queue.

Oh show me the way to the next doctor's room...

2005-09-26T20:53:00.000+10:00

Not knowing is the worst part. For some reason the known, however disturbing, is more comfortable than the endless expanse of ignorance. From the moment the doctor told us there’s a problem with O’s spine, my ignorance and imagination teamed up to create a horrific slideshow of nightmares. I went through each future year of O’s life. What if she can’t play sport? What if she can’t dance? What if she becomes one of those Hospital Kids who everyone starts off feeling sorry for then gets bored after the fifth operation and writes her off?

I have worked with children with severe Spina Bifida, and I know how many of them live from operation to operation. I do that awful superstitious thing that only confounds me further – I question whether my work with these children was some cosmic preparation for what lay ahead of me.

The ignorance is too frightening so I do the next thing I shouldn’t. Research online. I find out that the condition they think O has - a tethered cord - requires a series of spinal surgery over a period of time. The prognosis is varied, depending on the severity of the condition. One article points out that life expectancy of these children is normal. I hadn’t even considered that it wouldn’t be. Rather than comforting me, this upsets me further.

The wondering and ruminating is exhausting and frightening. Against the surgeon’s advice, I make an appointment with a well-known neurosurgeon. At least he will give me something real to grasp onto. I’m taking O to him later this afternoon.

And a strange sideline dynamic is emerging. Since returning from hospital, O has become much more short-tempered and explosive. I’m not sure if this is a result of her schedule being disrupted or her being in pain. I’m concerned that I’m pandering to her rather than letting her self-sooth, but I’m not willing to take the chance. If it’s pain she’s in, she needs me to comfort her.

I thought working in TV was a minefield but fuck me, this mothering caper is a far more complex beast.

Reality. Different to what I expected.

2005-09-24T01:53:00.000+10:00

Here’s the fucked part:
When I was a child I used to worry that I had things too easy. I thought a bit of adversity might do me good. My father came from a family of eight (seven boys, one very frightened girl). His father was a professional soldier who was never home, then died when my dad was fifteen. His mother was a Lithuanian peasant who didn’t speak English. One of his brothers was alcoholic, another schizophrenic. My father didn’t know how old he was until he left school at fourteen and was told he was too young to work. He’s now a Professor of Gastroenterology. His entire personality is defined by the fact that he had faced his demons and conquered them.

Me, I had it cushy.

While everyone around me seemed to have parents who were getting divorced, fathers who drank, mothers who lied, brothers with rabbit fetishes, I lead the good life. I had great parents who stuck together, siblings who seemed to respect me, the ability to do well at school without even trying, a main part in the musical and lots of friends who loved me because I wasn’t good looking enough to be threatening but I wasn’t ugly enough to be a liability. I played lots of sports, I laughed hysterically on the phone with my girlfriends and I was the person people came to when they had problems because, although I seemed not to have many myself (apart from the small issue of shovelling food down my mouth to fill the dark void inside me), I was good at helping other people deal with theirs.

I remember wondering if God was preparing me for some massive future horror.

Now I know he was just softening me up for parenthood.

It’s Tuesday, the morning of O’s operation. We’re not allowed to feed her for 12 hours before the procedure. She’s used to eating every three hours. For 9 hours before we even get to the hospital she cries horribly. The starving cry I remember from videos of Ethiopian children in the eighties. Her little wet eyes look at me in confusion – why are you withholding food? R spots me trying to sneak her a bottle. Wisely he confiscates it. Then he ties my hands together with a rope. Or threatens to. Not in a sexy way.

The drive to the hospital takes an hour and a half in peak traffic. O cries the entire way there, alternating between a fierce, angry scream and a pathetic, starving whimper.

Once there it all happens quite fast. Weigh her, check her, assess her. I’m allowed into theatre to hold her until the drugs kick in and her lively eyes turn empty.

Hours. Hours. Hours. Lumped on top of each other like stale hot-dog buns. There are meant to be two of them but there are four. Then the call from the anaesthetist. The operation took longer than expected. We rush to the recovery room. Our limp baby is still knocked out. Machines on every limb. The doctor calls us aside to talk. I expect him to say the operation went well, it’s all over, she’ll be fine. The most he’ll give is that technically it was okay. Then a small hesitation. We found Something Else. It’s her spine. He tells me a lot of things to do with the way a normal spine forms and the way hers differs. He mentions that we will need an MRI, a referral to a neurologist and a neurosurgeon. He talks about the long-term implications of the condition he suspects that she has. We’re lucky to catch it now, he says. Yes, lucky, I think. Lucky like a cigarette.

While he is talking I feel R shrinking behind me. At one point I become unsure if he is even still in the room. Here I am, in a pristine, sterile environment and I feel this lovely doctor, this gentle kind man in his sixties, holding an axe which he repeatedly swings at me. With each question I ask, he swings the axe again. Soon it has cut into my flesh and is ripping bits out of me. R hides behind, dazed, absentmindedly wiping the blood off his lapel. Then the doctor leaves, the axe in hand, and I am left staring at my limp daughter. Wondering if she’ll ever be able to walk.

Let's hope she can't remember this

2005-09-12T18:49:00.000+10:00

And suddenly it is upon us. Dr Second Opinion has suggested that O be operated on as soon as possible. Tomorrow in fact. The hospital is far away from home so we're staying at a motel. I know this sounds sick but part of me is excited to get a few days in a motel. The no dishwashing factor. And the miniature shampoo and conditioner. Must focus on miniature goods to distract me from the horror of her going under the knife again.

Will be off the blogwaves for a while but am sure I will have stories to tell on my return. Have asked R to shave before he meets any doctors so as to avoid looking like terrorist and frightening staff. He's promised not to flash his Al Quada membership card. Must focus on terrorists so as to comfort self. Must stop writing like Bridget Jones.

Night.

Happy Father's Day?

2005-09-05T21:52:00.000+10:00

Our first father’s day. R has been talking about it for months. A day of pampering just for him! A celebration of his paternal triumphs! Certainly, an occasion for fellatio! Turns out it wasn’t quite as lovely as he had hoped. I intended to serve him breakfast in bed. Instead I served him my dinner. I vomited all over him before I could move. It’s your unborn twins way of saying Happy Father’s Day, I said (through chunks of last night’s pasta). He would have preferred a card.

The day looked like it was going to get better. O had framed a picture of herself and written a lovely message for her dad (amazing how similar her handwriting is to mine) . It read:

I love you daddy. I smile when you come home. Please don’t bang my head.

She was referring to a dreadful incident a week ago when R accidentally slammed her into an awning. I felt like killing him until I saw the look on his face. Whatever nasty insults I could hurl at him wouldn't come close to what he was flagellating himself with.

So, yes, to show the love of my life I appreciate how great a father he is, I chucked up my innards on him and wrote a passive aggressive card. Blame the pregnancy hormones.

Luckily his own family was going to get me off the hook and upset him even further. His parents phoned from the Emergency ward in the hospital. They’d admitted his dad as he was concerned that he may have had a heart attack. We spent the rest of the day waiting by the phone for updates. His father spent the day in hospital being observed. Turns out his heart is okay but he has a killer case of halitosis.

We ended the day with me vomiting up dinner, kissing R goodnight (fellatio was out of the question) and pretending I was asleep when O started crying. (It's a game we play. Whoever pretends to be asleep better doesn't have to settle her).

R made me promise to not let him get excited for next year’s father’s day.

To Shnorrer, Perchance to Scheme

2005-08-30T21:50:00.000+10:00

* WARNING - ETHNIC STEREOTYPING CONTAINED HEREIN*

Yiddish is a language that beautifully captures human nature in a way that English is too polite to do. Take the word “Shnorrer” for example. Tightarse and cheapskate don’t do it justice, as those both have pejorative connations. Shnorrer is a word that conjures up both disgust and admiration. I
t can be a noun – He’s such a Shnorrer he takes his own popcorn to the movies, then sells it back to his family for a profit.
It can be a verb – I managed to Shnorrer the best parking next to a broken meter. (Actually breaking the meter yourself would turn you from a Shnorrer into a Ganif).
It can be an adjective – look at the Shnorrer sandwich she made me, there’s barely any meat in it.
Jews admire a good Shnorrer and are often boasting to each other of their latest shnoradike escapades. Our friends know R and I as the Royal Couple of the Shnorrer holiday. We’re constantly targeted by timeshare schemes who invite us to a ninety minute presentation with the promise of a free holiday. We’ve managed to never buy timeshare, yet we enjoy the same benefits the honest hardworking folk who purchase it do. We’ve had 2 free holidays a year for the last five years courtesy of various vacation clubs. Tasteless? Yes. Classless? Perhaps. But the feeling of joy we get when we see the shmuck in the room next door paying his bill is priceless. I don’t care how crappy the room is or how disdainfully the hotel staff look at us when we show them our voucher, a holiday is much sweeter when you didn’t pay for it.

