In full flight?

I got an email from a friend today...... asking me if my spirits had returned to full flight.

I love this friend. He's really more like an adopted uncle. He's been a bit of a mentor to me as someone that has worked in the community / Not for Profit sector for years. He's insanely idealistic and won't let cynicism and poor government policy or bad practice drag him down. Anyway, he took a holiday earlier this year to Alice Springs which is the town near (well nearest - it's still a couple of hundred kms away) Uluru (Ayers Rock).
Uluru.
The big red heart of this wide land.
When you are there you can understand why land is everything to our Indigenous peoples. It is their history, their law, their "dreaming". It carries their stories. It is their text - their bible.

You've never seen a sky as big as the one in the centre of Australia. If you tipped your head back as far as you could you wouldn't see the end of it. You have to turn in a circle to trace the unbroken horizon all the way round. The earth is red - not a clay red - it is almost like a blush - rust and ochre. It makes an insane contrast to the blue sky.
When you first catch sight of Uluru it almost looks fake. Like someone has stuck a fuzzy felt against the vast blue sky. But as you get closer you get more and more excited. And despite the bus loads of tourists buzzing around, you will still be taken in. In that moment it will own you.

I went to The Centre with my husband after our daughter died. A bunch of people chipped in to buy us a holiday and we flew to Alice. A friend there lent us her 4WD and a swag (it's like a made bed in a canvas casing that you roll out - no tent as it's so dry, so you fall asleep watching the desert sky). Two weeks after a c-section is probably not an ideal time to drive 700km from the nearest hospital on bumpy dirt roads and sleep out bush with not a soul around. But for me, and us, it was the best thing on earth. I could think of no better place to begin a journey of healing then in that heartland. The land was patient with me. I would cry and wail and work myself into knots..... and when I finally looked up, it would be there waiting.... offering it's stark and rather painful beauty as an answer to my many questions.

I've lost my way - I started with a friend who had visited Alice. My beautiful friend - well he got stuck there. He's just left everything ad made it his home. I knew he would. He loves being with Aboriginal people and there is plenty of work to anyone in the community sector. So he wrote me a little email just to let me know he was there and to ask after me. Asking if I had returned to "full flight". I was going to write about how far I was from full flight..... (I'm still free falling...) but my emotions carry no weight now that I have written about Uluru.

I have the feeling you get when you stare a huge starry sky. You feel small and yet not insignificant. Somehow the proportions work out and you see your place in the world.

Instead I'll leave you with some photos from our trip there.

I'll write about me another time.

Enjoy.

Another one

My sister is pregnant.

She has already had one little one since my girl Maya died. And now she is having another (her third in all).

And I have been doing everything under the sun ever since to try and have a baby.

I have nothing new to say on this...... I've said it all when others got pregnant........ but darn it. It's killing me.

Full and empty

I haven't blogged in a while.

Sometimes it is too hard. My head is so full but I feel empty.

It's been a hard couple of weeks which I won't go into.... but the long and the short - my Nana died, and in the same week I was a bridesmaid and my best friends kid had his first birthday.

My Nan was cool. She wasn't the type of Nan to bundle you up in her ample body and stuff you with biscuits and cake. She was a skinny Nanna. My husband rekons no one actually told her that the depression had ended, she still cooked, ate and spent money like it was still here. It was a question of virtue for her. So biscuits at Nans place always had a musty flavour - and it wasn't until years later when my uncle explained that she used the leftover lard (from the bottom of the grill) instead of butter, that I realised that the musty flavour did taste a bit like a chop. Which is of course confusing in a biscuit. She grew her own lettuce and it was always leathery and purple and regularly contained a slug or snail. In the recent period of drought she confessed to me in an intimate moment that she only used cold water in the shower (she was 92) and she turned it off when lathering the soap on her body as a way to save water (the cold water was to avoid the temptation of standing under long hot showers)..... she remembers visiting farms in drought and this is what you had to do.

