The Cyclone That Wasn't.

After nearly 3 weeks the doctor has declared that the MOTH's mother no longer needs 24/7 care

~ though she will never be completely independent again.  There are things that should be done now that family dynamics will make impossible ~ like selling 2 cars  & a boat.  My MIL will never drive again, though it is going to take quite some time for her to accept that fact.  However we have the domestic help in place, rails for toilet & bathroom coming, persuaded her the personal alarm is for her own good & we are filling the gaps: washing, meals, medication, shopping, ~ that sort of thing. 

Finally I have been able to turn my attention to my own household, which quickly gets out of control.  Surfaces accumulate things ~ which Kirby then feels free to push onto the floor & we step around because everyone is far to busy, or just not home, to deal with the mess. *sigh*  So the MOTH is back home sleeping in his own bed again & while I pop in & out next door to check all is well I no longer need to be there for the hours the MOTH is in college.  I do worry. My MIL's quality of life distresses me: too much poor quality tv, too few visitors, not enough of anything interesting or stimulating but getting her out & about, even for short trips ,is becoming more & more difficult & far more traumatic than enjoyable for her.  I don't think we can bring her home again the next time she lands in hospital ~ & that will only be a matter of time.

Meanwhile the tropical low that has formed in the Coral Sea is refusing to decide whether it will be a cyclone or not.  The rain & wind have arrived but the low itself is neither fish, nor fowl nor good red herring! Depending on the day & time it is a cyclone ~ or it isn't.  It isn't expected to cross the coast either, which is a jolly good thing given just being out there is causing enough rain & wind & tidal surge to bring no~one any joy.  These things are, always & forever, completely unpredictable & the Met people are not known for getting these things right, so, like everyone else, we will have to wait & see & hope Linda continues to slide down the coast until she peters out somewhere south of us.

A Little Pooh.

It was my brother who owned When We were Very Young.  I bought The House @ Pooh Corner for our lot.  I could recite, @ one time, all of James James Morrison Morrison Weatherby George Dupree/ Took great care of his mother/ Though he was only 3...

but I wasn't a fan myself.  Talking animals, talking toys were never my thing ~ with one notable exception: Rumor Godden, who had a knack for writing about dolls as real people.  So though I have read: The Wind in the Willows; all of Narnia; some of Watership Down ~ which I hated & thought absolute drivel; Charlotte's web; some Beatrix Potter [plus an assorted lot of not so classic animal tales] I was never enamoured of them because animals don't talk.  Easier to believe in things that simply don't exist than pretend things that are not so ~ so a good deal of well loved children's classics left me cold. That included A.A.Milne.

I was far more interested in the little boy who somehow was, yet wasn't, Christopher Robin.  So I knew he had had a love/hate relationship with his storybook self & because I knew that I was intrigued when Good~bye, Christopher Robin came out. I never did get to the movies but I pre~ordered the DVD release which I finally got my hot little hands on last week & watched with some dismay.

Now I have issues with how the upper English classes raise their children anyway: Nannies & prep schools followed by boarding schools & live in universities & a detached atheism~ honestly, no wonder the English breed strange eccentrics! And no wonder the children of so many of their writers came to bad ends: the Nesbit lot & the Peter Pan 5 ; the Mitford lot ~as Christopher Milne so nearly did.

That any parent, even ones so self~involved as the Milnes were, could use their child as they did is simply appalling, even given the historical period. So this is not a *feel good* tale of pooh~sticks & snuggly toys ~ though that is, of course, part of it.  The trauma of WWI lurks in the background.  The fear of the next war is an ever present threat.  In between is this magical childhood that Christopher never managed to escape.  As the grown Christopher says to his father: I asked you to write a book for me, not a book about me!

This is also a quite beautiful movie, in the way of English period pieces.  The scenery is stunning; The  period farmhouse atmospheric & the acting top notch.  What it is not is terribly historically accurate ~ though perhaps that doesn't matter because Christopher & his father had completely different understandings of what actually took place with the success of Pooh.  For Alan it didn't impact family life though he was furious & embittered that his trivial children's writings forever defined him & his more serious work never received the attention he felt it was due. For Christopher Pooh forever defined him & it took him his whole life to come to terms with the first 10 years of his life.

