2022 Year in Review

 Year in Review 2022

• JANUARY -Ring in the new year with fish and chips in freezing Cornwall, UK, asleep by 8pm. Continue road tripping round England, exposing the kids to Jason's heritage. Take kids to the museums and galleries of London. Enjoy England, dislike the weather, struggle with being a guest in someone's home, love seeing the kids connect with grandparents and great nan and cousins. Lots of tension with Jason amid the happy times. Very tough without help. Realise we are not coping and fighting about who is supposed to get kids spaghetti and help kids dress. Move home to Sydney seems to have been called off in tacit disappointed agreement.
• Get on with life in Singapore, birthdays, family rituals, swimming, pregnancy.
• FEBRUARY- receive large bonus at work in recognition of global L&D role. Calculated automatically by some new system. Boss advises he doesn't want to give me but he has no discretion to take it away.  Hand half over to Singapore General Hospital to pay off last chunk of former helper's bill and other half to builder in Sydney. Over the course of the year will borrow 370k from bank for renos and pay whole lot plus all my savings, inheritance and all bonuses to builder.
• MARCH Grand Prix approaching in Singapore and Singapore realises no one will come if it has such stupid covid rules. Things start to improve
• MARCH - Matilda starts Nippers, Jason becomes a coach, starts to learn about the psychology of 6yo kids and gets very engaged.
• Pregnancy progressing happily. Am exhausted but no big risks. Connecting with baby and overwhelmed with gratitude. Start mother& baby yoga and feel a sacred space with baby, wish i had done it with other two. Realise how much I missed out on being so stressed with work for previous pregnancies. Am enjoying the appointments, go relaxed and happy, celebrate them. Jason starts coming to some appointments. Have blood transfusion which makes me feel like Shera
• APRIL - Help fat lazy helper find job more suitable for fat lazy person. Hire skinny desperate helper from situation of quasi slavery and have to pay huge sum to release her. Right away she tells small unnecessary lies and I feel confused.
• Babymoon family holiday to Phuket, perfect, blissful happy time. Work annoyed because i will be on leave soon but figure family memories are more important.
• MAY - Fly back to Sydney to deliver baby. Told house 'might not be ready' so rent an apartment on Nicholson st.  Beautiful winter in Sydney.
• MAY - Expensive reno 'continues', to the extent it has even started. Visit house and discover that after 200k in builders' fees nothing has actually happened other than everything being ripped out of my house making it uninhabitable.  Am told "it looks like nothing is happening. But don't worry, it is!'
• Kids, Jason and helper arrive.  Happy time settling in.
• JUNE - Amazing joyful birth of Kaia Rainbow. Blissful newborn period and nesting time. Matilda's starts having insane violent tantrums which escalate. Feel sad and horrified. Sponsor tells me to give her more attention which helps. Parker starts speech therapy. Didn't realise how bad speech was until we saw therapist. 
• Discover my helper using credit card to buy clothes and pocketing change when given cash. Tells more strange lies. Feel very uncomfortable at prospect of leaving baby with her when i return to work.
• Wonderful catch ups with the Balmain girls, having new born baby with Anna, going to AA meetings in Rozelle with newborn. Exhilarated and overjoyed to be on maternity leave. Realise id been burnt out at work. Love taking Matilda to Nico and Parker to John McMahon, love pretending I am a full time SAHM. Am stretched though and feel like I am failing everyone. Helper goes home, Jason still working and we struggle to juggle looking after kids, dinner, cleaning up etc. 
• JULY - Visit to Dan's kookaburra farm, Kaia Rainbow naming ceremony. Happy Balmain life
• AUGUST - Spend a few weeks in WA, try to show Jason how amazing our life would be there, for a short time his eyes are full of the ocean and he agrees.
• AUGUST - Back to Singapore, Matilda starts year 1 at serious academic Catholic school, has to be up at 5.40am for school bus, uses chrome books all day, heaps of homework and is bullied by buddy in first week. Challenging time for her. Try to give her extra love.
• SEPTEMBER - Fun hanging out with Parker and baby, going to yoga, being a housewife, planning fabulous meals, shopping for exotic ingredients, catching up on life. Realise, with sadness, how much Matilda missed out on having a sick and absent mother when she was a baby. Trying hard to make amends.
• OCTOBER - Admit defeat and failure in my attempts to home-school Parker and put her back in school. Excellent decision. 
• Balmain house finally mostly finished and tenanted to a guy called Lester. No longer bleeding money. Overjoyed. Feel hatred to builders for writing random invoices for whatever they felt like and myself for being so desperate and inexperienced i just transferred money. Feel hatred to architect and landscaper also for variety of reasons. Did not get my dream home but got something way over budget which i didn't really want but can at least lease out. First world problem.  Try to let go of anger.
  