When The Entertainment Voucher book came out in Sydney a few years ago, Jews flocked to it like dieters to a black forest cake. We renamed it The Shnorrer Book and proudly carried it wherever we went. The joke that a non-Jew would be offended if you used a Shnorrer voucher on a date, while a Jew would be offended if you didn’t is only funny because it's true. Of course, there is a line that should never be crossed when shnorrering:
Never Shnorrer from a friend without them knowing.
Never Shnorrer at someone’s funeral.
Never Shnorrer your child out of a good education.
Never teach a Wasp to Shnorrer – it confuses them and upsets the delicate balance of the Universe.

Being such an expert in the ways of the Shnorrer, I feel silly that I didn’t realise a very obvious fact about my latest predicament. It’s like God’s looked down at our many years of shnorrering, both locally and internationally, together and apart. He smiled upon R and I and granted us the ultimate two for one deal.

One pregnancy, 2 babies.

A shnorrer mother's dream.

Reactions, Responses, Reservations for 5 at an Insane Asylum

2005-08-29T18:45:00.000+10:00

Haven’t you heard of contraceptives? The first words out of R’s father’s mouth when we told him we’re expecting. He’s a Holocaust survivor. Not sure if this excuses the response, but I don't want to call him a fuckwit. R’s mother was slightly more subtle – that’s… Close. She said. Then she sunk back into her chair and started hyperventilating. When she recovered, she put her head in her hands and was catatonic. This was before we told them it’s twins.

Feeling like I now couldn’t actually say the word ‘twins’, I simply showed R’s father the ultrasound. His face crumpled up in confusion. He lifted his hands and made the sign of the devil. Actually he was just raising two fingers but it looked like something from a Black Sabbath concert to me. In the old days. When Ozzy used to invite Frank Zappa on stage to eat his shit. Two, he muttered to R’s mom. There are two of them.

That’s when I offered her a Valium.

She settled for a strong tea. I headed off to make it, peeking back to look at her and her husband. They were shaking their heads at each other. R paced the kitchen while I made the tea. I knew they were going to take it badly but it’s like we just told them Hitler’s alive again. I don’t want to go back into the room, I tell R. They’ll come round, he says. Then I see the look on his face. Let's run away to Vegas is what it says.

After 3 cups of tea and an assurance from us that we wouldn’t have any more kids after this, they calmed down to a mild panic. Afraid I was going to pour scolding water over both of them, while chanting an Icelandic curse, I excused myself and left Rob to comfort them further and see them out. We’re phoning my brother next, I told him. He’s a Rabbi. We’re making more Jews. He has to be happy.

Elated was what he was. He whistled, laughed and ululated. Pity he lives in Jerusalem because I wanted to set him onto Rob’s parents so he could suck the negativity out of them and force them into the Horah.

Fifteen more phonecalls to various family and friends. A lot of laughing. Not laughing with, you understand. A few tears. Much shocked silences followed by the words “I don’t know what to say” (I’ve always hated those words. They’re cowardly and lack imagination.) The words ‘financial plan’ were raised a few times. The odd optimistic cliché from a cheery girlfriend – the universe never gives you anything you can’t handle. How come people commit suicide then, I ask? They don’t realise that, responds the fairy worshipper. She’s quick, I’ll give her that.

By the end of it I feel like I’ve just admitted to my local mosque that I wrote the Satanic Verses. While felating a goat.

The next day, R’s mom has done a complete 360. She’s told some of her friends and they’ve pointed out that this will make her the one with the most grandchildren in their group. She’ll have more grandchildren than her mother had. This pleases her. She’s sweet as a jellybean, telling me she’ll help me organise a roster, so that everyone will help out. She works herself into a frenzy, describing the country girl we’ll get to work for us for cheap, the good deals we can get on twin strollers, the day care centre that O can go to. Then she forgets my name, twice.

His father bustles in and exclaims with delight. This is a big Fuck You to Hitler! It’s at that point that I offer myself a Valium, then settle for a quick dash out of the room, home to my bed, where there are no rosters, no friends and family and no one else's agendas to contend with.

The Secret is Out

2005-08-26T16:03:00.000+10:00

Never go to a Lucky Dube concert unless you expect serious repercussions. Remember that night of free love, peace and utopia three months ago? Well the lurve continued on into the bedroom at home. And the lounge actually. (The kitchen was out of bounds ‘cos it’s next to the baby’s bedroom). A week or two later I started feeling exhausted. Not tired like after a good walk or a big night out. Finished. Obliterated. Unable to function. You may remember me complaining about it. What I didn’t say was that I was also perpetually green, feeling like I was constantly reliving the last moments of The Titanic. I even had a warped Celine Dion track droning in my ears (that was one thing the real victims of The Titanic were at least spared). I did a home pregnancy test, already preparing myself for the double line, the phonecall to a shocked R.

Negative.

I felt strangely sad. Like I’d failed an exam. Then the panic set in. Oh My God. It must be cancer. Or depression. Or a cancerous depression. I went to my doctor for a blood test. He phoned me the next day. We have your results. I steeled myself. Surely there must be an upside to cancer? You’re positive. He said. Positive? For what? HIV? Hepatitis? Ebola? Psychotic Hypochondria? You’re pregnant.

Two lessons there. One: Lucky Dube is a fertility god. Two: Never trust a home pregnancy test.

I started calculating my due date. Oh My. I’m due exactly a month after O turns one. Two children under 14 months. Surely that’s illegal? Aren’t I meant to be going back to work? Yes, there is a big part of me that wanted this, but I never imagined it would happen so soon. I’m the girl who was told by her doctor at fifteen that she would never be able to have a baby. Then again, the same doctor also wanted to break my hymen surgically as he feared “some guy would come at (me) like a ram and hurt (me)”. The man was clearly a perve.

So I call R. He’s in a meeting. He goes numb from shock. A few weeks before, we’d had his sperm tested. The doctors had told us there was a large amount of wonky sperm with two heads and no tails, or two tails and no head. Or something more clinical. They said he was obviously under a lot of stress and needed a holiday if he wanted to improve his sperm quality and count. Failing that, the next time we wanted to fall pregnant, we would need to have ‘sperm washing’ in which R jacked off into a jar and selected sperm were inserted into me via a pipette. The concept horrified me. I was never good at science. I cried for a day. R stared at the wall a lot. We decided it was better not to try for another baby for a while.

Seven weeks later. Our first scan. This scan dates the pregnancy, checks to see it’s not ectopic, and tells you if the baby has a strong heartbeat. I’m nervous. I lift up my shirt and say the strangest thing to the sonographer I’m not worried about multiples. She looks at me like I’m slightly deranged. She immediately finds the foetal sac. There’s your baby, she says. Then she hesitates and rolls the ultrasound over my belly again. Silent. I look at the screen. That looks like two sacs, I say, laughing. Mmmm, she answers. Why don’t you empty your bladder, come back and I’ll do an internal? I rush to the loo. It’s not just my bladders that get emptied. The expression “shitting yourself” exists for a reason. It could just be a left-over follicle, I think, not convinced. I walk back in to find R being offered a whisky by the sonographer. He’s breathing heavily. She inserts what my friend Ova Girl refers to as a “dildo cam’”. Yip, she says. Two sacs. Two placentas. Two heartbeats. R is an intelligent man. He works in brain science for God’s sake. But I swear I hear him ask, What does that mean? TWINS, I scream, surprising myself. Two babies means TWINS! Dildo cam almost lurches out from inside my hoo-hah as if it too is in denial.

The sonographer checks that everything is ok with B1 and B2, then tells me to get the number for the Multiple Birth association. She reminds me that my next appointment will take double the amount of time and cost double, gives R the rest of the bottle of Scotch to take home (mainly because he's clinging to it like a catholic priest to a copy of Barely Legal) and sends us on our way. He’s a dark skinned man, R, but he’s turned whiter than pure cocaine. I take my Brave Face out of my handbag and slap it on. Three children under 14 months, I think. Piece of Cake.

Then I feel a giggle welling up deep inside me and I laugh and laugh until my chuckles turn to tears.