I think that is sad.  Is anyone to blame? Probably not.  It was such a different world & when you have read as many authors from this period as I have, it really is not so terribly surprising.  Off hand I can't think of a single one whose personal views weren't rather jaded & whose personal life didn't reflect an amoral atheism that resulted in lives of personal chaos.  That Christopher came out of it as well as he did, finding personal happiness in his marriage & quiet life as a bookstore owner is a tribute to him.

One coin, two sides.

To Liz, who had only known gran's vigorous old age ~ sharp & sound as a good apple ~ it was all very distressing. ~ Hester Burton: In Spite of all Terror.

Old age is difficult enough: the memory loss; the aches & pains; the incontinence ~the terrible loss of mobility & independence; other people poking & prodding, telling you where to go & what to do & when to do it. The lack of privacy.  What is truly awful is when half the family makes it all soo much worse.

That is where we are: battling the lies & stories, the innuendo, the obstructionism ~ the desire to control other people when we are the ones @ ground zero doing the hard yards.  And every time the interference puts us back to the beginning again, starting from scratch to get the emergency help in place, home care in place, government help sorted, putting the person who needs the help under added stress & duress.

I find it difficult to credit ordinary people can be so nasty, so avaricious, they would put their greed & desire to not be burdened with the care of an elderly parent ahead enough to see them unhappy in an aged care facility  rather than happily @ home with a little help. *sigh*

I do not do well with aggressive & selfish people. *double sigh*

As one generation wanes the new one rises up.  My twins were the bearers of double good news this week.  T1 is about to produce our 2nd grandchild.  Sometime in October.  OT has announced his engagement. It is all a little overwhelming.  I don't think I do life well.  Ideas are easier.  If you don't like one, just bury it.  Life is not like that.

A Matter of Taste.

Some children read; some devour any & all printed matter.  I fell into the latter category. Each & every week I took out my full allotment from, not one, but 2 libraries. That was between 8 & 20 books a week [the numbers increased over time as libraries became more generous with their lending policies] & I could read the lot in a week.

Mind you, by the time I reached High School & realised any mathematical acumen would forever be beyond my reach, I acquired several extra hours in which to read by slipping my present reading material under my desk. Granted a large part of my reading was hardly edifying but I was reading The Taming of the Shrew for pleasure in primary school simply because we owned  a complete compilation of The Bard's works & that was the one that grabbed my fancy.

We were a home that owned books.  One reason my mother worked so hard in school was because books were always given as prizes & in due time I inherited her Billabong & Dimsie books.  Unlike her I had no desire to go to boarding school. Ever.  The thought of being locked up with a hoard of females my own age & made to conform to an extrovert schedule appalled me. I did, however, acquire a taste for what is known as *school stories*.  Along with Dimsie were the Abbey Girls & the Chalet school , Angela Brazil, & even Enid Blyton dabbled. There were the boys books too: Tom Brown's Schooldays; Jennings; Billy Bunter.  I didn't discriminate. The good, the bad & the indifferent were all grist for the mill.

I could, however, tell the difference & it is to my eternal joy I was blessed to stumble upon Antonia Forest, one of the good ones.  Excellent.

I have never understood why Forest [not her real name] got lumbered with the lable: school stories.  Certainly 4 of her books about the Marlow family are set @ Kingscote, an elite girls boarding school, but 2 are historical novels & 4 others deal with a variety of other things like the  War [II], the Brontes, falconry, pigeon racing & mixed families but even when Forest was still alive, still publishing, she was a seriously underrated writer.  I have never understood why.  I adored her. But even then her books were as rare as hen's teeth & incredibly hard to lay hands on.

I did manage, by dint of accessing the Inter~library Loan system, to eventually read all the books, not in sequence, & I did manage to buy all the school ones in paperback.  As an adult I see that Forest's delightful sense of irony & the sarcasm of some of her characters would likely go over many children's heads but as a reader who enjoys books about books, Forest was a wonderful introduction to the world of unknown literature & most of my older copies of her work have scribbled notes in their margins where I looked up casual references I didn't recognise: Hakluyt; Blessed Edmund Campion; or Baby Lon...Better yet  was the delightful sense of recognition for I could recite The Highwayman, had read Apollo's Mask & wanted to marry Lord Peter Wimsey, to say nothing of stumbling upon The Lyke Wake Dirge in all its glory. This was a world where esoteric knowledge & my reading habits were not out of place.