• Joyful trip to rustic Koh Lipe in Thailand as a family of 5. Feel very in the moment.
• NOVEMBER - due to return to work, helper announces she wants an easier job and feels i don't trust her. I agree. The day I am supposed to return to work it all comes to a head in the kitchen and she flies home that day. 
• New Indonesian helper moves in. Terrible housekeeper but excellent cook. Feel ok with that.
• Back to work. Sucks and not getting much work done but need the money to deal with 48% rent increase in SG and renovation eating all my savings. 
• Take Rainbow back to mums and baby yoga class and feel joy.  She starts eating food. Determined not to make the same mistakes i made with Parker and Matilda. Realise this baby gets the healthiest and most present mum at all and we are never parted even though I'm back at work.  Am loving it. Might get fired though.
• DECEMBER - Matilda and Parker always exhausted. School holidays for both. Feel so happy to see them relax. Hold cookie workshops, watch old movies, embark on craft projects, make advent wreath, few other new traditions. Realise with clarity that I am trying to build the big happy family i always wanted and never had. Rainbow starts crawling. 
• Turn 5 years sober.
• Spend Christmas in Singapore. Feel joy with Jason and my girls and our little universe. Go to fancy hotel lunch and look at rich ugly drunk people and don't want to be them.  Feel like that's what happens to people who stay expats for too long. AA mates tell me to stop judging.  Good advice.
• Its tomorrow, but the plan for NYE is watch  fireworks in Singapore. 

2021 Year in review

 Year in review 2021 (compiled from snippets of memory and Facebook)😎

• JANUARY - Ring in the new year in Singapore. Go to bed at 8pm
• In the swing of happy insular covid family life, working from home, having family dinners. Give away more suits and heels. Making rainbow rice & playdoh, cooking cupcakes, playing instruments, jumping in puddles, celebrating fresh bread and flowers, painting rocks, doing science experiments.
• JANUARY - Enrol 2yo Parker in Montessori after watching her gaze through the fence longingly when we drop Matilda off. Tell the school that she has respiratory issues and cant wear a facemask. Spend next 18m fobbing off attempts to make her wear a facemask, make me provide doctors letter etc. 
• Watch Singapore become worse and worse with covid. Facemasks inside and outside, checking in and out of all buildings, stupid rules like 'no more than 2 people at a table even if they are from the same household'. More and more people in the street telling me to pull my mask up, to put masks on my kids, photographing my kids without masks, and me with mask down. Feel hatred and disgust, tell lots of strangers to fuck off.
• FEB - start paying architect for concept plans for 133 darling street renovation.
• MARCH - go on bizarre 'cruise to no where', so excited to pack a bag, leave Singapore and wake up to the ocean, even if the reality is we are just floating around Singapore on a boat. Have such a good time that...
• APRIL - try second cruise to nowhere which involves many many stupid rules, men shouting at me for not standing on my cross, wearing mask properly, distancing correctly. Being told empty restaurants and empty pools are booked out and full.  Enough of the cruises. So desperate to get  out of SG though. 
• MAY -Schools are closed for 8 weeks. Try home based learning for one day, it sucks, let kids do whatever they want for a couple of weeks and then we are told kids can go back to school because i work in cyber security. Heart breaks seeing pictures of a total of 6 kids ats school wearing face masks AND face shields, watching a teacher on a tv screen, no one allowed to touch anything in classroom or play in playground.
• Jason claustrophic and miserable and hating Singapore but has taken up bike riding which brings joy. Agree to move home April 2022 when lease is up.
  
• MAY Argue with Jason about needing to go back to Aus and empty my mums house. He says have movers put the whole lot in storage or have the whole lot thrown in a skip. He finally agrees to come because i cant do the job with kids around and he doesnt want to look after them on his own for a month.
• Fly to Australia and spend 2 weeks in quarantine. Quarantine is an beautiful holiday characterised by gentle quality time with kids, no rushing, no decisions to be made. One of the happiest times of my life.

