Not (another) letter to the editor

Bullying is pretty awful. Surely we all agree about that.

Bullying which involves physical violence or direct threats of physical violence designed to intimidate or bend a person to one’s will should not be tolerated. In adults this can usually, and should be, dealt with severely under our existing laws. In children it should be regarded as an urgent problem for attention.

But in this day and age, since my copy of The Shorter Oxford Dictionary was printed about thirty years ago, the definition of bullying has changed. This means we all have to be very clear just exactly what we are talking about. Back then the physical component was predominant. Now we have the all significant Social Media.

I like the definition put out by the NSW Department of Education and used in NSW State Schools. It is inclusive, it covers physical bullying and bullying in a very wide sense in so far as what constitutes intimidation is concerned. It touches on the various different ways social media can be involved. But, wisely, it does exempt one off examples of unacceptable behaviours between equals. It stresses, but does not limit, the inequality that must be present for bullying to be defined, such as size, age, numbers etc. It does not mean these more equal unacceptable behaviours should be tolerated, but it excludes them as bullying behaviours. 

We talk a great deal about schoolyard “bullies” and “victims”. Often these can be, at different times and simultaneously, one and the same child. There are many children who go through childhood never having the experience of either being bullied or, conversely, of bullying. But this is, I consider, the group where where we can do the most good. It is in the training of our young children that accepting and nurturing adults can be developed. However, when I talk sometimes to my young grandchildren about bullying (and they have never reported that they have been bullied and do not seem to have bullied others) they are somewhat unclear about what the boundaries of bullying are.

An example is that a granddaughter often makes “fairy dust” with friends at school. They grind or scrape different rocks to make such dust. She reported that a child in her class had been “bullied” during the daily fairy dust ritual. When more details were obtained it appeared that this particular child had refused to share a certain colored rock that she had started to grind. The others en masse declined to let her continue in the game because of this behaviour. Now I don’t call that bullying. The game involved the sharing of rocks. If this child wanted to be included she shared. If she wanted to be exclusive she ground alone. To me this is just a question of her learning from consequences. This particularly over empathic granddaughter of mine (youngest in a biggish family) was very distressed by what I consider to be misunderstood concepts of “bullying”. She had thought that to ever exclude anyone from a game is tantamount to bullying.  I do not think she is alone in this assumption. I think children can choose with whom they want to play. It is nice to encourage them to include “loaners”, but if they sometimes choose not to, this not bullying.

I recently was chatting informally with a couple of Industrial Relations lawyers who said that some complaints about what is bullying in the workplace now can now reveal an unrealistic attitude towards work hierarchy. The need to obey orders can be called bullying by an increasing number of employees especially if there are consequences threatened for specific disobedience of directions given by a work superior!

And part of the changing definition is because now we have cyber bullying. And this has become a problem in our schools, universities and can be aimed at the teachers in those institutions.  I must extend my admiration to some of the prominent women in public life and the way they deal every day with disgusting and really intimidatory bullying. Thanks from us all that they are brave and continue to express their points of view. They are targets because they speak the sort of sense bullies don’t want to hear, but because of their attitudes I would prefer to use the word “targets” and not call them “victims”. Are there men who get this sort of hate mail daily too? I have heard a couple of examples from time to time, one from Richard Glover and one from Mike Carlton. Perhaps men are also flooded with these tweets but feel they should not share (perhaps a bit like crying). It would be interesting to know, as to target them is equally condemnatory.

As a person who formerly worked with children I found working with child perpetrators of bullying quite simple. One’s mandate was clear and it seemed that some results were often achievable.

Working with the “victims” was sometimes more difficult. There one’s own feelings were helpful. I won’t go as far as to mention counter transference but whenever I felt a strong urge, not only to give the poor child a big cuddle, but to simultaneously box his or her ears, I felt there was a some work I had to do with them as well. Some victims have an amazing wish to be included in a group, but on their terms, which often are to have constant acknowledgement of their own perception of their unique difference from the others, with no reciprocal perception that “the others” are all different too. 

But the most important task is to work with all the rest, the wider community of children who ultimately become most of us. It is how they will react which will make the biggest difference to any community of bullies.

How do we work with the mass of quite empathic children just like my granddaughter? How do we encourage that we must be tolerant of difference whilst still retaining the capacity to say, “We will not sit back and let you have the only different rock and yet still demand a share of the group’s”? How do we encourage each of them that sometimes they have a duty to stand up and be counted when what they have to say may cause disquiet in the group? How do we teach them that it is often more productive to work from inside the group to change it whilst still knowing how to be an individual. How do we make them aware of the difference between asserting an individual view or need and being selfish? How do we teach them to identify and to publicly condemn bullies?

