Forever Baby: Jenny’s Story - A Mother’s Diary. Mary Burbidge

      Look at this flash new diary, a present from the dear departed Geraldine. In years to come, connoisseurs will look at it and say, ‘Ah yes. That was 1995!!’ A familiar date. Am I missing something? Ann’s birthday, perhaps.

      The only hectic part of the day was between arriving home and serving tea, and even that could have been worse. Ant could have come. Ron could have come earlier. As it was, there was Julie comparing notes of Queensland with Elizabeth and Rosemary, Servas travellers from Stuttgart, Southern Germany; Jo waving a phone message to ring someone about billeting Servas people for the International Conference; Jen in the pool; hungry quacks and clucks from the back yard; Annabel distressed; Philip ringing to say Ant was coming round because it looks likely that he'll be turfed out of the Rooming House unless he agrees to pay $5/day for daily cleaning (maggots having been something of the last wriggling straw); Lynette arriving for a referral because her voice is still husky; salmon patties to be made even though Jim was watching a friend have her eyebrow pierced instead of coming home for tea; and I've got a life to live too you know.

      I told Elizabeth and Rosemary that the beach was just down the end of the street, and they took the hint and disappeared for an hour, and we eventually sat down to our salmon patties, Andrew entertaining the guests with wine and patter. His talk is so idiomatic, has so many figures of speech, so many rapid-fire alternatives and options built into his questions that their eyes start and their mouths hang open. But at least he talks. Once he comes home I can retreat into comfortable silence. They're both nurses and met while working on a German Christian kibbutz in Israel. They fly home on Friday after five months travelling in Australia.

      There were a few Fawlty Towers moments – Andrew went to call Thoz in. "Hünd!"; Andrew at tea, "What were you doing in Israel? Digging in the gardens? Nursing? Shooting Palestinians?"; and Jo at tea time, "Yer, Steph reckons all the Arts students are radical feminist lesbians." "Ah, I think it was 'druggies', not 'lesbians'." I checked later on their forms. Yes, they live together at home. No offence taken, chat continued and they went to bed after tea, before Ron arrived.

      Jo washed up. I got on with my life – a letter to Georgie, a phone call to Kate Veitch about judging the CAA-SSC (Yes!!), a phone call to Nan about her normal ECG, and tidying my papers into the three trays I bought today for putting under the seat near the computer.

      The rest of the day was spent at WHRC doing nothing much and feeling nothing much (those two 'nothing much’s are quite different). A bit of shopping broke the day up. No luck with a vibrator for Jen, but I got my paper trays and a $75 pair of binoculars for Lil (from a pawn shop, but new) and some hose fittings.

      Andrew had a good day, collecting data, and anecdotes about someone new. He worked hard and came home late. Jo’s going to write something to explain that Aborigines in Alice Springs don’t live in the Todd River, drinking grog, because they choose to. She’s given up her room for the visitors and is sleeping in Annabel’s room. Annabel rushed off, upset, to stay with Sarah.

      I thought of two little maxims – rules, aphorisms, truisms, whatever. The first is, The longer the hypotenuse, the shorter the short cut, and the second is, If you don’t have anything to look forward to, you'll never be disappointed. Lynette said that’s a very pessimistic one, a very bleak view of life, but I realised that my high frequency of disappointment (like daily, almost) for the last two years stems from my creation of things to look forward to. If you send things off and there’s a chance of a wonderful reply in the post, each bundle of dreary mail is a disappointment.

2

       Wednesday:

      I can’t believe the power of the written word. Only yesterday I posted that letter to Terry Laidler, he can’t have got it until this morning. And by this evening he'd not only taken the idea on board, he'd implemented it. Not exactly a regular segment on Disability Issues, but the broad idea of presenting disabled people in a positive light – he had people from 'Back to Back Theatre', the Director and one of the intellectually-disabled actors, talking about the company and their productions. Thanks, Terry.