• JUNE - Empty out my mum's house. Intense emotion working through documents, file notes and letters in her study, learning more about her marriage, life, a time when she was bullied at work, disappointment, heartbreak and fears. Learn about her happy times, youth, courage and adventures also. Read letters between us going back decades and remember our relationship, some good times and some very hard times. Difficult reading.
• Find own journals from age 14-30. Flick through. Decide there might be some amazing poetry, reflections, travel writing and enlightenments in there but there is a lot of alcoholism, addiction, pain, trauma and verbal diarrhea also. Realise they document my spiral out of control and find many pages covered in ash with the handwriting becoming illegible. Throw the lot in the recycling. 
• JUNE - Visit Dan's kookaburra farm. Magical and memorable weekend! My heart breaks realising how much I miss nature.
• AUGUST Pee on a stick and find out I am pregnant. Overjoyed. The day i go to see the OB I start bleeding. He gives me progesterone tablets. Walk down a hill saying to the baby 'please stay with me. I will take care of you'. By the end of the week the bleeding is done and I am not pregnant any more. Remember relapsing over a miscarriage before Parker was born and explaining that's why I relapsed, as though it was a perfectly acceptable reason to drink. Realised that I didn't have to drink over a miscarriage, or a bus driver yelling at me, or a fight with Jason. Realised there is no 'good enough' reason to drink and no bad situation which will be improved if i start drinking.
• SEPTEMBER - Fell pregnant again. Peed on stick. Overjoyed. Tell Dan. Go to OB who looks at progesterone levels and says baby is stable. Feel a sense that the baby wants to be born.

• OCTOBER - Singapore passes a rule to ban people from shopping malls, buildings, zoos, attractions unless vaccinated. After a month of not being able to buy bread or take my kids anywhere , waiting while jason and other mums take the kids to cool places, I get vaccinated. Feel defeated.
  
• NOVEMBER- Tell Jason I am pregnant while he is sitting on couch drinking beer and watching a movie. He does a slow dark hollow laugh. Then goes silent. No more mention of pregnancy.
• Still negotiating with Singapore General Hospital over 100k bill for former helper's brain surgery. Paying off what I can.
• Performing visible and stressful global L&D role at work. Ask for promotion and payrise. Recieve these.
• DECEMBER - start paying builder for renovation for 133 darling st. Start of painful expensive process.
• Gossipy helper tells whole neigbourhood we are pregnant and people start congrautlating us in street before we have told the girls.
• DECEMBER -  Jason starts to talk about pregnancy as though he has accepted it. Fly to England for simultaneously lovely and disastrous trip. Announce we are pregnant at happy family Christmas with Jasons parents.  Find it extremely difficult to work and care for kids and have clean clothes and deal with pregnancy exhaustion. Both have a sinking feeling that we cant cope with a third baby and without domestic help. 
• Enjoy winter in England, hanging out with Jasons family, getting to know the village.  Also very stressful time between Jason and I. See out the end of the year on a road trip to Cornwall

