Leaving home, starting life.

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It's been a long time since my youngest one started school - 2002 in fact. I only have vague memories of her starting. We sent our kids to a very non-traditional school at the time, which was very small, filled with people our kids had known most of their lives, and very, very....disorganized and dysfunctional. Why? Don't ask me. I'm still at a loss as to why, but we learned lessons regardless so for that I'm grateful. Let's just say we were in a very different place to where we are now and would make different choices if we could do it over.

For our youngest daughter's secondary schooling we simply sent her to the local Secondary College. This ended up being the best decision . She received a lot of support from staff, made many friends and got really involved in the Theatre Studies and Drama groups. Despite all this though, she left school in the middle of last year, feeling as though it wasn't for her as she wanted to explore other educational options. She did a couple of short courses in subjects she was interested in, giving her a taste of what she might like to explore in the future. As a result of this, the year took on a whole different feel. School holidays came and went without us noticing and VCE (Victorian Certificate of Education) exams that my daughter would have sat if she had've remained at school were something other families were worried about. I have to admit to it all feeling very strange when the year was drawing to a close. I didn't have to fill out orders from book lists, think about uniforms and fill out enrollment paperwork and gather medical reports for "special needs" funding. When the new year clicked over this year it occurred to me that this was the first time in over twenty years that I didn't have to think about purchasing new school shoes, checking uniforms and wondering if the lunch boxes and drink bottles needed replacing.

It was kind of strange really. When you're a brand new Mum one of the things seasoned parents tell you is, "Really cherish each moment because it just goes by so quickly!" Of course when you're smack bang in the middle of you umpteenth sleepless night with your colicky, screaming offspring you just can't wait for it to be over, but before you know it, it is over and you're looking into the face of your baby who is now an adult.

And you wonder, as Talking Heads sings, "My God! How did I get here?" (Once In A Lifetime)

Regardless of the fact that she didn't complete her VCE, our daughter applied for courses at various universities around Melbourne, hoping to be able to study Creative Arts. She did this all herself, following her heart and her instincts. It was with great excitement earlier this year that she received an offer for the course that was her first preference - Bachelor of Creative Arts at a University in the northern suburbs (just goes to show that you can have a future without your VCE, folks!). Since then she has been a flurry of activity - selecting her subjects, organising her timetable and finding a place to live on campus. She did this all herself. It was this that made me realise that my time as Mama was over.

It's their turn. It's her turn.

That being said, last weekend was rough. We got her packed up and moved her over into her college residence. Walking into the room where she was going to live was a surreal experience. We checked out the shared kitchen space, laundry and bathroom spaces knowing that we had to let her go and work out how best to function in this unfamiliar environment. She was excited and nervous, happy and sad all at once. I understood all that conflict because my Mama heart was so divided - explosive pride, happy that she was doing what she wanted to do, excited for her, yet so very sad that she was leaving, melancholy that my baby really wasn't a baby anymore and worried that she wouldn't enjoy it. It was hard leaving her there, but I knew she was going to be ok. She's ready. I know she is.

As her Dad and I drove home that night I had two songs in my heart and in my head.

Slipping My Fingers by ABBA which I played after dropping her off at her first day of school all those years ago and Never Grow Up by Taylor Swift.

New Mamas....believe people when they encourage you to cherish every little moment....because it's true.....they grow up so quickly.

You belong here

Weave in rehearsal
Photo credit: Margherita Coppolino

I was going to save this post until tonight but I have too many thoughts swirling about in my head to wait any longer. I'm blogging on the train. Did you know I did that sometimes? I'm not one of these "plan everything you're going to say" bloggers. A feeling grabs me, I get the urge to write, so I do. Unfortunately I have several blog posts in draft form - this being one of them.

I digress...as usual.

I'm on the train heading into the city for White Night. Weave Movement Theatre is performing a piece on the Ausdance stage tonight. I'm a part of Weave so, you guessed it, I'll be performing too.

I'm ridiculously excited

This is my first public performance. Like, public public. I've done other performances in the past on stages where audiences have comprised of the performer's family, friends and interested others but nothing like this.

I don't quite know what to expect, but it hasn't diminished my excitement. Not one bit.