Secret Keeper

2005-08-23T08:10:00.000+10:00

I am a Keeper of Secrets. People always tell me their most hidden innermost hush-hush stuff. My theory is it’s because I’m fat. Fat people are like Switzerland. Innocuous. Neutral. Unlikely to cause a stir. Since I was a small child, I have kept other people’s secrets in sparkly coloured jars in my room. The jewel encrusted green jar was home to the story of Tina pulling the arms off her favourite doll, then blaming her sister. Later, it kept the secret of Jo’s mother’s latest trip to the hospital, which had nothing to do with her breaking her arm and everything to do with the litre of scotch she drank before fetching the kids from school. The ruby red jar held lust secrets. How Lance lusted after Roger, his sister’s boyfriend, how Elise was secretly seeing Tracey’s ex without her knowledge, how Jarred was selling dope to make enough money to pay for the earrings he promised Lisa. The flaming yellow jar was for secrets of cowardice – how Elaine faked an epileptic fit to get out of running the school marathon, how Rodney left his best friend bleeding in his garden after hitting him in the head with a rock, how Rowan blamed Kevin for the home bomb they made even though it was his idea in the first place.

I kept all these secrets tight, tending to them regularly, making sure the jars that held them were secure.

But the funny thing about secrets is that, before long, someone (usually the person who gave me the secret for safe keeping) would sneak into my room late at night and open the jars, letting the secrets out. There was the inevitable aftermath. Accusations, tears, break-ups. And from me, relief. The secret was no longer mine to keep. Even then, I feigned ignorance. Third parties would tell me the stories in all their sordid details and I would act out my surprise and shock. I would never have guessed, I’d tell them. I always suspected, they’d tell me, unconvincingly.

But the problem with being a Keeper of Secrets is that you get used to putting things in sparkly jars. You get used to closing those jars very tight and never opening them. You get used to pretending not to know what you know. And for every jar of Other People’s Secrets I owned, I had ten of my own. Mine never got opened for air. Mine were never broken into in the night. Mine remained so tightly sealed that if I were to open them now, the pressure would make them explode in my face. Also, I know for a fact that worms hatched in the jars and grew fat living off the juice of my secrets. Everyone knows what you should never do with a can of worms, let alone a whole jar...

The secret I am now holding must come out. But I am scared. Of what people will say and how it will hurt me and them. Of how to tell it. And mostly, of the secret itself. It’s a big, life changing one. It’s very beautiful, but also very frightening. And while I have it in my jar it’s still pure and clean and mine. Who knows what sort of horrors it will be exposed to when it’s let out? My cocoon of denial is warm and snug and, although it’s getting pretty tight in here, it’s a place I know and trust.

I glance at this secret in its bright pink jar. I feel the lid to see if it’s ready to be loosened…

Trying to Keep It Real

2005-08-19T13:56:00.000+10:00

A nasty little script editor I once worked with said that I use humour as a defence, as a way of not having to face the truth. Fuck it, I thought, better that than Crack Cocaine. But I have to admit, that last post I wrote was tremendously glib and evasive. Then again, if I told you I was terrified about O's next operation, I'd be lying. I'm numb, actually. It doesn't feel real. Maybe because my denial mechanism is tremendously well honed (you don’t get to be my weight without a brilliant ability to self-deceive), or maybe because O is not in any pain and it doesn’t seem to affect her in any way. True we have her on a cocktail of laxatives. True if we stopped them she’d be chronically constipated. But we’ve got into a comfortable routine which means we’re side stepping her physiological problem quite nicely thank you. So to be told she has to have the tiny muscles in her gut moved to a different position that may not even remedy the problem seems absurd.

Like any big decision, family politics are now starting to play a part. R’s father, a retired doctor, seems to think I haven’t been firm enough with the surgeon. As if I could bully him into rescinding his desire to operate again. A few firm words and I’m sure he’ll admit O is actually fine. My own father, a practicing gastroenterologist, has been amazing in mobilising for the Second Opinion. Only problem is, he’s found an alternative surgeon who practices at a hospital over an hour away. While this sounds unimportant, it means we would be very isolated during the operation. We would probably have to stay in a hospital dormitory and it would be difficult for people to visit O. I really relied on visitors last time to break the tedium of those endless neon-lit hospital days in which the outside world ceases to exist. Also, the current surgeon, Dr Saturday Night Fever, may be smug and evasive, but at least he knows O and her condition… Plus he can bust a mean move on the dance floor. Sorry, there I go again…

And there’s something else. Something secret that I’m not ready to write about yet. Something that impacts directly on all our decisions that I’m still back and forthing about. I feel like I’m in a mistaken identity film. I’m actually 17 and I got transported into a dystopic version of what my life could be if I don’t immediately mend my ways. Am realising, perhaps a bit slowly, that being a grown up isn’t all about getting to choose your own bed time and drink tequila…

Witch Doctor?

2005-08-18T12:21:00.001+10:00

Dr Saturday Night Fever, O's surgeon, takes me into his office last week. He had a slightly paternalistic look on his face, which annoys me because he's younger than me. Or looks younger, which is even worse. He flings his jacket on the chair in the disco manner that earned him his name, and assumes a grave voice. O has to have another operation, he tells me. And this one is a biggie.

He procedes to explain that they want to reposition a lot of her muscles. The operation is finicky and long, and she'll need to be in hospital for ten days. Plus it only has a fifty percent chance of succeeding. Then he starts drawing diagrams which remind me of my high school biology teacher, a woman with a nervous tic and halitosis. I realise I am trying to distract myself from the blow he's just delivered. I leave his office feeling like swinging his jacket around his neck and tightening it. Ever so slowly. Little O smiles at him and I can't help but suspect her judgement.

So now, we're getting A Second Opinion. It's quite political, this second opinion caper. Doctor SN Fever is getting a bit defensive about it. I'm always intrigued by people's egos. I suppose a lot of doctors are used to being revered, so they're put out if you question them. Probably why I fantastise about becoming doctor. That, and those bossy secretaries you're assigned who look like they've been sucking a lemon for fourty years straight.

To try earn some dosh, which we'll need for all of O's medical expenses, I've been doing an incy bit of copy writing. Am not yet ready to get back into anything full time so this suits for now, but I'm finding that I can't do any work with O around. Hence, looking for a nanny. Which is its own little half hour mini-drama. Have asked R to consider people-smuggling as a side business. That way, I can exploit refugees and create underground nanny-house in manner of whorehouse but with time out for tea and a community atmosphere (sing-alongs, bingo nights, pin the tail on the immigration minister).

I've also got to get another draft of the ball and chain screenplay done. Have reworked the first act and am awaiting feedback from Script Editor. Grrrroan. Wish I could just set aside a month and work only on that, but now's not the time. These little buggers may be demanding, but the thought of putting O in full time day care now is totally unappealing. Apart from the fact that she couldn't tell me if she was having a crap time, I'd miss her too much. She's such fun to be around.

Do you think the doctor could operate on me instead of her? They must have invented some osmotic surgical process by now. I'm pretty sure I saw it on "Beyond 2000" in the eighties...

Does anyone here remember laughter?

2005-08-11T18:00:00.000+10:00

Having a child of my own has flooded my brain with hundreds of incongruous recollections from my own childhood and how different O's is likely to be. Here's one:

My best friend Nina had a huge, sprawling house that used to be the Lebanese Embassy. There were hundreds of rooms and even a secret, concealed bathroom that we loved hiding in. From age ten to thirteen, I practically lived there. I even used to sleep at her on school nights, something I now find slightly dodgy - why were my parents letting me sleep out on a school night? Was I that responsible a child that they weren't concerned I'd stay up all night and not be able to focus at school? Sadly, yes. But I digress. The memory that flooded me this morning as I awoke to a freezing Sydney winter with a dog on my face and a baby crying, was how Nina's nanny, Maggie, used to wake us on chilly South African mornings. She would come into the room singing our names in a low, deep, melodic voice that always seemed on the verge of a chuckle. Or tears. I forget which. Then she'd place two piping hot mugs of Milo down next to us. While we drank the Milo she'd bring us our school uniforms, which she'd already warmed on the heater. Yes, Maggie's own children were probably freezing their hungry arses off in a makeshift hut in a township while people outside were being brutally killed by the police, but, hell, that Milo tasted good.

Apartheid was tricky like that.

Some of the Reasons why I love my Daughter...

