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

      Annabel had been and left a note to say she was staying at Sarah’s again, that she’s still in turmoil. Andrew worked back late and missed his train. He’s using all that data for an article and is also finalising budget arrangements for the secondment deal. He found out tonight that he (and his crew) came third in the championships - what better reason for ringing Lynda!

      Elizabeth and Rosemary had an indifferent day shopping for souvenirs but completed the sale of their car. Jo is just home from Viv’s, $25 richer for her child-minding efforts. She'll meet Jen’s bus for me tomorrow instead of staying at the 'No Fees' protest rally — “’I’ve paid your fees! If anyone needs to protest it should be me!”

3

       Thursday:

      Another day off, ha, ha! I told Geraldine I would use it to write a story for the ABC competition. Ha, ha. The day stretched blank (and, alas, idea-less) with only perhaps Writers Group at 6.30 if I decided on a literary wind-down after a day spent in creative isolation. Then two lectures on Statistics got slotted in, 3.15 and 4.30. Oh well, that still left the bulk of the day, and meant I was in the vicinity so I might as well go to Writers Group. Then I offered to take Elizabeth and Rosemary to the market, because we needed potatoes and carrots. If we got away smartly, there'd still be several hours for writing. But we didn’t, and since I had an hour on the meter, I took an hour, buying birthday bits and pieces for Jen, loading the buggy with corned beef and carrots, parsnips, pumpkin and pineapple. Back in Willi there was petrol to buy, letters to post, a deficit cheque account to replenish, depleted supplies to replace, half-price sales to investigate, Urimbirra office plans to consult a man about and the marketing to unload. If I'm quick, can I write a story in an hour? But no, there’s Annabel to console, Andrew to be short with, mail and local papers to be disgusted with, animals to be fed, stew to be prepared. I manage lunch in the sun. The computer isn’t even turned on. Huh!

      The lectures are interesting. Probabilities. Empirical distributions. Binomial distribution. Poisson distribution, and all the remarkable beauty of the normal curve, and Z. Notes are handed out so I don’t need to write. All I do is listen, try to grasp the ideas, the scope of what is there, so that I know where to look when I need to use some of it. If I ever want to work out the probability of a given number of car accidents occurring in a given time at a given intersection, when I know the average number of accidents per year at that intersection, then I'll pull out the pages on Poisson distribution and away I'll go.

      On the other hand, if I wish to know what the probability of a randomly selected first year journalism student being less than 190 cm tall is, I pull out the normal curve for the height of first year journalism students, find the mean (mn -μ) and the standard deviation (sigma), transform 190 cm to a Z value and look it up on the Z tables, to 4 decimal points. The chances of a first year journalism student getting pregnant in a given number of individual, independent, and identical attempts, however, are best calculated using binomial distribution. Golly, gosh!

      I had an hour to spare then. I rang Jo to see how she was managing with Jen and the stew, and critically read Benizi’s Chapter 1. We discussed a short piece by Leon, a touching vignette on child abuse which I liked more after hearing other people’s thoughts, a poem by Polly which I found abstruse but less so than some people (I find myself taking Polly’s part against Les, who takes the rather brutal view that Polly is amply able to defend herself) and Benizi’s Chapter 1. Sad to say, I preferred his novel the way it used to be shaped, and his language is as quaint as ever.

      The session ran over time, so I was quite late for concert rehearsals, but was still made very welcome. The shakers I made out of the plastic strip fly curtain from the caravan were welcomed too, and fluttered rhythmically in ‘Mame’ and ‘Broadway Melody’. Peter wasn’t there, so Iris did his solo and we pranced around in our 'dance'. Poor June, there she was, confirmed on Sunday, and just a few days later tripping on the laundry step and breaking her ankle and having to miss the Church concert. What does this say about God’s attitude to His people putting on song-and-dance acts in His house? I ask you! And pride, and falls?

      So, home to stew and Ron talking and smelling of sweat and paint and Andrew listening and provoking and Jim entering the fray and Jo and Kane and Jim going off to play pool and Jen giggling in bed. Jim went to the big protest rally about up-front fees for uni courses and argues strongly about the injustice of such fees in denying education to the not-wealthy, and says Jo had her priorities wrong for going to the pub (on strike) instead of going to the rally. She could have gone to the rally and been home in time to meet Jen. She wasn’t keen on doing the full Jen routine — "I'm incompetent, I don’t know how to get her out of the pool. I don’t know how to dry her. I will muck it up." — but she managed, so I'm sure she now feels much more competent and confident. So important to give the young people some responsibility, don’t you think, a chance to prove to themselves that they can do all your work for you?

      E & R moved on to a hostel for their last night in Australia. They didn’t like to deprive kind Jo of her room for three nights. Fair enough. Lovely to meet you both. Quick photo. Bye.

      Andrew had a busy day too. A meeting in Sunshine with Melbourne Water to discuss the impact on low-income families of their new charges meant he was out and about in Jo’s car so he might as well slip down to the caravan place in Werribee. Home quickly for a pleasant bite of lunch with his dear wife, retreating smartly to work when dear wife bites his head off for no apparent reason. And a meeting of the Crisis Line committee after work. The day was neatly framed by thick slabs of talking Ron at either end.

      I wonder, if I'd had an idea, would I have re-ordered my day? Bugger binomial curves, there’s a story that needs to be written. A curse on carrots, a pox on parsnips, can’t you see I'm computing? Dunno. I've just read some of Les’s notes he keeps about the process of writing and rewriting his novel. Wow! It’s no light undertaking.

4

       Friday:

      No, it’s definitely the time. I proved it. Today I switched on the computer with an hour for writing and not an idea within cooee. And I produced a lovely story — poignant, nicely shaped, deep, the right length and not quite the right form for the ABC competition.

      I just started typing and the story appeared. 'Where have all the flowers gone, long time ago?' I typed and the flowers of long ago bloomed in my mind with their attendant remorses and guilts. The childhood reminiscences flowed but metamorphosed. While I gave Jen coffee I become a boy, as I put her in the pool the dreary reality of the lily incident gained drama and humour, and as I hung out the washing a satisfying ending appeared. By 7pm it was done. Long swim for Jen, and late tea, but a gratifying afternoon’s work indeed.

      And apart from that . . . a full morning at work, no dramas. All the dramatic possibilities of Wednesday fizzled into normalities when the results came in. Good. That sort of drama I can do without. Brief Urimbirra business and a lengthy house-call ate into my afternoon. Likewise shopping, cleaning, cooking, washing.

      After the story was done, I had a swim with Jen and baked a carrot cake for her birthday and turned the left-over stew and left-over spaghetti sauce into a delectable-looking meat pie, but since no-one was here to eat it and comment on its delicious golden pastry, it hangs on until tomorrow. This pie deserves an appreciative audience.

      After tea I produced a draft ‘Conditions and Entry Form' for the CAA Short Story Competition. I'll get comments over the weekend. Kate Veitch dropped off the material she promised. A good sign.

      I had another chat with Phillip about Ant. They've agreed that the cleaner looks at his room daily and, if he needs to clean, Ant is charged for every half-hour he spends. And they're sorting out Joanne’s finances so that she can stay too.

      I decided, while having my swim and listening to ‘Books and Writing’, that perhaps my ideal job would be as a driver,