Never a dull moment ...

Picking up the pieces...

2013-08-15T10:12:00.000+10:00

At 6pm last night I said to my daughters, ‘Now, remember. Tonight’s the night that I have to bury Patrick.’

I was naively expecting sympathy/concern in my time of fictional-character induced melancholy, only to have my 12-year-old, without skipping a beat, say 'Can I dig the hole?'

I’m sorry?

What with this blow and last week’s now-infamous ‘Whoop-dee-doo’ from my husband (upon hearing news of Patrick’s death at 6am, while groggy from sleep), I am beginning to feel as though my family don’t truly understand me...

I realised last night that I’m exactly like Nina Proudman (although not quite as neurotic and certainly nowhere near as fashionable). The way she responded to Patrick’s death (stunned togetherness) is how I respond to death.

The way she lost it over the rocking horse is the way I eventually lose it during grief - triggered by something small and meaningful which opens a floodgate.

The fact that my nearly fifteen-year-old’s rocking horse was sitting right next to the television when I watched the episode didn’t help. I kept having Nina-like visions of my baby sitting on it in her little pink onesie... rocking, rocking... (Waaah! Patrick will never see his daughter doing that! Waaah! My baby is growing up too fast! - Etc.)

When I watched the movie P.S. I Love You - I howled. My husband hovered uncomfortably in the doorway, throwing Kleenex boxes (plural) into the enclosure and saying stupid things like ‘Turn it off if it’s this upsetting!’

What on earth? Why would I do that? I LOVE bawling myself stupid, to the point of wondering whether parts of my body will ever return to normal from the heaving.

The thing about Offspring last night was that it was brilliant. It was like watching brilliant people enter a disaster scene and gently pick up the fragments of our shattered hearts and tenderly piece them back together in something resembling the promise of Season 5.

I was in awe of Asher Keddie. I was in awe of Kat Stewart. And I was mostly fighting off a huge dose of ‘I’m not a writer. THEY are WRITERS.’

People wonder why the death of a fictional character could possibly have infiltrated Twitter, Facebook, commercial media and the ABC in quite the way that losing Patrick has. People think it’s frivolous. It’s non-news. We should get over ourselves.

From the time that I flicked off the TV at 9.40pm until 9am this morning, here are three things that happened in my real-life circle of friends:

Someone who has been trying to conceive for nearly two years and found out she was pregnant two days ago, started to cramp and bleed.

Someone was told by her mum that her little sister has opened up that she’s been molested by a family friend for six years.

Someone lost her mother unexpectedly.

I think the reason Patrick’s death has rippled as deeply through our culture as it has is that we see in Offspring what appear to be real people, just like us. It’s written and acted so well that that it’s hard to believe we’re not watching reality television. The lines between their fiction and our experience are blurred.

Our lives are hard. So, for an hour a week we were living vicariously through theirs. We thought Nina was about to get the fairytale that so often eclipses us.

Now we’re reminded of our own rocking horses. Our own sisters. Our own marriages. And we’ve been snapped out of our little Wednesday night bubble of escapism into ‘Life’s not FAIR!’

And that’s when writers Debra Oswald, John Edwards and Imogen Banks tip-toed in and deftly reminded us that ‘it goes on’.

People die and babies are born. Out of the darkest pit of grief will bubble humour, when you least expect it. Death often brings out the best in people.

I just sat there, eating banana chips on auto-pilot (comfort food, you see), shaking my head at how exquisitely it was all handled.

And let’s face it. If it gets too much - if losing our leading man is too unbearable - we can always turn to Dr Lawrence.

Mark my words - that man is going to step up to the plate in his understated and highly-professional manner, with his A+ listening skills and his clingy jumpers. He’ll unleash the come-hither expression that he’s never quite unleashed as yet because that would have been completely unprofessional during couples counselling.

But, after a suitable period of time has passed (eg. we should be good to go by May 2014), then I predict that ‘Patrick who?’ will start trending on Twitter like no-one’s business.

Because I still want Nina’s fairytale, dammit.

And I’m telling you now - if the good psychologist gets hit by a bus and goes the way of the good paediatrician and good anaesthetist before him, I am breaking up with Offspring and we are never, ever getting back together.

Not ever.

Ain't no sunshine now he's gone

2013-08-08T09:14:00.002+10:00

When Molly died on A Country Practice, my sister and I weren’t allowed to watch the end of the episode. Our parents thought we were too young and impressionable to see something so sad.

WHY WERE THEY NOT HERE LAST NIGHT? Thirty-nine is young and impressionable! I needed them to send me to my room - banning me from losing Patrick in a similar manner! Gah! The tears...

Actually, I fib. I didn’t shed one tear. Not one.

That’s how upset I am. I don’t cry at funerals, either. I spring into action. I become Suzy Homemaker and start baking.

A friend started baking last night. She baked pikelets and made a cup of tea, then read the caption on the tea bag, which said “I’ve left you temporarily. Stay Strong (like this tea)”, then posted a pic of the tea and pikelets on Facebook with the caption: “So devastated about Offspring had to make pikelets... and now Patrick is talking to me through my tea! May also have to boycott Channel 10. — feeling incredulous.” and a sad face.

Facebook needs to revise its emoticons because there isn’t one distraught enough to accurately convey how it feels when your favourite fictional character accidentally walks into a slow-moving car en route to his partner’s baby shower, having already lost his first baby and having finally, FINALLY sorted out his drug addiction and checkered relationship (ably assisted by the beautiful counsellor, Lawrence).

If only he’d been wearing a bear on his head!! It might have saved him! (and given us once last visual to see us through our grief...)

My husband has the flu (the real one) and slept in the other room. He staggered into our bedroom in the pitch dark at 6am and instead of asking him how he feels I said ‘Patrick’s dead.’

Too blunt?

And you know what he said? (I hope it’s the fever, otherwise what have I married?) He said this:

“Whoop-dee-doo.”

Argh! I can hardly type!

I blame my uni friend’s sister for all of this. She was the very first girlfriend of Mathew Le Nevez at Telopea Park Primary in the 80s. If only she hadn’t so irresponsibly let him slip through her fingers (he dumped her unfortunately, but I refuse to believe it was his fault because he’s Patrick) then he wouldn’t now have an American girlfriend, and might not be so tempted to build a career in the States, forcing Offspring’s hapless writers to murder him so brutally at such a crucial, crucial moment in our TV-viewing lives... (not that there would ever have been a good time).

And y’know - to the haters (I’m looking at you, man who I married, whose own uni mate is Richard Glover, partner of Debra Oswald, writer of Offspring - and even then we couldn’t save Patrick) I’ll say this:

It’s just a TV show.

It is.

There is real tragedy in the world and on our screens constantly. My family is dealing with a personal story of heartbreak at the moment. Yesterday, a friend found out that her aunt has three months to live at fifty-four. The toddler who was best man for his parents on the weekend, died of leukemia. Two brothers were strangled to death by a python at a sleepover. The Ohio Kidnapper’s house was demolished. People starved to death, were shot, bombed, murdered, drowned seeking asylum and died of hideous, hideous illnesses.

Our hearts are broken in real life, every single day, and one way that we numb ourselves from the pain is by escaping into fictional worlds, falling in love with make-believe characters and becoming completely engrossed in their lives, thanks to brilliant writers (who occasionally make a mistake so catastrophic that they may never be forgiven).

It’s not new. People have escaped into storytelling as a self-preservation measure since the dawn of time...

Back when cavemen hunted bears, slung them over their naked torsos and dragged them home to their women-folk...

Sob!

I need a cup of tea.

It's not always blissful at WorkLifeBliss

2013-01-26T13:04:00.000+11:00

My sister and I have five lovely kids, except when they’re not. We set off on a family expedition to see Peppa Pig perform for Australia Day, minus my husband who had sensibly gone to what I term ‘Geek Fest’ (an annual wargaming expo).

The six-year-old wouldn’t go near the stage because she ‘hates people dressed up as things’ but, other than that, it was perfectly divine and quite exciting when the military jets flew directly overhead and scared the bats out of the trees, after which the two-year-old kept yelling, ‘Wombats up a tree! Wombats up a tree!’

Thirty minutes later, the concert finished and you’d think that after a combined total of twenty years of parenting between us, my sister and I would have recognised the arrival of that sweet spot where all of the available fun has been squeezed out of an event and it’s time to quit before you do something you’ll regret.

But no. ‘Let’s wander up to the rides and find an ice cream!’ I suggested, madly - my brother-in-law having bought me my second coffee in a fortnight.

Of course the Pig concert had been packed with HUNDREDS of kids. The rides were right beside it. Every single child and parent was heading for the rides and ice cream en masse, many of them crying from over-excitement and lack of a morning sleep. Gah!

We abandoned the jumping castle idea when the ticket queue stretched beyond 100m. The toddler lost it. ‘I want bouncy castle! I want bouncy castle!’ (It would have been his second ever ride.)

‘Let’s go to the playground!’ I said, and he went limp from the armpits and began flopping like a dying fish.

The 14-year-old queued for breakfast. The playground was gridlocked. The tween refused to walk back for an ice cream on her own because she’d left her phone at home after accidentally racking up a $592 bill in her first month. The four-year-old starting harping about the super slide.

Abort! Abort!

The teen was extracted reluctantly from the Dutch pancake queue - the toddler kicking and bawling and going limp and getting heavier every second for the miles and miles and miles that we seemed to have to trudge through a throng of overtired families (even though it was only 10.45am) and back to the car.

Fellow parents actually approached us on the journey at times and offered reassuring comments, like ‘Don’t worry. I know how it feels!’ (We were THAT family. Crying in stereo while people stare and say to themselves, ‘SO GLAD IT’S NOT ME!’)

‘Look!’ I exclaimed, in that exaggerated distraction technique manner: ‘It’s a man with two puppies in a bike basket and one of the puppies is wearing a helmet!’

‘Nooooooo!!!!‘ Master Two yelled, ‘Not say puppy wearing a helmet Mummy! Not say puppy wearing a helmet! Waaaaaaahhhh!!!! I pick you up, Mummy!! I pick you up!!!’

By the time we reached the car I was drenched in sweat and on the verge of a coronary, feeling like I'd climbed the Kokoda Track lugging 16.5kg of kid on my shoulders in the humidity. We jammed him in the carseat, stiff as a board and wailing, and I pulled out into traffic, narrowly missing the official vehicle of the Vice Chief of the Defence Force and somehow becoming tangled in a convoy of the 21-gun-salute canons being towed back to Duntroon at a snail’s pace, by twenty-one military trucks.

‘I want mine hat!!! I want mine bouncy castle! I want mine ice cream!!! I want mine wombats up a tree!! I want mine rugby game!’ reverberated on continuous loop, at shrill volume from the back seat.

‘Can we drive through Maccas? I’m starving...’ begged the teen, as I jammed the brakes to avoid colliding with a massive gun.

Was she kidding me?

Anyway, we’re only home for a little while. I’m taking the older kids and their friends back in there for the fireworks later this afternoon, and filing the idea optimistically under ‘what could possibly go wrong?’

2pm UPDATE: There is now a severe thunderstorm warning coinciding with the fireworks.

8pm UPDATE:

My 'what could possibly go wrong' comment was a trifle prophetic.

One of my daughter's 14-year-old friends lives in Belconnen, and her parents were out tonight at a wedding. She intended to meet us in Civic for the frivolities - catching the bus there - and I put two and two together (ie. drunken Australia day revellers and a gorgeous 14-year-old girl alone) and said 'We'll pick you up from home.'

Next thing, we were driving through a SEVERE storm, which started in the north and followed us south home - trees literally falling over in front of us on the road, fire engines everywhere and, by the time we reached home, thigh-high flash flooding to negotiate with three teens in the back seat discussing nail polish and the top 100 countdown.

Eventually - crawling along at about 40km/hour with lightning bolts crashing to the ground nearby and water splashing a metre above our car as we drove through flash flooding, I said, 'SHUSH, GIRLS! This is actually more exciting than the promised fireworks if you would only get off your phones and look out your windows!'

Came home to find inches of water lapping our back door and decided to give up on celebrating Australia Day this year. I love my sunburnt country, with droughts, fire, floods and, at last count, five tornadoes (and that's just today!)

Last year was way better. We attempted a picnic at the Cotter and had a flat tyre on the way, changed that, got to the Cotter and it was closed ...

Recollections of the Canberra Firestorm - 10 years on

2013-01-17T15:38:00.003+11:00

One Saturday morning in January dawned unusually hot.

Mark had been in the garden since daybreak and the heat was getting to him by nine o’clock. I remember sitting on the front doorstep waiting for a headache pill to take effect (trust PMS to strike at the least convenient time), and watching charcoal black leaves fall from the sky into our garden.

