Chillagoe

We are back in Internet land after being well outside the zone.  If you remember that Verizon guy talking in the phone all the time;

"Can you hear me now?"

Well in Chillagoe I can assure you the answer is a resounding No! There are some fantastic things to see and do and Levi has been a trooper.  Each day we have done walks totalling about 6kms in two or three walks or tours.  There are some great limestone caves and fabulous formations.  We were able to explore a couple of caves by ourselves and had to go on guided tours for three of them. 

This is Balancing Rock.  Of Course!  We walked up and around it and Levi climbed through it and all over the rocks on the walk.  The best reward was at the end though when we played in the swimming hole.  Actually, I am a complete baby when it comes to cold water, so I stayed out and took photos.  Mim and Mike both got in and tested the depths before all the jumping! 

One of the caves was not lighted.  You carried around these big batteries and torches and there were some really tight squeezes.  In one you have to climb through a tiny little hole and drop out the bottom, legs first.  Levi was very proud of himself for doing this and talked and talked about doing it afterwards! 

Ask Not

I am in paradise.  Really I am!  Cairns in winter is as close to paradise as you can get.  The weather is perfect.  The skies are brilliant blue and the rainforest cool.  But we are working impossible hours again and I feel horrible.  Perhaps if I had just relaxed or not worked a sixteen hour day that first day, the cold would have gone away, but no I feel yuck!  Life goes on though and as we are here and I am here, it just makes sense to keep working.

I wish I had a photo from today.  Actually I stand corrected.  I wish I had a photo of the rainforest in Kuranda as we passed through.  I wish I had a photo of the view from Atherton and I wish I had a photo of the sea, seen from the mountain road.  No, I have a photo of Healthcare cards and pictures for Companion Cards, but there is hope!  Next week I will return to those places and I will get those photos!  But for now you and I will have to wait.

Today, in paradise, I listened to a man complaining about how little his government is doing for him and his disabled son.  Now don't get me wrong, I think we could do more than what we do for the families and I feel that our government has got much of it wrong.  Don't we all!  It is hard to hear how badly our government is treating this family, from their government subsidized house on there unemployment benefits, refusing the school that is free because they don't want to go anymore.  I keep thinking about J.F. Kennedy and wish that some of that spirit still permeated more:

"Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country."

Because although I can see faults in what we are doing, I think that it is always mostly our responsibility to look after ourselves and our own family.  Yes we can tell a lot about a government by how it treats it's weakest citizens, but we can tell a lot about ourselves as well!

Party

Today we went to Ruby's birthday party.  She was having a surprise bowling party.  Not Ten Pin but Lawn bowls.  Levi was grumpy and out of sorts.  He has been all day.  Actually to be honest, he has been all weekend.  I think it is because I am about to fly away for another week on Outreach.  I don't doubt that it is really important for the kids we see and for my work but I will have to say, it does take it's toll.  This is hopefully the last one for the year and at least this one is sweetened by the thought of a weeks vacation afterwards.

Levi had face paint on all weekend.  He put it on for his last soccer game of the year.  Because it is cheap stuff, you can either take off the first few layers of his skin getting it off, or you can just wait and it will gradually come off in progressive washes.  Consequently, he is sleeping tonight with further traces of it on his face.

Eventually we left the party early.  Levi had fallen and had a minor hurt but because of his disposition at the time, he deteriorated to needing me to rock him.  Yes, it was time to go home!  I am now packing for both the hard trip and the fun trip.  Tomorrow in the dark, I will get up and kiss the little man and miss him for five days.  At least this time he will come to me!

Soccer

This Post is called Soccer but could also be titled 'What are we doing with our kids?'  So let's go back a bit.  I took Friday and half of Thursday off sick and have been pretty under the weather.  I have been slow to move.  Last night (Friday) we went over to a friend's house for (significantly more upmarket) nachos, which we would have been having at home anyway.  The lower school had a Disco on that night and after being on again, off again several times in the night, the boys just didn't really want to go.  I too was grateful, because it started pretty late even for a Friday and frankly last time I took him he sat on the side and asked to go home all the time.

Then we woke up and went to soccer.  We played Dayboro (a little town up the way) and it was an interesting game.  Before the game I played with our team in a 5 against 1.  I tried to show them how a team can beat a single player every time.  They played against me and they called and passed well.  After a season of practice, they are getting really good!  I was almost in trouble!  Now there was a reason for doing it.  We were playing Dayboro. 