2020 Year in Review

 2020 Year in Review

• Rang in the new year in Balmain East, a week after my mums funeral. Overwhelmed with grief and shock still. Cuddled parker and visited old family friends the Hethertons, then Amy and Elga and the numerous visitors popping in and out of their house, then Peacock Point Park.
• Flew back to Singapore in a wave of sadness. Left a small bag of sleeping pills behind and wished I still had them.
• Spend many days breaking into spontaneous tears in the kitchen. Felt a huge hole in my heart.
• Watched Matilda learning to read.
• Took business trips to London and Goa. Put on "ideation workshops" and presented on diversity and sexy shit to a bunch of curries. Closed a couple of big deals. Made Jason plan out our year of holidays which we booked and paid for, from Okinawa to Rawa Island.
• Had travel insurance claim for Ethiopia trip rejected because my mum is not an "immediate relative" within the meaning of the policy. 
• Watched the world go into lockdown.
• Helper yum yum left to be with her husband. Hired helper Juliet. Yum Yum continued to email asking for money and sent pictures of her elderly mother in hospital. Sent some. Felt resentment.
• Watched Singapore become increasingly restrictive. Loved it at first because the museum, art gallery, everything was empty and spacious and all the annoying Singaporeans stayed home in fear.
• More and more restrictions. Wanted to come back to Australia when Singapore made masks mandatory. 
• Leant not to say out loud that it would be good for the environment if the global population was reduced, specifically if the populations of India and China were reduced to a billion people each through the spread of COVID.
• Watched the pools, cafes, art galleries close. Stood in line at the book shop and toy shop. Bought huge lego supply. Felt frightened and sad.
• Jason and I started working from home full time. Had extraordinary fights and planned to leave him.  Dragged Jason to counselling which he attended full of resentment. Called him some awful names.
• Stared working with new sponsor, a Kiwi Hari Krishna, advertising exec Nimalo. 
• Worked closely with sponsor on love, compassion. Learnt that love is an action not a feeling and to do loving things no matter how I feel about him. Result was that I felt love. Watched relationship go from half dead to loving and the resentment fade. Learnt that when I am angriest at Jason I should make him a coffee and give him a kiss on the cheek and a compliment. Did so through gritted teeth and learnt that it works.
• Fell in love with lock down life. Felt my heart burst with happiness at all of our family time.
• Started wearing formal dresses out to the shops and for coffee
• Embraced traditional arts with the babies - making meringues, our own paint, rainbow rice, growing seedlings etc
• Held secret playdates all through lock down with other miscreant criminals like myself
• Started sponsoring Celine. Saw her get a 6m chip. 
• Watched Parker become very naughty and mischievous. Still cant speak.
• Settled discussions around my mum's house with my brother and bought his half. all the neighbors and family friends happy.
• Started buying shares.
• Plan to move to Yallingup and live in a forest with Phascogales. Start negotiating with lady who owns Phascogale house. I want her life. Jason not ready to live in the forest.
• Helper Juliet gets brain tuberculosis and spends a month in hospital. Living with no helper and bills running up by about $3K per day. Rotation of babysitters and cleaners and Jason and I fighting. Spend my days on the phone to doctors, insurers family in Philippines, Juliet's friends, the embassy, the medical evacuation people whilst negotiating a massive deal with British American Tobacco every night. Extremely stressful.
• Learnt to make oatmeal pancakes then yoghurt pancakes.
• Get Juliet's brain damaged ass on a first-class SIA flight to Manila and a private jet to Ilo Ilo. Huge sigh of relief. Massive bill from Singapore General Hospital. Negotiations begin. Family continue to ask for money from the Philippines. Juliet's friends tell us this is the normal Philippines mentality. Family sends messages saying "we know we will be ok because you will always take care of us Maam!"
• Hire new helper Sheila because she i fat and happy and available immediate. Marvellous housekeeper, house has never been so tidy, but not very bright. Decide to focus on the tidy house and be happy.
• Working on honesty, love and compassion. Making good progress but so much of a way to go.
• Sponsor leaves town and I am devastated.
• Cancel trip to Aus for Christmas because we don't want to do/pay for quarantine and my request for exemption, plus numerous appeals, are all rejected.
• Feel very happy and peaceful with my life. Very joyful about beautiful healthy children, decent low stress job.
• Decide to live a frugal life and retire. 
• Take first block of leave for the whole year between Xmas and new years. My entire skeleton staff of Indians who are supposed to man the fort decide they all want a break and call in sick so I have to work anyway. Feel rage and make racial slurs on the inside.
• Enroll Parker in school next year.
• Stay in touch with my mums mates and old family friends. 
• Propose to Jason. He says he will think about it. Realize we have been together 8 years.
• Clean out wardrobe of suits. 
• Drink 20 coffees a day.
• Celebrate 3 years sober, Parker's second birthday and commemorate one year anniversary of losing my mum. Feel overwhelmed by the energy of it all.
  

Best job in the world

You stir, thirsty, and come looking for one of us. It is late. I take you back to bed and sit with you quietly until I hear the gentle purr of you snoring. Today you woke me up with a present and a cup of coffee and a card you made. We talked about going to Japan to hang out and do the things the little Kokeshi doll does in your book, like take the bullet train and eat little Japanese lunches. 

In the morning we hosted a tea party for your little school friends and it made me happy. You all dressed up in princess dresses and drank stawberry tea and decorated cupcakes by the pool. You were a perfect charming hostess and everyone had a blast.

We went for a swim int he afternoon with Parker Peepers and Daddy came home from work. We got dressed, said goodbye to KaKa, wished her happy CNY and headed out for dinner. At the restaurant you played with trains and made some friends. You sang happy birthday and helped me blow out the candles on a cupcake you decorated. 

I was reminded of the breakfast party my mum organised for me when I was little, coming downstairs to see my 3 best friends there. It was my happiest childhood memory I think, from that time at least, and its salience grows with the passing years and changes in life.

Its so much fun being your mum. I love helping you pick what to wear to school, the crazy dance in our house in the mornings as the 3 adults and 2 kids scramble around. I love picking you up from school and hearing about your day. Love taking a bath with you and Parker at night, selecting stories, hearing your little voice say "sweet dreams mummy, youve had a busy day". I love our weekends when we do cool things or a whole lot of nothing. Ive loved our times in Sydney when we would stay with Grandma and she would read to you, we'd all go across the road to the Bowling Club. The phantasmagoria of the library, the park, playdates with the fairy princesses, orange grove markets, visits to see other old friends, the local pools, all of it punctuated with coffees all over Balmain and the smell of jasmine in the mornings. 