No... she wasn't extravagant, and spoiling kids was not part of her repertoire. Where my Nanna came into her own was in doing things. She lived down at Chinamens beach. There was a little bush track heading down from the bottom of the great sandstone rock the house was built on down to "the green" the hectare or so of grass and trees before you rose over the dune and onto the beach. Nannas beach - as we called it - was a inner harbour beach .... so no crashing surf except in the wildest of weather. It was perfect swimming for us kids and we spent a lot of time there. We walked up and down the beach studying the flotsam and jetsam. Nan would show me what a shark egg looked like. We'd collect witches fingernails - a long thin shell that we held over our own fingernails for as long as we remembered or until they got a bit cumbersome and in the way of our climbing. There was a rocky headland at either end of the beach. The southend is where we hung out. There was a bamboo patch behind the rocks and my cousin showed me how you could lift the bamboo edges and crawl into a big hollowed out section. This was cubbyhouses on a grand scale - 12 ft ceilings and soft leafy carpet. It was a place to conduct important kids business although I believe the passage to and from was the most exciting part of this cubby. Once there.... well we were ready to move on pretty soon.

You could make your way round the rocks at sea level to the next beach - but you had to time it to miss the tide. Going around the rocks was one of my favourite things. I remember the feeling of power in my body and trust in my agility as I ran over the rocks, always sure footed and doing what seemed like flying leaps over gaping chasms in the rock. The barnacles hurt but if you learnt to relax your feet over them rather then tensing up it wasn't so bad. When walking on the green weedy parts you had to grip with your toes in order not to slip. We were forever stopping to wait for the adults to catch up. So we'd holt our nimble progress where the waves were lapping the rocks and tread on the cunjevoies(sp?) to try and squirt water at each other.... or just into the air. A little geyser controlled by yours truly. Next you had to find the best rock pool which meant finding one with something you hadn't seen before, or, finding one with heaps of anenemies. You could stick your finger in the middle and feel the gentle suction of the fronds closing around your finger. It required a small tug to release.

I remember waiting for Nan to catch up one day. The spot I was waiting at required a decision to be made. The tide was coming in and we had three options... 1 to turn around and go home (not really and option) 2. to lift skirts and wade in the water to our waste, 3. to crawl on a rock ledge on our bellies to get to the next platform. My preference of course was to crawl on my tummy. I remember being surprised that Nan agreed to that one. I felt very proud looking behind me to see my (seemingly ancient) Nanna on her scrawny tummy crawling after me. I felt very very proud. This is MY Nanna. The one doing what kids do.

This was the best of Nan. And I believe that she did not need her grand kids to be with her as an excuse for these things. In later years we'd swap travelling stories and where I would be struggling to remember the name of the port in Athens or which state of India Bahratpur was in, she would be able to remember the name of the plaka where she sat to drink coffee. She travelled more or less overland with Pop from Australia to England. Up through Australia, across to singapore, west through asia, the top of india, afghanistan, then i think a flight to turkey and overland from there.... This was well and truly before the invention of the Lonely Planet.

I visited her for 3 hours before she got suddenly sick. I think she knew. She was in a lot of pain and could barely stand up. She wasn't able to walk me to the door when I left, so she stood in the hallway of her home and waved and said "Goodbye" "Goodbye".

Goodbye Nan.

An apology....... of sorts.

I am feeling kinda sheepish about the melodrama of my last post.

I don't really think I am cursed, or that God hates me. It was obviously a crap week. I would delete the whole thing except that would make something a lie.... this blog I guess.... so for the sake of truth in the personal annals of B I will keep it up there.

I just read a beautiful entry from msfitzia at http://peanutsmom.blogspot.com/ describing her experience on the night of October 15th. A visit, if you will, from her son. A message of love and of peace. A moment of stillness in the darkness and turbulence of greif.

i know those moments. You can't break your way into them. But they are all the more precious for the fact that they cannot be conjured. I know it has made me fall on me knees and weep tears of gratitude.... for the chance to have experienced love. To love the little person that was made in love by me and jake and the grace of God. To know that even in death, there is still love.

