Sunday Blog 108 – 29th October 2023
It’s Sunday and I’m reflecting on the very big, ginormous, impossibly long week. Do you have weeks like that? Where you shade your eyes to look across the shining expanse of the previous week all the way back to Monday?
My week went a little like this:
Monday: Bring Mum’s favourite armchair, books, photos, rugs, ornaments etc and take them over to her residential aged care room. Feel happy about how they look. Cry a little bit. Pick up a wheelchair her brother used to use that your cousin is willing to lend you. Fist pump. Cry a bit more. Sleep in old bedroom in crumbling family home.
Tuesday: Put said wheelchair in the back of the car and head over with a sister to pick Mum up from hospital and take her over to move her into her new home. Feel that squeeze of her hand when she sits in her favourite chair, the sun coming in through the window, the fresh, fresh air after two weeks of hospital air conditioning. Her gracious thanks, as always. Tag team and tap out to go back home. Do a 3-minute pitch for the manuscript for the very first time. Immediate no but try someone else. “Tell them I sent you” he says before Zoom snaps off. Keep checking the Messenger thread to see how Mum’s going. She’s doing good. She was ready. Still. Cry a bit more, with sad-happiness and happy-sadness.
Wednesday: Prepare feverishly for Thursday’s meeting that will run from 6am (curse you, daylight saving!) until 2pm. Have another go at the keynote for Friday night. Seems pretty good. Have a look at the material for the call-back interview on Friday. More checking of Messenger thread plus long debrief with family member.
Thursday: Wake 4.30am before alarm. Do yoga, might as well. Online. All day. Collapse in afternoon. Croak out another rehearsal of Friday night’s keynote.
Friday: final, final rehearsal of keynote. Choose and pack outfit. Attend call-back interview session which is a mix of sweaty horror and quite fun. Pop off to do another 3-minute pitch for the book. A bit better this time. Not an immediate no. But not a yes either. Go and see Mum for myself. Feel 1,000 times better. Go back to crumbling family home and choose another bedroom that’s free for tonight. (This resonates with my childhood as I moved out of my first bedroom at 12 years of age and then kept moving when siblings boomeranged home and out and home again.) Get dressed in glad rags for keynote. Deliver key note which is great and am still there at 10.30pm. Way past my bed time.
Saturday: wake up in old bedroom under the stairs. My daughter’s actual 25th birthday and I have invited lots of people for an afternoon tea. Procrastinate and then finally get into action after 11 and madly prepare afternoon tea. Mum comes as one of the guests of honour. She is happy to come but happy to go home. A miracle. More surreptitious sobbing. The modest afternoon tea goes somewhat off-piste with siblings and cousins and friends getting into the champers and reminiscing. Definitely miss my bedtime again, but by a much longer margin.
Sunday: feel very bloody shabby and creep about my day. Another visit to Mum who is more and more at home. Drive brother to airport. More surreptitious sobbing. Finally get onto the Sunday blog.
But wait, there’s more…
As you can see, I love to tell stories. I’m telling one again on Sunday night, 5th November from 5pm at the Irish Club. I’m one of ten story tellers yarning about Spare Rooms – I am riffing about my spare room in my London flat in the 1990s. All proceeds from this event go to Breast Cancer Care WA. It promises to be an entertaining evening in a cosy venue where you can still be home by 8.30pm. I’d love to see you there!