I feel like we are very blessed.

Shapeshifter

It shapeshifts, the pain and sadness, taking different disguises, making itself a flat black shadow that can slide under doors and into empty rooms, a blanket that wraps around me in the cold, a companion sitting beside me as the plane lands, the tears when I hear a song that takes me back.

I am busy but trying not to be so busy that I avoid processing and feeling it all, trying not to hide in books and work and love and kids. I want to be available to the memories and emotions that come up.

My early years as a lawyer in Sydney, I had moved home for a couple of years and then out, so I couldn’t conduct my miserable life more flagrantly. They were really unhappy days. I would go home on the weekends to pick lavender in the afternoon sun with you, bunch after bunch. Sometimes you had already picked it and my job was to collect and tie in bunches. They were such sad days for me on the inside, seeing my life and purpose deteriorate, and I took such solace being able to come home. Another couple of admissions, periods of peace followed by worse periods and I was heading further down hill. Towards the last days I started morning drinking at Balmain Shores and would head over in tears, listening to music to match: but always it was a place of peace and love and calm, and always you were there for me with unconditional love despite what you were seeing. Id like to think that I was a loving daughter, when I passed adolescence especially and we became best friends. I wasnt very useful when I was sick, was more of a liability than anything else, but I did get well and step up and try to be the daughter you needed.

I think about when I realised how frail you were in April this year and I had returned from Sydney after maternity leave and stood crying in the kitchen for 30 mins. How happy I was to hear the joy and light in your voice after you’d been to the gym or out with AJ.

I think about those admissions to RPA and how scared you must have been. The worst once, where you were in ICU, where at least I could fly out and be there without kids, and could be present, albeit taking work calls in the hallway of level 10 outside your room. How scared and lonely you must have felt. And I was a day late, after the operation, because we had a big party scheduled for Matilda's birthday and I thought I had to stay for it. I will always feel really bad about that. I am really sorry. "Im so glad you came" you said.

I think about my 21st at Margaret’s and Patrick’s wedding and our first communion parties and how great you were at stuff like that. I think about which years exactly must have been the hardest years for you, and think I have it locked down to 1991-1996. I’d like to think that it got better after that, or maybe towards the end with the Swedish family staying and you in your helping element, with Hannah to stay up all night with. And then we started moving out of home, you took some cool trips, things were looking good.

I think about how you taught me to give of myself and give my time and home and love and the shirt off my back and my last loaf of bread if someone needs it, and how that’s more important than just giving money which you can spare. I hope I can teach Matilda and Parker this lesson also - will it bring them happiness or do they need to learn it just because we are Christians and this is what is important to a Christian? I don’t know. But I think it important to live in service to Others and as part of a community. I want my girls to be happy functioning stable members of society, maybe all you ever wanted for me. In those last few years, the last 2 specifically, did you know that’s what I had become? I had mum. You don’t have to worry about me anymore. Everything will be ok, and it was a privilege and a pleasure being able to step up and to be a helpful and useful adult in the years when you needed me. I just wish I could have been there longer and more and closer. I will always be sorry about that. 

Mum's Eulogy (the most heartbreaking writing task of any person's life)

I am Caitlin, Eileen’s daughter. Thank you for coming.

My mum detested simple narratives with no character development and could only tolerate biographies, but she did love regurgitating her own life’s events -good and bad-  so I feel we have a license to do so in her absence.

Just 2 weeks ago we were celebrating mums 72^nd birthday  at the Bowling Club, where she drank Aperol Spritzes because she was reading a novel set in Tel Aviv where the protagonist drank Aperol Spritzes. 

My experience of Eileen, over four decades, is that she was:

Kind, compassionate, generous, courageous, independent, creative, very funny, intelligent, eccentric, rebellious – with an exceedingly beautiful heart.

Here is what she was not: tactful or boring.

Her adult life before kids was unique and cool. She studied Economics at Sydney Uni and then teaching, because she hated school herself, and like most teachers apparently, dreamed of “changing the system”.  She became a teacher and hipster at Griffith High in regional NSW.

