I know this happens to lots of us but, just as I was clearing the spam (which I had given up checking because it’s always spammy), I noticed a couple of familiar names just as they were whooshed away into the place where deleted stuff goes.
So far I have never not accepted a comment and have tried to reply as well, so, if I haven’t done either, it means you’ve somehow ended up in the spam. Not my fault but I’m sorry anyway.
Arghh!
My father died on June 9 over 30 years ago and every single June 9 seems to descend on me like a nasty cloud.
Until today. Well, technically it’s today but it’s not even 1am yet so daylight will take awhile and I am going to bed, not with the usual June 9 Dad grief but with a whole bunch of happy memories.
He walked like Charlie Chaplin
Canadian autumn leaves brought tears to his eyes
He talked to himself on the train, just silently, but I could see his mouth moving
Perspiration sometimes beaded his upper lip
He was strong, stern and silent
He was tired, relaxed and vociferous
His adoration of my mother was evident in every blink of his eye, every day I knew him
I was sometimes afraid of his intensity
And my own
But this didn’t stop me from rushing to hug him
He let me buy bazooka bubble gum even though he hated gum-chewing
He was a grammar school teacher
Then he was a chiropractor
If patients couldn’t pay, he would accept milk or apples or smiles
He was not a business man
My brother were playing football when he died
It was too sudden
I was on the other side of Australia
The nun from the hospital rang my mother and told her to come quickly to the hospital but wouldn’t say why
My mother drove those 20 kms not knowing that her husband was already dead
He loved dogs
And squirrels
He loved my older brother’s determination
He loved my younger brother’s gentleness
He loved my being so much like him – well I think he did, maybe he didn’t know
My mother’s gregariousness was difficult because he was a bit of a loner
And a poet
Not a perfect man
Impatient if I didn’t cut my asparagus before putting it in my mouth
No stirring of the icecream
He got us our first television and we watched Disney at its inception – the wonder of it!
Everything about his memory makes me cry and laugh
Live and die
Bleed and heal
Today I refuse, for the first time in all these years, to mourn his death
Today I will walk like Charlie Chaplin
And I will grin my dad’s grin
Because I have thousands and thousands more memories
As Dad might have put it – “buggar off, grief!”
I just got permission to name the wonderful surgeon who fixed Son’s spine (you need to see previous post). His name is Peter Woodland and I am trying very hard not to fall in love with him – hehe! Son took this photo from Peter’s computer at our last appointment.
And here is a picture I took today of Son’s brace-free back:
Thank you, Peter Woodland!
Those who have been reading this blog for awhile will already know the story of Son’s scoliosis and surgery, but newcomers may not, so I thought I’d do a little pictorial recap here. This is because, yesterday, Son was told that he could finally, after over three months, take his post-operative spinal brace off and leave it off for good – YEEHA!
Before his scoliosis became so severe (it went from around a 40% curve to nearly 80% in the space of around eight months when he was 15), he was a passionate football player and had tentative dreams of pursuing football professionally. He was very good at it.
However, despite taking Son to numerous series’ of appointments with a chiropractor, physiotherapist, osteopath, kinesiologist, personal trainer and others (all of whom were wonderful and possibly prevented his scoliosis from getting even worse), the following X-ray speaks for itself. Surgery, which we hadn’t contemplated before, became a matter of inevitabilty rather than an option, so we saw a surgeon and Son was told he would have to have surgery and that he must stop playing football immediately. As this was two days before a school football trip in which Son was the star attraction (of course he wasn’t the star attraction, but I’m his mother so I like to say things like that), the devastation of this news was difficult to deal with and I will never forget Son’s sobs after that appointment.
So, on Valentines Day this year (Feb. 14 2012) Son underwent major surgery which took, I think, over eight hours and in which twelve of his vertebrae were fused, using quite a bit of titanium, and bone from the bone bank (a bit like a blood bank). I will spare you the gory details as there are plenty of youtubes on how this works. The following pictures show Son with the electrody things in his hair, the evening before surgery (we were allowed to go out for dinner!), the second is in intensive care after the surgery, the third is us mucking around and trying to be silly, and the fourth is Son a week later in the rehabilitation unit with the teddy I bought him and some gravy and chips!
And this is Son in his brace, standing 3 inches taller than he was (I kid you not!) with my mother – and another picture of him feeding the gang with some visitors.
