Please pack your hat!

Fourth term starts tomorrow and with it, compulsory hat wearing at school.

I've heard every excuse known to man for not wearing a hat. It's too hard to bowl with the hat on, I have naturally brown skin, the dog ate it, someone stole it, Mum forgot to put it in my bag, it will ruin my hair! I've had kids who will sit in the sun with their hats in their lap, put the hat on when the yard duty teacher walks by and then take it off again. I even had one mother tell me her doctor said her child should leave her hat off because it makes her head itchy. Let me tell you, if the kid gets melanoma the itching won't be a problem any more :-(

After so many years of Slip, Slop, Slap education the ignorance about sun exposure totally bewilders me. Today the temperature was unusually high for October but later in the week it may only be 15 and it might rain so I'll have kids telling me the hats aren't necessary. Rubbish! Sun damage is linked to UV exposure, not temperature and not wind. The UV will be high tomorrow and it will stay that way until at least April next year. After 10am in the morning you need to be wearing a hat. Every day. Even if it's cold and over cast.
If you need a reminder, there are great apps that will tell you whenever the UV goes over 4.

I first met melanoma when my mother contracted it. Mum was an active, vibrant woman, universally loved. She played tennis and golf (quite badly but enthusiastically) and she was devoted to me and to her new grand daughter, Jaime.

There was no visible change in any of Mum's freckles or moles, just a tiny lump under the skin on the back of her neck but by the time they biopsied that lump and provided a diagnosis the melanoma had metastasized to every part of her body. In her initial surgery they removed 94 separate surface lumps requiring 357 staples. The internal lumps were hit with radiation. Every inch of her skin and behind her eyes was searched for the offending mole with no success. Later, after traction to relieve a pain in her neck (believed to be caused by arthritis) had failed, a scan revealed that she had a primary tumour in her spinal cord. Not all melanomas are visible. Removal of that tumour caused paralysis in one arm and required her to wear a neck brace to hold her head up. No more golf or tennis, no more carrying Jaime. Metastatic melanoma is a death sentence and we were told she would likely be dead within weeks or months. Mum was 'lucky' enough to gain a place on a new Inteferon drug trial. 3 times a week I or a nursing friend would inject her with a drug that caused her to vomit, to shake uncontrollably and made her itch so badly I had to wrap her in glad wrap at night time to stop her tearing her skin off. The drug boosted her immune system and slowed the growth of the tumors. More importantly to Mum, it gave her an extra 18 months with Jaime and provided research data to help in the fight against melanoma for future sufferers. When the trial finished so did the free access to the drug so I took out a personal loan to pay for the injections. Eventually though, the disease won. In late November a scan showed massive tumours in her brain and in the early hours of Christmas morning, the black scourge stole my mother from me. She was 56. She missed seeing that precious grand daughter grow up to have babies of her own. She missed meeting two of her grandchildren, and I still miss her, every, single day.

I had inherited enough of Mum's colouring to know that I was at high risk of the disease myself but unfortunately it was a bit late for caution. The skin damage that causes melanoma begins in childhood and I lived mine in the coconut oil drenched 60s and 70s. I had literally baked myself on enough occasions to know that my fate was sealed. So despite slip, slop, slapping through the 80s and 90s and having numerous surgeries to remove less dangerous skin cancers it was no surprise when I had my first melanoma removed a couple of years ago. I was lucky that this one was a) visible and b) in the early stages. If I'm really lucky no renegade cells found their way into my bloodstream before it was removed. If they did, then sometime in the near or later future it will appear somewhere else in my body, most likely my brain or my liver. It's likely I won't know about that until it's too late. I get my skin checked every 6 months and anything odd is biopsied in between but I live in constant fear that every headache or nagging pain is a sign of my worst nightmare. Every time I suffer from vertigo or nausea, I'm rushed into an MRI- just to check.