I went to church last week which I hardly ever do because sermons really give me the shits. I just can't think of any other time in life where I would subject myself to listening to someone telling me how to live in three alliterating points with a tacky metaphor thrown in for good measure - so why do it at church? But I went last week cause my friend Jo was preaching. As it turned out the passage she was preaching on was from Jeremiah where the Israelites had been taken captive and were living in exile in Babylon. It has the oft quoted passage of "I have plans to make you prosper" but starts with Jeremiah telling the Israelites to make there home in Babylon, to take wives and have children, to plant gardens and eat the crops..... It meant a lot to me that she spoke on this because she too is experiencing infertility (which is a kind of exile) and her husband has been living with depression and had been home from work for a couple of weeks because of this.

The bit about making your home in Babylon..... that is the thing that has been ticking around my head. The Isrealites didn't want to hear this, they wanted to be delivered from their conquerors and returned to Jerusalem. They did not want the permanence of planting crops, building houses, taking wives, having children.... and the command to seek the welfare of Babylon. I have been thinking about the wisdom of making this, where-we-are-now, our home. Of building a home in exile, rather then waiting for deliverance.

I have been reluctant to accept this. For one it is just too sad. To accept my present life. And there also seems a kind of resignation to "building homes" and "planting crops". It is what I think other people mean when they say things like "getting on with life". There seems a lack of hope. Or a feebleness, a refusal to fight for what is right.

And yet, this week I have been reviewing this. I don't know how long our "exile" will be. If I will ever be able to have living children. Maybe it is time to begin to look at this as my new life, rather than a lapse or a pause from the real business. Looking at this passage also made me realise that embracing the present and finding a way to plant and build and harvest in this painful, confusing time is not giving up on hope. Rather, there is a deep level of trust.... of trusting the future to itself, or to God (if you are so inclined), which lends true freedom to the present. I cannot be held ransom by my imagined future...... I must plan to live wholly, fully, now.

****

Am back teaching at school. That is a good thing. I held a little kid tight today as he was loosing it. The body wracking sobs and self harming gradually subsided to indignant outbursts (in Shem-speak) and then sorrowful mumurs. He looked me in the eyes and touched the tip of my nose with his pointing finger. He took a shuddering in-breath and crawled out of my lap and onto a bike.

tis the season to be knocked up

I lied. God doesn't love me at all. He may even hate me, or curse me.

I am being a bridesmaid in three weeks. The bride just told me that my fellow bridesmaid is officially announcing her pregnancy..... and my response "wow. That's really great." and then get off the phone and bawl. I was already afraid because I know that my other pregnant friend will be there (you know... the one who ended up staying over at our house....) and I know that the day after the wedding I am going to a one year birthday/thanksgiving for my friends little bubba and there are going to be all these babies there born after my little girl. So its already an emotionally loaded weekend.....

No-ones knows how much it costs me to participate in their lives. I wouldn't make any other choice.... I just need a witness to my courage in continuing to participate. I need someone to see how hard it is, and how much courage it takes to be involved. Call me dependent. But I need a big fuckin "congratulations - on being a friend to your friends when the price is so high. you deserve an honorary degree in something"

Did I mention my next door neighbour who is pregnant? I stupidly spilled the beans about our last failed IVF cycle (the one before this) only to find out a month later that she was pregnant. We have been studiously avoiding each other which is hard given that there is only a few metres between her front door and mine. And it's (almost)summer so we all spend our time outside anyway. It's like when Maya died - 5 other cousins were pg, 2 workmates, 2 bestfriends and my sister.

Man it hurts. And i hate to say it but it is getting worse. I have been desperate to have a child since Maya died. Each new pregnancy feels like a nose rub in the shit.

