Image courtesy of Grey’s Anatomy, 37th ed. I knew that bloody heft of a forest would come in handy one day…
Me: Hey mate, I hear you are growing a bit of a Mo, how’s it going?
Liam: Not bad, not bad at all.
(Strokes ‘moustache’ like his Pop used to do)
Liam: Yeah, its’ coming along, about on a par with my hairy legs, and a little in front of my chest wig.
(Lifts t-shirt to reveal Mr. Puniverse thorax, with a completely, absolutely and utterly, bald chest.)
Liam: It’s weird, I have this Mo, but no other public hair.
Me: Huh? Did you say public hair?
Liam: Yeah, you know, the public hair.
(Gestures to his nether regions. Thankfully he doesn’t feel the need to elaborate with a display at this time.)
Me: It’s called PUBIC hair, mate. As in, the hair that grows near the pubis, pubes, or pubic bone of your pelvis.
(Now I’m gesturing to my nether regions. Oh sweet life, WHAT is going ON here?)
Liam: Ohhhhh, I thought it was public hair, as in, it tells the public that you are ready to reproduce. And stuff.
Conversation Officially Terminated at 7.10am. Way too much information has been shared before my first coffee (or wine). I do not wish to know what “and stuff” is. Not at all.
So how are your pube-y talks coming along?
Have you been putting your pubes out in public? (For strictly reproductive reasons of course)
Liam has just turned ten. He is medium sized, blonde and a little on the skinny side. So not at all precociously developed. He wears size eight clothes.
He came to Nath yesterday rubbing his upper lip.
Liam: Dad, I think I’m about to hit puberty.
(He is desperate for puberty because he is hoping to get pimples. Yes, he is my son.)
Nathan: What makes you think that mate?
(As clearly it is not the presence of any primary sexual characteristics that has prompted this thought.)
Liam: It’s just that I seem to be developing quite quickly at the moment. Check out my moustache. It’s still blonde, but as you can see, it’s really coming along.
(There is no visible evidence of said moustache.)
Nathan: Hmmmm
(Not wanting to offend Liam’s impending Manhood.)
Liam: I know, it’s weird right? I mean, usually it’s usually the other way around, you get the pubic hair and all that, and then secondary sexual characteristics come, well, second. I’m doing it in reverse order. Weird.
(Nathan now has nothing. He isn’t even sure what is a primary or a secondary trait.)
Liam: I reckon I’ll have to shave by Christmas as this rate.
(Liam walks off, talking to himself about Pokemon, in a voice so high pitched canines were cowering in Cooory.)
Some days, when you have a kid who has a thing, and when the thing gets too much, she can cry because your extra sensory perception wasn’t working properly, and you gave her porridge instead of corn flakes, or too much honey, or not enough honey, or the wrong coloured straw to drink her smoothie (that you really want her to drink, because she needs every bit of help she can get right now), or you are helping her to get dressed because she is so damn tired, and you choose the mauve knickers instead of the pink, all before your morning shower. These are the days that you know you have to tell her. It’s time to tell her. Really, it’s unfair not to tell her, that today will be the day when she gets the blood taken for a cross-match. But still you waver.
These are the days that when all the other kids are jostling around, and straggly lining-up to go into class to start the last day of school, you will be sitting in the school car-park after dropping the big one off, applying Emla to the tender skin of the inner arm. Looking at the those thin blue streaks and hoping one of them will be plump enough to puncture.
These are the days when all the other kids are sitting on the mat in a circle, perhaps thinking about who they will play with at little lunch. Your kid is sitting in a hospital waiting-room that smells of chlorhexidine and the ghost of urine, hopefully also thinking of who she will play with at little lunch, but more likely thinking about nurses and tourniquets and things that pierce vulnerable flesh to get to the life blood beneath.
So these days are the some days when you think it could all go pear-shaped.
And then it doesn’t.
You tell her that it’s today, and she doesn’t lose it. Instead she looks at you, eyes so big and blue, innocent and wise all at once, sclera so yellow it’s almost green with the funk of excess bilirubin, and says, “Yes, I think I am ready for a transfusion, I pulled my eyelids down yesterday, and looked at my conjunctiva, look, they’re really pale. I must be low. Even though I’m not really that tired, only when I have to stand up for too long, then my legs get all wobbly. And what is the plural for conjunctiva anyway, do you think it’s like the word octopus?”
These days, your heart leaps and lurches all at once. It zings with relief, at the miracle of adaptation. That the plasticity of the brain, and the wiring of the body, can allow a human adapt to almost any situation, given time. Given the right conditions. And in that very same moment, your heart feels denser than element 117 and just as unstable, as you yearn for a life for her that doesn’t know anything about haemoglobin or conjunctiva or local anaesthetic creams or blood typing or even hospitals and their strange layered smells. You wish all there was was little lunch. And then big lunch. And shithouse spider craft.
Okay, this could be the last in these transfusion posts for a few months. Thanks for humouring me.
If you are able to give blood, Coco would love some of yours. Call 13 14 95 to make an appointment.
On one side of my family there is a pretty big age discrepancy between me (the oldest) and all the rest. They are all adults now, having their own kids and such, but I still think of them as little rugrats getting all liquored up on red lemonade and my Nan’s tooth-achingly sweet slices, every Christmas.
My Mum just sent me a link for my cousin Jarrod McShane’s website, and it turns out, that somewhere between sitting at the kiddie table at family dinners, travelling to The US with us in 2003, and now, he has become an extraordinary photographer.