The flight path to Canberra airport had been diverted over our house. As they do most summers, bushfires had been burning for a couple of weeks on the Brindabella Mountains and visibility must have been low. Still—no one had pressed the panic button, so I took the girls shopping for school shoes.

We emerged from the Plaza at lunchtime and noticed the smoke was thicker, but we’d been living with that for weeks so it didn’t concern us. Matilda wanted to show Nanna and Pa the new shoes so we called in and chatted about the spot-fires on a friend’s property south of Canberra the night before. The wind was picking up a bit and I made a move to go home.

I threw on a change of clothes for afternoon tea in trendy Manuka. I was meeting two of my closest friends, Lauren and Kate, for a catch-up. No sooner had we ordered our coffee and cake, than Lauren received a phone call from her husband. Their suburb, Duffy, was apparently on high alert for bushfires.

Bush fires? What bushfires? Not the ones on the ranges, surely? There had been no warning that these could reach urban areas. Two minutes later he phoned her again to say they were now on alert to evacuate! She pushed back her chair and was out of that restaurant in half a second, leaving Kate and I to stare at each other in confusion.

Not a minute later, Kate received a phone call to say that her suburb was on alert, roads were blocked, and our thoughts flew immediately to her children who were at home with her husband. This couldn’t be happening. Her phone rang again and it was Lauren, who yelled, ‘I’m driving towards home and looking at a huge orange firewall over the mountains in southern Tuggeranong—go home NOW!’

Kate went pale and fled, leaving me sitting alone at a table in an up-market Manuka restaurant contemplating three pieces of untouched mortal sin triple-layer chocolate mousse cake and various hot and cold beverages, thinking ‘What am I supposed to do now?’ The obvious course of action was to start scoffing the first slice, scull the cappuccino and phone our friend Jessica in Melbourne.

‘Jess—I’m in Manuka and Lauren and Kate have rushed home to evacuate from the bushfires...’

‘What?’

‘The bushfires...and I’m here by myself with all this cake...’

‘What fires?’

I mean—do I eat all three slices, or do I ask for a doggy bag—but then, what is the etiquette about doggy bags in a natural disaster? Oh! Unbelievable! Jacinta Mitchell and Sally Watkins are walking past the restaurant.’ (They persecuted our group at school and I hadn’t seen them for eleven years.) ‘Do you think I should tap on the window and ask them in to help me out with this cake?’

‘Emma! What is the story with the fires?’ Jessica pressed, with a social worker’s calmness—valiantly attempting to focus my hysteria on something other than the problem of too much cake.

‘Well—I don’t really know. Weston and Tuggeranong are on fire and half of Canberra is preparing to evacuate...’ And at the sound of my own words, common sense finally broke through and it hit me like a bullet to the head. Bushfires...evacuation...What am I doing here having a coronary over this bloody cake when I should be at home?

‘Actually, Jess—never mind. I have to go home! I’ll call you later.’

I jumped in the car, hurtled out of the underground car park and tore down the Monaro Highway, driving into what looked like the heart of the firestorm (but I wasn’t anywhere near it). An emergency warning siren I’d never heard in my life was blaring over the radio and a clearly shaken newsreader was saying:

This is an official emergency services announcement. There has been a rapid deterioration in the bush fire situation in the ACT. Residents in the following areas [long list of just about everywhere] are on high alert and are urged to return to their homes...

Rapid deterioration? What, exactly, did that mean? On cue it suddenly became incredibly dark. Thick red-black smoke billowed over the city. Sirens were wailing, everyone was driving with their headlights on—we were in the throes of Armageddon. At least that’s what it felt like at our turn-off so I can’t begin to imagine the sight in Weston where the fires were out of control.

I tore up our street and saw Mark standing on the front steps talking into the mobile phone. The second I pulled into the driveway he raced past me, grabbed the keys and said, ‘The depot’s under threat, I’ve got to go.’ And that was that.

I went inside, grabbed Ellie’s radio and listened in horror while we were given instructions about how to prepare our houses for the onslaught of fire and I thought, ‘But this doesn’t happen to us...’ while Matilda ran around the house in an orderly fashion shutting all the windows.

‘What are you doing, Matilda?’ I said, and she turned to me calmly and explained, ‘The lady on the radio said to shut all the windows to keep out the fire.’ With this, I collapsed into a lounge chair and thought, ‘Well—that’s a relief! At least the four-year-old in this household has the situation under control.’

Half an hour later Mark called from Weston yelling, ‘I’m surrounded by flames, the police academy is on fire, the archery range is on fire, we’ve got 2,500 litres of diesel and a storage shed full of fuel and we’re going to lose the depot...’ Then I heard a male voice shout, ‘Get out of here mate, this whole place is going up in two minutes...’

And the phone went dead.

Letting fly with a string of uncharacteristic expletives too colourful to reprint in a book that my grandmother-in-law will probably read, I set about phoning everyone I know (which was essentially Mum—several times—as everyone else was evacuating).

I was vaguely aware of Matilda wandering sensibly around the house gathering precious items, like photographs and Barbie dolls and piling them up in the study. I actually remember thinking, ‘That’s good, she’s doing that, I’m free to panic...’

Mark called from a choked Hindmarsh Drive, ‘Sorry about that, a huge fireball exploded in a pine tree, went over my head and set alight the eucalyptus I was standing next to...then a guy ran out of the fire towards me and jumped in the car and I drove him to his family...’

Big sigh! My husband, the hero.

‘Are you CRAZY—standing there beside highly flammable materials with fireballs exploding overhead...!’

But he was out of the worst of the firestorm and on his way to his parents’ house in Chifley (where the children and I had been an hour earlier) because the paddock over their back fence was ablaze.

‘Are you okay?’ he asked.

‘We’re fine. Everything is completely under control here. Go to your parents,’ I instructed, with a significant degree of faux togetherness.

‘Look after the house!’ he commanded, and the phone went dead again.

Right. The house...

It dawned on me that I was the only responsible adult present, but unfortunately I was neither feeling grown-up nor acting in the slightest way responsibly. It also occurred to me when I found Matilda opening one of the windows she had previously closed and yelling, ‘Fire, fire, go away!’ at the top of her voice, that I should probably take measures to reassure the children.

I also realised that I should buy a new hose. And some storage containers for the considerable collection of important things I started helping Matilda to assemble. At the same time I was searching in vain for the calm control I had exhibited in all previous emergency situations. There was the night Minstrel the dog was in the throes of the death rattle and I stoically transported him to the vet to be put down. And when Rachel and I heroically raced Mum to casualty when she was choking on a chicken bone, and that other incident when my grandmother stood on a crochet hook... But then I realised I had never had to deal with the sort of chaos that was unfolding second by second over the radio, accompanied by the surreal darkness, smoke and absence of Indiana Mark.

Mum, meanwhile, was struggling to motivate Dad, who apparently suffers from the opposite of panic in situations like these and wouldn’t budge from the lounge. She practically had the esky stuffed with emergency rations of gourmet sandwiches by this stage, and it was all she could do to get him outside and on the roof to ram wet shredded sheets down the drainpipes.

With their house eventually attended to, they came round to do the same with ours, freeing me to gather essentials from the local shops. The shopping docket reveals a lot about my thought process in an emergency:

250 g dairy milk chocolate
dark chocolateTim Tams
Cheezels
sun-dried capsicum dip
watering can
hose
washing basket
six-pack of 99% fat-free yoghurt
aromatherapy lavender scented candle

Half way down an aisle I received a call saying a car-load of refugees from Chifley were on their way (including another family who had evacuated there from Kambah) so I also grabbed:

1 kg mince
salad
rice
sausages
Coke (caffeine-free and diet)
two spare light bulbs
the latest Women’s Weekly

At the checkout, I managed to engender widespread panic amongst fellow shoppers and staff, regaling them (and others who gathered nearby to eavesdrop) with my cake story, the adventures of Mark and the fireball, the fact that my friends may have lost their homes, and several other panicky snippets. I left the place reeling in a state of shock and headed home again under a midnight-black sky at 4.30 pm. I struggled in with the groceries, only to learn that the Chifley party had been forced to turn back—blocked by a wall of fire at the end of their street.

Oh great! My husband was trapped by fire for a second time in an hour—this time with my beloved in-laws—and I was, yet again, inundated with surplus food and starting to panic. The full extent of the disaster was only beginning to unravel when we got the first images on the news—and when I spoke with Lauren who had left their suburb with the house behind them in flames and very little hope.

Ellie was going crazy with the Cheezels by this stage. I looked out the window and saw them both playing jump-rope in the backyard with the new hose—black leaves raining down on them, smoke, darkness—their father and grandparents trapped in an inferno...And where were the diaries I wrote when I was fourteen? This, unbelievably, became my new focus! I had to have those diaries. I would not lose that part of my life and so I ripped apart every corner of the house in a frantic search. When Mark came home—covered in ash and soot—he wondered how the place had been ravaged by disaster, when the fires themselves were kilometres off.

By nine o’clock that night I was exhausted. We were glued to the radio and becoming marginally concerned about fires to the south at Richardson. ‘Marginally concerned’ because once Mark walked in I was instantly transformed into a rational adult. We eventually fell asleep with the radio and TV on listening for updates.

At four o’clock in the morning I woke up feeling nauseous, and for the next twelve hours was combating Rachel’s gastro virus, which subsequently spread to Ellie (as everything does). This is just what you don’t need when fires are threatening to jump the highway to your south, and you still can’t locate your teenage diaries.

Mark, meanwhile, was called back to work to move trucks of smouldering mulch to another location as they posed some kind of threat (possibly to the fuel stores that miraculously survived). He reentered the disaster zone and was shocked by what he found and the extent of the tragedy.

Sunday was spent largely in disbelief and thankfulness, and the weather was strangely calm. Firebreaks were being dug all around the western side of the city, but it remained to be seen whether they would have any effect.

Mark left me in charge the next day while his boss flew in from Melbourne to inspect the devastation.
After three days of waiting and watching I knew the drill. Provided I didn’t have to climb up on the roof (fear of heights) and could keep the girls from drowning in the baths that remained full of water, I knew I’d cope even if the worst should happen.

For us, thankfully, it didn’t.

This is a chapter from Wits' End Before Breakfast! Confessions of a Working Mum (available here).

Where we left off

2012-11-27T21:20:00.000+11:00

When I was little, my best friend Michelle* and I planned to dig a tunnel that would link our two backyards from several streets away. We had that kind of intense childish optimism that rendered anything possible and we imagined our own delight at being able to sneak into each other’s backyards through our private passage-way...

Michelle and I met in 1973, when I was three months old and she was six weeks. Our parents were friends and we went on to have the kind of all-encompassing friendship that lit up the world. In her company, everything was warm and predictable and safe – even first steps and first days at pre-school and primary school.

We formed a secret club on weekends to solve suburban mysteries (I still have the minutes of our meetings). As it turned out, there was a disappointingly low number of mysteries in our suburb, but while we were searching for one, we uncovered a dead bird under our back hedge and gave it a formal funeral service and grave site, complete with eulogy and headstone.

We shared lunches and make-believe and dreams. We joined the lower-brass section of the school band together, became Brownies and - as gangly tweens - had those first, whispered conversations about what was happening to our bodies in the back seat of her parents’ car waiting for her mum to lock up the Guide Hall. It was Michelle who let me know that I was reassuringly normal, and vice versa.

Life was confusing then, and exciting. The upheaval of moving to different high schools threw challenges at our friendship that have been long forgiven, but we drifted apart.

So it was onto a new school. New friends. (Wonderful friends, who I adore with all of my heart.)

No more Michelle, though.

Fast forward through two jam-packed decades and, in our mid-thirties, we found each other again. I

can’t remember how - but we met up, and started remembering.

A lot happens in your life between the ages of twelve and thirty-six. It’s the stuff that my high school ‘inner circle’ understands and knows backwards, and helped create – cementing who we are as friends today.

The path that Michelle and I trod together until it forked as teenagers, intertwined again twenty-four years later and there was a large slab of life unaccounted for, on both sides. The journeys we’d taken were very different.

She’s a criminal investigator in the police force. I’m a teen-romance writer and work-life balance coach. A part of me laments that we weren’t by each other’s sides when our vastly different careers unfolded. We missed all the important stuff – uni, weddings, children being born, relationship break-down, recovery, re-marriage...

Sitting on her back step this morning, watching our sons play together in the easy way that we once played as little girls, the conversation was effortless. It was completely devoid of pretence. We felt like our mothers.

There is a sense of having picked up where we left off, but it's tossed in the politeness of distance. There’s a sense of loss. Of not having enough time available to adequately ‘fill in the blanks’ from the years we didn’t share.