And then how do we teach them, once they can speak out boldly against cases of bullying, how to cope with pride and self respect intact if they are bullied themselves – especially by bullies in cyberspace who are often lurking inside the group, not game to reveal their identities?

And we must teach them that people who will not give names to their opinions are not people whose opinion is important.

Anne Powles

I refuse yet to be put into any category of calibration as a woman. In fact I would like to kid myself that in the few years that I might have left in this world I could even reach a new standard, perhaps a bit closer to “excellence” which I have never managed previously.

But surely excellence in one’s capacity in the paid workforce, however crudely this is measured, can never be equated with parental capacity, however that is to be measured? This is the flaw in some perceptions. There may be a strong correlation between an individual’s educational success and the socioeconomic levels of the family. This by no means correlates directly with the quality of parental love and care. It can be also easier for wealthier people to access good assistance with their children, such as someone else who will smile at them as the going gets tough. Perhaps this latter could be helped with better government support?

Personally my most clear and absolute choice between parenting and career came in 1973 when I was studying for a post graduate diploma. I had a baby who was born prematurely on 9th March. As it neared the end of March, when I was due to pay the yearly fees for the continuation of my course, the future of my little son was still very uncertain. I agonized about what I should do. I knew if he came home from hospital I would have a great deal to do and no time to study. I was already going to the hospital every day with expressed milk. Other children could not come into the Intensive Care Nursery so I had to arrange care for them. On the other hand, if he died I knew that having to study would be better for my own mental health. I decided to defer. Making a decision to continue studying felt like abandoning him. A week or so later he died.

My realization after those few weeks of mental anguish about this decision was that these actual decisions do not matter very much. One will, throughout life, be constantly faced with forks in the road, decisions to be taken, choices to be made. And we have to cope with whatever decisions we make. And there is no doubt that any one of those choices may or may not make life a little different. Some things we wished for will become unattainable. Some will come closer. We will develop new aims and priorities. We will inevitably make some mistakes. We cannot know all these in advance. And it is very hard to know how well we will cope with decisions we make.

When I look back I am more inclined to want to calibrate myself on effort not on results (after all one can always excuse oneself when looking at more professionally or parentally successful contemporaries and say, probably erroneously, there but for X go I). Could a band width be regarded as a sort of calibration? If I had to give myself a NATPLAN score for living I’d put myself in a higher band for professional effort than for professional achievement, much lower again for parental effort but certainly in Band 6 for parental achievement (perhaps allow there for parental bias). But overall I enjoyed myself and think I contributed to life in some small ways.

The main thing for the young to recognise is that although it all seems so important, life is barely started when children are young. There will be choices yet uncontemplatable. And decision making is not over on some set date! We have chances to recalibrate to almost any bore we like in the, it is to be hoped, many more years that life goes on. There is nothing fixed or immutable if we spend time out of work with children. There is nothing fixed or immutable about career decisions made early in life.

Even if it does not recalibrate us, let experience as well as education inform us all.

The planets’ aligning caused this unnecessary post on my blog.

First I finished a month of writing a poem a day in the NaPoWriMo cohort. (By the end of the month bad doggerel was tripping off my tongue whichever way I looked, not a good outcome.) However I am now  iPad loose and fancy free.

Second my wonderful teacher daughter started off a survey, on Twitter no less, about children’s classic books and what we read as children. Third was that as a consequence I had a long interesting conversation with each of my son-in-laws about what they read as children. Each of them is a non-violent, thoughtful, hard working member of society and a wonderful parent.

Lastly, yesterday, the organization Generation Next asked for violence to be removed from children’s books and published an interesting post by Naomi Cook which asked the question (and she more or less answered her question in the positive), “Should we write violence out of children’s books?”.

Here we have two of the greatest interests for me on this planet coming together in what seems to me a massive astronomical collision, child development and books. How can a black hole of non-matter be avoided in this collision?

Should children’s books be yet another area in which we have “helicopter parenting”? This type of parenting is bad enough when children, merely because of the very loving but over terrified care some parents give them, become frightened of their own shadows. It also tends to lead to an expectation that, while bad things sometimes happen in the world, a particular family can be exempt because of high vigilance. None of this is helpful or realistic. To limit children’s knowledge of real violence and its presence in the world is a mistake. In my opinion they should, however, be also brought up to think it usually is avoidable. Options which are an alternative to violence should be widely discussed.

