Conversation between Ming and me this afternoon:
Me [timid]: If you could just stop being so angry – please! I think we need to go back for counselling.
Ming [sarcastic]: Oh, of course, counselling because I am a psycho and I need help.
Me: Everything seemed okay until a couple of days ago and now you’re angry again – I can’t stand it and I want it to stop.
Ming: But I am angry. I AM ANGRY!
Me: So what do I do?
Ming: LET ME BE ANGRY!
Okay.
That angry angel has a good point!
Last night I rang Anthony and, instead of the usual commiserative, areyouokay? conversation, I blathered on about a whole bunch of farm/child/other problems I was having. My blah blah blah went a bit like this:
Can you believe it? The peacock man hasn’t come, I can’t find three of the girls so they’re probably nesting in a paddock or killed by the fox or maybe the neighbour has shot them and I am at my wit’s end!
Ming is fighting with me again; I think we should send him to bootcamp – what do you think? I can’t stand it!
Oh bloody hell now this other thing has happened and I don’t know if I can see you tomorrow because I have to …. argh!
You know that old lawnmower – is it worth fixing? What if it blows up? How am I supposed to figure all of this out? What! Are you crazy? How can you possibily help when you can’t walk – oh sorry, sorry!
Well of course I’m stressed – why are you chuckling? How dare you chuckle!
Yes, yes, yes, I know you love me. I love you too. Can we develop a new repertoire – this is getting boring!
Oh, all right, are you sure? Okay. Yes, I feel calmer now – thanks, Ants! G’night.
I miss the patriarch.
I have always found the concept of ‘normal’ problematic. As a child I was obsessively anxious that I might be abnormal and would constantly ask my mother, “Am I normal?” She would always reassure me but I still had my doubts.
As an adult I eschew the notion of normal. It is such a bland, boring word and it hardly ever makes sense on its own. Without context, cultural and social, it is a vacuous concept. Quite frankly I don’t like it and it doesn’t like me.
I’m not alone here am I. But normal rules doesn’t it. It boxes you in with its perfect corners. But ‘abnormal’ isn’t a very pleasant word either so it is a dilemma for children when they are measured on such a continuum with nothing in the middle. The pressure to be normal or the same as everyone else is a ferocious pressure and can torture the child/person who struggles with not being able to fit into the box.
If you are not normal in the stereotypical way, you are not abnormal, you are just different, unique, original, maybe a bit eccentric even. So what.
If you are ‘normal’ well good on you!
I’ve always embraced Ming’s various idiosyncracies. When his pre-school teacher informed me, in serious tones, that he didn’t conform, I pretended to be concerned but was secretly thinking ‘yay!’ Hell, he was only 4! When he couldn’t grip his pencil in the normal way, a psychologist was brought in to see him at the school. Again, I pretended concern but secretly thought ‘does this really matter?’ He was only 7!
Now, however, I struggle with whether it is normal for an 18-year-old boy/man to emotionally detach from his father. I have allowed this to happen because my only other choice was to force guilt on him. It has been heartbreaking to watch this transition from compassionate to dispassionate son. 15-year-old Ming said to the doctor “we will never put Dad in a nursing home!” with his eyes full of tears. 18-year-old Ming doesn’t even want to see Anthony anymore. “It’s not Dad now,” he reasons.
I bought one of those mini photo scanners the other day. My plan is to scan the best of hundreds of photos of Ants and Ming that I took over the years of Ming growing up. I will then organize these into a photo book for each of them for Christmas.
Last night I asked Ming, “Can you reconjure any compassion at all?” and he said, “No, Mum, but I can pretend.”
That is enough. That is normal enough.
Oh, I have been so so excited about Anthony’s, and my, idea for a Christmas present for Ming this year. Ants and I have been discussing it for some time but have finally made the decision to do this (I can’t say what the Christmas present is in case Ming reads the blog; he hasn’t for some time, but you never know).
This will undoubtedly be the last time Ants and I collaborate on this kind of thing, for two reasons: 1. Ants’ dementia is getting worse; and 2. Ming is nearly 19.