In between Mum's illness and mine I have lost friends to melanoma and I know countless other families who have lost children and brothers and sisters and parents. Scarily, many of these people have been much younger than me. Melanoma is the most common cancer in 15 -39 year olds and it kills more 20 - 34 yr olds than ANY OTHER CANCER and yet still our young people risk their lives for the sake of a tan and their parents allow it. My Facebook feed is full of teenagers posing in bikinis with comments like 'great tan babe'. Just last week someone even told me their child had a 'genuine Noosa tan', as if it was something to be proud of!

Genuine Warrnambool tan. Not worth dying for.

If you're lucky enough to avoid a deadly melanoma then you might just get a basal cell carcinoma. That's less likely to kill you and they can cut them off fairly easily these days. I've had lots of bccs and I'm lucky that my dermatologist is also a great plastic surgeon and does very neat stitches. Once though, I sat in the waiting room and watched a woman lose her entire nose over the course of an afternoon. Because that's how facial surgery for skin cancer works. They take you into theatre and slice a bit off and send it to pathology. While that happens you sit, (with all the other poor suckers) in the waiting room with dressings and tape holding your face together till you get the all clear and go back in to get stitched up. If the pathology doesn't show clear margins then they take you back to the table and slice some more off and so on until it is clear. The fear in that room while we waited to see who got the call back was palpable.

So, to all the parents reading this blog, I hope you understand that the only reason I ask your children to put their hats on is because I care about them. I don't want them to become skin cancer statistics and until the time they are mature enough to make their own smart choices you and I have to make them for them. I also hope you understand why I feel so angry with you when you don't support the hat rule or when you turn up at a school event without a hat yourself. We need adults to role model safe sun behaviour. You wouldn't put your child in a car without a seatbelt - don't send them outside without a hat. I make no apologies to all the kids I will cajole, plead with, yell at and send inside because they aren't wearing a hat this term - I hope you live long and scar free lives because of my 'meanness'.

When I see kids actively sun baking, I feel sick. When parents tell me there's nothing wrong with a 'healthy tan' or their kids turn up at school with bright, red sunburn and peeling noses I have to bite my tongue not to accuse them of child abuse. The sun kills people and to ignore that message is disrespectful to me and my mum, to my friends Wendy and Jenny, to Nigel's brother, to Jim Stynes and the thousands of other people who have lost their lives and their loved ones to this vicious disease. Worse still, it is inviting disfigurement and risking the lives of our precious children.

When you pack the lunch boxes into the school bags this week, please make sure the hat and sunscreen are in there too.

Ode to the graduate.

We went to Sophie's graduation last Saturday to witness her receive her Bachelor of Arts (Media Communication) Degree. I'm pretty sure it won't be the last time we see her don an academic gown, in fact she's already enrolled to go back to Uni next year but it's her first university degree and therefore the culmination of her childhood education and a good time to reflect on that journey and give thanks to the people who helped her along the way.

Sophie was blessed and burdened by being a 'faculty kid'. She started Prep the same day that her sister started Yr 7 and I started teaching at Mortlake College. By the time she was in Year 5, her step father had joined the staff as well and for 3 years she spent more than half of each day being taught by one of us. When your parents are teachers at your school there's nowhere to hide. If you stuff up then they hear about it pretty quickly! On the other hand, there's always someone to cheer for you at the sports, to watch you in the school play and get you some lunch when you leave yours at home.

When Soph made the state netball team, we toyed with the idea of her going away to school for awhile. We had some pretty lucrative offers from independent schools in the city looking to add her success to their honour boards and since we were traveling over 500kms a week for training it seemed like a possible solution. In the end though we knew that no school could offer the same, individualised program that ours could and above all, we valued having her at home with us more than anything else. Kids are grown and gone so quickly and you never get back that precious time with them once they're grown so we kept her with us. As a result, she combined the training and travel with her study, right through to the end of year 12. I'll always be grateful we made that decision because the conversations we had during that stressful, teenage time helped to forge the bond we have now. We spent a lot of time discussing novels and practising formulae in the car so it was also kind of an enforced study space and I guess her 96+ ENTER score was proof that multi tasking in year 12 is not only possible but also a good way to keep yourself organised and focused.