Adventurous, fearless and altruistic, she joined Australian Volunteers Abroad in the 70s and was deployed to Malaysia where she taught at the university. From there she was recruited by the Japanese Peace Corp and trained Japanese volunteers in Tokyo before being sent to Tonga, Samoa, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe and other random places on bizarre assignments like negotiating prisoner releases with African warlords or conducting rescue missions for volunteers who had gone AWOL. I  loved when she spoke about those days and gave me practical advice about things like how to kill an enormous rodent with a big stick, store your rice to protect it from weevils and floods,, get invited to diplomatic parties when hungry or lonely.  She stayed lifelong friends with many of the volunteers and our childhood home was full interesting artifacts and people from this time - shrunken heads, blow pipes and poison darts, tribal art, meetings of returned volunteers, Japanese students.

She got married,  had my brother and I and devoted herself to parenting  with joy, passion and creativity, acting as both mother and father to us . She made a lot of sacrifices to give us a world class education - in terms of school, extra curriculars, excursions, travel, , art, history, culture and people of all walks of life. There were some extraordinarily challenging times with marital strife, economic insecurity, harrowing days in the Family Court and the dark night of the soul as she called it. When we first moved to 133 Darling Street we would sit on rocks, in  a circle, like American Indians, because we had no furniture. She was strong and stoic though it all.

Despite the challenges she was vivacious, joyful, gregarious, interested in the world and other people and always doing her best to create a happy home for us. She turned every day events  into interesting  learning opportunities, like time and motion studies on the trip to woollies or when she convinced Kerrie and John next door to eat acidic foods , drink alkali drinks, litmus test their urine and record the Ph on a chat, for our own scientific inquiries. . I received letters from Santa that started with “Dear Caitlin, I have travelled , from the North Pole, a tundra environment. Its latitude is 90 degrees north, and all longitudinal lines meet there. Can you find it on the globe? “

She was so profoundly generous, with anything she had, including time and love. If she saw a woman in the bathroom using a Q tip to get the last out of  her lipstick, mum would give the woman hers. She  would buy a coffee and croissant for the homeless man outside the bakery and say “here Sir, I thought you might like some breakfast.” For many years in our childhood she took us to a place in Surry Hills called “The Refuge” on Sunday nights where homeless and mentally ill people gathered to celebrate mass, telling us “you’re never closer to God than when you kiss someone soaked in their own urine.”

Our home was open to anyone who needed shelter, especially women leaving marriages, conflict, danger, or simply needing a place to think and rest, pick lavender in the afternoon sun and watch the stars in the night sky.

She made a profound difference to the many kids she taught over the years - Geography, Economics, Commerce, Society & Culture - at different schools. Her years at Strathfield South, were  stressful and bad for her health but she forged lifelong friendships there, bound by the same intensity as those formed between survivors of a train wreck.

Then she moved to Balmain High where she taught Aboriginal Studies, worked with special needs and smaller kids and again made many beautiful friends, but in much happier circumstances.

When she retired, she took extreme pleasure, every day, in not going to work. How are you today Mum? I’m great! I love being retired. Every day you don’t have to go to work is a fantastic day.

She was still  busy, preparing literacy and numeracy lessons for her many biological and surrogate grandchildren , staying up late chatting with the steady stream of house guests passing through, going for yum cha, reading voraciously, dropping into Brays and arguing with Tim about the Booker prize shortlist, sending bizarre emails, posting things all over the world, walking around Balmain drinking coffees with her friends and later with her beautiful helpers.

She is no longer chilling out in her home in Balmain smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee or wine.

But she is every wild woman in her 20s on a motorbike flying through the rubber plantations of Malaysia in a tropical thunder storm. Every teacher picking up her car from the mechanic saying, “never mind son, you did your best”

She is the frequent, unexpected and thoughtful presents - books, tailored to your temperament, or for your kids, 1-2 years above their reading age, an electric carving knife for One-Arm-Charlie, a purple umbrella to match my purple hair, the Zambelli business shirt for a girl with her first office job, glittering loose blue sapphires collected during our travels for the friends who already had everything, obscure spices and belle fleur chocolates posted around the world.

She is  friendships that span 50+ years, characterized by fierce loyalty, consistency, love and honesty. She late nights of laughing so hard we cried at the absurdities of life.

She is  the teacher taking a disadvantaged kid to lost property for some new uniforms, showing him how to wash his clothes in the sink with sunlight soap, asking her hairdresser to cut his hair for free.  

The woman who gives her wedding ring to the heroin addicts getting married at the Refuge, buys flowers and caters for their wedding.

Mum, let me address you directly:

You are every time I see a mother and daughter perched on the balcony of the London with a bottle of champagne and a martini glass full of strawberries, a mother and daughter travelling together, squabbling about what room to take or playing good cop bad cop whilst bargaining with the jewelers. You are every single mum going hungry,  so your little kids can eat that night. You are Feng Shui, Jungian dream analysis, synchronicity, the mystical side of Catholicism and the tangent drawn between them. The pied piper on family picnics, leading a little band of children around explaining the medicinal properties of various plants. The lady who uses her winnings on the race 8 trifecta to pay off the fines of a stranger.