2005-08-06T19:41:00.000+10:00

I realise this blog is turning into a whingefest about my dastardly domestic life. In truth, little O brings me so much daily joy that there’s nowhere I’d rather be right now than at home with her. And a nanny. And housekeeper. And Chef.
Sorry, I can’t help myself. Bloody spoilt South Africans…
Here is a tiny representation of the many ways in which she lightens my life:

1. She has the most infectious, pure, joyous giggle that disarms and delights me every time I hear it.
2. She is curious and friendly, smiling at anyone who says hello. Later I will teach her that paedophiles are people she shouldn’t smile at, but right now it’s very endearing.
3. She’s clever. And responsive. And babbles endlessly when R and I are talking, contributing wisely to the conversation.
4. She does most of her pooing in the early morning, during R’s shift. This is highly considerate.
5. She is unbelievably patient, and allows me to take her wherever I go without complaining. She even comes with us to restaurants at night and sits happily in her pram, not whinging.
6. She loves the dog. When the mangy hound, Pepper, sniffs at her, she grabs Pepper’s ears and giggles.
7. She has a cheeky glint in her eye that is mostly present when she’s doing something she knows she shouldn’t be. Like eating my childhood copy of War and Peace. (Yes, I had a childhood copy. Along with Steppenwolf and God and Death. Bizarelly, some people thought I was an intense child).
8. Sometimes I don’t change her nappy for a few hours and she hasn’t reported me to the authorities even once.
9. She sleeps through the night. Everyone praises me for it. I secretly know that this has nothing to do with my mothering techniques or settling methods. It’s just luck.
10. She eats everything we offer her. Later, I will tell her about campaigns to poison Mars Bars, but right now it’s fabulous to have a non-fussy eater.
11. I have more unabated fun with her than I’ve ever had. Even including my chemical drugs days and the time I met Jonny Depp. She reminds me what it’s like to be a child, to live in this instant, to trust unreservedly, to fart in public with no shame… and to love with my heart wide open.

In which Yidchick leaks cerebral fluid on her pants...

2005-08-04T21:25:00.000+10:00

This is what happens when you educate a woman, tell her she can be anything she wants to, then confine her to a house and make her wash dishes... She starts to set herself inane tasks to keep her sanity in check. Today I peeled an orange, put the peels on the roof of my car and set out to chart how far I could drive before all the peels fell off. The result was a lesson for me in never doubting the potential or tenacity of a truly motivated being. The orange peel travelled all the way from my mother-in-law's house to the shopping mall. It made a detour with me to the petrol station, sneaked into the No Stopping zone in the park and accompanied me home. (Aside: a small insight into the banality of my day). Granted, parts of it were lost along the way, but one die hard take no prisoners monster of a piece stayed with me the entire day. I'm looking out the window now, smiling proudly at the persistant motherfucker, her pockmarked orange skin languidly resting on the boot, as if to say How could you doubt me?

I like food that sticks around. Nuts are good like that too. You can eat a couple after lunch and still have pieces at the back of your teeth for tea. But that orange peel, she's special. If I can hang in like her, I might survive this year of not earning money as my arse gets bigger, my language skills regress to such an extent that I think "poopy" is a legitimate word and my idea of a good sleep is three hours in a row.

Let's hope.

The Resistance

2005-07-26T14:19:00.000+10:00

You hear the horror stories but you rush in, head first. Foolhardy, blissfully ignorant, cocky even. But being a mother is as awfully visceral as any horror movie you ever saw. Today, an example. After a morning of doing everything for Bub, I realise I haven’t eaten a thing. I put her in her bouncinette (they have absurd names for all baby products. Somehow it gives them licence to charge you more for them. The Bug-A-Boo Frog is a pram that costs over a thousand dollars.)

As I start to prepare my food I hear her squeezing out a monstrous poo. Good, I think. It means the system’s working. I’ll detach myself from the disgusting reality of making brunch in the company of a defecator, eat and then deal with the mess. During my meal I hear her squeezing more. She seems very pleased with herself so I plough quickly through my pasta, shove a kiwi fruit down my gob and lift her up. Poo. Everywhere. All over her jumpsuit, all over the bouncinette (which is looking a little less perky now) and all over my hands. She smiles at me - enjoyed your meal, did you?

I realise I have to take her straight to the bath. A quick undress, into the water and… the bell rings. The dog goes ballistic, jumping at the door. I pull O out the bath and answer the door. The grocery delivery man, someone who may have been the subject of my porn fantasies in another lifetime, disengages the dog from his balls and dumps the food down. I assure him I’ll pay next time, it’s just impossible now. Sorry, he says, still clutching his gonads, you have to pay now.

Wet baby in hand, rabid dog at feet, I seek out the credit card. I rid myself of delivery boy and start drying bub, meticulously cleaning the brown morass off every fold. She’s starting to get grumpy. I clean her, dry her, cream her. I look for clean clothes. Everything seems to be in the wash. I manage to find a fresh jumpsuit at the bottom of the cupboard and change her into it. Ffffwwwoooo. Exhale. Sparkly as new. The phone rings. I pick her up. She vomits. All over herself, all over me, all over the new towel I’ve just put down. It’s a pumpkin and milky mix and it hammers. On the phone, the producer, LK, who has been offering me the most amazing work at the one time in my life I can't take it. Talking to LK through the vomit, I put O back down and start to clean the goo off everything. LK offers me an absurdly interesting job. I literally tell her to call me in a year. She seems put out. I go back to cleaning O. When finally finished, I ask her Would you like to excrete anything else? Wee in my ear perhaps? She laughs. Spit up my nose? A big giggle. Poo down my mouth? Hysteria. It becomes clear. She planned this all along.

Don’t be fooled by ‘doctors’, ‘scientists’ and ‘psychologists’ who tell you babies come into this world with a tabula rasa – a blank slate. They’re here with an agenda. Total annihilation of their mothers. Not with guns or bombs, but with the slow erosion of our sanity. Poo by poo, vomit by vomit, they’re taking us down. Anyone who wants to join the resistance, get in touch. Our first meeting starts Monday at noon. Or it may be one if she needs a sleep. Or maybe two ‘cos she might need to feed. Actually, I may be too exhausted on Monday, can we make it Tuesday…

Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match...

2005-07-23T19:38:00.000+10:00

In the Kabbalah, there is a principle that every family is made to be together, either to teach each other the lesson their souls need to learn in this life, or because they will match each others temperament in a way that makes it possible to live together and learn from each other. But I reckon some people just get the wrong parents. Through no fault of their own, they land with their complete mismatch. I witnessed this on Saturday night at my friend LB’s thirtieth birthday party. She is the antithesis of her parents. Them: wealthy, influential, conservative. Her: earthy, socially conscious, altruistic. Nonetheless, they clearly love her, and despite the fact that she has a nice Jewish girlfriend they would rather pretend was a nice Jewish boyfriend, they still try to get along. So when she was planning her party and didn’t invite them, they were disappointed. Feeling guilty, she sent them a last minute invite. But LB’s parents are not the type to simply sit back and be guests at their eldest child’s coming of age shindig. They insisted on organising alcohol, buying elaborate cakes, and generally making their presence strongly felt. When I walked in to the restaurant, I asked LB how it was all going with her folks there. She nervously answered that as long as they didn’t make any speeches, she’d be happy.

The night progressed and The Parents seemed to know their place. Then, just as LB looked like she was finally starting to relax, a tapping on glass. Her mother, C, a well-heeled American from Scarsdale, New York, wanted our attention. Oh no, grumbled LB. I thought I said no speeches! C smiled. This isn’t a speech, she said. She proceeded to hand out colour photocopied sheets with music and lyrics on them. Five different songs, each with the words adapted to reflect LB’s personality (or at least her mother’s perception of it) and the fact that she was turning thirty / getting old / starting to wither slowly towards death. I’ll paraphrase an example. To the tune of Aint She Sweet:

Aint she Sweet
With a Figure so Petite
Now I ask you quite rhetorically
Aint She Sweet

Such cute knees
She defends those refugees…

And other, more absurd things that I’ve blocked from my memory out of care for my friend. Then there was Thirty Years sung to the tune of Three Blind Mice.

Thirty Years, Thirty Years
Hard to Believe
Hard to Believe
She likes English lit and she knows every plot
She’s into human rights and she sure talks a lot
Thirty Years

The more mortified LB was, the more enthused her mother became. To C’s credit, she had the crowd obeying her every command, singing rounds of different songs, changing pitch when she asked us to. At one point LB’s sister shouted out “Who misses teaching?” in a not so oblique reference to the fact that C used to teach primary school and was reprising her role, complete with the encouraging tone young children (and sophisticated, urbane thirtysomethings, apparently) respond well to.

The whole thing went on for about fourty minutes, during which time LB chugged down more alcohol than her ‘petite figure’ could possibly handle.

LB was then called on to make a speech. She said something about pay back for all of us who encouraged the behaviour. We laughed, secretly nervous that it wasn’t funny at all.

In the car home, I realised there was a part of me that was really envious of how involved her mother was. However misguided the song session was, it took a lot of effort and thought on C’s behalf. My mother, who is an independent, interesting, go-getting feminist role model, would never have had the time or inclination to do anything as absurd for me. I’m not saying I’d like C for a mother. I’m pretty sure if I grew up with her, I’d be as horrified as LB was to be sung to in a way that essentialised her most complex characteristics. But the teeniest part of me was impressed at the commitment her mother had, the lack of concern about making a fool of herself, and the desire to go out on a limb to turn a simple dinner into an occasion that few of us will forget.