Dayboro has a kid who has some pretty good skills in it but the team and their parents have allowed the team to go from the Dayboro Under 6's to Ed's team and his Minions.  It is so sad to watch.  He is pretty good and with my Physio brain, it is fun to watch kids well put together and enjoying it.  With my parent brain, the whole thing just saddens me.

He never passes.  He tackles his own team and he is never substituted.  The first time we played his team we lost about 10 000 to zip.  Actually it was 14 to 0, I think.  Today it was 4 to 2 and 2 of their goals were scored in a mismatched game.  It is great to watch what we all know is true; A team will beat an individual every time!  I think that this poor kid, unless a parent gets a clue, or someone brings him in line, will likely peak in his soccer career somewhere between Under 7's and Under 8's, because after this, the team becomes the focus.  It would be such a pity.  He has such potential with his skills, it would be sad to see ego destroy it.

Today we had 5 players and so did they.  We play 4 a side on the field at a time, so both sides had a substitution.  Our kids played well.  They were locking Ed down and tackling him.  They went to him and tackled him and often as not got the ball.  So Ed starts to get frustrated, and cranky!  Now remember, we are talking about Under 6's.  First off, he runs over Levi's hand wearing soccer tags, so Levi comes off crying with three tag marks in his swollen hand.  Now we are down to 4 players.  Next Ed whacks another boy's head, who comes off with his nose bleeding.  We are down to 3.  If we had been playing another Samford team, actually any team, they would have pulled a player.  In fact it has happened several times during the season, but not this team.  We played 4 against 3 for about 5 minutes.  Now Levi is a bit of an Italian Soccer player so I was not concerned he was actually hurt, but still at this age it is a bit unfair.  Anyway our coach and our parents start to yell encouragement to our team;

"You can tackle him!  He won't pass it!"

And once they took that to heart our team did well!  Take out Ed and there was nothing left.  At halftime, our team all huddled together with the coach chatting and getting encouragement.  Their team did too.  Oh except for Ed who sat with his parents.

I wanted to go to them afterward and ask them;

"What are you trying to teach him from soccer?"

"What are you thinking!?"

But they would think that it was sour grapes from me.  Not so.  I am so proud of our kids and the fact that when H went back on with blood on his face, every one of our team went up and patted him on the shoulder and checked out how he was and it was true too when Levi went back on.  Because if that parent asked me those same questions, the answers are easy;

"I want him to learn to work with a team"

"I want to watch him grow into a strong compassionate adult and childhood soccer, is one of the ways"

And you know what? It's working!

More Photos from the Beach

Couple of Days

It has been a wild week as you can tell because I haven't been here at all.  Monday was a day off for all of us and Levi and I and four other kids and two other parents went to the beach.  Shorncliffe is about 25 minutes drive from Samford.  Now all the adults made the same decision before leaving that it was too cold and the kids wouldn't swim.  Yes it took the kids all of about 3.5 seconds to actually get in the water when we arrived! 

They played beautifully together.  They dug in the sand and they played in the water.  They climbed on the rocks and jumped from them.  They played all day without our having to correct them or direct them.  I love beaches!  Kids can just go and go and there are endless things to do.  I spend time loving watching them.  I get joy watching them.  I see them running and jumping and digging, and I enjoy seeing how easy it is for them.  There is such beauty in that ease.  So many of the kids that I see struggle.  They struggle to get up and walk, let alone freely run to the jetty and back!  I get so much enjoyment realizing that there are kids out there not struggling!  I get a warped view at times and need a day (or more) at the beach with Levi to realign my views again.

My computer has been acting up.  It has been doing a really weird thing with scrolling and not allowing me to get to the bottom of any page.  Luckily, one of the Mums that went to the beach is an IT legend and found an exact link describing a cure.  It involved throwing out my mouse and buying a new one, but in the meantime, I haven't been able to access much!

Today my work mates and I went to the Ekka (the State fair) and helped out while Mick tried to break the world record for staying underwater on a single tank of air.  Mick is the diver that helps with the Shark Bait kids and he was raising money for the program.  I am really bad at these things.  That many people is just a day in hell for me.  But there are parts of our team that are, in fact, extroverted and they thrived.  I did the media thing.  I updated our page and twittered, sorry twitted.  Oh that's right tweeted.  Yes I can think of little reason to know what anyone is thinking during the day but I am happy to use it.  Plus I got to chat to a friend in USA at the same time when there was space in the day.  Mick didn't quite make it to the record.  He missed it by 15 minutes.  After 8 hours underwater it was a pity for him but he was a hero regardless.  He put Shark Bait Kids at the fair and he raised money for us as well.  I hope he can be proud of himself because we are!