More than that, though, I feel a keen sense of being ‘the old me’ in her company. The real me. The ‘early’ me. The me who was once untouched by grown-up faults and failures and disappointments. The ‘clean slate’ me, with no mistakes yet.

It’s as if our rekindled childhood friendship sparked the embers of who we were before life swept us both up on the journey that shaped who we became. And from the other side of this, there’s also a big dose of: ‘Wow – look at us. So grown up!’ We’re resilient. Successful at batting back at life and scoring runs on different boards.

I noticed an anomaly in her back fence and asked her what it was.

‘Oh!’ she said, ‘That’s the trap-door we built for the neighbour’s kids – the four of them can come and go into our backyard and theirs through this secret passageway...’

I couldn’t believe it. Did she remember?

‘Like our tunnel,’ she said, smiling.

Things have a funny way of coming full circle.

*name changed.

How my 'early night' turned into 1.30am

2012-09-10T21:49:00.004+10:00

9pm Sunday night

Decided to kick-start a healthy, productive, relaxed week with an early night.

No! I have an even better idea. Will do a fifteen-minute guided meditation to really calm down, even though I already feel great, after a wonderful day, and could easily drift off to sleep right now ...

Oh, wait! Can’t find the meditation CDs. No biggie! Will just as easily download one from YouTube, with bonus video of waves crashing on the beach at sunset, because that’s how I roll – uber modern techie type that I am.

Except our internet has the go-slows because my teen has been downloading copious ‘how to break in your new pair of Docs’ videos, and eight mins in, just as I’m feeling the strains of daily life start to melt away, the feed cuts out mid relaxing instruction. Damn!

I’ve got it! I’ll download a meditation App from iTunes and be listening to it in the comfort of my bed in just a jiffy!

9.20pm

Googled ‘best meditation apps’. Found one, recommended by the New York Times and various Yogis called Simply Being. Ahhh... Sounds so lovely!

Hit ‘download’ and was immediately informed by iTunes that this process would take 33 minutes.

THIRTY THREE MINUTES? But all I want is a fifteen-minute relaxation commentary before my early night...

9.53pm

Became the proud owner of Simply Being, which felt quite promising.

This is the part where I confess that I’ve had an iPhone 3 since 2009 and have never downloaded an App. Not one. Not even Facebook. I have this policy of ‘when I’m out in the world, I’m out in the world’ and not on my phone other than to meet up with people and keep in touch with my kids, plus I didn’t know they were so great til I got the iPad (I have lots of apps on there – mainly for my toddler, downloaded by my t/weens, and he’s the only one who knows how to use them because I never get a look-in with the machine).

So, I attempt to move Simply Being to my iPhone, mistakenly assuming that, as people have hundreds of Apps on their phones, it can’t be that difficult...

10.13pm

Why won’t it work! Waaah!

Search ‘App function greyed out in iTunes’ on Google. There are 110 replies to a similar question.

First respondent suggests ensuring that your phone is connected to the internet. Oh, riiiight!

How can I tell that?

10.25pm

Gaaah! Phone is pestering for wireless password? What, what?

Search through ‘network settings’. Nothing. Check old emails from internet provider... archived items, in hope of gathering intelligence (ie. information, not IQ).

Finally! SUCCESS! User name and password located!

10.40pm

Nooooo! Wrong password!

Brainwave: Will search archived emails for one that I sent my husband last time we needed the password and I had to get my sister to phone the help desk to retrieve and re-set it during daylight hours here when we were in London.

Woohoo!!! I’ve got it! I’ve really got it!

Phone is now connected to the wireless network!!

11.07pm

Aw, MAN! Still can’t move the App to the phone on the screen. Still greyed out. Why, Why?

Google again. Response number sixty two suggests ‘Go to settings, restrictions, allow Apps (or something)’.

11.48pm

STILL NOT WORKING!

Google starts swimming in front of my eyes and tells me to activate something in the Apps page on iTunes to allow the import of Apps if I've already activated or deactivated (including turning on and off) the phone restrictions and allowances. Right.

At LAST! YES! I can drag and drop Simply Being onto the phone! I am an Information Technology Genius for figuring all of this out!

11.54pm

Where are the ear plugs?

Monday - 12.05am

Settle into bed beside husband, snuggle down with iPhone, Simply Being and some skull and crossbones ear buds that I found underneath the pool table (attempting to dismiss the idea from my germophobic mind that I don’t know whose ears they were last in) and click ‘play’.

Ahhhhhhhh... the soothing tones of...

Ssssssssssssnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnooooooooooorrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

‘Let any ambient noises simply wash over you...’

Ssssssssssssssnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnooooooooooorrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeee

I can't!

Sssssssssssssssnnnnnnnnnnnnnoooooooooooooorrrrrrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeee

This can't be happening!

Monday – 1.15am

Glance at the clock, STILL AWAKE! FURIOUS!

Snnnnnnnnnnnnnnnoooooooooooooooooorrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

1.30am

He prods me awake. Yes, he does. ME! The sleep-deprived computer geek and love of his life and he actually says this: ‘You’re snoring.’

I’m snoring???

No, no. No, I am not. I am SIMPLY BEING and it's HARDER THAN IT LOOKS!

Post script from my daughter: ‘WHY didn’t you do all that from your phone in the first place? WHY are you using the computer at all? You’re insane! You don’t deserve a computer, or an iPhone or an iPad! And those ear buds are mine. That is DISGUSTING!’

The woman in his life...

2012-09-07T21:07:00.000+10:00

I am writing this ten minutes after tucking my toddler into his cot with Iggle Piggle and Teddy and Thomas, after his very first utterance of: ‘Love you, Mamma’.

Oh my ... I am so dead gone on this boy it’s ridiculous. I’ve been wanting to articulate how I feel about mothering a son for a while, but have never found the right moment until now.

I’m one of two girls. I’m a ‘girl mum’ and ‘girl auntie’ from way back - fourteen years back, to be precise, when I had my first daughter, followed by my second, followed by my sister’s two girls... all of whom I adore in ways that I've tried to capture and have written about as if my life depended on it.

We know what to do with girls in our family. (Until they’re teens – we’re feeling our way in the dark a bit there right now, but generally it’s been simple. Familiar.)

Enter the first boy in the family for generations. When I was pregnant for the last time mothers of boys would say things like ‘boys are special’ and ‘boys are different’ and ‘the bond between mother and son is hard to describe...’

I thought, naively, ‘What are you on with your boys are special/different rhetoric? How special and different could they be?’

I must admit right now that I never really had a desire for a son. I’d been overjoyed that I’d had a daughter, and given her a sister.

I’m eating my words now. No, not ‘eating’ them, gorging on them - like someone who hasn’t had a meal in days. No desire for a son? Was I mad?

Meanwhile, I ran this article by my teenage daughter and said 'Is this okay? Do you get how much I love you all - in different ways?' and she said, 'Mum - you are so weird! Seriously! It's fine!'

Having a boy is different. Not better. But it’s the stuff that mother-in-law nightmares are made from. He is MINE and he always will be, in a way that I don’t obsess about with my girls, and not from loving them any less - almost from wanting more for them...

I've got it all organised, you see: My girls will be blissfully happy in their separate lives from mine and we'll still be sitting side-by-side watching chick-flicks together when I'm eighty.

In my more hideous maternal moments, though, I have also thought this: 'Who IS this girl who will take my boy away from me, decades from now?’ Yes, I have.

Or guy. Maybe a guy will steal his heart? Which seems less threatening, somehow. You see – I am the woman in my son’s life.

From the moment my daughters drew their first breaths, I saw a little bit of myself in them. I identified with their strength and femininity. I wanted the very best for them, and wanted to champion them to become independent, strong young women who would stand on their own two feet, hold their own in a boardroom and be sassy with it... (or whatever they wanted.)

I identify with my daughters in ways that can't be replicated in my son. I see much less of me in him. Perched on the upper deck of a Parisian tourist bus last year, I bawled my eyes out about being there, sharing the city with my growing-up girls - just the three of us. It was the highlight of my parenting life and I could fast-forward to their next trip there as young women, independent from me. They make me ache with pride.

But my boy - oh, no – that is different. He is different. I love how much he adores and depends on me. I love that he clings. He has me on a pedestal and I won't want him jaunting off to Paris on his own! He needs his mummy! (Or is it the other way around...)

Every rational part of me rebels against how differently I feel about the two genders of the three children who I love equally. As much as I want to raise strong women, I do not want to raise a ‘mummy’s boy’. I despise Mummy’s boys! It’s just that now, I finally appreciate how Mummy’s boys are unintentionally created...

In some cultures, the 12-year-old son is removed from his mother and undertakes ‘initiation into manhood’ rituals. The bond between mother and son is severed, to an extent, for the good of the young man. I hate that! I cry at the thought of it! But I get it.

It’s to protect young men from mothers like me, who have fallen for their baby son in ways that they can barely articulate because it’s ‘different’. It’s ‘special’. It’s ‘hard to describe’.

I have several friends who only have sons and who long for a daughter. I completely understand that desire. They adore their sons, and sometimes I wonder whether they realise how privileged they are, having them.

At our 20-week ultrasound, boy bits were identified and a part of me was crushed. I knew girls. I loved having girls. I had to say goodbye to the concept of my lovely Amelie Isabelle...

My husband, who already had one of both genders from his previous marriage said ‘This will be good for you – you need a boy,’ and I didn’t know what he meant by that.

Until the moment Sebastian was born, and snuggled right into my heart like his sisters had before him – a tiny version of the man he will become and I thought, ‘Hello! What is this? This is special. This is different. This is hard to describe...’

Life. DIY - not through your kids.

2012-09-06T21:41:00.002+10:00

I’d barely sat down the other night at my daughter’s sports game when a stranger sat beside me, smiled and launched straight into this:

‘That’s my daughter over there. She’s very competitive. She’s represented the State twice. She’s also a long-distance runner. All of her friends couldn’t believe it when she qualified for the high jump the other day – they thought she was a runner and she said, “I am – but I can jump too!” I used to come second in everything at school – but the girl who always beat me became an Olympic pentathlete, so I’m not sure that counts... What about your daughter?’

I couldn’t really understand the question.

I didn’t even want to be there. (Who schedules 9pm games for school students?)

‘There she is!’ I gestured, just as my child served the ball onto the court next door, narrowly missed the referee’s head - and dissolved into giggles.

‘She’s got other strengths,’ I wanted to explain to this woman, but then she might ask me what they are – and what sort of person catalogues their kid’s strengths with a stranger?

People whose children come first when they themselves used to come second, it seems. Watch the train wreck that is Toddlers and Tiaras and you’ll get my drift. The pageant mums’ kids are gorgeous (before they are plastered with glitz) but I find it sad to see them brandished about like the consolation prize in what seems to be a life half-lived.

A pattern has emerged in my conversations with women in their thirties and forties. Many think they’re stuck in soul-sucking jobs that they despise and most know exactly what they’d do if they had the freedom to change paths. When I ask what’s stopping them, the answers surprise me: ‘I couldn’t explain the career change to my parents’, or ‘You could only go down certain paths in our family’.

Note to self: Let my children be.

As adults, we each have voids from our childhoods that need to be plugged, but they need to be plugged by something other than our kids. It’s us that we need to sculpt and mould and push until our self-esteem is sated – not our children, no matter how malleable they might be and how much easier it seems to ‘start fresh’ with a new one.

I love seeing my children do well and wonder what they might end up doing in life. Whatever that is, I’ll support them wholeheartedly, but I’ve got no interest in carving it out for them. I’m busy chasing my own dreams.

And I think that’s what’s missing when the ‘living through the children’ thing kick-starts. It happens when parents have given up on making something different of their own lives. But whose goals are they kicking then?

When my kids were in early primary school and projects were due, it was always clear which ones had been done by the children and which were the handiwork of parents. I’m not talking about giving younger kids a hand to put something together that is 90% their imperfect work – I’m talking about taking creative control of a school assignment like you’re the project manager for the procurement of a military aircraft, and implementing your plan with military precision and little assistance.

I’ve often wondered what’s behind the drive to do that and what it’s really teaching kids...

‘I’m not good enough’ is probably the answer to both questions.

Published on HerCanberra

Breast is best. Or second best.

2012-08-27T18:59:00.001+10:00

The last time I wrote about breast and formula feeding I had a ten-week old baby who, at that stage, had been formula-fed for about a month. I was tired, emotional and defensive. I’d wanted to breastfeed my son the way I’d fed my first daughter, until she’d weaned herself happily at just over twelve months.