After a gap year to help earn her own way, Sophie eased into independence at Melbourne Uni by spending two years on res at St Hildas (giving her the boarding school experience we'd denied her earlier ;-) and then jumped headlong into life by taking an exchange semester to UT in Austin, TX. What a great learning experience for her and a fabulous excuse for us to go and visit.

And now she's a fully fledged Media Communicator working in the industry as an Events Assistant and looking forward to adding a teaching degree next year. While I'm not entirely sure about her entering the 'family business', I know she'll be a great teacher and I'm glad she's discovered that the glitz of the media world is nothing compared to chance to enrich the future of generations to come.


Graduations are pretty boring occasions. You pay a fortune to hire the regalia, then you sit through name after name, pretending polite applause until your hands go red, waiting for your own graduand to have their 30 secs of spotlight. I wish I'd been rude enough to have my phone out though because both the guest speaker and the valedictorian made some excellent points. If I'd had my phone out I would have recorded them or at least made notes but I was trying to be technologically pc and 'live in the moment'. Consequently I can't remember the exact words but the valedictorian spoke about the worth of the Arts degrees that Saturday's group were receiving. She said that an Arts degree is an investment in learning about yourself and your place in the world and indeed, about the world itself. It's about learning to appreciate and discover things about the world and how the people who inhabit it connect with each other and their environment. We've made plenty of the 'fries with that' jokes about Sophie's Arts degree but the truth is that she hasn't been unemployed at anytime since she left school. That's because she has a great work ethic (and stingy parents who insisted that if she wanted to travel the world as a student then she'd have to pay for it herself!). It's also because she does have a desire to learn about herself and how she connects with the rest of the world and I think the future of the world depends on more people knowing that.

So well done to Soph and on her behalf, thank you to all the teachers who have inspired, motivated, goaded, annoyed and at times, bored her into reaching this academic milestone. Her sister who taught her to read before she went to school, her kinder teacher Andrea who nurtured Sophie's problem solving ability by letting her play endlessly with jigsaws when everyone else was at the play doh. All her teachers at Mortlake College but especially; Mrs Goddard, who in Prep let Sophie sort her earring collection and chased her down the corridor when she was screaming to stay with me. Kerry Talbot who taught her to have fun and write naughty poems, Kath who taught her to sing despite her genetic disability with pitch. Lyle, who allowed her to try on so many different characters, Jackie who instilled an understanding of kitchen clean up and taught her to make great coffee and muffins thereby ensuring she would always be valued in the hospitality industry. Geoff who taught her that girls can be good at Maths, Earl Carter who polished her manners and encouraged her to respect herself and reach for the stars and Jane Boyle who role modeled female leadership at it's best. Thank you to her friends from school and netball and university and Texas and the workplace.

Every one of you has added something to the sum of the whole.

Mr Miracle turns 10

There's been lots of press lately about older mothers, most of it negative.

I'm certainly not refuting any of the scientific evidence. I know that fertility declines sharply after 30 and even more sharply after 40. I know that the odds of chromosomal problems increase with maternal age and that the chances of miscarriage and gestational diabetes are higher. I know that even with IVF it is very difficult to safely deliver a healthy baby after 45. And yet, that's exactly what I did and the resulting little miracle turned ten today.

I had my first baby at 26 - conception, pregnancy and birth, all to plan. Then followed several miscarriages, including two ectopics. That my body managed to gestate my second daughter seven years later was, in itself a miracle.

And then life, as it does, took another unexpected twist. Divorced and remarried to a (much) younger man with no biological children of his own, it occurred to me that if possible, he too should experience the wonder of pregnancy and childbirth. We didn't seek any assistance with conception but nor did we do anything to prevent it. It was a pie in the sky, fairytale sort of maybe but not likely thing, like when you imagine how you'll spend the Tattslotto winnings. I spent 3 weeks of every month in fairytale mode and then one week in resigned acceptance of the inevitable failure of my ludicrous plan. Then I actually got pregnant and had a couple of early losses and began to wonder if maybe the misery of miscarriage would overwhelm the pipe dream. I decided that my 45th birthday would be a defining moment and that after that I would look at some permanent contraception, but the birthday came and went and I was busy and didn't get around to making a doctor's appointment......

