The Girl in Bed 1

There is an anorexic in Bed 1; I hear her giving her birthdate to the pediatrician and work it out in my head. She is a few months away from her 14th birthday. She is painfully self-conscious as are the other two anorexics in the ward. We saw them earlier, about to sit down to morning tea. It was laid out in the playroom on the table, despite a notice instructing that no food or drink be consumed in there. Martin and I walked into the empty room and sat down at the table as Avery pottered about, helping himself to trucks and dinosaurs. Broom, said Avery. And, Rahr. And occasionally, a rasping wheeze, a bone rattling cough. We glanced at the meagre servings - not sure at first if this was before or after the meal. Processed cheese slices, individually wrapped servings of a crackers, oranges. The girls stood in the hallway, talking earnestly to each other, all of them radiating the same painful self-consciousness. It dawned on us that they expected to sit in here, but none of them were able to negotiate the complex task of entering the room with us already inside.
Avery found a black and white chequered flag and waved it in a surprisingly authentic figure-eight. He stumped out to the three girls and they studiously, painfully ignored his incredibly overt charm. He insisted on drawing their attention. One finally giggled nervously as I went out to scoop him and bring him back, plonking him next to the bins of toys again, wiping everything down that he'd touched.
A nurse came in.
'He is welcome to stay and play,' she said to us, 'but we need the table.'
Martin and I moved to the edges of the room. The girls came in and sat down. Almost immediately one complained about the orange, she doesn't know what to do with it. 'Oranges are for juice,' she said. 'You juice them, you don't eat them.' The other girls agreed, none of them, if they are to be believed, know how to peel an orange.
Martin and I took Avery back to the ward and left them to it, despairing over the impossible project of entering and consuming an orange.

Later the girl in Bed 1 was on her bed, drawing. The Happiness Trap sat on her bedside table. There were two 'get well soon' cards on her chest of drawers. She had a pillow from home, white with strong black geometric patterns and two teddybears, one large and brown, the other gaudy pink. She was settled in - for how long?
The doctors were visiting the ward. Our doctor examined Avery who, after waiting all morning to be examined, had just fallen into a deep sleep. His breathing was still ragged and there was still the occasional cough, but he had improved so much, I expected we would simply be discharged and therefore I was paying more attention to Bed 1.
The girl hid her drawing bashfully when the doctor showed interest in it.
'Wow, that's really good. Is that one of your special...things that you do?' the doctor asked. I got the sense she'd muddled up her syntax, almost got lost in the middle of the sentence. Awkward.
The girl shrugged. 'I always draw when I'm bored.'
'Do you want to talk about it?' the doctor asked, and she doesn't mean the drawing anymore. The girl was silent. 'Not today?' offered the doctor.
I was scribbling this down in my journal (despite the fact that there is a sign outside the ward saying No Recording Devices) so I didn't see her response but she isn't going to talk about it now.
'How are you feeling in yourself? Any aches and pains?'
'I'm still getting them. Eating. And drinking all that Sustagen.'
They exchanged a few more words, the girl had some work, some textbooks, she said.
'We don't want you to fall behind,' said the doctor. She patted the girl. 'You'll get there.'

I was writing this down when the doctor examining Avery said, 'Has anyone talked to you about his heart murmur?'
I put my pen down.
She explained to us that infants can get them when they are sick, or for all sorts of reasons, but it can also mean there is something structurally wrong with the heart. 'On his x-ray his heart looked a bit...' she trailed off - there was something she wasn't telling us. 'Big,' she finished vaguely, and she frowned, listening intently to her stethoscope.
They had taken the x-ray in case there was an obstruction that had caused his sudden severe retractions, which is what caused us to call the ambulance in the first place, our tiny boy gasping air in, his chest receding so savagely it threatened to disappear, his stomach ballooning, his narrow ribs protruding.
The doctor told us the next step would be an ECG which they may as well do while we are in the hospital and that she will have to examine him again when he is awake.
Martin had to move the car because parking is terrible in the area, mostly two hour. Before he went, he brought me a cup of tea from the parents room. He spilled a little on the floor and we had a brief bitter squabble, fuelled by exhaustion after a long night in emergency for both of us, and then the rest of the night for me sleeping in a fold out chair, tending to a fitful Avery every 45 minutes, breastfeeding him like a newborn every few hours. And then this new uncertain worry, scratching at our tempers.