That said, I was determined to avoid the situation I’d faced with my second baby, who I near-starved in a desperate attempt to continue feeding with what turned out to be a hopelessly inadequate supply. By the time the paediatrician ‘rescued’ us when she was seven months old, and despite every supply-boosting trick in the book, she was dangerously underweight and lethargic. Even with her at risk of organ damage, I was still being strongly discouraged at the local clinics from complementing our near-empty breastfeeds with formula.

It was a slippery slope from there into post-natal depression. Ironically, the guilt came not from failing to breastfeed, but from failing to stop breastfeeding earlier – in her best interests.

So, when my son came along, ten years later, I tackled it differently. My intention going into the hospital was to feed my baby. Full stop. I would breastfeed if possible, but not at any cost – either to his physical or my emotional wellbeing.

I’d have loved a ‘last baby’ breastfeeding fairytale, but it wasn’t to be. When he wouldn’t latch on, no matter how many ways we approached it over the first six weeks, I decided to stop expressing and move to formula. Two experienced lactation consultants agreed that there are some kids who simply do not get it – even without a tongue-tie - and he’s one of them.

Having been down the formula-feeding path before, I knew it would be okay. I had two healthy, energetic tweens under my wing and no-one could pick which had been breastfed.

When you dearly want to feed a baby and can’t, you can be plunged into a grieving process. Grief, dressed up as guilt. An aspect of motherhood that you valued highly is wrenched from you by circumstances beyond your control.

Mums who are struggling with this grief need compassion and support – not judgement. Which brings me to the weekend’s report about an Australian Breastfeeding Association class, where it is alleged that participants were told that "Formula is a little bit like AIDS. Nobody actually dies from AIDS; what happens is AIDS destroys your immune system and then you just die of anything and that's what happens with formula. It provides no antibodies. Every 30 seconds a baby dies from infections due to a lack of breastfeeding and the use of bottles, artificial milks and other risky products. Every 30 seconds."

The breastfeeding counsellor who made the comments has been temporarily suspended by the Association while they investigate the complaints, and the Association has stressed today that this information is not standard in their education programs. Nevertheless, the counsellor is named in the Association’s annual report for taking the highest number of calls to its hotline, and we can only wonder at the nature and impact of those conversations.

When I hear stories like this, or see Facebook arguments between breast- and formula-feeding mums, or overhear conversations in parents’ rooms that make things difficult for struggling families, I just feel tired.

Breast is best, except when it’s second-best. Support mums to breastfeed if they want to and can, or support them to make different choices that provide for maximum infant health and maternal joy, because that’s where the parenting gold lies.

Published on iVillage.

Now more than ever...

2012-08-25T16:50:00.000+10:00

When my daughters were little, a work colleague – then a mum of two young teens – told me she was dropping back to part-time hours. ‘My daughters need me now more than ever,’ she explained.

There was a hungry baby on my hip and an over-tired toddler barnacled to my ankle, screaming. I gaped at the woman helplessly, wondering how much more needy kids could get. Surely teens were more independent than my two? Please don’t snuff out the light that I’d been led to believe was at the end of this particularly demanding tunnel...

Fast forward a decade and I’m her. Mum of a teen and a tween (and a toddler, but that’s another story) who, yes, need me now more than ever.

If I’m not snooping about my daughter’s Facebook account or throwing a bar of Cadbury’s Marvellous Creations at the learning curve that is Year 8 PMT, I’m mopping up ‘drama’ or helping analyse poetry or the reproductive habits of Emperor penguins, or driving them interstate for a performance (either theirs or Justin Bieber’s).

People say the problems don’t go away – they get bigger. At thirteen, the big guns have been wheeled out: cyber bullying, youth suicide, self-harm, eating disorders - they may not be happening under my roof, but the fall-out is splattered all over computer screens and phones in my house and it’s happening to girls who flit in and out of our front door.

Someone gave me a card when my first baby was born saying the hardest part of parenting is letting go, little by little, as children learn their independence. She was right. It is hard. The part of me that aches to keep them safe is at war with the part of me that has encouraged them to stand on their own two feet since they were ten months old and first doing that which, incidentally, feels like yesterday...

I clapped and cheered then and I’d clap and cheer now only it’s ‘embarrassing’ of course, and as a parent of a teen my job is to keep a low profile – particularly as I’m so unique (nobody else’s parents ever think or do or say the stuff that I do, apparently).

I often wonder how my ex-colleague made it through these years. Her daughters would be adults now - out in the world, working themselves. That will be my kids next. I’ll blink and they’ll be on the other side of puberty and first boyfriends and last exams and I’ll be less embarrassing and more useful.

When I take my toddler to Gymbaroo he loves to walk along a high ladder. I stand beside him, arms outstretched but not quite holding his hands - ready to catch him if he falls. It’s a pose I know well. I do it every day as my girls walk along the ledge of high school, publically annoyed that I’m close but secretly glad that I’m here.

And when I miss a step myself I phone my mum, who was once embarrassing and is now helpful and who still mops up my drama, arms out-stretched ready to catch me if I fall – showing me how ‘mum’ is done. Reminding me that getting the kids to eighteen is not my end goal, it’s just the next stepping stone, and it will be okay...

Real-life romance

2012-08-25T16:45:00.001+10:00

A friend’s husband proposed via a full-page advertisement in Cleo magazine. Another was surprised during a stroll along the banks of the Yarra when, amongst the buskers and street artists there was a painting with her name on it, and the words ‘will you marry me?’

This week in Sydney, a Qantas passenger gave sixty of his fellow passengers a single white rose to deliver to his girlfriend in the arrivals lounge, before he emerged with a red rose and a ring.

And then there are the romantic flash-mobbers, sky-writers, crop-circlers, film-makers and Craig Jones – who deserves a category all to himself for spending $9000 on possibly the most elaborate wedding proposal ever, involving thousands of onlookers, choreographed dancers and a 140-piece high school marching band.

My husband proposed on the couch at home, when he could get a word in edgewise during my post-work monologue after a particularly stressful day. I looked exactly the opposite of how a woman should look when she is proposed to: cartoon-print flannelette PJ bottoms, ugh boots, tailored work shirt and costume jewellery. (You know how sometimes you slip into only half of something more comfortable? I’d done that.)

I’m not sure why the candlelit dinner that he’d slaved over or the glass of Moet in my hand hadn’t tipped me off that this was no ordinary evening. Perhaps it’s because we’d been standing under the Eiffel Tower only a few weeks earlier, following a French friend’s wedding at a chateau in Normandy – and, even with a backdrop like that, the opportunity had passed him by...

With us, it had not been a case of love at first sight. The opposite, if anything - I thought he was an arrogant git. He made the mistake of ordering me around in front of a table full of VIPs once and I was so annoyed that a response escaped my mouth before my Inner Professional could put a stop to it.

‘What’s the magic word?’ I’d said. Loudly. Apparently during the ensuing pin-dropping silence, he wondered who on earth I was.

A while later he began to seem less gittish and more normal – even nice-ish, then very nice and, damn it, really smart and funny and considerate. Gawd – how I hate being wrong! Eventually, there was nothing for it but to have an epiphany similar to those which sideswiped Bridget Jones and Elizabeth Bennett when they realised they’d been completely off base about Mr Darcy.

I loved him. No mistaking it. Which is how I found myself plonked on his couch attired in the least attractive outfit imaginable, blathering about work with him on the floor at my feet and the aroma of his gourmet cooking swirling around the apartment.

When I finally drew breath, he seized the microscopic lull in conversation to produce a gorgeous ring from his pocket and say the words ‘Marry me, Emma’.

Just like that. No ‘will you?’ No question mark. He was awfully sure of himself, as usual.

Had I been standing up, I’d have been comprehensively swept off my feet, it was so thrilling. Instead I smiled, threw my arms around his neck, kissed him and delivered the only logical response to a command like that.

‘What’s the magic word?’

Published on iVillage

Growing up too fast

2012-08-25T16:37:00.000+10:00

Issues that my daughter has been exposed to over the last two weeks: ‘getting trashed’, oral sex memes on Facebook, teen suicide (one threatened, one achieved), cyber bullying, extreme dieting and self-harm. Hardly a day passes that I don’t scoop my jaw off the ground and cobble together impromptu parental guidance on the teen pressure de jour, and it’s only just begun.

She’s thirteen. An A-grade student who hasn’t yet put a foot too wildly wrong, according to my incessant snooping through her recently-acquired Facebook account (with her knowledge) so that I can toss her a life raft before she drowns.

Meanwhile, Port Macquarie mum Ana Amini has written an outraged comment on Target’s Facebook page urging the company to ‘make a range of clothing for girls 7-14 years that doesn’t make them look like tramps’. As I write this, the ‘open letter’ has received over 52,000 ‘likes’ and nearly 3,000 comments.

I asked the recently-appointed ‘online-fashion shopping guru of Year 8’ why they’re all shopping online and she looked at me like I came down in the last shower: ‘Have you seen what’s in the shops, Mum? It’s all crap!’

If I feel jipped that my teen is being forced to grow up too fast, I can only imagine how parents of seven-year-olds might feel – rummaging fruitlessly through racks of ‘short’ shorts, low-cut tops and ‘grunge clothing’ – searching for something ‘nice’.

My eleven-year-old was in a regional schools concert recently, during which one high school performed a routine inspired by the movie Chicago to the song ‘He had it comin’, complete with simulated sex, drunkenness, stabbing ‘twenty times with a knife’ and a liberal assortment of profane lyrics.

The dress-rehearsal audience was aged five years and up – the vast majority of them in primary school. After parental complaints, the item was modified for the second performance and the sex scene removed – alas, not before a heap of kindergarten kids were exposed to it and asking about condoms.

This is the same daughter who emerged from a sleepover party, terrified by the horror flick, The Grudge, and having seen Knocked Up. At ten.

I’m fighting an age-old urge to lock my kids up and keep them safe, but that would be doing them a disservice. They need equipping for battle, not retreating from it. As I stand on the sidelines of the gauntlet that is modern young adulthood - my heart in my mouth, hoping I’ve done enough - I’m yearning for the innocence of the last few years. It’s being been ripped out from under our kids, far too young.

A friend was recently horrified when the five-year-old daughter of her friend began gyrating suggestively to a Lady GaGa song, only to have the mother burst into applause and say to my friend,
‘Do you like it? I helped her with the choreography!’

Childhood has been compressed, largely by the speed of technology and also by a growing desensitisation in adults and children to sexualisation in the media. There are now precious few years for little girls to cram into their lives the sugar and spice – before the tsunami of pressure hits them around middle-primary school.

I was accused by my daughter of ‘caring too much’ when I asked her to ‘unlike’ an image on Facebook. ‘Nobody cares, Mum!’ she explained, with a good eye-roll.

Parents like Ana Amini and the 52,000+ who appreciate her stance do care and it’s only by speaking up that we can have any hope of pushing the boundaries of childhood back out to a safer distance.

Our kids need more time to ‘grow up’ and ‘skill up’ before encountering much bigger challenges than we ever had to face at their age.

Nobody’s going to shift those boundaries but us.

Published on iVillage

Spoilt by choice

2012-08-25T16:34:00.000+10:00

Gah! So much brawling about ‘having it all’ – can we, can’t we, should we, shouldn’t we, can parents, can singles, can men, can women, can Gen X, can Gen Y...

In the past week, The Atlantic published a hotly-debated barrage on ‘balance’: Why Women Can’t Have it all, Men Can’t Have it All Either, Single People Deserve Work-Life Balance Too, How to Have an Insanely Demanding Job and 2 Happy Children, Why do Successful Women Feel so Guilty and several others. The original article has been viewed over a million times.

It's the latest 'flare up' in the 'Mummy Wars' - a first-world drama that always leaves me wondering, is the plan just to bicker til the kids leave home and there’s nothing left to argue about?

When our feminist foremothers fought to give us choice, did they imagine us wrestling over that freedom like spoilt teenagers? They sacrificed much to pave the varied paths now available to us, and surely the idea was for each of us to stick to our own path – not to trample on others.

Then there’s our children. What are they thinking, watching this? “When I grow up, I want to be just like Mummy - if I can’t say something nice about someone... Oh, wait...”

Right now, ‘having it all’ is about having kids with little interruption to your career. It’s about being able to take several years off paid work til your kids are at school. It’s about having time for your ‘day job’ and other passions. It’s about caring for a sick family member and putting food on the table.

It’s those things and more, depending on who you are and what’s going on in your life. For each of us, the picture changes shape over the years as we tweak our choices in response to what happens to and around us. People get there with varying degrees of success, depending on their personal and professional contexts.

As often as I work with women who want ‘less’ in their lives - a slower pace, more space - I work with women who want ‘more’. More variety, more stimulation, more help at home, more flexibility in the workplace.