And I voice my protest to whoever cares to listen.... actually... just to God and you and my husband.

But God doesn't hear and you guys and husband can't change it (I know you would).

Excuse the lack of imagination in this post..... somedays there is just no love.

Confused

I never did get my vision.... my midnight encounter with God.

But the week went on moving and once again I am caught in it's flow. And I persist in believing that LOVE is the force that creates and sustains each molecule and moment of this crazy world. And I believe that God and LOVE are one and the same. And therfore I persist in believing that God loves me.

Here's this weeks proof.


My friend Ruby dancing.




Love in beauty.


Fellowship.


And I love my husband and he loves me. Which means...... everything.

I spent the week wondering why I did not feel worse, thinking that maybe all the greif and anger would hit me when I got my period. But the anger never came, or is still yet to come. I don't get it. I think I'll give up trying to get it. Maybe understanding yourself is not as important as I think it is.

What is this thing?

I don't normally go in for denial. It's a stage of grief I've never really bothered with. Let me tell you, I know grief..... I know how I grieve... well I think I do.

I'm having this new things happen. And it's scaring me shitless.

I found out on Saturday that there were no helathy little embryos to transfer. The fact that I had remained so positive through the cycle (except for the tiny wee hour on Friday which is when you happened to catch me last), the fact that the daisy whose petals I pulled told me I would have a healthy one, the fact that I was on my knees before God asking Him to see me, just see me this once....... these things didn't count for anything. As if i needed my lack of control reinforced.

I didn't even make it to transfer this time. Shit.

But this new thing.... I seem to have shut down completely emotionally. Yesterday I had a tiny cry, went to the pub for a beer and yes a cigarette, and came home and played jenga (can you pick a more nerve wracking game than waiting for a tower of blocks to fall?) then went to bed and more or less slept. Did I mention that we made love? for the first in unaccountable days/months. Who knows? It's hard to reenter your body when you have spent the last month and a half trying to remove yourself from it while needles, ultrasounds, hormones, pessaries, tablets get put in you. It was hard. It was clumsy. I didn't know what to do. The thing is.... we didn't use contraception (which we never do- it is playing with death). I woke up this morning with this strong feeling that I would become pregnant and it would be a miracle baby (you can't get pregnant 6 days after an egg retreival can you? you know.... if they missed and egg) and because it would be a miracle baby it would be healthy and I would have a child in my arms at last and we could be parents at last. And then I thought about donor embryos and maybe someone would want to donate their embryos to ME. You can't use money in that kind of exchange in OZ (I guess its not an exchange, that is why they call it a donation) so I don't know how you go about finding a donor. But I felt sure that anyone who met us would realise exactly how much love we were able to give and would be happy for their little embies to go to sorrowing couple. We would send them photos and updates. School reports and paintings. They could have as much or little contact as worked. I thought it all through...... "Yes" I thought "we will have kids". So simple.

I went for a two hour walk. We went to Oktoberfest at the daggy German club across the park. I laughed, danced and ate strudel and drank too much beer (obviously didn't have that much faith in being pregnant..... but it is a miracle baby, it can survive anything). I came home and read. The only thing to tell me I am actually "grieving" right now is this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach and the clenching of my jaws.

So can your body take over your mind? Can it make the decision that enough pain is enough and just take over and let you not feel things anymore? That is what makes me scared.... It's never happened before and so I am worried that when it comes it will be unbearable. I am more worried about my anger.... I swear I find that more unbearable than sorrow and pain. I am scared I will be unsafe. The thoughts I have terrify me so much I wil not even tell you. I mentionted them to Jake and he said "That is not OK".

I lay in bed and prayed and prayed for a sign that God loves me (I'm not normally into "signs and wonders"). I asked him to give me a vision. To come to me. To let me know that he can see this terrifying mess that I am in.

And it is four in the morning and I am not even asleep. Can God come to you when you are awake?

Will I (and we) withstand the storm when it comes?

How can I shelter myself?