I wonder if I’ll turn out to be just the right match for little O, or if, at her thirtieth, I’ll keep quietly to myself, not daring to sing to her, only to find out that that’s what she would have wanted most.

The Tragic Eighties

2005-07-13T11:22:00.000+10:00

I did it again. Cried in the car. This time it was Joe Jackson who set me off. Won't you be my number two, me and number one are through. How awful. Feel old today. But not rich.

Went to the doc again with O. He's happy with her progress and said she was very bright. I bet he says that to all the babes.

And in good news... I re-wrote the first scene of my script. A whole scene and then the bub needed me. I usually do up to eight scenes in a day. But one's a start.

Is a Balanced Mother an Oximoron?

2005-07-13T05:45:00.000+10:00

Juggle, juggle, juggle. Struggle, struggle, struggle. Am yet to finish one task properly. Woke up this morning, as I do every morning, to the dulcit tones of hungry bub cries. When will bub learn to feed self? Must invent machine which administers milk to bub using heat sensor to determine where her mouth is. But would probably get to the bit just before I had it working and not be able to finish it. Am avoiding working on my script like Muslims avoid alcohol (or like Americans avoid Muslims). Every time I see it sitting on my desk I dodge out the room. Even considered prodding sleeping baby to make her cry so I had an excuse not to work. Is that technically abuse?

Wanted: Kindly Grandmother with No Life of Own

2005-07-05T13:16:00.000+10:00

I am involved in The Babysitting Wars of 2005. Now that little O is on the road to recovery, I may at last be able to say YES! to some form of work and finally get going on the next Oh-Good-Lord-Please-Let-Me-Get-It-Done draft of my screenplay. But for the fact that my mother and mother-in-law have craftily formed a rebellious alliance and have started to refuse to baby sit. Not in a ‘screw you and your dreadful spawn’ kind of way. More a ‘I have my own life and it happens just when you need me to babysit’ kind of way. This means that I’m endlessly having to re-arrange everything because my mother-in-law has a bridge game/haircut/colonic irrigation or my mother has decided to take on even more work than she’s already doing. God Forbid there should be any space in her life not filled with work. Hence, just when I’ve finally decided to emerge from my cocoon of tracksuit pants and daytime telly, the Rebel Two have simultaneously told me to stuff my two days a week – they’ve got plans.

Have been checking out day-care centres. Oh gentle souls these places are not for the squeamish. Reminiscent of Charles Dicken-esque orphanages, the ones I can afford have scores of snotty-nosed sproglets lying on makeshift beds in dark rooms, making a collective moaning noise. Mooooooaaaannn.... On a recent visit to a community centre that had been recommended to me, I opened the door to see what the facilities were like. A teary eyed girl grabbed her backpack and sprung up to me. Mommy? Home? She asked. I nearly said yes, just to stop her lip wobbling. Not that I can actually get little O into any of these places. Most of them have a 12 month waiting list. So for now, I’m trying to devise cunning plans to get the Rebel Two on side. Hell, I’ll even give my mother-in-law a home colonic if it gets me more hours…

And I've just spent the weekend at an intensive Jewish Learning seminar. Interesting lectures. Pity the place was swarming with Jews.

I want it, I don't, I want it...

2005-07-01T12:38:00.000+10:00

So annoyed was I by being overlooked for the jobette that I thought I’d show them what they were missing out on. I wrote a 2 page document of ideas that appeared casual and off the top of my head but were actually carefully considered and researched. I sent it in to the director with my CV. I received a reply a few hours later, dripping with regret that they didn’t hire me. He said he was going to ask his producer for extra money just so he could ‘use’ me for a day of brainstorming, and then get more money for me to write the proposal. He reiterated that he’s sorry he was so hasty to hire someone else. He sounds like a fabulous guy. He wants to meet me next week.

Now this is where I’m really weird. I wanted him to be sorry. I wanted him to think I was marvellous. I didn’t actually want him to offer me another job. I’m not sure if it’s the whole looking for childcare fandango (something that’s proved quite difficult thus far) or if I’m just using that as an excuse. I just feel so very tired. And conflicted. And I have a heinous cold sore on my lips that’s making me feel like a creepy old letch.

I wrote back a sexy little response about being flat out at the moment and then, without realising what I was doing, I offered to proof read the proposal. I’m like a job cocktease – I get them all lubed up and then I run out the room.

I wonder if I’ll ever feel unambiguous about taking work again?

Yeeeehah!

2005-06-30T13:33:00.000+10:00

KABOOM! An explosion the likes of none I have seen before. Scarcely had the little girl digested her sugared diuretic when the bomb dropped. A week's worth of gastric innards surged out of her mini backside. I've never been prouder. Or happier that I have a badly blocked nose. She had poo from her nose to her toes. I spent twenty minutes cleaning her up then she started again. The second wave was less intense but equally messy. My fancy croched jumper (have been trying to curb my habit of wearing only daggy pathetic housewife tracksuits) now has dappled smatterings of mustard coloured shmeer on it. But no matter. She pooed. Oh glorious day! She pooed!

Also, was offered a jobette for a week helping develop a series for TV. I told them I'd get back to them once I'd worked out if I could get child care. Then started the monstrous job of trying to organise babysitters. Seems I dilly dallied for too long because they phoned me back a few hours later and said they'd offered it to someone else who didn't have domestic responsibilities and who would be able to focus their energies entirely on the job.

What the fuck? Who do they think I am? Some idiotic housewife obsessed with the bowel movements of her child?... Oops.

Moving and Shaking

2005-06-30T06:10:00.000+10:00

Like the people who write in to Penthouse Forum, I never thought this would happen to me… My daughter’s bowel movements have become the focal point of my universe. Before I was a parent I couldn’t comprehend how people could be so dull as to sit around discussing how many times little Timmy or Tina had made poo-poos. But that was BC – Before Constipation. My little one hasn’t pooed in a week. After trying prune juice, we went to see the doctor. He pushed and prodded and poked but nothing came. So he took an earbud and started digging inside, pulling out sticky little faecal bricks. As he excavated, I was given the task of holding the little one’s legs open while she screamed. It was horrible. As each piece of brown treasure came out, I cheered her on – come on, bubs, push. Poor little brave O. After twenty minutes, she was starting to bleed. The doctor decided it was enough. He sent me home with some sugared medicine to soften the stool. Have checked her nappy three times since she’s taken it. There’s been some thunder and rain but no hail as yet.

There wasn’t a clear moment when I crossed the line from normal adult to freaked out poo-obsessed parent. It happened somewhere between feeding, burping, changing and bathing... Must run. I think I hear a fart with the promise of more…

Reasons I love my husband...

2005-06-27T14:24:00.000+10:00

Now that the horror of the week is behind us, I am starting to remember some amusing interludes that happened whilst in the surreal zone that is The Hospital. The funniest one involves my beloved R, who, to be frank, looks like a terrorist at the best of times. Dark skin, hairy, the slightly dazed stare of the Neanderthal about him, I prefer to think of him as a freedom fighter.

When R is stressed, the first thing he does is stop shaving. Within hours, he has grown a heavy misshapen beard, peppered with random grey blotches. The hair literally grows all the way up to his eyeballs so that only his dark eyes pop out. The hair on his head is currently overgrown and, on the day of the incident, R had forgotten to brush it. Half his hair was running in one direction, the other half fleeing the opposite way. It was as if his head had declared Jihad on itself. Clothing wise, R was decked out in an old tracksuit that I’d picked up in a frenzy at a sale. Something yellow and sticky clung to it. I suspect it wasn’t custard.

R and I were fussing over the bub in her cot when I spotted our paediatrician in the distance. A refined and well groomed man, he had come to see another patient. Realising what a bonus this was, I suggested that R call him over to have a look at little O – her surgeon hadn’t seen her since the operation, and the thought of nailing the doctor for some free advice appealed to me. He charges us $200 for fifteen minutes, I felt we deserved some sort of bonus.

I watched as R dutifully approached Dr Prim. Dr P took a step back. I saw the abject fear on his face. R lunged towards him – Doctor, it’s me – he said. The doctor reached for the Emergeny Call button. R, desperate to clear things up, moved closer to the Doctor, his voice hitting a slightly higher, hysterical note. I’m O’s father, he pleaded. Dr Prim took a step backwards and surveyed his exit options. Who’s O? he said, buying himself some time as his hands drew closer to the emergency button. I realised I would have to step in. I rushed towards the two men. On seeing me, the relief on Dr Prim’s face was palpable. I explained that R wasn’t an escapee from the psych ward. He was, in fact, the same man Dr Prim had met a few months ago. Only then he was wearing a suit. And his facial features were visible. And there wasn’t anything crusty and yellow on his pants. By that point Dr Prim was willing to do anything just to make the terror stop. He did a thorough examination of little O. And then he ran.