I gave a workshop at a conference recently on this topic, and my talk followed a presentation by a woman from Sierra Leone – a survivor of genital mutilation and gang rape, whose inspirational message promoted a much-deserved, five-minute standing ovation.

It was a good lead-in to my ‘first-world workshop’. There are battles worth fighting and this one - working vs staying home - isn’t one of them. Choose your path without needing to convert everyone else onto it with quasi-religious fervour. Get on with it, without constantly comparing yourself to the mum-next-door.

I wonder what would happen if we converted the energy required for mass preciousness and judgement into making workplaces and families more flexible and equitable. Perhaps our daughters would thank us for getting over ourselves, picking up where our mothers left off and becoming leaders on this issue in our workplaces and homes.

Let's work together, develop and release 'Having it All version 2.0' by the time our kids need it. How does 'Sharing it All' sound?

Nothing to complain about...

2012-05-15T15:51:00.000+10:00

I love my kids and I’m not moaning about motherhood – this is simply a factual report of the last couple of weeks, spent re-living the glory days of single parenting, while my husband galliv - er, works - in Washington DC.

The week before he left, I hosted my parents’ combined 80^th birthday and when they arrived for it, I was still in my pyjamas - make-up-less, hair every which way - emerging from a frantic hour online - gambling. Yes.

The first part of the gamble was that the Ticketek website would come through with two seats for One Direction’s September 2013 concert. The second was that the girls would still want to go by then.

My parents were in their Sunday best (Dad was even wearing a tie) and I ushered them into the family room where Mum offered to fold three loads of washing so that she could sit down on the lounge.

‘Thanks! Happy Birthday!’

The roast was at least an hour behind as muffled screams alerted me that the toddler was stuck inside the TV cabinet again. The usually-helpful husband was stuck inside the study, catching up on some vital chit-chat on a forum about little men (ie. miniature wargaming figures). My eldest was ensconced at my desk with her laptop balanced precariously beside my desktop, madly refreshing both screens and occasionally screaming 'Mummy! I'm IN!' while my middle child prayed in her bedroom (for 1D tickets).

‘Who on earth is this One Direction?’ mum asked, and then remarked about what lovely, clean-cut young men they seem to be on the CD cover, in their cable-knit jumpers and stripy shirts... and I explained that appearances can be deceptive - for example, it looks as though I’m completely disorganised for your birthday lunch, but in reality...

‘Mummy – a girl in my class has cuts up her arm...'

‘Mummy – can I go on Australia’s Got Talent...’

‘Mamma? bliwochysokiffalahmanon. Car. Nooo. NO!’

Exactly.

Not long after, Jeff flew off to the States for ten child-free days and uninterrupted nights – a departure that a mother's dreams are made of, which threw Sebastian completely out kilter and had him pounding on the front door, crying ‘No Daddy! No Daddy!’ and pointing at our wedding photos yelling ‘DADDY!’

I knew what I would do. I would use this time to go cold-turkey on the overnight bottle and dummy as a special welcome-home surprise for Jeff! (Alas, it didn’t occur to me that now was perhaps not the time to take away the only two comfort habits Seb has, and that the nights would become lonely scream-fests, with every ounce of willpower directed into being consistent).

Bad behaviour erupted with the force of a long-dormant volcano. The worst of it was during the one attempt I made at socialising, when he sent a knife and fork flying at the editor friend with whom I was attempting to converse, before kicking the table (up-ending lunch), throwing a pen at the neighbouring patrons, screaming, squealing and escaping to a nearby playground, where he all but fell off the two-metre high fortress before I could bat my way through the crowd to catch him.

I made our apologies (about twenty minutes later than I should have) and attempted to split the bill and leave, but splitting the bill is impossible – even when you have with you a miniature hell-raiser who would improve the ambiance of the restaurant no end the second you got through the payment process and removed him from it, so I was sent back to re-negotiate with my friends.

On the way back to our table, I overheard a couple of old ladies say, ‘Oh, look – he’s back!’ to which I replied, ‘Don’t worry – we’re leaving!’, to which they lied, ‘Oh, but we think he’s gorgeous!’

I’ve never been so mortified in all of my life!

Back home via a challenging trip to the school assembly to watch Sophie win her award for Haiku, I took to opening some emails for comfort and was horrified to read that the Year Nine’s have been caught sexting and Skyping naked with boys! What?

‘Did you know the Year Nine’s are sexting and Skyping naked with boys?’ I drilled my daughter before she’d even had time to put her bag down and raid the fridge.

‘Yeah. Guess what - I got 94% on my maths test.’

Was this a trick?

‘Sebbie’s got the netbook in the toilet!’

Huh?

‘My Haiku was about One Direction.’

How?

‘Looks like I’ve got a spare seat beside me on the flight home on the Pacific leg...’

GREAT! It’s all right for some! If only I could traverse a few time zones over twenty-four hours... sounds like bliss!

‘Has Sebbie been a good boy for Mamma?’ Jeff asked him on the phone.

‘No,’ came the honest reply, before he threw the phone on the floor and himself on it shortly after, and I resisted the strong urge to follow suit (or would have, but I’d just read Bibi Lynch’s article about infertility, in which she urges mums to quit complaining - and I realised I’d rather be crying on the floor over no sleep and the fifth shattered glass of the week than crying on the floor, shattered, because I’m not lucky enough to have these problems in the first place).

There's more than One Direction

2012-04-11T13:14:00.003+10:00

My thirteen-year-old set her alarm for 4am today to receive a call from her BFF, who was in Sydney meeting the boy-band-de-jour, One Direction. BFF has an uncle in high places (ie. he’s a well-known entertainment reporter) and, like a hungry dog grazing on scraps under the dinner table, my daughter emerged from her customary pre-dawn fog to feed on verbal snippets from the encounter...

There’s nothing quite like a teen crush en masse, as Martin Place goers discovered during this morning’s pandemonium. It’s not just about how cute they are, or the mushy song lyrics, or their Bieberesque hair – it’s about belonging.

Hopefully my daughter will learn over the next few years that there’s something even more comfortable than ‘fitting in’ - and that’s standing out. Not in a ‘look at moi’ way - in a ‘this is me’ way.

I thought she’d already arrived when she ordered a pair of ‘Galaxy Leggings’ online. They’re skin-tight and shiny and depict various NASA photographs. When they arrived in the mail, I wondered if she’d have the guts to wear them and my heart swelled as she appeared for a birthday party, without a skerrick of self-doubt, dressed in the Horse Head Nebula.

That’s my girl! Unique! Courageous! Possibly a science-geek?

Then her friend came to the front door sporting the Reflection Galaxy Inside of Orion.

Turns out everyone wants a pair. The herd is heading in One Direction for the Galaxy Pants shop.

I love teenagers. I loved being one (notwithstanding the unrequited lovers, chemistry tests and zits). I recall my group of friends being very much ‘our own people’ at the time. (Sure, we phoned ahead to find out what each of us was wearing and took pains to turn up in vastly different versions of rolled-up acid wash jeans, rolled-down fluoro socks and white sneakers – but we had our own style. My socks were orange, for example, and Ali’s were green).

The same group of friends is now just as close nearing our forties, despite stretching in very contrasting life paths. We’ve learned that what keeps us together isn’t the music we like or the clothes we wear, or having partners who are similar or careers in the same field – it’s a mix of memories and values and mutual respect for each other’s choices.

I often meet people through my work who are stuck on a certain path, because ‘it’s expected’. They’re in a particularly career because ‘we could only be doctors or lawyers in our family’. They’re miserably married because ‘nobody gets divorced in my group.’ They've seen themselves as trapped, in some cases, for twenty years or more.

It’s interesting how entrenched the teen-like obsession to belong can be, and how long those insecurities can last. When I look at my girls, I hate to imagine them struggling to reach my ‘expectations’ twenty years from now. The last thing I want is for them to stare down a career path that fascinates them and wonder, ‘But what would mum think...’

So, once the hysteria of loving what everyone else loves dies down, my advice to my daughters will be:

Do what floats your boat
Choose what’s best for you
Care deeply about the people in your life
Care less about what they think
There’s more than one direction...

The discomfort zone

2012-04-09T20:22:00.012+10:00

Catapulting out of uni, when my brain stopped spinning from readings and essays and tutes, it came to rest not on the career I’d prepped for, but on marriage and babies. My parents had me late-ish, and I wanted my kids to know them. Motherhood – warts and all – felt right. So, at twenty-four, I plunged purposefully into the slow lane, career-wise.

My job paid for electricity and meat and Clarks First Walkers and Gymbaroo and had promotional opportunities and flexibility and sparked about as much creativity as did lying on the couch having a kip. It was safe. I could do it with my eyes shut and focus on other things. Important things... or so I told myself, several years into it, having dredged from somewhere yet another morning's bucket-load of fake enthusiasm for the kids’ sake.

‘Have a great day at school! Mummy’s off to work!’ (Yawn... sigh... bleuch - childish dramatics in the face of interminable clock-watching.)

My plan to tread water was well-intended. I was up for low-stress, medium-level responsibility and work-life balance. But, at the end of the day, the extra energy that I’d hoped to plug into motherhood had already been sapped by the effort it took to be Bored Senseless during working hours – a situation more challenging than it sounds, that spreads virally into your private life if you let it.

I’d crawl home, exhausted from another day of cruising in a direction that didn’t interest me - eight hours closer to my next holiday, which was never close enough. I’d tell myself ‘I’m in my comfort zone, and that’s ideal as a working mum...’

Every so often, I’d catch a glimpse of the magic that lies beyond that zone – i.e. the cool stuff that other people do. Bold people, who – even with kids – have grass stains on their knees from all the times they’ve fallen over, giving a career they’re wildly passionate about a red-hot go.

My knees were pristine, and the longer I clung to the status quo, the less comfortable it became in the fortress I’d built to stay secure and protected. From what? Exposure? Mistakes? Failure?

Eventually it dawned that, in my effort to be conservative and sensible and ‘family friendly’ – I wasn’t being me.

The ‘Am I good enough?’ mantra that had blasted through my internal PR system for years was soon drowned by a new question: ‘Is this good enough?’ This life ‘half lived’? These opportunities shelved...

The taste of possibility was more-ish and, despite not seeing the big picture yet, I formed an ‘exit strategy’. First question: How long could I stay here – miserable in the wrong job - serving up to my kids a poor imitation of the mother they might have if I'm being ‘all of me’.

Another year? Three months? Three minutes?

None of the above?

Gah! Would my alternative plan work? It meant starting from scratch. It meant an enormous drop in income. It meant a sharp rise in the number of times I heard, ‘are you crazy?’

Easier to stay in the comfort zone, perhaps...

Except, having opened my mind to another way, I couldn’t close it again. I knew that the fear of failure would chase me and find me and taunt me like a school bully while I cowered in the toilets.

Frankly, I was cowering in the toilets anyway - hoping to make short work of another five minutes in an endless working day.

Why not run towards what I wanted, instead of away from what I didn’t want? What was really the worst that could happen?

Confidence shows up when we need it. We don’t need it to laze in our pyjamas, watching cooking shows, thinking ‘I wish my life was different.’ We need it to push ‘send’ on the resignation email, to lick that stamp on the enrolment papers and to register a business name.

When my daughter started pre-school, she was barnacled to my ankle. Every morning I dragged her back to face it. Every morning there were tears (hers and mine). Almost a decade later, I watch as she ever-so-coolly sashays into the school yard and I think, ‘Is that the same girl?’

Several years after I pressed ‘send’ on that email to my boss, saying ‘Thank you – I have to go ...’ maybe my daughter wonders the same about me. Is this the same Mum?

The one with the grass stains on her knees, falling onto the couch at night - sated from work, loving motherhood - success and failure littered like Christmas wrapping around her.

No longer wondering ‘What if?’ but ‘What next...’

Published on Mamamia

Wardrobe malfunctions. I've had a few.

2012-03-15T15:31:00.007+11:00

When I was six, and in a Scottish dancing performance at a theatre, there was a super-quick costume change, necessitating a swap from black to white undies for the Sailor’s Hornpipe.

In the flurry, one pair of pants was tangled in the curtain ropes and swished up into the set as the scene changed.

The knowledge that my underwear was dangling precariously above our heads quite put me off my singing at the choir eisteddfod in the same venue. When would the undies pounce?

Another time, I got the date wrong for my (much-awaited, I’m sure) Highland Fling performance in the primary-school assembly. Try playing it cool when, for no apparent reason, you've spent assembly in a kilt, knee-high tartan socks, a frilly blouse and a bottle-green vest.