I sipped my tea. Avery slept soundly. I heard the whirr of what sounded like a dial-up modem, the ding-dong ding-dong of someone summoning the nurse, and on another patient's television Homer Simpson declare: 'Boring!' My room was empty now, the girl in Bed 1 had slipped out unseen by me, maybe scared off by the intensity of our conversation, or maybe she was more polite than I had been and hadn't wanted to eavesdrop. The girl in the bed across from me, a seven year old with a broken wrist from a scooter accident, had gone home a few hours before. Her mum had been friendly, bought me a latte in the morning and wouldn't take my money (I was short anyway). In two weeks they were going to Thailand. Bed 4 had been empty since we'd arrived somewhere around midnight.
The hospital had that timeless, dreary quality of an institutionalised day. Early, when the night's long artificial twilight had finally given way to morning, Avery had looked out the window into the grey concrete courtyard and pointed up. 'Sky,' he said. The sky was the same colour as the concrete.

Avery woke up. Lunch arrived and Avery refused everything (even the jelly) except the mashed potato. The two doctors came back before Martin, while I was still shovelling potato into his mouth. As I was telling our story again to the second doctor (the short haired groovy one who had previously attended to the anorexic girl) the other one gets a call. She gets off the phone looking cheerful, embarrassed, mostly relieved.
'That was radiology,' she said. 'They mislabeled the x-ray.'
She listened to Avery's heart again. 'It's definitely on the left,' she told the other doctor.
It transpired that radiology had labeled the x-ray so that the heart appeared to be on the wrong side (the right instead of the left).
'There's no sign of the murmur now he's sitting up,' she said to me. 'Which means it's nothing serious. If it was something to worry about it, we'd still be able to hear it.'
She listened a few more times, again expressing relief that the heart was where it was supposed to be. It does happen rarely, they told me. The night before the doctor in emergency had said that one in a hundred appendixes are on the mirror side - not to us, this was to the family in the next cubicle, whose son, as it turned out, did not have appendicitis on either side.
Avery coughed then, and the doctors were confident that it was croup. He got another dose of steriods and we were also given a script so we could keep them in the house in case of a relapse.  
On the way out of the hospital I passed a board that had been put up for positive affirmations. I wanted to write my favourite aphorism on there, 'Be bold and mighty forces will come to your aid', but I felt suddenly self-conscious.
'She was incredibly beautiful though,' said Martin, meaning the girl in Bed 1.
She made me hurt, as if all her raw nerve was somewhere outside her skin, and the signals from her brain were intercepting the signals from my brain. I felt her self-consciousness in the submerged part of my self, the stratum layer, that is and always will be thirteen, almost fourteen.
And with Avery bright and buzzing from the steroids, warm in Martin's arms, we walked down the corridors, past the birth centre where Avery was born, into the empty space of the wide bright foyer, down the lift to Basement 3, through the carparks and finally out into the wintery grey street, specked with a sort of pre-rain hanging motionless in the air. We walked down towards the bowling centre, where Martin had parked. 

'Sky,' said Avery.

Love Story

I walked into the bottle shop with a cleanskin red I'd bought only twenty minutes before. I had Una with me.
'My husband says I bought the wrong colour,' I told the man behind the counter.
'Wrong colour?' he asked confused. He thought I meant the label.
'Red not white.'
He laughs. 'Oh right, I like that. Wrong colour.' He laughed again. 'What do you want? Semi or a chard? I've got some cold.'
'Oh, chardonay,' I said, like I have an opinion. I don't really care. I don't really know the difference, having been most of my life a red drinker - but suddenly red is too intense for me.
'Here you go, Darling,' he said.
Outside Una told me with conspiratorial quietness, 'Mum, I think that man has fallen in love with you.'
'What makes you say that?'
'He called you Darling."
I laughed. 'I'll have to watch out for him.'
Worried, Una said, 'I hope he doesn't come and take you away one day.'
'I won't let that happen,' I assured her.
Una thought about that. 'You would punch him in the nose,' said Una.

Polenta and goats cheese "cake"

This isn't really a cheese cake but you make it in a spring form cake tin, so I am giving it the honourary title of cake. Avery loved this dinner and even the girls wolfed it down and they can be iffy about onion. I guess the cream and the butter and the cheese help. The onion retains a bit of crunch but you want that with all the creamy cheesiness so don't be tempted to cook it first.