      I went to the surgery this morning and saw loads of patients. Pearl Hartford wanting a check-up — she’s having ’turns' again. Not like they were, not bad, not very often, not for very long, no pain, not even discomfort, more a 'feeling' that comes over her and sometimes when she puts her hand on her chest to check her heart she can’t feel it. Mr Connell had 'feelings' too, not feeling quite right. His 'feeling not right' was more alarming. A big man, 109kg, with black mountain-range eyebrows and intense eyes, he’s diabetic and had triple by-pass surgery last year after his second heart attack. A month ago he was seconded from his job of ten years to another post, where he has to develop some scheme for the government (Kennett, I suppose) over the next six months. Since this pressure started, he’s reverted to his old habits of late nights and heavy drinking (three bottles of red wine and two whiskeys after getting home from work!) and he thinks the job is too stressful. Yes, tell them you can’t do it, I say. I did, yesterday, he says, I have to see the Minister tomorrow. Well, tell him he'll have to get someone else if you drop dead, so he can just get someone else now instead, I say. I will, he says. Sensible man. I've never seen him before — must be some job, having to see the Minister himself about pulling out.

      Wheezy kids, vomitty kids, alarmingly overdue smears, the weeping mother of the runaway again (at this stage my sympathies lie rather with the runaway — talk about punitive, blaming, criticising, hostile, guilt-laying attitudes as the underfelt to a carpet of spoiling, loving, giving-in and dependence, and deaf to any counselling input. She just wanted to tell me all about it. Come again if you need to talk some more, if it helps), sore throats, sore legs, swollen feet, smelly wee, snoring. They kept me going until after half-past one. Just time for a bite to eat and a quick floss and brush before fronting up to the dentist. He and his nurse made wise-cracks about chomping on lollies and talked about birds and he smoothed the tooth off for no charge. No wonder my tongue was sore — the piece that felt like a jagged pinnacle in a rugged mountain range (that’s the second mountain range simile for the night, I should change one of them. Eyebrows like a breaking wave up-side-down, eyebrows like ski jumps, beetling eyebrows except I don’t know what beetling means) was in fact one of the metal pins he'd inserted last time, left exposed as the filling crumbled around it, like a column of sand turned to glass by a lightning strike which becomes a geological wonder when the desert sand all blows away. Come on now. Aren’t we a touch picturesque for a decrepit tooth?

      Alright, alright. So I went to work, except my mouth felt so good it wanted to see action and made me drive to Lygon Street for cakes. While there I looked in trendy shops for a present for Jen. No luck. "Can I help you?" "Why, yes, I'm looking for something for my daughter’s birthday. She'll be twenty-one, so it will need to be strong and very durable, able to be thrown and banged and chewed, preferably something that vibrates or plays music but with no moving parts. What do you have along those lines?" Cheery, hopeful smile. I don’t think so. "Just looking", more like. Andrew’s going to see what the sex-shops have in the way of vibrators. That should be fun. Maybe I'll get her a nice jumper.

      I can’t say I did much at the Unit. Sylvia’s in the throes of organising another big project Nick has given her (getting up a funding submission for getting GPs to come and watch us in action at WRHC) and I was able to use my data base to give her the numbers of clients from the Western region. She was impressed. It would have been easier to do it by computer though.

      I wrote a cheque for the Easter trip ($335) and discovered a cheque I wrote for Les weeks ago still had no money to cover it. I hope my trusty bank didn’t bounce it. Steve Farish’s Statistics & Computer lectures are mostly at 4.30 — bummer of a time. I might ask Nick if I can work Thursday afternoons instead of Wednesdays so I'm not getting Jen minded four afternoons a week. It mightn’t suit Julie though. Botheration.

      Jim was home tonight, with a ring through his eyebrow. It’s the 'in' thing, body piercing, and there are many more potential sites. Think of the most unthinkable, horrendous possibilities and you won’t be far wrong. But if it’s the 'in' thing,