You are every crisp and fabulous Simona suit I see, every flock of jet black shiny hair on a wild and rebellious woman, every insightful but totally inappropriate observation. Every truly sincere compliment which starts with a huge insult, just so I know it’s genuine. You are the sun streaming through the stained glass windows in Edward street, and the sage reminder that a house is just bricks and mortar, that things are just things and you cant take them with you.

You are the gentle old lady cuddling your newborn granddaughters and telling me “Caitlin the happiest time of your life is when your babies are little”.

 Maybe you here knew Eileen as a fiery woman, a gifted teacher, an open minded confidant, an eccentric aunt, a loyal friend, a warm hearted neighbor, as a kind old lady or an iconoclastic rebel. To me she will always be my mum, an inner voice that does not age nor fade.

If mum was here today she’d ask you what you’re reading, tell you it’s rubbish, suggest a much better book, then look around, say “Well. This is boring. I’m going for an iced coffee. Bye.“

I’ll leave you with mum’s own words from a postcard I came across, from one of our adventures together:

“Dear Hethertons, This place is fun, fun, fun. We’ve decided to forget about sightseeing, and will look it all up on the internet and just hang out by the pool instead. We’ve met so many interesting people. There’s a shortage of single women. Caitlin and I are surrounded by men from breakfast to 1am, sometimes later. Not much sleep going on around here. We leave for backpacking on Thursday – we can get educated then. Laughing all day long.”

May god bless her the way she blessed us and protect her the way she protected us.

.

On a rainy Tuesday night, the saddest news of all

It was Tuesday evening and I hadn’t heard from mum all day. She wasn’t answering calls or emails. I asked Kerrie to check on her. 10 minutes later Kerrie replied Can you call me urgently. The bottom fell out of my stomach and I already knew.

Kerrie went in and facilitated the ambulance and police. Please listen to me when I say this Caitlin, she looked so peaceful, lying in bed.

We had been there all month. As I flew out on Sunday I sent an email saying I love you!

She responded: I love you too. Its been a happy month. Now time to wash my hair. I called from the airport and Lujia and Thoran had dropped by with their babies. Later that night she said the house was so quiet.  I sent some of the photos of our month.

We arrived on a Saturday. Our first Sunday we went to a kid’s party at the bowling club, with jumping castles and a kids disco. This is so much fun! she said as we watched the kids disco and tried to coax Matilda into playing musical chairs. She told the DJ how impressed she was, as a teacher, at how he connected with kids.

I don’t know what we did all month. Normal stuff. I went to work. Yum yum took Matilda and Parker to the play center.  In the mornings the babies would make a lot of noise, but mum would sleep through it, wake up about 10, have some coffee. She would be around during the day, attend to her mum-stuff and outings, I would be in and out. We would have dinner, she might read Matilda a story, blow her a kiss goodnight. She was so kind to Matilda and Parker. And me.

We would go to the bowling club for dinner, mum and I would park ourselves by the window to watch Matilda play. For her birthday we had a dinner at home with a birthday cake. She blew out the candles. We have her three bags of books form Brays, carefully selected by Tim. Matilda wanted to give her chocolate milk as a present. We went to the bowling club the following night to celebrate again and she had the Aperol Spritz that she wanted, having read about them in some novel set in Tel Aviv. This isn’t at all what I expected. Maybe its an acquired taste. We went up to the french café on the corner and drank coffee and smoothies in the sun. Mum seemed happy.

At one point I found her writing a very long letter to Tim critiquing his book. 8 or 9 points he should fix. I convinced her to rip it up and write a nice letter encouraging him to write more. We went to the hairdressers to get her hair fixed. We had another ACAT assessment and she was approved for level 3.

She did some word formation with Matilda. She read the babies stories. She did fun things and bought fun and interesting books for Matilda on her Monday and Wednesday adventures in Balmain. The Nutcracker. Allegro. We both drank a lot of coffee. As promised, she didn’t start drinking wine until the babies were asleep.

I didn’t sit outside in the wee hours as I usually would. I found it difficult to have the drunken conversations as of late. But we would talk in the morning, or I would be sitting by her chair with the kids playing or we would talk when we were out. But not enough. So I have regrets about that. We talked about the future though. I told her we would be moving back and moving in with her in April. She was happy about that. We were coordinating to have her house painted. I know she was proud of me and happy that I had gotten my life together. She complained about having too many appointments. I told her she had heaps of time.  She loved going up to Balmain on Mondays and Wednesdays and running into everyone, socializing.