From Donna Hay seasonal diary 2006

1 cup water
1 cup milk
1/2 cup polenta
30g butter
1/2 cup parmesan cheese
sea salt and cracked pepper
150g spinach
1 small red onion
6 eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 cup single cream
80g goat's cheese crumbled

Preheat the oven to 180ºC (355ºF). Grease a 20cm springform cake tin.

It also says to line the base with paper, which maybe you could do if you want to be fancy and not serve it out of the tin like I did, but greasing it will be enough I reckon. Save a tree. 

Place milk and water in saucepan.

Forget about it until it bubbles over dramatically and then say to your husband, "oh I meant to do that.". OR bring to the boil.

Gradually pour in polenta, stirring until smooth. Reduce heat and continue to stir for five minutes. Stir through the butter, parmesan, salt and pepper. Oh, and I added nutmeg.

At this point you can lock yourself in the bathroom and eat the buttery cheesy polenta straight off the wooden spoon and then make scrambled eggs for dinner for everyone else. OR you can proceed with the recipe.  


Spread polenta over base of tin, top with onion and spinach. Whisk together eggs and cream, pour over spinach and top with crumbled goats cheese. Cook for 40 minutes or until set.

It says it serves 4 but I think you could easily feed six with a hearty salad and bread. We had leftovers.

Vego for June

We have started having the conversation about eating animals. It has happened later than I thought, Frederique is 9, Una is 6. Up till now they have hadn't had a problem with the idea of meat, easily slipping between cuddling their pet chooks to tucking into a roast chicken dinner. I was vegetarian for many years as a teenager, but went back for bacon around the age of 20 and now eat more or less everything. Anyway, after a few conversations where the girls expressed great concern at the idea of eating fluffy baby lambies, we've decided to go vegetarian for a month. I too have been wondering about the ethics of meat eating again. I am not really opposed to eating meat, but I do want animals to have quality of life, and somehow I don't think simply selecting free range options at the supermarket is enough to ensure this.

I am sort of hoping this might give us a chance to readdress what we eat, when we eat it, how we shop... Our hens were off the lay, and so I briefly entertained the idea of going vegan, but I just don't think I am prepared to go that far, especially with Avery so young and, you know, lattes. Cheese. Lattes.

The girls like chickpeas, lentils, beans and a reasonable range of vegetables and both eat all fruit. There is a nut free policy at school, and we've struggled to find savoury sandwich fillings that they'll eat, but it seems they like broad bean dip with alfalfa sprouts. Getting their lunchboxes healthier and more substantial is one of my goals with this month's trial. Martin deals with his own lunch at work (I am not sure if he will go vego for this - he usually has tuna). I cook lunch for Avery, usually an egg, baked beans, veggie fritters or leftovers, sometimes he has a tuna sandwich. I have a salad or toastie or leftovers or a "snack plate" - cheese, biscuits, fruit & veg, nuts - or, if I am lazy, fruit toast with peanut butter. Which is what I have for breakfast most days too.

Anyway, my rough evening meal plan for this week - seven meals though if we are lucky at least one of these meals will get thrown over for dinner at A Boy Named Sue:

Veggie soup
Beetroot and feta gozlemes with Waldorf-ish salad (with hazelnuts instead of walnuts, since we have some)
Tempeh sausage rolls
Gado gado (hard boiled eggs and steamed and raw veggies with homemade peanut sauce)
Goats cheese, spinach and polenta bake (from a 2006 Donna Hay Diary) with orange and fennel salad
Store-bought sesame falafels, store-bought hummus, flat breads, tomato and cucumber salad

Google Prediction Zeitgeist

Google prediction search
Google prediction search not working
Google prediction search funny
Google prediction search turn off

Why won't my baby sleep?
Why won't he marry me?
Why won't my ipod sync?
Why won't my macbook pro turn on?

Why don't you love me lyrics?
Why don't muslims eat pork?
Why don't I have a boyfriend?
Why don't you get a job?

Are you interested?
Are you being served?
Are you there chelsea?
Are you gonna be my girl?

Why didn't they ask Evans?
Why didn't you tell me?
Why didn't frodo fly to mordor?
Why didn't I think of that?

When did the titanic sink?
When did facebook start?
When did jesus die?
When did alcatraz close?

How far?
How far did I run?
How far along am i?
How far is the moon?