As an adult, I attended my niece’s Christening as newly-appointed Godmother. Standing serenely at the baptismal font in front of a large congregation of our family’s nearest and dearest, I bowed my head in prayer, which is when I noticed two completely different knee-high boots on my feet. What on earth? No wonder I was lop-sided! It wasn't a sharp turn for the worse in my scoliosis (as I'd envisaged, darkly) - my heels were just entirely different heights!

Then there was the time the plumber landed on my doorstep earlier than anticipated, and I was forced to answer the door in an old nightie teamed with a whirring Thomas the Tank Engine toy, entwined in a long strand of my hair and stuck to my head, which the plumber chivalrously disentangled with a screwdriver.

Hmm... what else? I was once pulled over by the police on the way home from the school drop-off, wearing purple pyjamas and bed-hair and also, on my wedding day, just as I was leaving my house for the church, I leaned over a vase of fresh lilies for an artistic photo and covered the bodice of my bridal gown in sticky brown pollen...

Look, we'll be here all day if I catalogue every single faux pas. For brevity’s sake, let’s just agree that I’m no fashion plate.

That said, at least I haven’t attempted to pull on a denim jacket in front of the school mums, only to realise that it wasn’t the jacket at all but a pair of jeans, complete with yesterday’s undies... (a good friend of mine did this recently – birds of a feather etc.)

I'm pretty chilled about clothing. Embarrassingly chilled, according to my thirteen-year-old, who has been known to quiz me before I leave the house about whether I'm really going out looking like that, as if it's Freaky Friday and we've swapped lines.

But, unless I’ve rounded a corner and bumped unexpectedly into my high-school crush, (Dear God - please don't let this happen...) I usually laugh off these little hiccups in personal appearance.

Yesterday, though, my usually laissez faire approach was challenged somewhat, when I was invited to morning tea with a former model turned image consultant, in her stunning new luxury apartment. The home is filled with glass ornaments, crystal vases, a precariously-stacked expensive wine collection, a pedigree cat and a series of her original artworks - lined up along the corridor floor ready to be collected by buyers. (The apartment’s decor and contents are relevant because I had my toddler with me. The hour and a half that we spent there, poised for mass destruction, took a good decade off my life.)

I was not invited for a makeover (though I'm sure the thought occurs to her every time we meet). It was just for morning tea and, when I realised I was running late for the appointment (punctuality is part of image, right?) it became screamingly apparent just how far my standards have plunged:

Despite a mad, pre-dawn hike around the suburb that morning, I'd failed to shift the 16kg I’d put on since she last saw me, pre-third-baby (which is the excuse I fling about, despite having lost all the baby kilos in the first six weeks, before acquiring a new stash that I blame not on third baby but third book).

Having said that, I have lost a bit recently, which means the only jeans I own are now either a size too big, or four sizes too small.

Never mind – I had a master plan. I would cleverly draw the eye upwards, with the careful application of makeup.

First up, where’s my makeup? Make-up, make-up? BINGO! I applied half of it, before my sixteen-month-old dashed off with the cosmetic bag and dropped the jar of foundation onto the bathroom floor.

Shattered. (Foundation and spirits.)

All is not lost! Those years I spent in the Girl Guides, being prepared, mean I’m nothing now if not resourceful. I remembered, gleefully, that my tween has a special kit of theatrical stage makeup reserved for ballet concerts! Simple!! I’d just use that... (I can't elaborate on the result, I really don't have the strength, suffice to say that I now recall something in the dancing-mum instructions about not being alarmed at the orange hue, as it's designed to be worn under intense spotlights...)

Next issue: would the baggy black suit trousers that I was forced to team with a casual top in the absence of appropriate jeans cover the multi-coloured, stripey mens’ socks? They’re kind of like clown socks. No time to change and put pantihose on after the makeup debacle. Why didn't I think of pantihose earlier? (I have a million pairs, all of which are riddled with holes and ladders, like they've been in the pantihoe equivalent of the London Blitz. Anyway, does anyone really look at people's feet? I never do..)

Gah! The sole of my shoe is flapping! When did that happen?

No matter – we’re late – let’s GO!

Damn!!! Forgot to dress the baby! What to wear, what to wear...

WHY IS NOTHING WASHED?

He seems hungry. Did he have breakfast? Surely we fed him. 'Did you have breakfast, Sebbie? We’re not taking food, okay? No food in Auntie Susan's apartment!!' I couldn’t bear the responsibility.

Twenty minutes later, we screech into a park outside the Fort Knox that is her high-security complex, except it turns out we’re parked at the wrong spot – miles away. There's no time to dawdle in at a toddler’s pace, swanning along like the model I'm not...

No, instead I'm forced to pick up all twelve kilos of him, wrestling his weight while lugging the handbag I've dragged out specially for the occasion. It's the first handbag I've used since he was born - into which I have stuffed every single thing he owns, most of which keeps falling out of the bag and onto the road...

It can’t be that far to walk, surely...

But it is. It is. And it’s 29 degrees. He’s heavy. So is the bag. My socks are hot. My shoe is flapping. A cake of theatrical makeup is dripping off my chin.

By the time I collapse through the door of the residence, (where I'm greeted by the most stunning, ‘together’ angel of a woman imaginable), I’m covered in sweat. Not perspiration – that would be too ladylike. Sweat.

I'm fairly glistening, to be honest, and teaming that sparkle with a bold ensemble of clown socks, a decrepit shoe, baggy trousers and half a head of orange stage makeup.

'Wow! You look great!' she says.

Which leads me to wonder. What on earth I was dressed like last time we met?

So embarrassing, and a little bit wonderful

2012-03-07T14:50:00.003+11:00

Teen girls are not known for their capacity to leap out of bed at 5.45am, but that’s when I dragged mine into consciousness for an International Women’s Day breakfast, at which I was speaking on my pet topic, ‘7 Types of Busy’ (pre-dawn work engagements being an 8th type that I didn’t mention.) I took Hannah along as my camera-woman.

Alas, in the flurry of getting on stage to speak (hoping I didn’t have scrambled eggs in my teeth or cappuccino froth on my chin etc.) I forgot to clip on the camera’s microphone and the video is completely useless. Hannah was up six hours earlier than she’d staggered out of bed yesterday specifically to record the show and I’d mucked up the technicalities. It was an immense shock to her system (being awake, not me mucking something up).

So was hearing me speak. It wasn’t so much that I pepper the talk with chaotic anecdotes inspired entirely by her and her sister over the years, or that I apparently have an annoying repetitive phrase that I really must exorcise from my presentations (thanks for the tip, Hannah!) – it was that the presentation was ‘really good, Mum’.

What? Did I do something right?

This is the same thirteen-year-old who thinks I need to donate every single piece of apparel in my wardrobe and start entirely from scratch on the clothes-front, with remedial shopping assistance (either from her, or from my sister, who apparently has ‘cool’ dress sense).

How she rolls? Brutal honesty.

Knowing this, I let her rip on the opening few chapters of the manuscript of my teen novel, Fifteen. I was prepared for ‘constructive criticism’ (or at least for criticism).

‘This is better than Twilight’ she assessed confidently. Now, let’s not unpack that observation too thoroughly, okay? I like Twilight (further evidence that I’m embarrassing), and she doesn’t (it’s stupid, badly written, Bella is an idiot and Edward is ‘gay’ – not in the sense that we use the term, or in the sense that our grandmothers did.)

A week later, she danced out of her bedroom – eyes sparkling, another book in hand - and said, ‘Wow! This book is better than yours, Mummy – no offence.’

None taken, I’m sure!

I realised somewhere in the last couple of years that there is one thing more rewarding than receiving positive affirmation from your parents and peers, and that’s receiving it from your children. Particularly older children, who ceased regarding you as a super hero somewhere around eleven, and now see you as human (and sometimes as sub-human).

We spend so much time, as mums, worried about letting them down – focusing on where we slip up and trip over and dress badly - and nowhere near enough time thinking about how we get it right.

While I was speaking this morning, I glanced at my little girl – the one who, as I was explaining to the audience, once held a whirring Thomas the Tank Engine to my ear while I was on the phone to my boss in my pyjamas. Unfortunately, the train became entwined in a long strand of my hair, which it gobbled up until the locomotive was firmly affixed to my head. This happened just as the plumber arrived on the doorstep to fish out an entire alphabet of magnetic letters from inside the door of the dishwasher (where she’d posted them) and luckily he was chivalrous, and had a screwdriver which he used to untangle the train from my hair ...

The point is that now that inquisitive little girl is a lovely young woman – prepared to lose sleep for her mum. Holding her own in breakfast chit-chat with interstate business women. Supporting me in my work. Smiling encouragingly. Taking video. Doing her best to ignore text messages vibrating like a swarm of cicadas in her pocket... Dishing up evidence, everywhere I turn (except in the tip that is her bedroom) that I’m doing a great deal right.

I hope there’s a little part of me that she still regards as her super-hero – because I certainly regard her as mine. I wanted to stop speaking mid-sentence - smother her in kisses - and tell her how immensely proud of her I am.

But if I’d done that in front of forty witnesses – she wouldn’t be speaking to me right now and I'd have to find a new camera-woman...

The circle of life ...

2012-02-20T20:25:00.010+11:00

This week, my friend Rebekah shared a photo on Facebook of herself, her husband and their beautiful daughter, Emilia. It was taken during the seven, precious hours that they held Emilia after she slipped away peacefully - at four days old.

Embraced, kissed, held, loved.

An outpouring of grief and support threaded its way through her parents’ Facebook walls, their friends’ walls, and the walls of friends of their friends – a tsunami of love from a community that held its breath as Emilia gave life her best shot.

News of her passing (on Valentine's Day - during Congenital Heart Defect Awareness Week) hit hard. She’d taught us what beautiful is. She’d shown us what time means. She’d inspired us to value the breaths that we take, the heartbeats, the music, the sunsets...

How could this happen? Why?

I’d barely begun grappling with what it meant for her parents and brothers when another newborn photo was posted - this baby wrapped snug in a second outpouring of love and relief and joy and hope, as was his mum, Rebecca ...

Finlay.

Embraced, kissed, held, loved – just like Emilia. Just like his sisters Ava and Georgie. And home.

For almost two weeks now, I’ve watched Fin and Emi twirl through my Facebook feed in a bittersweet dance of hope and heartbreak. One just starting. One at her end. Their mummies watch over them, protectively - bonded by more than their first names, more than the immeasurable love they feel for their children - each having stood where the other is now.

Bringing home a healthy son. Losing a baby daughter.

The circle of life announced itself, as it tends to do in moments of unmitigated grief: mysterious, powerful, tragic, beautiful.

My mother’s only sister, Ella, was stillborn in the 1930s. If a baby was born sleeping then, she was taken away immediately.

My grandmother never held Ella, never touched her. Never saw her face ...

She never posted a picture of her on Facebook, never introduced her to her friends and had people tell her how beautiful she is - how precious. No-one ever said, ‘she has her Mummy’s nose’ or ‘her Daddy’s chin’.

No-one knew her.

There was no outpouring of support. No SIDS and KIDS, no Bonny Babes, no online tribe of mums chipping in for groceries and flying a friend across the country to the funeral. No helium balloons for the children to release at the funeral.

No funeral.

My grandmother, having endured this loss - privately, silently, heart-wrenchingly - went on to have four other children, one of whom she buried as an adult.

She died at ninety-five years old - weeks before my first daughter was born. Still grieving until the very end...

I gave a reading at her funeral service, heavily pregnant - and my baby was kicking inside me: ‘I’m here, Nana! I’m coming! Wait!’

But she couldn’t wait. She’d stepped aside to make room for one more.

One goes, another arrives...

Welcome to the world, little man.

Farewell, angel girl.

And, Auntie Ella – no-one embraced you when you were born, no-one kissed you, no-one held you ...

But know this much: your mummy loved you - until her dying day.

I am woman, hear the furore...

2012-02-16T21:58:00.006+11:00

My friend Alex lives in one of those gorgeous renovated workman’s cottages in Balmain. I love visiting. Although, whenever I do, I seem to get my clutz on (which isn’t hard – I’m fairly well in touch with my clumsy side as a general rule).

Last time, as I dragged my overnight case down their front path, I missed my footing and tumbled down their front steps – grasping at whatever I could to help break my fall – which is why, when Alex opened the door, she found me prostrate on her welcome mat with one of her large pot-plants and some dirt in my lap, as if to say a breezy, ‘Hi! I’m here! It’s been too long!’

At the time, I’d put my distractedness down to my ‘Woe is me! First-world problem! Have to escort my baby to Bieber, oh! Instead of watching the royal wedding’ situation ...

Which doesn’t explain why I fell down the same steps this time, baby-less, Beiber-less...