I guess it is these two factors that punched me in the face this morning when I drove Ming into music school. I mentioned Christmas Day and said Ants would be coming home for the day and Ming’s reaction to this was so horrible that we ended up having our first row for weeks.
We made up for lost time.
While Ming and I were yelling at each other, I thought of Ming’s Christmas present – the only thing that has elicited a bit of enthusiasm from Ants for ages.
Since this morning’s row, Ming and I have had another, followed by a tentative truce in which he said, “We only have each other, Mum”, and I said, “You wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for Dad.”
And now he is in his room and I am in mine and Anthony’s phone isn’t working.
Ming asked me today what I wanted for Christmas and I said, “Wings”.
After Anthony’s hospital adventure yesterday, the hospital doctor rang me and said that the CT scan didn’t show anything and that she surmises he is having TIAs (mini-strokes) and this makes a lot of sense to me because I have seen him have these strange ‘turns’ a lot over the last few years. When I did a bit of research, all descriptions of TIAs were an exact match so, even though a TIA can’t be picked up on a scan, this does seem to explain these episodes. The trouble is – like yesterday – he just looks as if he is asleep and it’s only when I try to rouse him that it becomes obvious that something is wrong.
The nursing lodge staff want to watch him carefully for a week and I’ve been advised not to take him out, so that’s fine. I mean, I haven’t been taking him out lately anyway, because it is so difficult to lift him and all that. I rang and spoke to him and he said, “Maybe I should just step in front of a truck!” and I reprimanded him but of course who can blame him for feeling like this.
Oh I just can’t stop laughing – I keep bursting into guffaws because of three things:
1. My BFF emailed me twice today to complain that he was getting bombarded with email notifications of my work-in-progress romance novel. His emails are shrill with angst and outrage to have such tripe enter his inbox. I have, of course, apologized and tried to eradicate him from the ‘list’ to no avail. We are having lunch in a couple of weeks so hopefully we can fix this but, in the meantime, I’m quite enjoying torturing him – ha!
2. In the romance novel that I’m editing and revising on the other blog, I thought it best to change Matt’s name to Bob. That’s because, when writing the first draft of this novel last century, I didn’t know a Matt. So now that I do know a real Matt, I thought it best to use that editorial ‘replace’ thing to get Bob into the story. The trouble is that every single time the word ‘matter’ comes up in the novel (with surprising frequency) it gets altered automatically to ‘Bober’ – do you see what I mean?
3. Then, tonight, around an hour ago, I rang and spoke to Anthony and he said, “When am I going to see you?” Argh!
That’s okay. It is fine and he is fine enough now and will probably sleep really well tonight after today’s ordeal.
Me – I am going to laugh myself to sleep!
Today’s plan was to bring Anthony home for lunch but I got a phonecall at the crack of dawn from the nursing lodge to report that he’d had a bad fall and they would be getting an ambulance to take him to hospital. He’d been found on the floor next to his bed with his head bleeding and seemingly concussed. The nurse who rang me reassured me that he wasn’t anxious or in pain and, knowing how fond she is of Anthony, I took her word for it and decided not to freak out.
So I calmly got dressed and ready to go into the hospital, but waited for Ming to get home from milking the cows first. I rang the Emergency department and was able to speak to Anthony and the first thing he said was, “I’m such an idiot!” We had a bit of a chuckle and I said I’d be in soon.
Unbelievably, by the time I got to the hospital, and waited at reception (rather a long time), I was told that Anthony had just been ambulanced back to the nursing lodge. So I calmly left and headed to the nursing lodge to find him looking fine but with a wound to his right temple (the opposite side from where he had the skin cancer taken out last week). He was surprisingly nimble, so using his walker, we walked out into the patio and sat at a table. I teased him in my usual way and he held my hand in his usual way and then he went to sleep in his chair so I grabbed a magazine and read the latest celebrity gossip, then went down to the nursing lodge kitchen and asked if I could order lunch to have with him. No problem.
I went back to the patio and Anthony was still drowsing so I sat there calmly thinking oh this is so boring, then the lunch arrived – a beautiful roast dinner. At this point, I punched Anthony in the shoulder (lightly) to wake him up, but he didn’t respond, then I shook him and said loudly, “C’mon Ants – lunch is here!” No response. So I calmly went and got a nurse.