However it is Forest's handle on character that resonates authentically.  No~one is all good.  No~one is all bad.  Good characters do stupid things & bad ones do noble things & the internal conflict of navigating the morass of other people's feelings & emotions is as daunting now as it was then. She is so good that those of us lucky enough to find her as a child have continued to enjoy her work as adults & predictably we hold onto her books.  They do not end up in Jumble sales or the Thrift Shops.  Rare.  Very rare indeed~ as I found when I began to scout round hoping to scrounge up a copy of every one of her books.

The 1st one I aimed for was The Ready~Made Family because in many ways it is my favourite. It cost me a small fortune & came from America, not England as one would suppose. The basic outline goes:  Nicola's oldest sister Karen gets married.  However she is just 19; he is 41 with 3 children. As Nicola's brother, Peter, observes: D'you think there was a ghastly pause after Kay said, And there's another seven @ home? 
There was a gruesome ghastly pause after Kay said He's 41 with 3 children, I can tell you that...

Peter has the awful habit of talking Mummerzet ~ an invented west counties dialect that is simply infuriating, even to read. Actually Peter is infuriating; in turns charming, kind, arrogant & obnoxious. In some books I really like him, but not in this one.  As an adult all my sympathies lie with the adults he's driving to distraction.  One of those is his new F~I~L, a man who is consistently portrayed, from the children's point of view, as an unlikable old fuddy~duddy & why Kay marries him no~one can understand...! And this is why I like Forest.  Right @ the very end, Forest turns everything on it's head for Nicola finds herself contemplating this suddenly different person; he gave her a thin, ironic smile & she saw that he might indeed be, not only a different, but an easier person than she'd thought: one, with whom, to put it @ it's lowest, one would be able to share the occasional joke... & on that thought pushes Lord Peter forward like a chess piece & finds herself reciprocated.

It does help if you get the references because of sub~texts & all that but it's not necessary.  I just have the sort of mind that likes to know what everyone is talking about but the books can be read & enjoyed if you know nothing of the Brontes, have never hunted hawks, & thought all pigeons were good for was defacing statues. It's all a matter of taste, but for my money, Forest is worth every cent.

Walking The Maroochy Regional Bushland Botanic Garden

Many moons ago, shortly after it was opened to the public, my girls & I did this walk with my mum.  The newly planted specimens were little, the garden raw, the sculptures brusque so while it was interesting & had great potential that potential was yet to be fulfilled. 

 Doing it this time reminded me how much time has obviously passed as things like the gum leaf seats & the stone sculptures have aged & weathered, fitting neatly into their surrounds.

 The infinity pool is an excellent example.  Last time there were great swathes of open ground waiting for the shrubs & bushes to expand & fill all the empty space.  The pool stood out like a sore thumb, raw & exposed, & the infinity symbol perched at the edge of the pool without meaning or purpose. So different now with the pool surrounded by shrubs & native grasses, the sculpture seeming to hang in the air & reflect in the water.

This is a big park with a number of different walks, none strenuous or taxing, lots of open space for picnicking & a huge variety of native flora, though we found the bird life  to be wanting.  We loved the fern walk.  Too dim for good pictures but very tropical & as so often the dense green creates a cool haven.

Sadly there has been little rain & the gardens were very dry & the creek beds valleys of worn rock  dreaming of water. 

Walking Mary Cairncross.

We have been walking through the Valley of the Shadow.  It has retreated for a while ~ but it will be back.   That's what shadows do.

Amidst all the angst & difficulties I managed a week with my own mother, who is in her 80's but robust & healthy.  As I always say when I stay with her & am asked the perennial question: What would you like to do while you are here?  I answer: Walk.

The Sunshine Coast is littered with National Parks & walking tracks, some good, some not so good, but all dependant on having amenable weather. Rain brings out the leeches & makes many of the tracks slippery & dangerous.  Too hot & they are exhausting.  This year we had wonderful weather & on the Wednesday we walked the Mary Cairncross track.

Mary Cairncross is perhaps my favourite walk.  It is part of the lush hinterland around Maleny/Monteville with spectacular views towards the Glasshouse Mountains. These 13 volcanic peaks can been seen for miles along the coast or out @ sea before you are anywhere near them.

I have done this walk any number of times.  It is neither a particularly long or strenuous walk but has recently been upgraded to be more wheelchair friendly. It is home to a huge variety of native birds & always, always I see birds I never see @ home ~ & hear the calls of many more I can't identify.