We wandered up the street for a late lunch. At the cafe, Alex hooked her umbrella around the table leg as we were leaving, tipping the entire table curbside, along with a huge assortment of crockery and un-eaten food (mine), which littered the pavement while her three-year-old argued that she was ‘very strong’ and should be able to push the pram (x100) and Balmain retirees and Yummy Mummies stomped on the chicken and avocado wrap and fries detritus and bits of jagged porcelain, which I tried to clean up, until the waiting staff urged us to please leave...

‘I’m very strong – I can push the pram!’ Jess said again. Has she no sense of drama? Look! Jessie! Drama! Dra-MA!

Nuh, she didn’t see it...

We took her to the ferry, to meet her Papa. Alas, we forgot to mention that we would, thirty seconds after reuniting them, be jumping on the very same ferry – sans her - to get to the Opera House to see Il Divo (Sigh! So HOT and so BRILLIANT – although my step-daughter sent me a Facebook message saying, ‘Em – so LAME!’ to which I replied, ‘Yeah, but you know how I love loving lame stuff!’)

I can report that there’s nothing worse than sailing away on a ferry for a much-deserved girls’ night, with a three-year-old crying with her arms out desperately, on the jetty...

That said, we made the most of things, drowning our sorrows in prawns, a cheese platter, a glass of sauvignon blanc each and a sumptuous concert, after which I settled down for a blissful, child-free sleep.

But I was not alone!

Three days prior to my arrival, the very studio in which I was sleeping had been the subject of a 2am police search for a wanted fugitive, on the run after an assault at the local pub!

Yes! It had!

I’d like it noted on record that I am one brave woman.

Picture me sleeping alone, in a room detached from the main house, without my Bieber-besotted teen there for protection, with this nutter on the loose – police dogs traipsing through the neighbours’ house only 72 hours previous (I know this, because I met the neighbour and lapped up the chaos eagerly, saying ‘Ooh!’ and ‘WOW’ and thinking, ‘why doesn’t this stuff happen where I live?’)...

That’s irrelevant, though. Because it wasn’t the fugitive that freaked me out. It was the Huntsman.

I spotted it, as I was crawling into bed. Huge! The size of a dinner plate, at least! Well, a saucer. Actually, the size of a babycino saucer... No matter!

Menacing.

Alex’s husband had said to me as we bid goodnight, ‘let us know if you get scared in the studio’...

Did this count? I was in my mis-matched jammies by this stage. VERY mis-matched.

Honestly? I’d have to get dressed again to raise the alarm. Could I be bothered? I’ve had three children and been through a divorce. SURELY I could contend with this situation like the super-woman that I am, underneath my embarrassing PJs and arachnophobia...

I took my shoe. Not the sneaker – too broad. The one with a wide heel. For once I was thankful for being a size 10.5 – 11 (one size on one foot, one size for the other). More fire-power. Deadly (I hoped). And I crouched on the bed, psyching myself up for murder...

After about ten minutes, I threw the shoe at the spider. I'll admit it. I ‘threw like a girl’ – but only because I didn’t want to chip the paint on the feature wall in the studio. I can throw like a non-girl, if I want to! I just value decorating.

It (the spider) played dead. I retrieved the shoe. Flashbacks from previous spider-incidents mocked me – the time my friend Ali came to our rescue at midnight, as hysterical sixteen-year-olds at my sleepover. The time strangers thought my ex-husband was attacking me in a shopping centre car park when he chivalrously batted a huntsman off my bare thigh while I screamed...

In any case – with the insect frozen on the slate tiles, and with no todder-wake-ups to dread, I thought bliss! Sleep...

1.30am – a violent fugitive jumped onto the tin roof of the studio!! Or that’s what it sounded like. It might have been a possum. Or maybe Alex’s cat...

2.30am – knocking.

Knocking? I leaned over the precipice of the bed (not keen to set foot on the floor) and prised open the Roman blind... but couldn’t see anything. Cat-flap?

I needed to go to the toilet.

Is the spider dead or foxing? Decided to hold on til morning...

7am... iPhone alarm blaring. I lay there, thinking ‘I’m alive!!’ and rolled over, casually expecting to pay my respects to the eight-legged carcass in the corner but...

EEEK!! It was AWOL!

Heck!!

I eyed my overnight bag, suspiciously... was it in there - plotting to hitchhike interstate, to my house? Lara Croft-like, but not quite so ‘kick arse’, in fact, a bit more Some Mothers Do ‘Ave Em-ish – I stepped out of bed.

I had a shower. Shook my clothes out for dear life... got dressed. Crept into the main house and met Alex’s husband, who said ‘how did you sleep?’

GREAT! The bed is so comfortable (which it IS!) The studio is GORGEOUS (it is!) I slept way better than I do on average with my sleep-challenged toddler (I did!)

But you guys should know - there’s a rogue lunatic inhabiting your studio ... she's shooting for Angelina Tomb Raider and hitting Angelina Ballerina ...

But less gutsy.

Didn't she almost have it all?

2012-02-12T18:23:00.005+11:00

Whitney Houston’s songs seem inexplicably barnacled to specific memories from my childhood...

I wanna dance with somebody...

I’m 14, listening to my brand new hi-tech (then) Sony walkman in 1988, in a Japanese high-school dormitory in Shizuoka, at an International Youth Music Festival, flirting with the cutest Danish boy you would ever see... thinking ‘I wanna dance with him!’ Specifically. (Unlikely, given was too scared to talk to boys.)

Didn’t we almost have it all?

Fifteen. Hopelessly besotted with the lead trumpet player in the school orchestra. Oh. My. Gosh. Had reason to believe he was besotted back, but not besotted enough to leave his six-foot tall, bombshell girlfriend. Would play this on continuous loop after rehearsals, lying on my bed, staring at Kirk Cameron posters to cheer myself up.

Run to you and I will always love you...

Year 12. Night before final maths exam. (Maths: something I wanted to run away from and will always hate.) Lying in bed wrestling algebraic formulas with The Bodyguard playing on TV in the other room. A freak storm hits and a eucalyptus tree crashes onto the roof above my bedroom. Shatters already shattered nerves.

I’m every woman...

2nd-year uni. Meant to be studying. Watching Oprah.

I’m every woman...

3rd-year-uni. Meant to be studying. Watching Oprah.

Just introducing my kids to Ms Houston right now:

Hannah (13): ‘This is SO LOUD. I can hear it in my bedroom through two walls! I’d say something about it but I don’t want to speak ill of the dead!’

Sophie (11): ‘Who even is this! She’s AWESOME!’

Sebastian (15 months): ‘Waaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!’ (in Whitney’s defence, Seb had inadvertently turned the volume to max before I switched it on, and was standing beside the speaker when it burst into I’m your baby tonight... a song that, incidentally, reminds me of learning to drive...)

So, Whitney – thanks for injecting your voice into some of the key moments in my life. After today, So emotional, will forever represent my daughter trying to convince me to let her quit ballet lessons after seven years, a few months off finally reaching pointe shoes... And my kids and husband (and possibly the dog, who can't even protest because he's wearing an anti-bark spray collar) will be forever traumatised by my belting out a dazzling vocal array of your greatest hits, as a mark of respect.

Yes. There were tears. (Theirs.)

Parents. SO embarrassing...

2012-02-11T19:46:00.003+11:00

Tommy Jordan, from North Carolina, caused a frenzy this week when he repeatedly fired his .45 pistol at his 16-year-old daughter’s laptop computer as punishment after she posted a drama-fuelled rant about her parents on Facebook. He captured the firing on video, having already filmed himself reading her post aloud and responding to each of her complaints in turn (cigarette in hand). Then he posted the video on YouTube and linked it on her Facebook wall ‘so all those kids that thought it was cool for how rebellious you were can see what happens.’ (sic).

Thanks, Dad.

Teenage girls can really try your patience (I was one, I have one, and there’s another not far behind her). Yes, I’ll admit it - the Facebook-and-teenage-girls cocktail can drive you a little crazy (as Jordan so aptly demonstrated).

At thirteen, it’s all ‘like’ for a ‘rate’. Endless posts gushing, ‘tbh you're actually really naturally pretty, and like amazing hair, and great personality: 8/10. Let's be closer this year, I wish we talked more!’ juxtaposed with updates from the Justin Bieber fan page...

What it isn’t, usually, is the long-winded open letter to her parents that Jordan’s daughter authored (not before de-friending them so they wouldn’t read it – an action which backfired, somewhat, when her dad not only read it but shot it to pieces).

Jordan has received mixed feedback on his disciplinary response, after more than 4 million views on YouTube (at the time of writing). There are those who love the fact that he’s teaching his daughter that there are consequences for bad behaviour – and there are others who regard the consequences in this case to be extreme and observe here a parent behaving badly: ‘Like, tbh, you’re totally out of control and childish, wish you talked with your daughter more instead of shooting her stuff. 2/10.’

Whether his daughter’s ode to parental unfairness was justified or not (and we can’t know the answer to that), the fact is that Jordan’s choice of discipline in this instance was public humiliation and violence to exact revenge on his child – one-upping her, at her own game. To be fair, it’s unlikely that he devised a strategic plan for his family’s dirty linen to become a worldwide viral hit in a matter of days. He probably only meant to intimidate and berate his daughter amongst the people whose opinions matter most to her, where maximum mortification would be felt, after which she was supposed to do what, exactly? Run home to mum and dad?

‘Harrshh’, was my own teen’s response when I outlined the story to her (they like to toss in a few superfluous letters here and there). Alas, public humiliation of children by parents seems to be the flavour of the week in the news – after a father filmed his four-year-old running through the snow in socks and undies to ‘toughen him up’ in New York, while the boy’s mum laughed and egged him on, ignoring his repeated requests to be picked up.

What’s wrong with kids these days? (Rhetorical question.)

Perhaps it’s all the teachers’ fault. A Herald Sun survey found that nearly half of teachers surveyed admitted they’d considered resigning over the last 12 months. One teacher explained that ‘on more than five occasions this year, parents have brought in excess of 200 pages of Facebook transcripts and (said), "We’ll leave it to you to sort out"'.

Noice.

I’ve confiscated the laptop a few times. I'm proud to say I’ve never shot it, or given in to the impulse that I have felt, to throw it out the window. I'm immensely proud of my teenager, and I've had some teen-mum situations arise. I've ranted. I've lost my temper. I've gone on for longer than the circumstances warranted and I've handled situations badly. I've apologised, I've sat with her and we've had rational conversations. I've got it right. I've handled things calmly and well.

Am I harrshh? Dunno?

It’s all trial and error, as it has been since the moment she was lifted out of me in a c-section thirteen-and-a-half years ago and I thought she could do no wrong and I'd be the 'perfect mum' (my first mistake).

Parents are about as ‘only human’ as it gets – particularly on a bad day.

Sometimes we hit the mark, other times we hit our kid’s computer with a pistol and skyrocket our family to worldwide infamy - missing the mark by a long shot (imho, no offence, ♥)

OMG, parents are, like, so embarrassing...

The tribe is heartbroken

2012-02-10T14:12:00.008+11:00

Mums’ groups can get a bad rap. The worst of them are competitive and cliquey - a minefield of 'mummy wars' – a place where women facing the gauntlet of new parenthood hope for support and guidance and leave feeling judged and alone.

Not so in my group. In the two years since we met in an online ‘due-in’ thread on a baby website, we’ve morphed from slightly wary strangers (potential ‘axe-murderers’, according to some of our partners) into something I’d never have believed was possible except ‘in real life’.

We do the things that best friends do. See each other through the deaths of parents, the end of relationships, the excitement of engagements, weddings and pregnancies. Mourn together through miscarriages, support each other over the loss of jobs, encourage the flourishing of careers and pitch in to rebuild after the destruction of homes in floods and fire.

We’ve supported each other through custody battles and court cases, through post-natal depression, after car accidents, through the development of an Ethiopian orphanage, the set-up of businesses, the hiring and sacking of employees...

We’ve opened up about things we’ve never opened up about before – to anyone. Domestic violence, rape and sexual abuse.

We’ve shared our dreams, our grief, our belongings, our money.

And right now, we’re sharing our hope.

As I write this, forty-two of us are embracing each other in our little, private Facebook hideaway, while one of our own fights for the life of her newborn baby girl in Western Australia.

A Queenslander suggested we buy her a bracelet with her baby’s name engraved on it. One of the Victorians wants to send money to a Perth member so she can deliver a home-cooked meal on her behalf. Someone from NSW is looking into the Heartfelt organisation, which provides free professional photography of very ill or stillborn babies.

This is the second critically-ill baby we have had. We lost our first, and mourned him like Aunties, while holding our precious babies even closer.