I didn't feel any different being pregnant at 45 than I had at 25. Apart from an early CVS to check for chromosomal issues, I had no extra attention because of my 'elderly' mother status. The pregnancy was textbook. Blood pressure normal, sugar normal, no morning sickness, no fluid retention. I was at work the day before he was born and and at 9.20 am on his due date, with no medical intervention, almost exactly one month before my 46th birthday, our beautiful boy was born.

I've read lots of comments on other blogs from women who say they couldn't imagine having the energy at 45 for a small child but honestly, I don't think I was any more tired than I had been with the girls. In fact because Taine had an enthusiastic and energetic new father and two much older and besotted big sisters, I probably had more rest than I had with either of them.

I've also read lots of comments lately about the selfishness of having a child whose mother will be an old age pensioner at his 21st. I do have moments of sadness when I do the sums that tell me I'm unlikely to spend a lot of time with Taine's children but despite having me in their mid 20s, both my parents were dead before I was 30 so I'm hopeful that he and I will get at least that much time together. If not, then there's the aforementioned big sisters and younger husband to maintain family continuity and in the meantime I make a big effort to record all our memories together. I also take exception to the assumption that I'll be in my dotage at 67. I may be too busy swanning around the world to organise a great 21st bash but I certainly won't be doddery!

My advancing age doesn't seem to have put too big a brake on our adventures so far. I may be a bit older than other mums but I'm not totally decrepit! We've ridden Dumbo at Disneyland and cycled the Washington Mall together. We walked the length of the Highline in New York and last week we snorkeled on the Great Barrier Reef. Admittedly, I'm not that keen on getting up for junior footy early on Saturday mornings and I'm a bit over parent teacher interviews but every age-stage of a child is so wonderful and I've been able to enjoy my hands on parenting of these stages for much longer than most people. I feel very blessed that Santa has had a reason to visit our house for 30 continuous years.

So while it's optimal to conceive before you're 35, I believe it's more important to be a great parent and to have babies when the time is right, whether you're 18 or 50. And if you're an elderly, want to be mum, then don't give up hope. Even against the odds, it is possible. And so very worth it :-)

If you can't be nice..........

It's taken me awhile to get back to my blog. I've got lots of drafts saved but, you know how it is, I've been busy.

But today one of the kids at school was bullied and it made me so angry, mystified, frustrated, saddened, bewildered that I had to write.....something.

Kids sometimes get bullied at school so this incident wasn't all that unusual. Some schools will tell you they don't have a bullying issue but they're lying. I think bullying behaviour on some level is a part of everyone's learning curve and a lot of my day is spent following up the real, the perceived and the imagined hurts that kids inflict on each other. Usually it works out well and everyone learns from their mistakes and kids become better at being kind to each other as they grow up.

Today's issue though was with big kids, mean girls who should know better. It was a cyber incident, an online, nasty comment. Not defamatory or illegal, just mean. Mean enough that 4 different people sent me a screen shot of it (This is a good thing because it means other kids are looking out for each other and for someone to 'fix' this sort of behaviour). Online bullying is hard to follow up because of the fine line that exists about what is and isn't school business. Nevertheless, I will follow this one up and likely I'll be accused of not minding my own business etc etc etc. No mind, I'm a big girl and I get paid to make sure everyone feels safe in my school.

However, what really led to my overwhelming frustration was that when I got home I read several different versions of this post  about a political party menu with a totally disrespectful 'joke' about our Prime Minister. Every political affiliation and debate over misogyny aside, it's not ok to say this about another person. Worse still, while some of the comments on the sites that published this news were in agreement with me, many were not. "Just a joke', 'harden up', 'the Labor Party do it too', appeared frequently. You know what, it's not a joke to make derogatory comments about anyone's breasts. Payback doesn't make a wrong thing right. The office of Prime Minister is occupied by a person and all people deserve respect.