I have been a long time campaigner against censorship per se. I am conceited enough to think any censor has much less acumin and knowledge than I have to decide what will be damaging for me, and if I think this, then the same has got to apply to everyone else.
But I do agree that children are a little different and therefore certain programs should be scheduled on the media when they are in bed or pornographic DVDs should be stored in a high cupboard! I rather despise TV programs or games filled with gratuitous violence and feel free say this loudly to anyone watching such a program. This tendency of mine can develop into a feisty argument that, I feel, harms nobody. Children need to learn the art of debate.

It is concerning, as Ms Cook has said, that we can all potentially be desensitized by unrealistic violence on screen or in games, where death is rarely final and massive injury is instantly brushed off by the brave. This has been around for some years, as far back as Disney, if we look at the example even of the Road Runner. Recent developments in computer generation have made animations much more realistic than in those days. On the other hand being exposed to realistic violence such as some scenes we saw on television during the Vietnam War, can and often does have positive consequences.

But these issues do not apply to books. Books require much more effort to absorb and much more imagination to interpret. We underrate children’s capacity to do this. I did not like the message when reading The Hunger Games, but, despite their popularity they were somewhat derided by many of the young. One grandson gave me a published “send up” version to read which was very popular and which was doing the rounds of his friends!

Another protection is that if books are not understood they are often abandoned. One of my sons, a very early, avid reader asked could he read a James Bond novel. My few concerns were allayed very soon. He asked, part way into the book if it was all right to skip some pages. Of course I said, “Yes”, as I agree that skipping is a great asset in some books, but, out of interest, I asked him what pages he wished to skip. He replied that it was boring when women took off their clothes and danced with pineapples on their heads. Fair enough for a seven year old. Gratuitous violence can be and often is treated the same way.

Returning to Ms Cook’s comments, I support her view that, if it were not necessary for her plot, it was better not to have a scene which involved a man being eaten by a crocodile in her book. But, if she did decide this was a necessary scenario, the reader has time to digest this information, match it with alternatives or reasons for the event or decide to skip those paragraphs. 

Children have their own way of interpreting what they do not understand but, in books they can do this slowly and with thought and sometimes after asking questions. Violence is part of life. We do not want to eliminate any part of ordinary living from their world nor can we do so effectively. It is not a healthy or educational way of preparing any child for the future. We do not need to helicopter them away from the notion of violence. After all we kill and feed animals to our children. Before the age of two they can link the fluffy, feathery toy they cuddle with chicken nuggets. But what we need to do is to encourage children’s writers to deal with the ethics of violence. I think many do already.

Dr Seuss does. He links rights with responsibilities. Enid Blyton did. The naughtiest girl in the school often shocked the reader. The plethora of avid Biggles readers, which included myself did not grow up war mongrels or anti German. There were some gender issues in many of the old classics but some of us still grew up feminist. And there was a great deal of fun and adventure.

I am no authority on what happens in fantasy books as I read very little In that genre, but even John Wyndham has some messages for discussion in his books. I am led to believe, from the brief discussions I have had with fantasy reading children, that there are goodies and baddies. I certainly know that ethics is heavily discussed in Halo Reach.

Ethics and the meaning of actions can not so easily be or are not always raised in short films and in games operated by children. But the same cannot be said of books. This makes them a great medium for discussing the thorny topics in life.

Let us not so sanitize the world for children that they grow up emotionally crippled as adults by being either frightened of or disappointed in what they ultimately discover life is.

We hear a lot of talk about middle class welfare. I want to focus, instead, on middle class mentality, at the moment deplorable. And I want to focus first on myself as a typical, deplorable example.

I did not know how bad I had got until today. Here I am, typical middle class, my parents middle class, most of my children middle class. I sit here in my slightly leftist way reading blogs and tweets, and voting on surveys as to how I regard violence in children’s literature or what I think about proposals to fund the NDIS. I had began a post on children’s literature and the fact that perhaps children should, from an early age, have to deal with the concept of realistic violence.

I supported and still very strongly support the idea of and the need to fund a disability service.

But I had to leave the comfort of my middle class iPad and do a message for an elderly relative by marriage.

While at her house I did a couple of little jobs which culminated in my removing some old, dried dog feces from the carpet and a table leg in the living room. As I did so I mentally fulminated about what I was doing. I felt I needed to get back to the important contribution I making to the world with my views on children’s literature rather than dealing with dog poo!