I've spent a great part of my life hiding, I guess. Diminishing myself. Making myself as unobtrusive as possible. This body attracts enough attention as it is, don't attract any more! Of course it's all very well and good to get up on stage and deliver some inspirational words, showing how clever you are but to perform...?

Historically I guess that's been fraught with a whole heap of minefields...that, in some form, still exist today. Once upon a time the only job though suitable for people like me was on the stage performing simply because we were physically different. Then came the 70's and the big push to get us off the stage and "into real jobs"...to the point where anyone still on the stage was frowned upon.

I guess the Arts hasn't been kind to performers with different physical appearances either. To my mind the Arts has usually celebrated bodies that model perfection, perfect technique, pitch, delivery and poise. Assumptions are made of the body that is physically different. It is not capable of that which is worthy to be seen on stage and given critical acclaim and so it is relegated to specific workshops designed to give the person with a disability/difference " something to do". Audiences are more like cheer squads; cheering on the performers for simply having a go, rather than looking at the work critically and considering it worthy of serious reviews and potential development.

Weave Movement Theatre is turning that kind of thinking on it's head. We are artists. We are dancers.

I am a dancer.

So here I am, on the train, about to put this different little body on the stage and invite hundreds of people to look because what I and my fellow ensemble have created together is truly beautiful, artistic, creative. Look at what we can do! See the beauty we are portraying right here on this stage? This is what beauty means to us! Watch beauty as we see it translated in our movements! Do you see it? Do you hear it? We do!

Caroline Bowditch, an Australian born performance artist and choreographer has choreographed our piece. She has encouraged us to own it. "Know you belong up there on that stage!" she has encouraged. "Own it! Own the stage!" Each time she has said it it's been like an affirmation to me. I hope to get up there tonight and be truly present, owning that space, looking out at the audience and inviting them to see what we see. I am so excited I can barely contain it.

My hope is that we encourage the audience to think about dance in a different way; seeing the potential for everyone to express themselves through dance, regardless of physicality.

I can't wait to get up there!

Movie review: Still Alice

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Still Alice is the story of Alice Howland (Julianne Moore) - wife to John (Alec Baldwin) and mother to Anna (Kate Bosworth), Tom (Hunter Parrish) and Lydia (Kristen Stewart). She is a much respected Linguistics Professor at Columbia which indicates to the audience exactly how learned Alice is and how much words and language means to her. However lapses in her memory and a disturbing incident where Alice finds herself lost in what is a familiar area to her, sees her visiting a neurologist who, after a series of tests diagnoses Alice with early-onset Alzheimers disease at the age of 51.

The film follows Alice and her family through the initial diagnosis and her seemingly rapid decline. The audience stays close to Alice at all times, sometimes even entering into Alice's experience with muffled sounds, blurred vision and confused context. Time even seems to disappear just as it does for Alice, even though the story is told in a linear fashion, and so the audience enters into Alice's confusion - did that happen just yesterday or has time slipped away from us?

Julianne Moore's portrayal of Alice is brilliant. She is unsentimental, never suggesting for a moment that what happens to Alice is a tragedy, never making it into a drama. Alice never feels sorry for herself but instead sets herself challenges for managing her own illness for as long as possible. As the disease progresses we watch the light slowly leave Moore's face - her features become slack, her luminosity diminishes. We almost feel her confusion as words slowly disappear and faces become unfamiliar. As Alice detaches from the world around her, Moore's voice becomes expressionless, a monotone; as though she is simply responding to things and people by rote - knowing that this is the right thing to say even though she no longer knows why. Eventually the words that have been so important to her during her entire professional career almost disappear completely.

There is no happy ending for this story. Even though the audience triumphs with Alice when she finds ways to manage a new set of limitations, the ground once again crumbles beneath her feet and we share her growing sense of panic that she is losing more and more of herself. The disease even thwarts Alice carrying out a pre - planned suicide attempt, paving the way for the audience to accept that there is no way to stop Alice's inevitable decline.

Although the other players in this story have an important role and what happens to Alice affects them all, I found it interesting in the way that the story was shown through Alice's experience. Whilst they are all prominent in the beginning of the film, they eventually fade into the periphery,  just as they do for Alice. Eventually they simply disappear. Alice's husband John, for instance, leaves Alice in the care of their younger daughter Lydia to pursue his career in another state. We neither see him leave, nor does Alice mourn his leaving. He simply disappears.