Teaching kids photography

Today I thought about teaching.  Specifically teaching Levi, because he is the one closest to me at any one second.  I don't know how anyone homeschools because in the time that I have been reading with Levi, I think he has actually gone backwards in his skills, not forwards.  There are times that I wonder if he will ever read.  I get frustrated and annoyed by the lack of progress and it makes me a poor teacher.  Levi doesn't want to learn to read.  He doesn't want to bother and that too I find really frustrating.

Now if it is something he wants to learn he can be insatiable.  He loves the camera and I love to just let him have it.  It hasn't been long since digital cameras came onto the true retail market, but they are a Godsend to those of us with budding photographers.  I can just hand him the camera and put the strap around his neck and let him run.  He can take hundreds of photos and we can go through afterwards and pick out which are the good photos and which are not as good.  He can get a good shot sometimes.  He has a great eye!

So we get shots like the ones below and yesterday's sun behind the cloud photo.  The one I love the best though is the one above.  That gives me an enormous amount of joy, watching Levi get so much joy from something that I can, in fact, teach him! 

                                      

Dreamtime

Today I decided that I was over being sad.  Levi had a bye in his soccer and we didn't have to drive anyone to the airport as we thought was going to have to happen.  It gave us both a completely 'free' day and we went to Dreamworld.  My brother and Sister-in-law gave us yearly passes for both our birthdays and today was a perfect day for it.  It was an incredibly beautiful Brisbane winter day, blinding blue skies and warm sun against your shoulders.  today Levi was mostly about reading the map.  He would spend time sitting on benches just working out where he was and how to get to the next thing.

We spent the morning there and left just after lunch time. It is too expensive to eat there but I had taken food and water bottles and Levi was actually the one who was ready to go home. He said that he was happy to go because he knew that we would be back because we had the passes now!  It was a lovely morning and all Levi all the time, which I think he was needing too.  He misses me when I have to go on Outreach and misses me again when I come home completely and utterly trashed out. 

After we came home we fought for about an hour.  Not that sort of fighting!  Levi fighting!  He wants to wrestle all the time and this afternoon I could spend the time to do exactly that!  I spent some time talking with a friend in USA as well.  The best part of this weekend is that it is long.  Both Levi and I have the Monday off for Ekka show day and I can't wait.  We are going to go to the beach with a few of his friends, but the best thing is that day.  We had a really fun, whole day off together today and still have two more to go!!  That and the other really cool thing - we can go back to Dreamworld everyday if we want!

A Time to be Born and A Time to Die

It has been a hard week.  It has been hard for lots of reasons, none the least that in the last fortnight, I have worked an impossible number of hours.  Pam was off sick today and said she wasn't sure if she was sick or if she was just so tired, that she couldn't tell the difference anymore.  This week more than most I have watched children dying.  I have tried to hold it back by sheer willpower but in love and compassion I have to at some point, bow to God.  I have watched a 15 month old, his strength now reserved purely to breathe.  It is the force in us all that drives us.  He breathes in and out with every accessory muscle until those too will fail him.  Why does he continue?  What drives him to continue in the face of a force that at some point will inevitably claim him.  There are many theories for that but I suspect, that death itself bows somewhat to our will.  Bows and retreats to the corner to wait.  Death doesn't leave you but perhaps to some extent we are permitted to choose our time.

I have watched a sweet 4 year old who can smile so sweetly, but who can't handle the saliva that pools as she lies on her back.  What deals has she struck with her creator?  She is unable to speak to us but who knows if she has other lines of communication that we can only dream of.  I think that these children have a knowledge that perhaps we don't.  They have outlived their timelines.  The predictions made at their births (or diagnosis) have been superceded.  Those predictions haven't disappeared though, they have just been delayed.  Perhaps from the very beginning they understood better than we do and with more grace, that there is a time to be born and a time to die.  Why then do they wait?  What are they waiting for? 

Are they waiting for their parents to be ready?  Are they hurting this much because of the love they have for their parents, or are they driven by a predirected timeline?  Are they still pushing back that prediction because we all still have something to learn from them?  Why have these sweet infants been burdened with such a load?  Any one of their parents would shoulder that load in a heartbeat but they have not been given that choice.  Their burden will be harder still to carry and perhaps these children hold on, just because, for every extra day they fight, it is one less that their parents will carry theirs.  I watch the parents, with the deepest compassion, because they think they know, but they don't.  They think that they know the depth of pain that occurs when their child dies, but they are wrong.  They are misjudging it, probably because if you knew beforehand, you would be unable to brave for your child.  You would be unable to do what likely they are waiting for.  You would be unable to let them go.