Wonderful photography amazes me, in this digital age of fast, sharp cameras and accessible filters, where it seems everyone can take enough pictures to get something decent. But true photography is something else, isn’t it? Real photographers somehow manage to tell you a story, take you on a ride, urging you to leave the couch and step inside the frame with them. They make you experience the world in a new way, with eyes that don’t belong to you. I think that is a rare thing, something you can’t get with just a fancy camera. For that you need heart.
So when I went over to Jarrod’s, I guess I expected to see a couple of cute snaps of this or that (he’s just a kid remember), but instead he took me along with him to Alaska and Melbourne and Canada. Places I have been and places I haven’t, experiencing them all in the heartfelt way of my quiet, thoughtful cousin. Seeing details that my own eyes would have passed over, capturing moments that I would have rushed by.
The excursion made me smile, in a benevolent old-lady kind of way, proud of what my kid-cousin has grown up to be.
It also made my heart ache a little, as I know my Dad would have loved to see the art Jarrod has created, and I know he would have had thoughtful things to say about it. We would have sat together and looked through the gallery, recognising familiar places, and making up stories of the spots we didn’t.
I would have liked that.
So I did it by myself instead, imagining his voice in my head.
And I liked it anyway.
Thanks Jarrod, I think you have a gift. I appreciate you sharing it.
This might be my fave, but it’s hard. There are so many. It’s very Melbourne though, and I do love that old bird. …This pier has a story or two to tell…
By the time you read this, it will be exactly one decade since we welcomed this dude into The Ashers.
10!
But of course we weren’t really The Ashers then, we were just Al and Nath. This little fella made us into something bigger than ourselves. He popped into my uterus as a bit of a surprise, what with all the androgyny of me (It’s okay to say it, I know I might not be the most voluptuous, oestrogenic looking chick on the planet) and the cancer of him and his boy bits. I think it’s safe to say I thought that we would be pretty safe from being Offspring Infected. I didn’t even have my fingers crossed in ‘Barleys’ like we used to at primary school. (Yes, I know, it was my legs that should have been crossed)
So he buried himself deep into the warm folds of my womb and stayed there until he was nice and ripe and he was fit to burst right out of my skin.
He birthed himself just like a text book, and followed our every plan to the letter. So many times we would look at each other and say, “Is this for real? Is this kid Baby of the Year or what?”
Because he was.
Still is.
He is funny, quirky, clever, challenging, straightforward, just, logical and about seven steps ahead of us most of the time. He has a blog over here if you want to see how he rolls. He has a strong sense of self, and so far, I think that is what I am the most proud of (other than the fact that I pushed his 9lbs7oz out of my very own vagina).
This morning he said to me with a sigh, “Today is the last day of single digits, the last day of my first decade. It gets tough from here.”
I thought he was talking about footy, “What do you mean, the competition?”
He looked at me like I was an idiot, “No, life, it gets rough from here on.”
Now it was my turn to look at someone like they were dopey, “I’m forty-three mate, my life isn’t rough. It doesn’t have to be rough.”
He sighed again, speaking slowly, as if I was a little feeble minded, and counted on his fingers, “Your Dad died, you have to make the lunches every day and then there’s taxes.”
I laughed and told him he didn’t need to worry about those things for a long time.
He looked doubtful and said, “It’ll be here before you know it. And the lunches: every.single.day.”
I left the room, shaking my head at this little grandfather-child we were raising, a little sad that he knew all of those things so early: the repetitive nature of life, and of death, and of course taxes. I worried that some of his attitude was from having a sister with a thing, from spending too many of his days in hospital waiting rooms, seeing things beyond his years. Or perhaps it was from his precocious reading, devouring stories meant for more mature minds. Or maybe it was just that he had seen too much of death and The Cancer. I vowed to bring more frivolity to his next decade. To encourage silliness and nonsense and time-wasting. To create space for daydreaming and giggling.
And then I heard some stifled laughter coming from the wizened one’s room, so I popped my head around to see these two idiots:
Very mature
goggles on, and taking pot-shots at each other’s heads with Nerf guns.
My heart lifted a little.
Maybe there is hope after all. Maybe the next decade will be just fine.
Happy Birthday Liam. You rock. And not just on the drums or the guitar or on the…erm…clarinet
I have an embarrassing confession to make. But I think you might like it, so I’m gonna spill the beans.
Over here at The Asher’s we like to work as a team, and a little while ago I thought a team should have a team song. A theme song to sing on long car trips and to get us psyched up before big shopping trips. Or something.
We consulted the kids, without consensus. Liam wanted Thunderstruck, and Coco wanted some shite Minecraft song that isn’t really fit for humanoids to listen to.
So I made the decision, and I chose the most uplifting song in the world.
kidzta on Lessons From Lego (and Liam): “Liam’s insight is refreshing – instead of decluttering, he suggests expanding, embracing new ideas and opportunities. A youthful perspective on…” Dec 21, 16:08
kidzta on Lessons From Lego (and Liam): “Absolutely! It’s akin to acquiring a larger handbag – you end up filling it with more things to lug around…” Dec 21, 00:17
Alison Asher on Something Delicious: “Thank you! That’s such a nice thing to say… Happy writing!” Aug 31, 07:30
Tracy on Something Delicious: “I love your style (writing in particular) and you inspire me to develop mine too. Love the “new” words and…” Aug 30, 23:20
Alison Asher on Change It Up: “I will. Reminds me of the good old locum days. Maybe that will be a thing again soon??” Aug 27, 11:01
Alison Asher on Change It Up: “Yes, as if people “have” a panel beater on call… Well I do, but…. Lucky it was you, is all…” Aug 27, 10:59
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