No wonder my mean girls thought it was ok to bully one of their own :-(

Travel time

The USA has been at the top of my travel bucket list since I was a little girl. Even though I do my best to be a patriotic Aussie and I know I live in the Lucky Country, I believe I may have been misplaced in the Cosmos at some stage and should have been born American.

I admit to an entirely romantic notion of the country, founded on all the stories I've read, the songs I've listened to and the movies I've seen.

This trip has been many years in the planning, interrupted by babies and study and financial restarts. Given my penchant for procrastination I would probably never have actually made the trip except that middle child Sophie has gone to the US to study for 6 months and has thus provided the impetus for me to actually put the trip wheels into motion.

My original, literary based itinerary dreams included driving through the Mid West a la Little House on the Prairie,  shopping at Needful Things whilst traipsing through Stephen King's Maine, being Sleepless in Seattle and tracing Scarlett O'Hara's path through the deep South.

However, even with nearly 8 weeks we can't see and do it all so the itinerary has been trimmed to what I hope is a manageable one. Sophie's placement is at the University of Texas in Austin and so that is where our trip will begin. From there we'll head to New Orleans, via Memphis if we have time or Houston if we don't. Then we'll fly to Florida for some warmth and R & R before flying north to the Winter of Washington and New York. We're booked to stay at the Grand Canyon for New Year's Eve and then it's on to Disneyland for a few days before we come home.

WOW! The very thought of doing all that is surreal. But it's about to happen. We've slaved away for the last 3 months to make sure everything at home and school is under control, some lovely people have moved in to mind the house & look after the menagerie. I've packed and repacked into what seems like a ludicrously small bag for 8 weeks. Geoff has packed on the way to the car ( and as a result has NO shirts!)

Now, here we are at the airport with child no1 and her husband and child no 3 and his iPod getting ready to board a big tin can and fly over the sea to catch up with child no 2.

For someone who has lived her entire life in the shadow of Mt Shadwell, it's a big adventure!

If you'd like to follow our adventures you'll find them on our travel blog demansersintheusa .
Until then, thanks to everyone who has helped us to get ready and wished us well. Bon voyage to me!

Happy Birthday to Me.

It's my birthday.

Up until this one, I've always looked forward to my birthday. It's lovely to have one day of the year that's all about you. But I haven't been looking forward to this birthday with great anticipation. This one is somehow different & I'm not entirely sure why.

Today I reached an alliterative number that, if I live to be 100 (not impossible the way human organ replacement is going), puts me in the middle of my life, with just as many alliterative birthdays behind me as there are in front of me.

Maybe it's because I have gone over that hypothetical hump and no matter how optimistic I am about my chance of living to 100, there are most certainly more years behind me than in front of me. At 50, I changed the rules about half way by making up the alliterative rule but I've run out of ways to fudge the numbers. It's time to face facts. I'm running out of time. The list of things I can do when I grow up is dwindling rapidly :-(

I embraced 50 in lycra but there's no way that super suit is going to look sexy at 60. I don't have any grey hair yet but my eyebrows are disappearing and my neck looks like motley, pink crepe paper.

Then there's the look of shock on peoples' faces when you tell them you're 55. Their eyes glaze over and you realize you've suddenly moved into that invisible wasteland that belongs to women over 50.

Perhaps it's because my body no longer reacts correctly to the messages my brain sends. I lose things and forget names and some days I can only manage to do two or three things at once instead of ten! If I join in a drill at netball training I can't walk for a week. The doctor says I have high cholesterol so now I have to feel guilty about the KFC my daughter's bringing me for my birthday dinner.

I've reached the age at which I am legally allowed to retire from teaching. If I only worked part time I would be eligible for a Senior's discount on my insurance. I've moved up an entire age bracket on the 'tick your age box'. In fact, it's the second to last box. The next one on the list is 64+ , and then what?