Well, there was a fair bit of panic when nobody could rouse him so once again the ambulance was called and a troop of nurses used the hoist to lift Anthony from his chair to a trolley to take him to his bed. They wheeled him off but I didn’t follow immediately because I was very calmly bursting into tears. One of the nurses came outside and asked if I wanted a hug but I said no thank you, not now, maybe later.
Once I got my stupid eyes to stop leaking, I went into Anthony’s room where the same nurse was taking his blood pressure and looking worried. He’d come to a bit but looked very dazed. I tried to jolly him up by mimicking what he’d done outside but he had no recollection of course and was a bit nonplussed at all the fuss.
The ambulance arrived and I met them at the hospital and, after several more tests including a catscan, he is once again going back to the nursing lodge, and I’ve just got home.
I am, once again, subscribing to too many blogs but I don’t want to unsubscribe (like I had to do once before when it all got too much and there was a software glitch) because I really enjoy those blogs and I’ve even found a few new ones.
This presents a dilemma that will be familiar to most bloggers: How do I keep up with all the reading, liking and commenting as well as write my own daily post(s)?
Well you can’t, can you, so don’t even try. Read, ‘like’ and/or comment on the blogposts that interest you on any given day and leave it at that. You don’t have to read everything! Check out the title of the post and if it appeals to you, read it; if not, it’s no big deal. It isn’t a crime to not read everybody’s blog posts (especially those daily people like me!) Take the day off and delete all of your email notifications because there will be more tomorrow. – that is guaranteed!
I lost a few ‘followers’ when my bird blog evolved into something more personal and that is fine. As a novice blogger I was initially a bit sad not to hear from a couple of people anymore but, as a more seasoned blogger, I completely understand. After all, why would someone interested in birds also be interested in Parkinson’s disease?
Blogging is a strange and beautifully unpredictable world. You make friends, find commonalities, offer support, receive support and you are allowed to say anything you want to say. I find this exhilarating, but, yes, risky and even a bit frightening. When I tiptoed into this blogging world a little over a year ago I had no way of anticipating that I would become so emotionally gripped by various bloggers/people. I had no idea that I would discover friendships that would alter my own little status quo and give perspective to my little life.
Who cares about the stupid statistics? That is the one thing I have begun to loathe about blogging – this constant, daily reminder of how many ‘hits’ you’ve received. Why does that matter to us so much – are we that desperate for acknowledgement that we exist? Why are we competing?
Give me a hug, virtual or otherwise, any day!
PS. If I have lost touch with your blog it has not been intentional….
I was determined to do something fun this December so have decided to begin revisions of a romance novel I wrote a few years ago. I sent it to Harlequin Mills & Boon and the editor was interested but wanted some changes and I never got around to it. It will only appeal to those who are ‘into’ this genre, a genre that is often dismissed by the literati as lowbrow literature. This kind of writing doesn’t come naturally to me, so it was a huge challenge when I wrote it but it is going to be great fun revising on a daily basis. I hope you enjoy! I finished revising the first post this morning and it can be found here:
In just a few hours, December will be arriving and I have to admit I am a little nervous. Last time December visited, it outstayed its welcome and ruined Christmas and made us all wish it would go away. This time, I’ve decided to welcome December by asking it to be more supportive and I was quite blunt in this request this morning. Thankfully, December wasn’t at all offended and had no idea how badly it behaved last year and has even apologized! Nevertheless I am on my guard because December has a reputation for being unreliable, and rather arrogant about its ownership of Christmas. And, during a further discussion with December tonight, I’m almost certain I detected a little smirk. I hope not because I really want us to be friends or, at the very least, to establish a working relationship. I have been trying to contact December for a couple of hours now but there is no answer so I guess I will have to wait until it arrives to reiterate that if it becomes overbearing again I will have to take action and possibly kick it back to November using Ming’s old football shoes and Anthony’s walking stick.
But perhaps it is my own attitude to December that is the problem? Maybe I should just embrace December like a long lost friend? Yes!
jmgoyder 