When will the world end?
When will I die?
When will iphone 5 be released?
When will timeline become compulsory?

I don't know how she does it
I don't know where you're going
I don't know how to love him
I don't know what to do with my life

Aurealis Awards

Only Ever Always has won an Aurealis Award! This is an award for excellence in Australian speculative fiction and I way so chuffed to have won it, not the least because I was up against some pretty tough competition. I have a big soft spot for the Aurealis Awards, not least because they recognise books that might get overlooked otherwise. "Truth may be stranger than fiction," wrote Frederic Raphael, "but fiction is truer." And I think that is especially so of fantasy, where there is a breach between the interior and the exterior worlds and one leaks into another, because fiction is about our inner selves and our inner worlds, and the border territories where the inner meets the outer.

I went to the Aurealis ceremony seven years ago when my first novel Undine was shortlisted. I was a newly franked author who was still getting used to being a mother, in fact it was one of the first times I had been separated from Frederique (she came with us to Brisbane but stayed with a friend while Martin and I went out to the awards). I was mildly pregnant with Una, maybe about five weeks, so I couldn't drink...I think I was still learning how to manage social situations without alcohol (a steep learning curve for many mothers I am sure). I was very shy. I didn't win, but I don't recall being particularly upset. Scott Westerfeld won, I think it was for So Yesterday. Nearly everyone seemed to know each other. I remember seeing another shy author in the audience and thinking 'if I was braver I would go and be her friend.' These days I am much braver, I would definitely approach a loner at an awards ceremony. But also thanks to festivals and other writing gigs, and of course Twitter and blogging, I now know have lots of Aurealis-type friends.

I wish I could have been in Sydney on Saturday but the logistics of managing Small Person Who Still Breastfeeds was all a bit much. And of course I would have missed my mother's day morning cuddles and delightfully odd presents. And witnessing Avery discover his inner dinosaur. RAWR, complete with rabbit/Tyrannosaurus Rex hands and a convincing knee crouch and shoulder hunch.

An Aurealis on the eve of Mother's Day, as Carole Wilkinson pointed out on Twitter, is a very nice confirmation that I am doing okay at both jobs (Carole Wilkinson has done a pretty good job at both herself). As I drove home last night through the green hills and the weather, I saw a mother cow licking the head of her calf with a big raspy tongue. And I thought "Happy Mother's Day to us, Mama Cow.' Because she was doing a pretty good job too.

Nine

On Friday I said, 'I will miss eight-year-old Fred.'

 Una said, 'In the middle of the night eight year old Fred will take off all her clothes and then she will be in her birthday suit. She will run away outside and nine year old Fred will come.'

 Fred said, 'I think nine-year-old Fred will be the same girl as eight-year-old Fred' but there was a flicker of uncertainty in her voice. 'Eight-year-old Fred will rise up and go to Heaven,' said Fred.

 For her birthday, Fred wanted to get her ears pierced. I made an appointment and took her to the chemist (I wanted to go to a tattoo parlour, but Martin didn't approve). 'Do you want me to count to three?' Lauren the Beautician asked. 'Or do you want me to just do it?' 'Just do it,' Fred said. Bang. Bang. She flinched. It hurt more than she thought it would. She didn't cry.

 Later she joined the conspiracy. 'It didn't really hurt,' she told Una. 'It just felt like a pinch.' 'I just got my ears pierced,' Fred would tell people after we left the chemist - the ladies in the toyshop, people in the cafe. Only women though. She leaned forward to me at the cafe. 'All the women here have pierced ears.' My ears are pierced but I don't usually wear earrings. I was nine like Fred when I had mine done. I still remember the shock of pain, the loud noise of the gun.

Fred kept saying to me, 'I just got my ears pierced.' It was like she had to rethink herself. Our appointment was at 12.30. She was born in the early afternoon. So eight year old Fred really left then. And nine year old Fred, in the end, is really quite a different girl after all.

'Maybe one day,' Fred said to me that night before her birthday, 'eight year old Fred will visit. Maybe one day you will see her again.'

The ghost of the girl you once were is everywhere Frederique. She slips in and out of the shadows of your face, and in your brother's face who is so much like you. She brings messages from the past, but I cannot send a message back to her. She does not stay to notice what the world has become without her. She is a spirit of the wind, and nothing will pin her down, she is the moment between breaths, she is here, she is here, but when I reach out to touch her she is gone.