Then I remembered my mother. She helped look after a lot of old people. Two significant examples I recall were, as a child, hearing a demented aunt screaming that she was on fire when a hot water bottle was put in her bed and later, as a young adult, asking my mother why she kept visiting an elderly, remote cousin and bringing her to the house. She had not known her at all well during their lives as they had lived in different states. “Why you?” I asked. She replied that she felt we all should be looking after those alone and unable to care for themselves and she would prefer to do this for people who were even remotely in the family as she felt a stronger obligation there.

She was, in essence, being tribal. The tribe takes responsibility for their own.

I think the NDIS is essential and overdue. No one should have to buy their own wheelchairs and pay for things that the able can take for granted. Any person may need extra help in any area that might be simple for others.

However why should we pay for people to do simple tasks such as pick up poo? These are the things we ourselves should all go back to doing for our family and other people, as part of the tribe. Does it make easier to do these sort of jobs if they are paid for? I think not. In fact it probably makes it less unpleasant if we feel some vague sort of responsibility for the owner of either the dog or the poo, be they relative, neighbour or acquaintance.

This morning in the newspaper I saw an article bemoaning that retired people like me are finding that, rather than just kicking up their heels, they are helping to look after grandchildren. Wasn’t this ever so? When one got too old for hunting and gathering (in my case only gathering I’m afraid) one had to look after the younger and older in the tribe as long as one could. I think a lot of middle class people in my mother’s generation did this. When did this cease to be a norm for us?  When did we all, like me, start to think that everything unpleasant or too hard could be outsourced or ignored be it violence, childhood dependence, disability or degeneration in old age or illness?

There are a number of volunteers in the community and many do much hard work but, again, most seem to be organized into middle class style groups unable to do certain activities because they would be uninsured or hidebound by other middle class types of restrictions.

Be warned I am going back to the tribe! I won’t put my iPad away. In fact I have today installed, with my trusty drill, a new shelf for it. But I may talk to my wonderful grandchildren about violence as I look after them sometimes, possibly as I change a nappy or two or play a game of Mine Craft or Halo Reach or lend them a violent book . I will try to be hands-on with relatives, friends and neighbours if they need help and will force myself to ask for help if I myself need it.

And I won’t advocate that picking up poo should be out sourced.

When I was in my mid 20s, and in labour, I rocked up to the hospital to give birth to my first child. I was somewhat taken aback with the forms that had to be filled in before I gave birth. I was not permitted to quickly complete the forms myself because of my condition, but had to laboriously spell out all the details to the elderly, quite officious, admitting officer.

I was booked into a Catholic Hospital where my excellent Jewish obstetrician, of Hungarian origin, was a consultant specialist.

(I will add at this point that the hospital care was very good and I had four other trips there later for similar purposes.)

When the admitting officer came to “Religion?”, I answered “None”. This was entirely unsatisfactory to her. She told me that I did not have to be Catholic but I had to put down some religion. She actively suggested C of E would be “sufficient”. I still insisted the answer was none. I was by this stage heavily in labour, however my convictions were so strong I could not be swayed by the minor matter of contractions. She actually said to me, “But nobody has no religion at all.” Finally I said to her, quite rudely I suppose, “Write ‘nil’ as in nil by mouth”. Her retort was, “But what IF SOMETHING GOES WRONG, who should we call?”  To that I replied, “Another doctor”. I was eventually admitted but the blank space on the form was pointed out to me by another administrator after the birth and she filled in “none” with a resigned air.

Religion is quite often a prominent issue around treatment of those who are dying as Denis Wright pointed out in his recent post, “Let’s get practical”, on http://deniswright.blogspot.com/au/2013/03/lets-get-practical-3.html I had another experience with this same hospital, but a much more gentle one than that above. When, after a later birth, my premature son was in the Intensive Care Nursery he was attended by many wonderful nurses. The sisters in charge were all nuns. One asked me gently would I like him to be baptized as it was clear that his life hung in the balance. I declined, saying I was not a believer. She went away quietly and tended to him but I looked at her crestfallen manner over him and realized I was being selfish. These were the people providing minute to minute care and they held very strong beliefs. It could do neither him nor me any harm to allow them to assuage their fears. I went over to her and acknowledged this and said that, although I would not be involved, she had my permission to do as she liked about the matter. I told her his full name and then asked her not to discuss the issue with me any further. I do not know what she did but her step seemed lighter when next I saw her.