I was in two minds about whether I should see Still Alice. See, it's very up close and personal on a couple of levels. One, because both my maternal grandfather and grandmother as well as my great-grandmother had it. My grandfather in particular, had a big impact on my childhood and growing up years as his form was early an early onset type called multi-infaarct dementia. I was too young to really grasp what was happening to him, too young to make a real difference to his life and be a support to him until he finally passed away in 1984. My Nanna passed away at the age of 87 in 2011, so as an adult I was able to watch her decline knowing exactly what was happening and be more of an active support to her in her final years.

The second reason I hesitated about seeing Still Alice is that an MRI of my brain a few years ago revealed generalised atrophy. The words my doctor said to me were, "We don't normally see this sort of atrophy in people your age. It's normally seen in adults in their late 60's, so we don't really know what this means for you."

No, I don't know what this means for me. I can hazard a guess, but that's all it is. A guess. My doctor and I talked and we decided that seeing I am asymptomatic and firing on all four cylinders we would leave things as they are. I am still sharp, still active, still healthy. Let's concentrate on the here and now, enjoying life just as it is and not worrying about what could be. Why worry about what could be when there's so much of now to enjoy?

Having said that though, I've found that it's really important to sometimes talk about what could be. I think the experience with my grandparents taught me that. I think about Pa every single day. There's been not one day since August 24, 1984 that he hasn't flitted through my thoughts at some stage. I wish I had've known what would have brought him comfort in the confusion. I have small, precious memories of times where I was able to infiltrate his fog and connect with him, even just for a few moments. With Nanna I knew more and I realised, near the end, that a lot of what I was doing for her was because I knew it was what she would have liked and enjoyed before the fog descended. On my last day with her I played her a song that meant a lot to her. I asked her if she remembered the song. She said she didn't and I told her, "That's ok Nanna. I know this song and I know what it meant to you and whenever I hear it I think of you." 

It was then that I realised the importance of talking about what could be before it becomes a reality. Playing that song to my Nanna on our last day together brought ME comfort because I knew it was something SHE liked. I felt connected to her in the fog. I felt as though I wasn't leaving her alone in it. 

So, I talk about the "what could be's" with the people who love me. I tell them how much I love having my hair stroked, what songs mean the most to me. I ask them to remind me of times where we were laughing so hard we almost peed our pants, times where we were silly. I tell them I love listening to people read story books like they do in kindergarten, how much I adore the beach. I tell them all these things so that they can have things to do that will bring some kind of connection to me if ever the fog descends and I start drifting away. I tell them so that they will have those comforting memories to sustain if ever I should drift away totally....

Still Alice was incredibly comforting to me. I can't quite explain why, but seeing the story told in such a sensitive, dignified manner made me less afraid.

New arrival

Please meet the new arrival into our home.

It's not often you see her like this....

....or this....

This is her usual expression....

Meet Gypsy, my 13 week old kitten. In a whirlwind series of events she became part of our household on Friday. I had planned to get a kitten in the not too distant future and had my eye on one that had been born a few weeks ago, but I heard that a friend of mine needed to re-home her kitten due to medical reasons and I couldn't resist. I wanted a kitten and she needed to quickly re-home hers so the deal was done! I think the deal was sealed when I realised that an older kitty would already have the whole kitty litter useage thing pretty much sorted. It's the one part of getting kittens and puppies that I find tiresome, so to bypass all that was pretty much the deal clincher!

That and helping out a friend of course!

So, Gypsy has come to live with us and has pretty much set herself up as the Queen of the House! She and Maya are slowly getting to know each other after a few incidents of hissing and that gutteral growling that cats do. Maya is so gentle and would be more than happy to curl up on the couch with the new arrival and go to sleep together. Gypsy, on the other hand, is not so sure about all this yet, but that happy tail of Maya's seems like too much of a fun thing to resist! I don't think it will be too much longer before the two of them are the best of friends. 

I am loving having my own kitty again. I was sitting on the floor playing Candy Crush Soda Saga on my tablet yesterday (so addicted!) and Gypsy came and positioned herself between my legs and went to sleep. Maya curled up next to me and it was all the perfect picture of domesticity I think! Gypsy has managed to capture my heart already.

It's good to "mother" a little someone again!