Shalom

growing old

I had a few days off and my sister asked me to stay at her house and mind my elderly mother. Mentally, Mum is wonderful, often remembering things my sister has quite overlooked. She reads well and widely and discusses current affairs. Physically she's not very good at all. She had a fall a week ago, her first, and is bruised and sore. She has bad arthritis and is unsteady on her feet and was diagnosed last September with CLL, chronic lymphatic leukemia. She has lost 20 kg, unsought, since that diagnosis. She gets her own breakfast and tidies up after it but really needs some supervision. While I was there, she turned 88 and I cooked her a special meal.

My sister lives at Forster on the mid north coast, only a couple of minutes stroll from Burgess Beach. All the photos in this post were taken on the only sunny day I was up there. There is a variety of rock formations on teh beach and inshore rocks prevent it from being a surfing beach. However, it is quiet and secluded and has lots of small pockets of sand where the waves come in and it is possible to sit and cool down on a hot day. I went for a walk there to get some exercise and just as I was coming down the access trail looked up and saw a pod of dolphin. One of the nearby inlets serves as a nursery for these animals and there are a couple of cruises on the lake and out to sea for dolphin watchers. I wasn't prepared but grabbed the camera and took some shots. There seemed to be about a dozen together with several outriders. Unfortunately my shots do not show them clearly. One of the cruises came past about 30 minutes after the pod had gone.

I stayed at the beach for quite a while, wandering around taking photos of many views and other interesting bits and pieces. Then I sat with my back against a conveniently sloping rock and just soaked up the sun. I found myself thinking of the situation. My sister has lived with Mum for about 10 years now, ever since her first operation for breast cancer. She's had several since and two or three for more unrelated items. Mum used to sit with her all day, every day in hospital because my sister is not a very good patient. She says mum would do tis for me too, although I would not want it. It has been something of a symbiotic relationship since then. My sister is on a disabiity pension and is unable to work. I know Mum helps her financially many times. I don't begrudge her that and have no intention of ever making it an issue.
While she was ill, she depended on Mum for many things and Mum was happy to be able to do things for her. As she recovered, it was easy for her to stay and they had a good relationship for quite a while. Then as Mum aged and became more frail, the roles were reversed. Unfortunately, my sister by then had developed her own life which nowhere near approximated what my mother considered reasonable, so there was conflict. Mum does not like her friends. I don't either but they are her choice, not mine, so I say nothing. I suspect she probably does not like mine either. However, Mum is not backward abut making her opinions known. Mum sees things from an older person's viewpoint, and while my sister is not young, she certainly isn't old either. She knows many people in the area and does a lot of fundraising for both local charities and cancer foundation events. She's often out, so mum feels neglected and uses this as a lever. Sometimes it seems to me that she's afraid to stop as she doesn't know what may catch up with her.

Allied to all this is Mum's increasing deafness. She wears hearing aids, as do I, but has them turned up to maximum and still has trouble. She's not good at lipreading, and if a conversation changes course abruptly, she will have trouble grasping new words she's not expecting to hear. This frustrates her, but it's also very frustrating for my sister. I found myself spelling words last week, saying them very slowly and loudly or changing my sentence structure totally, in the hope that she might catch something. I can understand that this is difficult for both of them. She likes TV turned up so high that I'm sure the neighbours could hear her channel as well as their own. I think part of her fear of being alone is that she already feels isolated even when there are people around.

Mum's younger sister admitted herself to a nursing home a few days ago. She is unable to live with any of her children and forgets much, especially medication. She has settled in well. Mum feels superior because she is not in this situation. Mum confidently manages a range of tablets at various times through every day. In fact she adamantly refuses to consider such a move. She's made this plain for may years. Her reason? She would have to be dressed to have breakfast in the dining room. Mum gets dressed after breakfast. she can't see that she could breakfast in her room and totally refuses to even think about this. However, I'm many hours away and work. My brother is many hours away and works also. My sister needs some respite occasionally and such respite is available for up to about nine weeks in every year.
Mum needs to learn to compromise but apparently will not. I'd like her to tone down her complaints and actually try perhaps a week. My sister is not well and has been told the cancer could recur either as a primary or secondary again, perhaps as bone cancer. If Mum were to see that this is a possibility for her, it would take a weight off all our minds. Much better to see for herself and then come home again than to find that she needs to make a sudden, complete change.

So I had much to think about as I sat on the beach. I can see her stubbornness in each of us. However, we seem better at compromise than she is. I don't want her to have to move suddenly, but can see something like that ahead. Getting older is not easy when families are smaller and more scattered. I would have Mum with me, but she loves that area and I'm months away from being able to have a place of my own. I have no idea where to move to or what sort of place I want. I certainly don't currently have the financial resources to move.
Mum is still strong minded. Perhaps things would have been easier if she was not so strong. We have much to be thankful for, but much of that is actually the cause of more problems.

glory be to God for dappled things

GLORY be to God for dappled things— For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings; Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough; And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim. All things counter, original, spare, strange; Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?) With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise him.