At some point you always pray.  Regardless of your religious upbringing, you always pray.  Then on some dark night,  you realize that you have already been answered. 

The answer is No.

Then you change your prayer.  You stop praying for healing or for hope or to switch places with your child.  You stop praying for a miracle cure or a last minute reprieve.  You start praying for the bigger miracle still. 

You pray for death. 

You pray that the burden that your child has carried for you, be lifted from him.  You pray that death is faster.  You pray for death to be painfree for your child, for the pain is only just beginning for you.  It is on that day that you invite death in from the corner where he has patiently waited.  You embrace him and give him the most precious thing in your life because now, at the last, it is the only way that you can truely be a parent. 

Then you need to learn the hardest lesson of all; how to continue to breathe.  You learn that there is too, a time to live, and you must now be brave enough to do exactly that!

Mt Isa

 Yesterday, for something completely different, I got up really early and flew away on Outreach.  What was, in fact, different, was that we got back on the plane that night and flew home.  For those of you who don't know, Mt Isa is a mining town, about as far away from a major metropolis as you can get in Australia.  It is just beautiful.  Well, this time of year and for about another month or so.  After that it will get so hot that your eyebrows melt if you walk outside. 

It makes for a hard day and a long day, but it works out to be worth it all in the end.  These photos were taken with my dodgy iphone.  Then it failed .... again!  It is now coping with about 2 hours of operation before it dies completely.  A big pity in Mt Isa, because I was using the Koi Pond app with the little boy we were seeing and it failed before he was done.  I still have a bunch of time on my contract (about 5 months) so it will be a couple of months at least before I am able to get a new one!  I guess I should just break down and buy a new battery.

 Mt Isa was incredibly peaceful.  It was hard to imagine that just on the other side of the world, London was burning with riots; Italy and Greece are fragile and the economy of USA was failing.  We were in the middle of the Outback, looking across hills that people 10 000 years ago were also watching over.  Little has changed in that outlook.  

Rocks out there are red.  The ground is red.  The sand is red.  The trees and spinifex are a grey green, and you never see the vibrant verdant green of Samford.  In a very different way the area is just so alive. 

The flight out was interesting.  We flew on a 737, one of two round trips that plane will take each day.  The flight toward the Isa, was chock a block.  There was not an empty seat on the plane.  Of the people on the plane, Pam and I were two of a very few women on that plane.  The outback of Australia, esp the mining outback is still very very male dominated. 

 The flight back was nearly empty.

Today was hard, only because yesterday was so long.  I was over it.  I was over work.  I was just done.  It is Tuesday.  Lord help anyone, who needs anything, by Friday!



Long Week

 It has been a long week.  It will be a longer month but at least we are on the way to getting through it.  This month is busy.  Not just busy but impossibly busy.  It looks like this:

Week 1 - Outreach to Townsville all week

Week 2 - Outreach to Mt Isa and regular work

Week 3 - Ekka week both Levi and I are off, Monday day off, Wednesday, Levi off as well

Week 4 - Outreach to Cairns all week and then the thing Levi has been waiting for; holiday in Cairns!

So I am back on the computer after a week to write on the blog.  Last night I was too busy with other things and my attendance here is going to be sporadic in the next month I am sure!  Levi is finally well enough to actually get out there and play.  There is still a residue of that illness, however.  This morning we went to swimming training and then met some friends at the BMX track.  A little way into that he started to fade and wanted to go home.  He spent the next two hours quietly plying with Legos and watching TV.  It isn't time that he normally would have needed, but it is less than this time last week!  So getting there, but slowly!

Last night in the shower Levi decided that he didn't want a fringe anymore and he cut it off.  I asked him why he didn't just tell me so I could help him.  He said that I always threw his hair away and he wanted to keep it.  So he cut it almost to the skin in huge chunks and also cut it at the back.  In the places that he cut the hair, I think he was lucky not to have cut himself it was so short.  So I did what every parent in my situation would do:

I took a photo of it!

And then I laughed and got out the number 3 buzzer and gave him a buzz cut.  Levi loved it and it is so fuzzy and soft, I can't resist running my hands through it.  That is the softest fuzz that I have ever felt.  Levi said that he wants a haircut every day so his hair doesn't have a chance to grow.  I said that I thought it would be a long time before it was long enough to cut, so we could probably cut it every two weeks and still maintain it.

 The mancub was very excited but I wish we could have got there a more legitimate way.  Still it will stop him getting nits in his hair from school and it will save on shampoo and generally make it easier to wash.  And I can run my hands through his hair!  He is such a snugly thing too!