This was a group of random women across the country. It’s now a tribe.

There’s a twenty-year age gap between our youngest and oldest members. We’re single, married and divorced. We’re atheist and religious. We’re career-driven and staying-at-home. We’ve breastfed, we’ve bottle-fed, we’ve controlled-cried, we’ve attachment-parented, we’re private schooling, we’re public schooling, we smack, we don’t smack, we immunise, we don’t immunise...
We’re all of that. On paper, it looks like a recipe for a giant, PMT-fuelled electronic catfight.

But it works. More than that, it thrives and deepens the closer we get, the more we go through – as if we’ve known each other all our lives.

Maybe it’s because we’ve never met in person that we get along so well...

Maybe it’s because we’re fabulous... :-)

Right now, all that matters is little Emilia Jayne, whose tribe of online Aunties is heartbroken once again, and wrapping her and her beautiful Mummy, Bek, in our arms.

Whatever happens – we’ll be here.

Online, in real life.

What next?

2012-02-07T19:48:00.005+11:00

I’d had quite a nice day today.

First day back at school. Baby slept three hours. Got some work done.

Then I was hit by one of those freak parental storms – where everything gets out of control in the space of ten minutes and you wonder if you’ve got what it takes to pull off this gig for the rest of your life.

Sebastian (15 months) woke up from his afternoon sleep with a rash all over his face. Gahh! Tens of little red dots, spreading menacingly over his forehead and nose.

Chicken pox? Measles? Spider infestation? He hit the wall (literally) then apologised to it, said ‘Awww...’ and kissed it. What on earth?

Called the GP who could only squeeze us in at the precise moment that I’d be delivering Sophie to her inaugural Intermediate Foundation ballet class, whatever that is (see previous post on extent to which I understand dancing).

‘Quick, get in the car!’ I yelled, bundling the baby up in his pyjamas and a t-shirt drenched in cereal, apple, banana, vegemite and milk (you know how you have some days where you just think, ‘can’t be bothered changing him out of PJs and also can't be bothered with the bib?’ and then the next meal happens and the situation worsens, then you reach a tipping point and there seems no point changing him until after a bath?)

I was sure there was a spare top in the nappy bag. (There wasn’t.)

Got to Hume (industrial area slash popular brothel and adult-shop slash ballet-school location) and kicked Sophie out of the car, hoping I’d read the email right and Intermediate Foundation was actually on at 4.30pm.

With minus-six minutes to get to the GP, I screeched into the carpark, dashed inside and presented myself and my grotty and possibly contagious boy in a waiting-room full of sickos, who stared at me in my husband’s grey track-pants, a t-shirt (of the same colour) and a pair of thongs, hair untouched since yesterday, like I was Exhibit A in the argument against age-gap families.

My expression was twice as frazzled as it would have been had it only been conveying the whole ballet-doctor-rash-clash, because, literally as I was stepping through the doctor’s door, I cast a glance down the shopping centre thoroughfare and noticed Hannah, 13, ‘hanging out’ outside the supermarket with the three friends she’d advised me by text message (on someone else's phone - see explanation below) that she’d be with, plus a group of unknown Catholic boys on skateboards, with bleached blonde hair and impure motives (I divined this in milliseconds, from 30 metres away, even though my prescription sunglasses are in a rubbish tip in London and I’m blind as a bat).

‘Hello!’ the receptionist chirped. ‘Is this the spotty boy?’

Everyone in the waiting room reeled. Even I reeled, and I’d already been exposed to the infection for hours.

‘I don’t have a clue what that is!’ the doctor pronounced, moments later. ‘Although the eczema on his back is infected and is now impetigo, needs antibioitics and a specialist referral...’

‘Okay, okay...’ I quipped, wanting to add, ‘HELLO! My other baby is outside right now with BOYS while we’re sitting here gossiping about dermatology!’ (I'm an old hat at childhood illnesses, having spent all weekend painstakingly collecting someone's urine for a 24-hour test, but let's not dwell on that.)

‘That’s seventy dollars...’ the receptionist trilled, like I wasn’t already having an awful afternoon - and then I was liberated and marching towards my precious, vulnerable teen – me, the very model of an overweight, grey-clad, messy-haired mother of a dirty toddler with unknown skin condition plus bonus impetigo...

Did my mind cast way back to a time when I was a teen too, and put myself in her place? Yes. It did.

Then it put itself firmly back in my place here in the present and on I marched like a ship in full sail, because the drive to protect is stronger than the reluctance to embarrass...

She looked up, smiled, seemed not to notice my appearance, yelled ‘There’s my mamma!’ and started running towards me. In front of everyone.

It was all I could do not to fall in a heap at her feet and scream, ‘I love you! Don’t grow up!’ and burst into tears. (But I do have a limit for mortifying behaviour and I’d reached it.) Given the presence of popular kids and sun-bleached boys (both of whom have intimidated me from the get go), I decided to go for ‘super-cool mum’ instead.

It’s a hard image to pull off, looking like something the cat wouldn’t drag in (did I mention hubby’s hand-me-down track pants are the type with elastic at the bottom and I’m still 16kg overweight so they don’t really fit? My t-shirt has ‘Pride and Prejudice’ emblazoned on it, which in itself is fine - particularly swanning around Cambridge - but not so much with the bogan accessories and hairstyle and kid, stumbling around my local shopping centre.)

When I said, as delicately as I could express it given her friends were listening, ‘Do you want to come with me to the pharmacy to get Sebbie’s impetigo antibiotics’ she declined my offer in favour of walking home with her friends. What?

There was other stuff (a tantrum over keys, the school phoning to say I'd double-paid the Starter Pack fee etc) but fast forward an hour and she still wasn’t home. She couldn’t text me because she’d inadvertently thrown her phone into a spa pool at a hotel in Sydney while seeing the Harry Potter exhibition with her grandparents.

At 5.40pm I was LIVID.

Where is she! This is SO not happening - ever again! No after school flirting outside the General Store, no boys, no ANYTHING. She is going to be kept under lock and key in a turret, like Rapunzel... without the turret, because we can barely afford the new bedroom we just put on for Seb.

I rammed some semi-still-frozen pork and veggies and Keflex down his throat (will he get food poisoning if I didn’t re-heat it fully?) and changed his top (the pink antibiotics down the front of it were the last straw) and got in the car AGAIN to go and look for her.

Gahh! Intermediate Foundation!!!

Called my parents, who are nearly eighty, and asked them to brave the red light district that is the ballet-school environment and pick Sophie up, while the baby and I panicked about our teen. Drove around the suburb. No sign of her. Had she been abducted by killers? Aliens? Worse - Year Eight boys from the brother school intent on chatting about music and Facebook and other fast pursuits...

Eventually, at 6pm, another mother drove into our driveway and dropped her off. Cue me, standing on my doorstep in something you don’t even see women wearing in those women’s-prison documentaries (with an English Lit twist), furious yet smiling and waving charmingly and thankfully as she pulled out of the driveway in an ambitious attempt to be grateful (which I WAS).

‘Hi Mummy! Sorry! If I had a new phone none of this would have happened...’

‘Mummy! I hate ballet!’

‘Mamma! Mamma! MAMMA!!! MAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!’

Waaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!

I decided to seek solace in the toilet (as you do) which is where it occurred to me, with a growing crescendo of panic... I'm two days late!!!

I'm sure it's nothing. Absolutely positive, in fact. Negative, that is.

Because it has to be! Right?

Confessions of a Failed Dancing Mum

2011-06-20T10:24:00.007+10:00

I was behind the door when the Dancing Mother gene was handed out - and that’s unfortunate. Very.

My girls have danced since they were five-ish, when one of them saw Riverdance and the other saw Angelina Ballerina and, before I knew it, the seemingly innocuous Saturday morning ‘music and movement class’ had been flattened by an ever-more-menacing tornado of bobby pins and hair spray and National Championships and fundraising chocolates (most of which I have consumed personally).

Fast forward several years and we’ve hit the ‘big time’: Three dancing lessons a week x2. Membership of the elite ‘Performance Group’. Interstate travel.

KA-CHING! $65 for the ballet-school approved make-up kit

I write this in yet another dancing-induced tizz, because I forgot to return the embroidered tracksuit.

KA-CHING! $10 to hire a tracksuit plus $10 late fee

The tracksuit (technically just the top, worn for approximately two minutes at a recent Eisteddfod) has pushed me over the edge. I’ve been perilously close for years, gripping the cliff with tired fingers - punished by the sewing on of six billion sequins because I didn’t know you could glue them - bankrupt from the Irish Dancing Dress (just a cheap, second-hand one at $400), stressed out from the waist elastic being the wrong shade of violet for the exam, mortified that the bun is a centimetre to the left.

KA-CHING! Irish hard shoes - ($195)

(The Irish are not as poverty-stricken as they make out – it all goes on shoes and dresses as far as I can tell.)

Ballet Exam enrolment fee ($60)

KA-CHING!

Exam administration fee ($65) Didn’t I just pay that? Oh, no, that was the enrolment fee.

And then there is everything associated with the Concerts (which are priceless, and not necessarily in a good way)...

I remember my first experience of the end-of-year ballet concert. It went for SIX HOURS. Six!

There were Nazis stationed at the theatre doors armed with torches and programs, trapping mothers who wanted to escape after the three minutes that our own child was on stage (which is the three minutes of gorgeousness that makes the preceding year's effort worthwhile). At the end of the concert there were awards and speeches. Senior students left the school. They thanked everyone who has helped them get this far. Bawling.

Or was that me, bawling, in the audience? I’d lost all sense of which way was up and felt like a trainee astronaut in a zero-gravity simulation.

Once, when I was engrossed in Twilight during a day-long Irish Dancing Feis (festival/competition), I didn’t tie up my daughter’s hard shoe tightly enough and, half way through a six-hand reel, she kicked vigorously and the shoe flew up in the air and across the stage, landing within inches of the adjudicator.

In the myriad nightmares I'd had about dancing, this scenario had never figured. I'd pictured the spray tan causing an allergic reaction or wiping off on the dress that had cost four times as much as my wedding dress. I'd envisaged the wig falling off - and it nearly had, on occasion. I'd come out in a cold sweat during the application of sock glue (yes, sock glue). But never - never - had the shoe knocked the adjudicator unconscious.

To her credit, she kept dancing. To mine, I put the book down and paid closer attention while dressing her.

I’d watched a handful of zealous mums (dancing in the wings – they know all the steps) seize kids as they exit the stage having made a mistake and pounce on them about it.

‘What happened? Why did you get that wrong?’

I'd wished Hannah’s projectile shoe had donged them on the head and knocked some perspective into them. These are KIDS. They’re DANCING. Let them ENJOY IT!

Increasingly, though, it is me who is the odd mother out. I watched a ballet workshop last weekend with the Real Dancing Mothers. I was the only mum in the theatre who didn’t have a child on stage. Mine was out the back with her friends, waiting for the next section and it was cold, the shops were shut and there weren’t any seats in the foyer, so there was nothing for it but go in early and absorb a masterclass.

Was the guy running it taking off Mr G in Summer Heights High? Surely he was. He was hilarious!

‘Isn’t he hilarious?’ I wanted to whisper - aching to dig the next mum in the ribs and share the joke.

She wasn’t laughing.

She was taking notes.

Everyone was taking notes.

I got out my notepad and started taking notes:

Chris Lilley – Summer Heights High
Shoe flying off in Irish feis
This is the last Will and Testament of a person trapped in an overly serious dancing masterclass...

‘I’ve got a sore foot, Mummy,’ Hannah confided.

Was my luck changing? My child was injured!! Within seconds, I’d booked an appointment with the paediatric podiatrist and, at the appointment, I conducted surreptitious charades as he examined her, willing him to say, ‘It’s the dancing, you see... it will have to go.’

‘It’s the dancing,’ he said. ‘You need a break from it.’

I nearly fell on my knees in relief. Thank you - you gorgeous man. Thank you, T.H.A.N.K. Y.O.U!

So, we’ve halved our dancing load. In the extra time this has opened up in our lives now it’s me getting my hair done and stage makeup applied at the kitchen table by the girls (who won’t take the imaginative play far enough to have me also dance, because that would just be embarrassing).

Speaking of which, I forgot that they’d done that last week. I did the groceries in the guise of mutton dressed up as an over-sized ballerina who had been into the fundraising chocolates again. I had dramatic side-flicks drawn in eyeliner pencil and I'd wondered why everyone was uncharacteristically attentive and grinning at me in the farmer’s market.

‘There’s another one...’ they were probably saying. ‘Poor, demented dancing mum. Lost her mind at the National Championships in 2008, no doubt...’