I should be grateful just to have made it to 55. My Dad didn't and my Mum, just barely. Genetics aren't on my side. Because of their untimely deaths I have no vision of how I should look or act as an old person. To have suddenly become older than the last image you have of your parents is a very confronting experience.

And yet, I don't feel old. Not at all. I feel exactly the same as I did when I was 25, except maybe a bit smarter and more broad minded. I think back on all the birthdays I've had and the calendar says a really long time has gone past, yet it seems like a blink since I was a kid. No one tells you that growing older will be like this. There's no warning that, bit by bit, your life changes until you realize that there are some things you will never get to do again and some that you will never do at all.

Reading back this all seems a bit depressing but birthdays are a great opportunity for reflection. I can't change the fact that I'm 55 but I can choose my attitude to it so I'm going to set myself some rules for the next 4 alliteratives.

I've spent the first half of my life reading about how you should grow old gracefully. I'm fairly sure that means I should cut my hair, stop wearing short skirts and keep my opinions to myself. What a load of crap! Why should I behave any differently now than I did 10 years ago, or 20 or 30 years ago for that matter?

• I will remain just exactly who I am and who I want to be. I will wear whatever I like & I will not cut my hair unless it becomes a convenient option.

• If I get rich/ all risk is removed/ plastic surgery gets good enough that you don't look like an alien afterwards, I'll have some. I liked the way I looked better before I got old. In the meantime, I promise myself to not wear my glasses when looking in the mirror so I can pretend I look the way I do in my own memory!

• If anything, I will become more opinionated & I will voice those opinions loudly and clearly, especially when they concern bullying, racism or other forms of ignorance.

• I will stop saving so much for a rainy day & I will spend every extra cent I find on exploring the world.

• I will work until someone tells me I'm not allowed to anymore. (Or until I get rich & then I'll just share my infinite wisdom with really well mannered children & their appreciative parents.)

• I will continue to give thanks every day for my beautiful children & I'll accept the fact that my husband actually does love me for who I am not how old I am.

• I will keep learning for the sake of learning & because it will help me retain my cognitive powers for longer.

• I will think less about what other people think about me and more about what I think of myself.

• I think I'll become more of an advocate for things that are important because I have an interest in the world still being viable for my grandchildren & their children. I won't give up on the idea of becoming famous.

• I will stop regretting the things I can't do anymore and embrace the ones I can (This is rubbish. I hate being old).

Happy Birthday to Me.

Be careful what you wish for 

(with thanks to Kate Calvert for the title of this post:)

" Twenty years from now you'll be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
Mark Twain

Today we took Sophie to the airport and she got on a big, jet plane and took off to America for 6 months.
When she hugged me goodbye I just wanted to scream at her to get back in her baby cot where I could control her every move and keep her safe.

Of course I didn't,  (mainly because I knew Geoff & Jaime were ready to gang tackle me if I did!) and with a happy little wave she strode off confidently through the 'gates of no return' while I tried to sob quietly so she wouldn't hear me.

14 years ago, when she was just 7, she took her first overseas trip with her sister and me and I remember telling her that it would be the first of many trips for her. That I wished her a lifetime of travel & exploring and that one day she would grow up to be a confident young woman who would take her  destiny in own her hands and seek adventure in new places & live every minute of her life to the full.

In between then & now we encouraged her to set goals, to dream large, to aim high. We helped her to set boundaries for her behaviour, we praised when things went well, we condemned mediocrity. We traveled all over the countryside for sport, we saved hard so she could go to university.

She responded by having a go at everything, excelling in most things and persevering with the others. She developed great self belief & the confidence to bounce back from setbacks and learn from her mistakes. She stuck to her goal of finishing her degree in the States and got several jobs to earn the money to get herself there.

So, today I got that wish from long ago.

Treasure your children. Keep them close until it's time for them to fly the nest. Time passes quickly. 7 yr olds become grown ups overnight!

Parenting is hard.

If you get it right your children do just what Sophie did today.

We've done a good job. And so has she.

Happy trails Fofie. Explore, dream, discover. Take the path least travelled, but don't forget to wear your sunscreen and watch out for bees!