Far far away.

We have an appointment with him next week. I’ve asked R to shave for it.

Clitoredectomy with your Tea?

2005-06-24T12:34:00.000+10:00

Last night I emailed a friend, LB, to ask if she wanted to join us at the Sydney Film festival to see Frozen Angels. She mailed back that she was going somewhere grimmer, Moullade. Sounded to me like a fancy restaurant, the type her parents always force her to go to for awkward family dinners. Now that LB’s girlfriend is in town, her homophobic parents are being particularly weird and, convinced that they had set this dinner up to ‘get to know’ LB’s gal, I spent some time and thought mailing back a sensitive email that attempted to sooth LB’s impending sense of doom, while tactfully not insulting her parents. She mailed back that Moullade is not a restaurant. It’s a film about genital mutilation in Senegal.

I still maintain it would be a good name for a restaurant. Perhaps a Senegalese one.

Bits without Stuff Inside...

2005-06-21T20:02:00.000+10:00

Depleted. Like the leftover grog at a uni party at 2am. Like the slushy machine in the Seven Eleven after stoned teenagers have been at it. Like the feeling when the one person you’ve always loved gets engaged to your sister. That’s how I feel. But more so.

My little girl had an operation last week. They shoved a naso gastric tube down her without sedating her to clean out her gut. The next day she was in theatre for four hours. Hour one: R and I fidget and pretend to read the newspaper in the hospital waiting room. Hour 2: Discussion on which is the best way to make tuna lasagne ensues. After a little controversy over whether the inclusion of mushrooms is appropriate, we both agree the secret is in the Béchamel sauce. Hour 3: Dash off to shops to buy tuna lasagne ingredients. Hour 3 and a half: Dump tuna lasagne ingredients in aisle and rush back to hospital. Hour 4. Wait in recovery. Keep waiting…

They bring her in, up to her little miniature eyeballs in morphine. And limp. I nearly vomit on the anaesthetist. The operation went well, they say. I’m sure they say that to everyone. But at least she’s out. And alive. And sitting still long enough for me to finally clean her ears.

We were in hospital for a week. She is recovering well, but I fear I took home a different child from the one I brought in. She’s been a public person now, with doctors and nurses and registrars and volunteers saying her name, touching her, telling us what’s best for her. One morning I came into her ward at 5Am and the nurses had hooked up the TV for her and were about to feed her jelly. She’s five months old, for Christ’s sake. There’s no need to expose her to the Danoz Direct shopping show, while feeding her refined sugar. I had a terse discussion with the nurse about the fact that she’s not on solids yet. Jelly’s not a solid, she argued. But the pole I’m about to shove up your arse is, I thought.

So happy to have Little O home, but so so tired. I feel like a bleak grey girl, no colour left. Also, I’m sure I have no internal organs, just cardboard outside and hollow inside.

And I also thought in the midst of this that I may be pregnant and having an early miscarriage. Then I went to the loo and realised it was just gas.

Lucky for Some

2005-06-18T18:29:00.000+10:00

Last Sunday night we avoided the fact that it was the Jewish festival of Shavuot and headed to a Lucky Dube concert. Was a big deal for us daggy new parents because it only started at 9:30PM, but we thought, fuck it, let's live large. It was at the Roxy in Parrammatta, an old scaly venue with the seats bashed in and the requisite broken toilets. (I went to the Ladies and a woman from Malawi told me 'they don't flush, but don't worry, I didn't make a poo'). There were at least a thousand people there - Africans, Aboriginals, Islanders, Maoris, barely a wasp or Yid in the mix. It was fantastic to be in that environment, the buzz, the smell of fresh weed, everyone making eye contact with each other, people dancing unselfconsciously, women who didn't look like they'd been starving for years a la Lara Skin Boyle. I felt like I was back in Joburg circa 1989. My friend K, who met us there, immediately mentioned that I was 'walking like a Joburger'. She explained that I bounced into the concert with my head up and a strut in my step. Like I didn't mind taking up space. She's a physiotherapist and told me the technical term for how I've been walking recently is 'Sydneysidus Avoidus'- head down, shoulders slumped, no eye contact. Made me realise how much I suppress of myself since I left South Africa.

The concert was two and a half hours and I didn’t stop dancing for a second of it. At one point myself and the people on either side of me in the moshpit put our arms around each other and sang along to the song "One" (Hey Rastaman, Hey European, Indian Man, we got to live together as one). Yes, pathetically simplistic and yes the dude on my right did in fact grab my arse on the word 'European', but for those few hours in the concert hall I felt connected to everyone around me in a way that doesn't happen when I'm walking the white streets of the Eastern suburbs. A little surprising weed infested Utopia.

I came home to a sleeping baby and wondered if she'll ever have a real connection to South Africa, or if it will just be that place her mum bangs on about when she's pissed off with over-regulated, white-bread Australia.

Rapunzel, Rapunzel, Let Down Your Fear

2005-06-08T21:01:00.000+10:00

I feel like I am cloistered in a damp, dark room, separated from the rest of the world. Looking through a little window but never venturing out. Not in a romantic Rapunzel-esque way. More like Ted Bundy in the days before he was electrocuted to death for biting debutantes' arses then killing them. Not that debutantes are my thing. I just feel a tad isolated. I watch other people being alive in the world and I'm amazed at their energy. These feelings may be linked to the fact that I did a two hour walk today up and down three hundred and fifty steps. With a pram. I swear I thought there was a boardwalk nearby. Just past those next hundred steps.

Another contributing factor to my feelings of exhaustion, nihilism and a slightly itchy punani is that I watched Tom Cruise on Oprah tonight. I reckon the Thetons from outer space that he believes in should come down to earth and split Tom Cruise's ego into thousands of tiny bits, to dish out to people with low self esteem. The man has enough ego to turn the most humble of souls into a self-centred wanker.

It must be fucking marvellous to be so sure of your own rightness. Or maybe I'm wrong.

God answers Prayers. 'No', says God.

2005-06-07T16:49:00.000+10:00

The title above is stolen from The Onion.

And it seems I have some answers from the Higher Being. Or at least from Nana Lil, who has my sock, and my forever friend in New York, B, whose source on what happened to Milli Vanilli was MTV.Com. It's a sad but fitting fable:

In 1991, Farian attempted to re-form Milli Vanilli with the original session vocalists (including female backup singer Gina Mohammed), this time crediting them and billing them as the Real Milli Vanilli, while also adding a Pilatus/Morvan look-alike named Ray Horton. However, the resulting Moment of Truth album flopped. Pilatus, meanwhile, was unable to deal with the sudden fall from grace; after mixing alcohol and prescription drugs, he slashed one of his wrists in a Los Angeles hotel, then called police and reporters to the scene, where he had to be removed from the balcony he was threatening to jump off of. Attempting to prove that they really could sing if given the chance, Pilatus and Morvan regrouped in 1993 as Rob & Fab; however, with their credibility damaged beyond repair, their self-titled debut reportedly sold only 2,000 copies total, despite an appearance on The Arsenio Hall Show. Farian had also attempted yet another album, this time renaming his group Try 'N' B and retooling the lineup again to enhance its visual appeal (which meant discarding the original singers); however, Sexy Eyes also stiffed. From there, Pilatus hit rock bottom. Beginning in 1995, he was arrested for several separate incidents in Los Angeles involving assaults (including one man he attacked with a metal lamp base), vandalism, and attempting to break into a car. Convicted of four different misdemeanors, he was sentenced to several months in jail in 1996, and did the first of numerous stints in drug rehab centers for his cocaine addiction. Pilatus eventually returned to Germany; in April 1998, his body was found in a Frankfurt hotel room after he mixed a fatal combination of pills and alcohol. Morvan continues to pursue a solo career.

This is What a Private School Education Buys

2005-06-05T16:14:00.000+10:00

Faith is a strange thing. For those who have it, everything that happens reinforces their belief. For those who don’t, a flame-breathing fairy could show them the hand of God Herself and they’d put it down to the hallucinogenic drugs they were slipped.

My brother and sister-in-law are religious people, so they see the loss of their baby as something that was destined, part of a greater plan. I asked my brother if he was angry. Angry? No, he said. I have no questions. I’m just sad. He explained that we can see and comprehend only a fraction of what is really going on, that the little soul of the baby was only meant to be here for the specific time that she was. That was enough to fufill her higher purpose. Those people in Mexico who live til 116 – they must have a whole lot of stuff their souls need to work out. I’m amazed at how calm my brother and sister-in-law are being. By amazed, I mean worried. They assure me that their belief doesn’t diminish their pain or sadness, it simply gives them a frame of reference within which to contexualise their loss.

Me, I’m just mad-angry. I’m if-onlying myself to bits.