Gerard Manley Hopkins, c.1883.

Praise him too for taddies swimming in two ponds in my backyard. One pond, smallish but a couple of feet deep, has several quite large tadpoles in it. It also has some tiny fish which do not eat frog spawn. The other pond, much bigger has some small tadpoles hiding in the weed from six goldfish which would normally eat such tempting morsels. They must be well hidden.

Frogs have the ability to find suburban backyard pools. We almost always have one, although sometimes the sound disappears for a while. Perhaps a casualty of our cats, although we never find the evidence. However, I've not seen tadpoles here for many years.

All things counter, original, spare, strange; ...Praise him.

screech, screech, squabble, squabble

Screech screech! Can't you hear the noise in the Tasmanian Apple gum tree in my front yard? It's in bloom and at dusk is invaded by what could well be hundreds of flying foxes or fruit bats all in search of a tasty morsel or two.

I see them sometimes flying at dusk, silhouetted against the evening sky. According to the ABC's Gardening Australia programme, they are becoming an endangered species as their habitat is reduced.

Pictures here of the Tasmanian apple gum and its blossom. It is the floral emblem of the state.

colour lives

Really, some more photos to reinforce tha fac t that I seem to have worked these things out on the new computer. Not totally, but well on the way.

I joined a group again this year called Project Spectrum. It encourages the use of colour in any way or form of craft and suggests keeping an eye out for the use of colour that we might have ignored before. The colours for February and March are blue, white and grey. I do a lot of knitting and am trying to knit with wool I already have. It's been a bit of a challenge to meet the colours as Ihave been making jumpers (sweaters) and hats for African AIDS babies and a specific type of yarn is called for. However as I sat outside finishing a hat today, I suddenly saw blue with a different eye.
I was outside on the deck which always seems to me to be cheerful. I looked at the blue door and window and saw them in in a new light. The blue with the sandy colour of the walls reminds me of the beach where I spent many happy holidays. I find water has a very healing effect and I could sit and watch a creek, stream or surf for hours quite happily, so being reminded of the place brought forth some of the same thoughts and emotions.

I jumped up, grabbed the camera and took quite few shots. Both are taken from the shelter of the gazebo on the deck, one looks back to the back door over the stairs to go down to the yard. The other looks along the wall from the door to the kitchen side window.

So open your eyes to the colours around you

going bananas

Or perhaps NOT going bananas, at least for quite a while.  Or any other tropical fruit grown in Northern Queensland.  The area around Innisfail has been flattened by cyclone Larry with winds reaching just under 300 kph.  90% of the area's  banana plantations have been destroyed as well as nurseries supplying young plants.

I usually eat pawpaw on my breakfast cereal and bought some more this afternoon.  It too came from Innisfail, so I imagine pawpaws will also be in short supply.

Destruction has been widespread and very severe.  What is amazing is that there seem to have been just a few reported injuries and no deaths from this severe cyclone.

Here  is just one account of many dealing with the cyclone.

update on cyclone larry

Cyclone Larry has indeed been updated to a category 5 cyclone.  This report shows some of the things happening in North Queensland this morning.  Winds up to 293 kph and heavy rain.  A  Weather Bureau spokesman says extensive damage was predicted.  He also said that as there are neap tides at the moment, damage from sea movement and high tides could have been even worse.

cyclone larry

Cyclone Larry  will probably cross the coast of North Queensland early tomorrow  morning. This cyclone is already graded as Category 4, but meteorologists  believe it has the potential to move to category 5, like Katrina.

The area affected covers a huge section of North Queensland, coming much further south to Mackay than is usual.  Holiday makers have been evacuated from island esorts and those living near the sea have been told to evacuate.

2000 years on and growing

Scientists have sprouted a date seed recovered from diggings at Masada in 70 AD.   The seed which was one of three carbon dated to within fifty years either side of the fall of Masada has astounded scientists.  Wheat from Egyptian tombs has sprouted but died early, but this is the oldest tree or bush by hundreds of years.

guerrilla gardeners

Maggi Dawn passes on a link to gardeners who surreptitiously plant and weed to improve the environment.  Wish they would come my way.  There's more than one spot in my yard where guerrilla gardeners would be welcome.  They might even find some gorillas hiding in the overgrown back corner.

another apostle bites the dust

No, not one of  those apostles!

The great ocean road on the southern coast of the state of Victoria has some spectacular  scenery.   These rocky outcrops are perhaps 20 million years old and have been formed by erosion.  The  Apostles  are a very popular tourist attraction and tourists watched this morning from a lookout as one of the 70 metre pillars crumbled into a 10 metre high pile of rubble.  This leaves eight apostles still on their feet, although evidence from underwater suggests there could have been quite a few more.

This collapse suggests quite a few sayings which could be applied.  How about  sic transit gloria mundi ?  Or perhaps the saying "as steady as a rock"?