Two palliative care nurses when my husband was dying insisted on talking about heaven and one described the windows in heaven that the deceased could look through to see the world.  He was more polite to her than I would have been (but he had the benefit of a shot of morphine). Appropriately, in my view, none of the wonderful palliative care doctors mentioned religion to us at all.

It seems that Veterinarians dealing with death, and particularly with euthanasia, have a much more pragmatic attitude. I have never heard God mentioned once. In my experience they discuss the reasons for decisions to be made. They look at the alternatives available and how they might be able to help, and they explain what the animal patient is experiencing etc.  I have had discussions, particularly with a vet I knew personally but also my current vet, about the relationship between how people with illness (including terminal illnesses) are treated and the way animals are treated. Their views have not always been positively slanted towards the treatment of humans. Here I refer again to Denis Wright and his excellent piece on this topic which prompted me to write these words.

Perhaps, when the admitting officer asked who I wanted called IF SOMETHING WENT WRONG, I should have said, “A vet”.

“To be or not to be” is really not the question. If we’re are asking the question it means we actually exist. And if we are here it is inevitable that we will die.

The only question Hamlet was asking and answering in Shakespeare’s wonderful words is really a “how” in two parts. How do we want to live and how and would we like to die? In both cases we have very little choice, as he so chillingly describes, but what choice we have is, in my view, quite significant both to ourselves and to others.

I know how I would like to be remembered. Sadly I do not think I have met these expectations in life but I have tried. On the positive side people seem to primarily remember the good in people they love or like. I do not feel the need to be viewed just as someone who “fought” an illness as if such battles are a sign of bravery rather than merely choice or as someone whose “acceptance” at the end is cowardice or alternatively something noble rather than also just a choice. I would like my life, which will inevitably include my death, to be remembered.

I also know that I would prefer not to live in a demented or disoriented state, out of touch with reality. But here there is little choice as often the illnesses which cause these appear either with no warning or allow for no self awareness. And despite my attempts to focus on her not insignificant life, my mother ‘s period of dementia haunts me.

Now in my seventies (but, at this stage, fortunate enough to be very healthy) the significance of the question to me is that dying will come sooner rather than later. For me the “how” of dying is inextricably connected to the “how” of living. Like most people of my age I have now had significant experience of loved ones and friends dying. 

The first experience of a family death we had was our young premature baby who died after only a few weeks of life. Fortunately we did not have to deal with as many decisions as a lot of parents of premature babies do because he was not exceptionally early and he had no other medical conditions other than prematurity to complicate the choices, but there were still many questions which had to be posed and considered in his treatment.

 I was present when each of my parents died.

My father’s death was unexpected and, for the nearest and dearest, this is probably the most difficult. I was dealing with the uncertainty, a mother who was in a state of disbelief about what had happened,  an extremely delayed ambulance and a very rude senior paramedic. For the dying, however, this must be the best option as Hamlet suggests, and it was not as if things were left unsaid. He and I, like most in my family, had often had discussions about the big questions of life. I had had one with him on his birthday only about three weeks before his death.

My mother died of  dementia and prior to her death she had lived for some years in this state. It was a situation which we had discussed during her rational times and I knew she hated the contemplation of such an existence. She was very unhappy while she continued to be confused and lose her capacities but once these were gone she appeared enjoyed her simple life in a nursing home until she became immobile. The enjoyment that she exhibited both surprised and continues to confuse me.

My husband was ill for a few months more than a year before his death. He spent almost six months at home in bed, visited by family and friends, and died peacefully here. It was the way he wanted it and I think, all things being equal, dying at home would also be my preferred option. Where he and I differed, however, is that he underwent much more treatment than I think I would have done. However how do I know how I will feel until actually faced with the same sort of choices? He was much more impressed with the doctors who suggested aggressive treatments, than the quiet and gentle gastroenterologist in whom I had faith and whose suggestions I would have followed and who, indeed, turned out to be very exact with his advice and recommendations.

My husband’s sister summed up his attitude just after he died. She said, “It was very strange. He knew and accepted he was going to die but he seemed to be determined that he had to get better first, yet he was extremely intelligent.”

A very close university friend of us both died last year. He had been a Medical Practitioner and had been ill for some time. After making preparations with his wife (also an old university friend) which included a move for their life together until his death and her life afterwards, he decided, by himself, that he needed to go into hospital and have no further treatment. He died quite peacefully and was coherent when I saw him the day before he died.