Taking the brace off after all this time (Son had to wear it except when sleeping), has been, for him, wonderful but also a bit scary. He said today, before he went into town with his friend, “I feel a bit naked!” But, apart from that, the exhilaration of such a fantastically successful surgical outcome takes my breath away. Son is a new man!
In the next post I would like to show pictures of now, and to thank the surgeon publically, but I need to check if that is okay with him before I mention his name.
Meanwhile, Son has decided that instead of playing professional football, he will become a rock star.
And he will!
1. How come, if I click ‘Follow’ I am sometimes automatically subscribed to a blog and sometimes not?
2. In relation to the above, why is ‘Follow’ enough on some blogs but on others I have to do the email subscription thing (which I don’t mind – just wondering)?
3. Is it normal for photos to sometimes take 20 minutes hours to upload?
4. In relation to the above, why will one photo upload in a few minutes, and another take a century, when both were taken by the same camera, at the same time, on the same day?
5. Where exactly did my blogroll go when I unwittingly lost it?
6. In relation to the above, will those ‘lost’ bloggers now hate my guts?
7. How many posts per day is too many? (Yes, I have raised this before)
8. Is it okay to not particularly like the whole award thing or does this seem ungracious and offensive?
9. How is it that all the bloggers I now know seem like perfect people?
10. In relation to all of the above, is scotch the same as whiskey?
Anthony (Husband): Would you mind putting the car away, Jules?
Son: Put the %$#@*^#@** car away, Mum – the peacocks are pooping all over it AGAIN – aaaarrrrrggggggghhhhhhhhhhh!
Me: They’re sweet aren’t they!
I have just made a difficult decision. I am not going to get the emu chicks after all.
Why? Because after Son came home from milking the cows for our neighbours this morning, he took our three adult emus for a walk and eventually came inside angrily because one had gotten away and it took him ages to get it back with the others into the yard. (Also, I hadn’t told him about the emu chicks).
So, I got my priorities straightened out. Son gets his spinal brace off on Friday and we can do all the things we haven’t been able to do over the last few months, like arrange driving lessons, arrange his driver’s licence, fix up the old car for him – and lots of other things in response to his request the other day that “we spend more time together, Mum, having fun!” How lucky am I to have a teenager who wants my company!
The emu chicks can wait until next year; this year I will concentrate on Son and Anthony and not get any more birds (well maybe just a few hens).
I feel rather relieved!
(Son’s wrath is something to behold, so I don’t want that – hehe!)
I am an easily confused person in that I often forget that I am not a teenager anymore, and if I read a novel where there is a character in her 50s, I automatically thing how old before I remember I am too (not old, but in my 50s – ha!).
When I began to write Anthony’s and my love story on this blog, little post by little post, I found it comforting that the difficulties of ‘the now’ (his illness, the nursing lodge etc.) somehow became more palatable via the memories of our past – especially the good bits.
Then I started to get a bit mixed up with where I was up to with the love story, so I plonked it into its own blog and, in many ways, that has alleviated my confusion.
But the strange thing is that this blog seems to be kind of missing the love story blog and the wide stretch of time between the anecdotes in each sometimes seems vast and rather empty. Each post in the love story blog tiptoes closer and closer to this blog in that temporal sense and I think this hesitancy, on my part, is because I don’t want them to get back together.
Sometimes I want to stay in the love story blog and not come to this one, simply because of an aversion to now even though now is all there is.
I want to go back in time.
Sort of!
View across Anthony’s farm. Photo courtesy of Shaam Burley
Daffy and Dotty are our two Indian runner ducks. They are inseparable and, for some reason, the other birds ostracize them – like a strange avianish racism. They can’t fly, but they can run (hence the name of this particular breed I guess) and they run exactly like Basil in Fawlty Towers. They only use the pond after the rest of the gang of geese and ducks are finished ‘bathing’ because they’re so timid.
The absolutely adore each other.
Underneath the following picture is a list of the amazing bloggers who have nominated me for awards. I am so grateful for this kind of acknowledgement (of my blog), however, as an award-shy person, my way of accepting these nominations, with grace, has been to create the ‘Hot Potato Award’ which I give freely to (no strings attached, no rules – you just take it and copy/paste to your blog page, or you don’t).
So please check out these hot potatoes – they are very worthwhile, incredible blogs!
jmgoyder 