In the last few days she was sick. On the Sunday she asked me to get her some antibiotics from the chemist and I did. We came home from church and got things organized to go to the airport. We chatted a bit. I said we were sad to go and we’d had a wonderful time. She said the same and she would miss the babies. I showed her the way I had organized her fridge and her meals for the next week.  There are conversations I wish we had instead.

The Melbourne folk will be here in a week. Will you be ok till then?

Yes.

And we’ll be back in March.

All the conversations now seem very practical and logistical. I wish they had been more spiritual and softer.  I feel really sad about that. But I guess we had our share of spiritual and deep and meaningful conversations.

I wish I had known It was the end. I wish I had known it was the last visit. I wish I had known it was the last conversation, the last goodbye. We left the house and I gave her a kiss and a hug, said I love you, thanks for having us mum and got into the taxi. She stood at the gate waving, as the car turned around down jubilee place and then headed up darling street. She waved until we were out of sight.

It still just feels very surreal. I am not ready to process all the memories, my lifetime of memories, all of then to do with love, selflessness, challenges, strength, humor, kindness, courage, above and beyond, the unconditional love.

From being a little family in Paul street, to Edward Street to Darling Street. Christmases made special by her love, energy, creativity and selflessness.  Weekends with grandma and papa or going on field trips, designing our garden together. A mother who did her best to instill education and a love of learning and integrity, compassion and kindness. A selfless mother who would do anything for her children, make extraordinary sacrifices every step of the way. Difficult teenage years and her strength and courage through it all. Reconnecting as a young adult and being so close. Moving out of home and mum saying it feels like Ive lost a limb. Standing on the balcony together one afternoon just before I was due to fly to Bangladesh  and the song Leaving on a Jet Plane started playing from the neighbors house, our arms around each other in the moment, her reminiscing about when the song came on in the airport before she took off for KL in the 70s. Her buying me business shirts at Zambellis all the time and wanting me to dress well and look good. Going to grandmas funeral, and then Barbara’s funeral and her sadness. Her being there during the hospital admissions, making the journey to Curl Curl and St Leonards to see me in rehabs, even to Perth. Watching me crash and burn through life and always being there to help me pick up the pieces. Her happiness at the arrival of grandchildren all over the place, taking in Ludjia as a surrogate daughter, Gabby turning her garden into something magical. When she started to decline and I could be there for her. The hospitals, trips to RPA. Sorting out the helpers, the admin, the appointments…

Always coming home, always to open arms and a warm welcome for me and my growing family, always my mum, a constant amid the changing world.  I would get frustrated, with the drinking and the refusing to take care of herself, the suspicion about doctors, the long winded explanations in the emergency rooms. Telling her about Parker, visiting Ashfield hospital quite pregnant with Parker, coming home to have Parker. I arrived in the November and we had a few weeks together before the family arrived… they were wonderful. We stayed for months with the new addition, Jason and yum yum having gone home. They were happy months. Getting into our groove, we would rise early and head out, when we got home mum would read to Matilda and hold Parker while I prepared dinner, more stories afterwards, we would chat a bit when the babies were in bed…  It all seems so simple and peaceful now.

Over the last month I was worried about mum of course. She was still drinking at night, after the babies went to sleep, and unsteady on her feet. I would get up and come downstairs about 10, ask her when she was going to bed. Sometimes I would be doing work watching tv together and at 10 start to encourage bed time. She would usually go about 11, 12, maybe 1 and Id turn down the bed for her, help her take her shoes off, turn off the lights.

I was worried that she would have another crazy accident when no one was there. I had an RPA bag packed for her with toothbrush, shampoo, hearing aid batteries, a couple of books etc. It felt so grim but I could see that she was still teetering around quite drunk at night and it seemed inevitable. But she never did. 

I feel so extraordinarily sad and it seems like such a shock and at the same time I have sort of felt this coming for a couple of years, for a year at least. I have called mum almost every day for the last year no matter where I am. I feel happy about that. And I feel happy about the time I’ve spent at home over the last year. And I feel happy that I have had a chance to make living amends and will continue to do that. I feel happy that I am sober for this and can get through this and do what I need to do at this time for my mum with dignity and grace. I feel like I got sober for this, to be able to take care of mum one last time. I feel really grateful for that and I will do my best. I wont get involved in any drama, I will just do the next right thing and pray to god for help and try to be the best most loving person I can be.