 Pademelons can usually be spotted if you don't have noisy small children with you.  I have walked this with children but mine were well trained to walk quietly & keep their eyes peeled & invariably it was a child who spotted the most interesting things having sharp young eyes that didn't need glasses! ☺

 The quality of the pictures is bad but we were so excited to see a family of yellow Robins, robins being ecologically sensitive.  We also spotted log~runners, a brown cuckoo & a rose crowned dove, all beautiful in their own way, while we were serenaded around the track by Golden Whistlers, Cat birds & Koel.

 There is a special spot just for the bats.  I have always had a special affection for our native bats since the bitter winter day we rescued an abandoned baby & I learnt how soft & hugely affectionate they are.

 Nests.  No idea really.  Gerrygongs maybe... There were lots of them hanging right beside the track, abandoned of course as most species have finished breeding.

 We completed our outing by having lunch @ the new Resource centre with its wonderful views of the Glasshouse: quiche & salad, so very scrummy.

The updated resource centre is wonderfully informative.  Nests, feathers & exoskeletons are on display & they have several interactive things, including bird calls, which ate up huge wads of mum & my time as we attempted to identify all the birds we had heard but not seen ~ which meant a lot of guessing to start with! Then whittling it down bit by bit.

Our final call was Nambour train station to pick up my niece who is @ uni in Brisbane & spends most of her free time up @ mum's.  Luckily she too likes to walk!

Being taught by the Rabbi.

Amongst all the things I read, watch & listen too  there is, & always has been, a strong Messianic flavour.  The Lord impressed on me early, even as a child, that He was a Hebrew.  Middle~Eastern. Jewish. I understood this even as I didn't grasp exactly what that meant .

I got, over time: prayer shawl; phylacteries; tallit.   I even understood His teaching was from a Jewish place but information is information & I simply absorbed the information.  Occasionally I applied it to scripture.  What I didn't do was apply it to me. I'm western.  AngloCeltic. Maybe the Celtic bit is why I missed something so very obvious because Celts are prone to operate in something of the same way.

See, we live where we live & that has always meant we are on our own when it comes to growing in God.  None, & I do mean none, of the other churches even come close to where God led us.  It has always created difficulties but we are meant to be following Jesus not some church or minister or congregation so there we perched like birds in the wilderness doing our thing & trying so very hard not to draw unwanted attention to ourselves.

So far, so good. Now, @ some point the Holy Spirit began chatting quite clearly to me & me being me simply went: Oh, right, now we are operating scriptually... I know... It never occurred to me people might think that was weird.  Not hearing was what I considered weird 'cause I'd read Acts you know... And what started happening was my kids because, you know, they were kids & they had no idea so I'd get this stream of: mum, would you pray for me about...

There were the dramatic answers: BLUE BARINA. There were the straightforward answers & then there was something odd.  See the kids got bigger & in all honesty they should have been hearing from God for themselves. Instead they'd ask me but instead of getting blue barina answers, or something straightforward, I'd get part of a scripture, often one I didn't know, or didn't know well & I'd have to google Mr Google & find the rest of it & sometimes there was more than one choice.  I can assure you this was more than a little on the frustrating side.  Just tell me already!

When I am super bored & sweltering in the humidity of a Queensland summer, what I do is amuse myself on Amazon reading all the book reviews on subjects I will never investigate ~ or better, seeing what's new in the religious department ~ which is how I came upon Sitting @ the feet of Rabbi Jesus.

Actually there were a number of books I was interested in ~ including The Hebrew Yeshua V the Greek Jesus ~ bits of which are online & very good~ & which I may still get, but I opted to get a book by Christians rather than a Jew, @ least to start with.  After that I watched all the Jewish videos anyway so I have to wonder about me. 

Having started the book I sighed.  It felt a little dumbed down & the first chapter I knew the info & boy do I hate spending money for stuff I already know. Still, I'd spent the money, the book was here & the other book I am waiting on is still weeks away [which is what happens when you order rare books from overseas.] Hmph! And I got my come~upperance. 

Discussing Rabbinic teaching methods, which I thought I knew in a fairly broad sense, the authors mentioned how the rabbis would only give part of the scripture, leaving their disciples to look up the reference ~ & it hit me like a thunderbolt!  Jesus has been doing this to me for years! lol Nothing like being taught by the rabbi Himself!