He spoke of death and treatments when he visited my dying husband at home much as Dr Ken Murray does in the extremely interesting article “How Doctors chose to die.” (referred to us by Denis Wright in deniswright.blogspot.com/ where he discusses these issues).

Our friend’s opinion, briefly summarised was that treatments such as radiotherapy are very invasive, sometimes much more so than actual surgery and can do harm as well as good. He thought that the public are not made sufficiently aware of this and that the lay person is inclined to think that an operation is the ultimate in interference. He also had professional, and at the end very personal, experience of the fact that very often doctors will not know the answers. They are not invincible and we must not expect it of them.

My own experience as a hospital visitor for the first nine months of my husband’s illness during which my husband was a frequent inpatient receiving multiple treatments, supported Dr Ken Murray’s views. I have blogged about this before. (As a regular visitor to someone who is very sick, there is plenty of unavoidable observation and eavesdropping time.)

Often a patient would be brought in calm and peaceful and apparently accepting and a group of relatives, quite often adult children then arrived and demanded aggressive treatment. The nuanced advice the doctors were giving was either not properly heard or was ignored. Elderly partners in distress were overridden by the younger family members or the patient was convinced to change his mind and treatment started with all that triggered off for the unfortunate patient. Drips are inserted and off it goes. Occasionally I had experience of, or saw merely as a bystander, specialists, often the younger ones, genuinely enthused about what they could offer and the new treatments that were just available. This  enthusiasm, admirable as it was, had a tendency to override the issues of possible extra suffering and sometimes gave the patient and relatives unrealistic expectations that exceeded what the specialist could actually offer.

In summary I think I know what I want when any of a wide range of illnesses strike me down. It is as much peace and physical and mental independence as possible.  I do not want major resuscitations. I do not want artificial feeding or drips for rehydration. In fact the refusal of fluids is and always should be an option open to all of us. It seems to be fairly normal in very ill creatures. In the case of my worst fear, dementia, I will have to leave it to my children but I do hope they make a choice that is convenient to them as I know that happiness can be found in a nursing home being useful, as my mother was, by watering all the flowers on the bed linen with the water jugs or helpfully collecting all the false teeth!

But my younger daughter has written my end of life plan for me. She tells me she is going to build a cosy log cabin in her country back yard for the years in which I need help and supervision but she informed me kindly that she will keep the floor as just an earthen one so neither of us has to worry about incontinence. One little part of me strangely looks forward to that cabin.

(Joan and Denis – I wrote this on Sunday, then decided not to post it. I changed my mind in the middle of tonight but think I will remove it when you have both seen it. But I wanted to say, “thanks”)

This post is a big thank you, Denis and Joan. I have been having a lovely couple of days, triggered by Denis with his story of his schooldays which included a Gypsy Tap and then his reference to the Mills Brothers, through Joan’s Canadian Threestep and Pride of Erin all the way to Charles Aznavour and last, but far from least, Al  Martino. The capacity to indulge in nostalgia has never been as great as it is now with such easy access via computers and tablets (very different “tablets” from those of the days of nostalgia) and moreover they reproduce accurately what happened.

I have never been one to indulge in romanticised memories to any great extent, despite knowing as a child psychologist that if one is spending money on children it is far better to do things than to collect objects. Why is it important to do things? To create concepts and memories.

I have always been enthusiastic about living in the present. But the last twenty years have been quite strange in this regard. I have found it dangerous to go back to the past. I try to reduce anxiety and any planning about the future by not dwelling on the past. I limit myself quite severely in the keeping of mementoes. Perhaps this began at first because, after my father suddenly died, my very sweet and fun loving mother plunged headlong into dementia. But it is mostly because, not too long after she died I discovered that my happy life with my nuclear family was fabricated on deception. In the revelations and aftermath I lost some I had counted on as long time good friends

Much of my life since that devastating discovery has been happy. I have four wonderful children and it has been a delight to see them grow into beautiful, responsible adults with families of their own. I have been lucky enough to have had an, at times inspiring, job with wonderful colleagues. My husband died five years ago at home here with some peace and I think some contentment at last. But I have still not been able to trust the past.

But then, yesterday, we started that mental dancing of old dances and listening to old songs, in a context that was different, among new, different sort of friends.

Today, on my walk with the dog, the grass seemed  greener, the purple flowers were more purple and even the dandelions were smiling. 

I can literally say to you Denis and Joan, “Thanks for the memory”.