If the Higher Being has a plan, I wish She’d let me in on it cos I have a whole lot of questions:

Questions for the Higher Being:

1. What ever happened to Milli Vanilli?

2. My fellow blogger and writer Ova Girl has been trying to have a baby for a while. If you had to build two ideal parents, her and her partner C would be them. Clever, loving, funny, kind, playful. Today I went to a far away part of the city. I saw a pram with a tiny set of week old twins sharing it. Each of them had a bottle in their mouths that they were desperately trying to suckle from. Being that they had no fine motor skills, they were spilling milk all over themselves. I looked up from the pram to see their mother, a cigarette dangling from her mouth, her eyes dead. She asked me if she could score some cash off me. The twins apparently needed a heroin fix. The desire to grab those babies and whisk them away from her overwhelmed me. She’d be relieved, wouldn’t she? It’s too much for her. There was another child hanging onto the pram who looked like he couldn’t stand to be alive a moment longer, like breathing was an effort he’d rather not make. I’d be doing her a favour. I’ll save these children before they get lost. I’ll give one to Ova Girl and one to my brother. Everyone will be happy.

Like Africans were happy when missionaries introduced them to Jesus.

I spent the trip home chastising myself for my middle class arrogance, for deigning to assume that I knew what was best for anyone. Another part of my brain was wondering if I’d get off kidnapping charges for mitigating circumstances. And there was a third bit, a little voice, that felt so sad for that mother who couldn’t see how beautiful these little souls were because her own reflection was bouncing off them.
What was my question again?

3. Why is it so hard to work out what I want?

4. For the last time, where the fuck is my other black sock?

Missing: Words. And Child.

2005-05-30T12:35:00.000+10:00

I lost my words for a couple of days. Mostly because of the absurdity of what’s been happening. Every time I switch on a light in the house, it blows. Our power fails at least three times a night. Our car broke down for the second time in as many weeks. Last time it was the starter engine, now it’s the timing belt. I suspect mechanics simply make these words up to mock car-less chumps like myself who have no choice but to cough up cash every time they mention a muffler. I never knew my car needed a timing belt. Isn’t a fan belt enough? (Any girl knows more than one belt at a time is just bad fashion sense).

So there we were on the highway. We had to push the car to the side, put Bub in the pram and start the long walk home, dodging tooting cars as we slugged down the highway.
Being a weekend, no one would tow the car and no mechanic would take it. This Morning (Monday) we finally got someone to take it. The Smug Mechanic opened the bonnet, then shook his head. What? Looking through me, to R (women are invisible to Smug Mechanic unless they’re holding a cocktail and wearing heels, apparently) he muttered ‘Not good, not good at all’. After a splay of words that involved ‘valves’ and ‘two to three thousand dollars’, he closed the bonnet. Then he mentioned other words like ‘difficult to get the parts’ and ‘at least a week. If you’re lucky’.

R and I walked out of there feeling like we’d been gang raped then sent an invoice. No matter, I said. We will attempt The Switcheroo. If we borrow my parents’ car (the only other car with a baby seat), my parents can borrow your parents second car, and we’ll be right. And so it was. Until… Ten Minutes Ago.

A call from R. My parents had a prang in his parent’s car. They’re okay but the car is written off. R’s parents are in a flat panic. My parents feel horribly guilty. And between us, we’re paying for the Smug Mechanic’s holiday to Reno.

And all this is clutter because there’s something else that’s sitting in my heart and head all the time. It’s something I haven’t had words for but I think I’ll find them now...

Two weeks ago, my brother’s wife was due with her baby. We were so excited that little O would have a cousin her age. Everything was going great with the pregnancy. At 39 weeks she had a scan that showed the baby was progressing wonderfully, and that she would deliver any day soon. A day later, she stopped feeling movement. Concerned, she called the doctor. He thought she was being over-anxious but told her to come in anyway, to put her mind at rest. He put the Doppler to her belly. No sound. The baby must have moved. Let’s try another position. Nothing. After ten attempts to find a heartbeat, the doctor stopped. The baby was gone.

g o n e

Where does a healthy, viable baby go exactly?

She was told to wait a day before they induce her. So that the baby can shrink.

s h r i n k

She spent a day with a lifeless baby inside of her, not telling anyone what she was going through. Then she spent the next day labouring through induced contractions, to give birth to death.

No explanation. The baby was perfect. A little girl. My brother looked at the baby but my sister-in-law couldn’t look, couldn’t stand to have the image of this perfect little still being indelibly marked into her memory.

They buried her little body the next day. My sister in law still leaks milk for a baby who will never suckle. An almost-being, all that potential gone.

And there I was, worrying about my car.

Rest in Peace, little soul.

History Vomits Itself Up

2005-05-27T12:00:00.000+10:00

And so it begins. My chubby nine-year-old niece is being sent to her first dietician. I want to grab onto her parents with such force that I knock the sense into their flabby heads. I want to scream ‘Nooooooooooooooooooo’ in a way that echoes perpetually in their silly skulls. Bright, funny, loving, my niece is a delightful child. She’s reliable, mature for her age, and, as her family perpetually tells her, she’s the ‘Good One’. So what does she do when she doesn’t feel like being the Good One?

Eat.

I’ve seen her overeat when she’s anxious, bored, frustrated, tired, upset. I’ve seen her sneak food. I’ve heard her mother telling her she’s not “allowed” ice-cream after dinner. I’ve heard her father say, in front of her, to her mother “Your Daughter is eating chocolate again”. I know the signs, and, sadly, I can predict exactly what’s going to happen. There will be some success with the diet. At first. She will be a Good Girl and eat her 30 grams of cereal and grapefruit every morning and she’ll lose weight. Everyone will approve and compliment her. The diet’s a success. By Golly, she’s CURED!

But no one will ever address the real issue of why she overeats.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, she’ll start to gain weight. More than she lost. Her parents will tell each other “Your Daughter is being bad. Maybe she needs a new dietician?”.

By the time she’s my age, she’ll know the calorific value of everything from a jellybean to a piece of bitter gourd. But she won’t know what to do when she’s alone and sad and the compulsion to consume an entire tub of ice cream consumes her. It won’t matter that she knows the glycemic index of a carrot when she’s ridden with guilt and disgust at herself and her body. No dietician will help her deal with feelings of emptiness that can only be filled with three Kit-Kats, a jumbo size Crunchie and an entire packet of Oreos eaten in quick succession.

I wish I could go back to five minutes before I went to my first dietician, aged nine. I wish someone could warn me that I was heading down a path that would end in anorexia at age ten, a lifetime of deprivation followed by bingeing, and a never-ending battle with my weight. A battle that is narcissistic and dull and exhausting. I wish someone had asked me why I overate. Like my niece, I was The Strong One. I was robust, reliable, bright, mature, trustworthy. I wasn’t allowed to be vulnerable or weak. I wish someone had helped me address the issues behind my eating instead of putting me on a diet. But as I see my niece standing on the precipice of the same destructive pit I fell into, I shout out to her parents not to push her over. But they won’t hear me.

I can only hold out helpless hands and wait at the bottom with three Kit-Kats, a Jumbo Crunchie and a packet of Oreos, ready to catch her.

How can I Fuck Up? Let Me Count the Ways...

2005-05-19T22:16:00.000+10:00

So the producer, LK, came over to get my writing samples. At three this morning I woke in fright with a terrible realisation. One of the articles I gave her was a film review of a film her boss produced. I panned it. I believe my exact quote was that the film "overreached" itself and that it raised interesting questions and then "attempted to resolve them in a way that was facile at best". Facile at best? What sort of undergraduate wanker uses phrases like that to assess the film of a much higher being than herself? Given that I hadn't recently read the work that I was giving LK (yes, I gave her work that I couldn't stand to re-read), I didn't realise that I had panned the film. The way I remember it, it was a neutral-ish review. To contexualise - this film starred the luscious, lovely Kate Winslet. I remember quite enjoying the film but at the time of writing the review I was a lowly freelancer trying to make a buck. Like all lowly, bitter, impoverished, morally-bereft STUPID STUPID freelancers I did this by panning other people's work. Oh Lord, Karma is so cruel.I texted the producer at 3.05 AM asking her to please remove that article before she gives my work to her bosses. I hope the fact that I woke her up, ripped into her boss and clearly didn't read the work I was forcing her to read is not held against me. That's not too much to ask, is it?

An Igloo with a View

2005-05-15T16:06:00.000+10:00

Eskimos are always being held up as some sort of freakishly idealised anomaly of modern society. People go on about – did you know Eskimos have hundreds of words for snow, what amazing insight they have into nature and although Eskimos eat high fat diets they rarely get heart disease. Each time we hear about Eskimos there’s some tacit judgement about how we should be living our lives. I’ve never been convinced. I’ve always thought we were just making The Other exotic. I imagine Eskimo children saying - did you know Australians have hundreds of words for alcohol, isn’t that genius?. Until I heard this: Eskimo women spend the first month after they give birth holed up in bed while people bring food to them and speak to them in high pitched sing-song voices as if they’re infants. After that first month they return to their duties as mothers and wives, raising kids and helping their fisherman husbands, but for that one glorious, lush month they get to be babies again themselves. That’s truly inspired.

I’m going to become one of those people who quotes Eskimo wisdom. Especially when I want R to bring me tea in bed...

Ode to a Miniature Love

2005-05-13T22:46:00.000+10:00

Am totally unsure what work to show the Uber-producers. Am feeling slightly paralysed. By slightly I mean tremendously. All my work suddenly feels too flippant, or too earnest. Too cheesy, or too cynical. Too hot, too cold, not cooked in the middle, overcooked...

Little O continues to delight me, however. She's at the stage of kicking tiny feet into the air, grabbing onto things and squealing with delight. When R comes home, she is so excited to see him she starts panting and beaming at the same time. "I know you. You're that guy I sort of look like". When someone else is holding her and she catches a glimpse of me, she lights up. Not since my Afrikaans next-door-neighbour, Yirkie, had a crush on me has someone been so unequivocally excited to see me.

And there is that constant amazement at having been a conduit for this whole new soul who's suddenly in the world with her own personality and her own sense of humour and delight and spirit. It's bizarre that so many people go through this and yet it feels totally unique, as if no person before has ever experienced the wonder of being a parent...

Wake Up, I'm Fat!

2005-05-13T15:42:00.000+10:00

Today I decided to dye my hair Siren Red. Partly to draw attention away from the fact that my arse is Ambulance Large. I also had my very long hair cut short in manner of romantic comedy heroine who realises that her life is changing and she can no longer be held back by her fear of intimacy. Only romantic comedy heroines don't wear dresses that come in size Tank, Elephant or Tent.

Feel strong desire to fall pregnant again so I can have a legitimate excuse for my gargantuan belly. That probably doesn't rank as one of the top ten reasons to bring a new soul into the world, does it?

Hopefully no-one will report me to the Smother's Group.

O is four months old today!

Tiger Lilies are Raunchy

2005-05-12T16:00:00.000+10:00

R bought me a bunch of tiger lilies for mother's day. They've started blooming and each time I walk past them I have the urge to ravish R. There is something dreadfully suggestive about their luscious pink lips. I've pasted in a picture of one for inspiration.

2005-05-11T22:57:00.000+10:00

This tiger-lily is making me horny.

Clear as Puddles When Stepped In with Muddy Galoshes

2005-05-10T04:47:00.000+10:00

How I envy normal people. People who call radio stations to enter competitions, who fetch their kids from school and eat sugared cereals, people who have real jobs in banks and gyms and law firms. I’ve always felt like I was floating somewhere to the left of them, somehow removed from the forward swooshing of real life. I learned very young to Act As If. Act As If you care what the footy score is. Act As If you’re talking to this man because you’re interested in his theory on why reality TV will never last, when all you’re wondering about is whether he’s a slippery fuck, the kind who seems to leak sperm through his every pore.

I keep questioning whether moving to Australia was some horrible mistake that I should have extricated myself from years ago and am now too far gone to remedy.

And I watched The Apprentice. It must be cool to be as sure of things as Donald Trump appears to be. Clarity, no matter how misguided, must be wonderful.

Rich for a Night

2005-05-09T17:15:00.000+10:00

My lovely friend K treated me to a night at the lush restaurant Tetsuya's. The thirteen course degustation menu was like sliding through velvet. There were other people there. Rich people for whom this was an ordinary evening. I felt like someone would expose me in my faux suede boots and polyester skirt. But the waiters all played along, allowing me to pretend too. Can't sleep and am obsessiong about the truffle parmesan butter. Oh sweet truffle parmesan butter, when will you be mine again?

My First Mother's Day

2005-05-09T00:06:00.000+10:00

Sponge cake is pointless. There's nothing chocolatey about it at all. I shall never buy it again for mother's day.

O is 16 weeks now and delighting us with her giggles. I feel so much more connected to other parents and children than I ever have, like suddenly I'm hooked into life rather than just observing it and writing about it. It's a very real, present feeling. So strange for me who is more comfortable being outsider / observer. Also am forced to be physically present for someone else. Have always been so involved in the intellectual, cerebral aspect that it is refreshing to be grounded in the physical (am aware of the irony of me analysing it).

I went to visit a friend in the maternity hospital today. She had a little girl on Thursday. Tiny, 2.6kgs. Can't believe O was that little. So sweet and scrunched up. My friend is so funny, bombarding the midwives with questions. Then asking me everything, as if if I tell her all the answers she'll pass the motherhood exam. I explained to her about the startle reflex. She just thought the bub was cold.

This time is so fleeting and hard to clutch onto.

Today we went to a grower's market and R ate snails. I admit I tried some snail pate. I told R not to ever mention it again as the thought is making me sick. So, instead of talking he made the snail symbol. I have now banned the snail symbol. R argues that symbols can't be banned. (Incidentally, also on the banned list are the words "Khlav Kalash" from The Simpsons episode where they go to New York. R kept asking me to make him some Khlav Kalash. After 4 days I banned it. He has not found a symbol for Khlav Kalash).

I'll be a Doctor, yes...

2005-05-04T12:50:00.000+10:00

Went to a talk last night by the head of Paediatrics at Royal North Shore Hospital. It covered the basic things that can go wrong with kids (choking, burning, drowning, becoming liberal voters) and how to deal with them. Everyone else found it frightening, but I kept thinking "Mmm, I'm enjoying listening to a medical lecture, maybe I should study medicine after all, or maybe something para-medical. I could be a nurse. It would be noble and interesting... but white isn't a flattering colour for me, and I'm not sure about the bedpan factor... Then again, nurses have long been the object of male fantasies. Maybe being a nurse will up my sex appeal... not that I want lecherous old men with gangrene leering at me as I connect their catheters... ". In my haze of fantastical self-involvement, I managed to miss the three most important things to do if you suspect a child has meningococcal disease.

Suppose I'm destined to be a writer after all.

A Mother of a Whinge

2005-04-30T21:15:00.000+10:00

My friend L has a new baby too. She's perpetually nervous. Has the baby had enough to eat? Too much? Did she eat too fast? Too slow? She's crying. Should I rock her? Sing to her? Play with her? Am I over stimulating her? PUT THE BABY BACK IN AND TELL HER TO COME OUT AGAIN WHEN YOU'VE CALMED DOWN, I say. Not sure she'll be asking for my mothering advice again.

Have done my back in. Not even in a glamorous, sporting way. I was in the bathroom and I bent down to pick up the toilet roll then couldn't get up again. Just yesterday my mother was telling me how fit and healthy I'm looking. Serves me right for being mean and spiteful. Am walking around in manner of elderly war veteran who wasn't quite the same after he came back from the camps. No medals though. Have taken copious amounts of Voltarin in hope of finding messiah and shutting L up.

Nothing yet.

2005-04-28T22:50:00.000+10:00

Me in midflight

Tears on the Dashboard, Vomit on my Shirt

2005-04-28T18:46:00.000+10:00

After several attempts to get the bub and the dog into the car to go to a mothers group meeting, I finally set off. Only to discover a splattering of baby vom on my fresh black shirt. I suppose the one place it's appropriate to turn up to avec vomet is a mothers' group. Still feeling tense from yesterday's dreadful attempt to return to work. Then they played a new song called "The Special Two" by Missy Higgins on the radio. There's a line in it about how when we're young we have an image of what our life will be like. That was all I needed. I started to weep. Embarrasingly loudly. With occasional pig like snorts and wails. It's not even a particularly good song.

Ehem.

My Brain Hurts Like Dysentery

2005-04-27T21:02:00.000+10:00

Oh Horror. Spent the day with my script editor, otherwise known as The Most Successful Writer in Australia. Was very excited to have babysitter for the day so I could focus on work and feel like a functioning member of society for five hours. Within seconds, we got stuck. Spiralled into an abyss of terror where the script that I’ve spent a good part of three years working on suddenly seemed to have no merits whatsoever. I had to keep reminding him that he used to think the story was great, the characters interesting. We were sucked into a vortex of negativity. He told me the script makes a good paperweight. Should have done that medical degree when I had the chance and been a paediatric surgeon by now. Have this awful feeling in the pit of my stomach that is making me want to hurl. If I had a medical degree I’d know how to deal with that too.

Wonder whether it’s too late to pretend I’m eighteen and start again. Become important doctor and save children's lives.