WoLFi TaLEs

Thanks to Ariane for my timely Lemonade award to be proudly displayed on my side bar. It’s all about taking bad news, even really bad news, and making it positive – which is not always easy to do. It’s also about gratitude and because life is a gift.  I dedicate this award to Possum’s auntie…

Possum’s cherished auntie in America has been dealt quite a bitter lemon.  She has ‘aggressive’ lung cancer (despite never being a smoker) which metastisized to the brain (this tumour was removed initially before the lung cancer was discovered). Now they have discovered her lymph nodes are affected and spreading cancer throughout her body like a run away train.

You would expect her to be devasted, and she is, but not as much it seems as us who can’t bear the thought of losing her. You would expect her to be angry at the unfairness of cancer striking a person still quite young, a person who strove to live a healthy life. Yet although frustrated, and scared at times, as the medical procedures for cancer are frightening… she has no self-pity and still manages to smile when we talk to her daily on Skype. 

Before her last big operation, we, her Australian family decided to make a virtual ‘healing quilt’ with beautiful images of things she loves, including her only niece, Possum. We put messages of hope and prayer on the quilt.  She has printed off her quilt and keeps it near her bedside. The messages, it seems have offered her some comfort, and have also been a comfort to us… as it seems you go through the journey of cancer together.  My favourite message comes from a wise woman who has made lots of lemonade in her lifetime, my mother:

Do not give up hope for a medical breakthrough which may kill your cancer cells.

Keep on enjoying life as fully as you can. Laughter can be a good medicine.. 

Embrace the shadows and enjoy  the light.

May the  pouring out of love from  relatives and friends  provide you with encouragement.  

 

Keep hoping that the prayers  being said constantly on your behalf will be answered.

 

 Know that you will never be forgotten.  Your spirit will live on.  It is eternal.

 

 When we watch ’Possum’ dancing like a ballerina, we shall be reminded of you.

With the year gone by and the new decade upon us it seemed fitting to do a kind of  assessment or reflection on what worked well or not in the world of WoLFi or trying to interconnect work life and family in my life:

Trials and Tribulations:

> me taking on too many ‘work/study’ commitments in latter half of ‘09 left me time poor, stressed and overstretched (this year I will try to leave a bit more time to enjoy life and ‘do nothing’ or at least just ‘hang out’. Yet I know that this year I have quite a few more things I need to achieve,  I realise I am quite driven, both an assest and a liabilitly.  Note to self  – just because you are writing a thesis on work life family balance does not mean you know how to do it)

>Mr G compensated for my time poverty by taking over most of the household/Possum duties, leaving him with less time for paid work and leaving us financially stretched and stressed. (Need to redress sharing parenting and unpaid work with paid work to a more balanced and less see-sawing model)

> Possum found to many extra curricula dance classes, combined with her penchant for late nights was causing her to be over-tired, and difficult to wake on school mornings (cutting back to just one dance class a week improved this greatly, as did our finances, though late nights remain an issue).

> Mr G’s sister became very ill with cancer in the later part of ‘09 (I found out in the middle of a conference I was presenting at in Canberra). I felt bad not being there for Mr G when he heard  the dire news. Mr G flew to the states to be with his sister which was a great confort to them both. Mr G’s sister is the most devoted and loving aunt to Possum. The worry, and fear of losing this precious person has affected us all (it also has made me realise that life can be fragile and fleeting and somehow deserves our full attention not some distracted or rushed version of living. Motto for next year keep it simple, keep focused, and appreciate the now)

>Possum experienced her devoted dad away for the first time, which was hard for her, but brought out a very resilient side of her personality. I discovered that life as a sole parent, even of just one child to rear, is quite tiring and yet strangely intimate. You really get to know your child and they you. I appreciated the support network around me in a new light while Mr G was away (grandparents who minded her , a special auntie who spent hours with her in the pool, P0ssums best friend’s mum who offered to take her for a day so I could do my Xmas shopping, a neighbour who invited us over for dinner, a colleague who bought her a fizzy drink to sip on while we had a meeting).

> It has been a year of achievements. Our family unit has grown stronger through the trials. Possum has done really well at school both socially and academically. She knows she is loved and knows how to love back. I have passed my mid-candidature review and are now officially at the half-way point of my PhD. I have conquered my fear of math by achieving a Distinction in both of my statistics courses. I have relished being able to teach a course on gender, sexuality and society to some really delightful university students. I have to admit I am really enjoying the intellectual challenge I have undertaken, despite the hard work. But I must also pay homage to my supervisors who are not only mentors, and fabulous role models but are supporting me most generously along this challenging path.

In summary, I have to say like many years, this one has had its challenges, joys and sorrows and while Wolfi has worked well at times, other times it seems to have collaped in a frazzled heap. Yet despite the undulations – it seems to me that those support networks – the grandparents, the aunties, the neighbours, the friends, are really so important to helping cope with the bumps. Some of these wonderful people you can call on at a moments notice to help you out. I realise and appreciate that not everyone has this kind of support around them and yet I think it is the glue that holds as together as a society. Wolfi just wouldn’t happen without strong and versatile interconnections, ones that give and take, a help us along this journey of life.

Happy new year. I appreciate my blogging community for this same support and flexibility, through word drought and gabfests, it is wonderful to know that there are others all struggling and surviving, all with their own stories to tell.

Would love to hear your WoLFi trials and tribs, if you have time.

Possum: Does Santa know god?

Cousin (male aged 8): I’m not sure Santa is religious

Possum: (un-deterred) Does Santa give god presents?

Cousin: I don’t think Santa flies up that high. The reindeers might get out of breath…Maybe if Santa wore a spacesuit he could.

Possum: (satisfied smile)

T’was the month before Christmas,  Possum lost her front teeth…

Possum: Mummy, Mummy ‘All I want for Chrissmass is my two front teeff”

Mummy Scrooge: Good! ’cause mummy is a student this year and I don’t have much money.

Possum: No mummy, that’s the song. What I really want for Christmas is presentsss

Mummy Scrooge (silently): Damn!

feeling time pressured?

Have you been feeling time pressured lately? The Australian Institute of Family Studies defines this feeling as ‘feeling rushed or pressed for time’.  Studies show that time pressure increases with parenthood, but significantly more so for mothers (in general) compared to fathers.  Fathers, however are more time pressured than men without children. It seems that mothers in paid work, especially those doing long part-time or full-time hours are under the most pressure of all. Not only are they feeling the squeeze from their jobs, unpaid duties including housework, child & often elder-care, but they are also primarily responsible for making their paid work fit around their children’s schedules (dr appointments, school, childcare, extra-curricula activities…). In short, many mothers are coping with a role oveload - trying to do to many jobs at once – leading to time pressure, stress, and ultimately burnout.

It was interesting to read Blue Milk  in ‘Sorted at home mother’ reflect on how pleasant it is to have the time to devote to one main task (taking care of  an infant and young child) which is exhausting enough, without feeling you are being torn between the worlds of paid and unpaid work.  But for many mothers, the brief respite that maternity leave may bring from the pressures of the workplace, end all too quickly and then it is back to the pressure cooker.

I am really intersting to hear when you have most felt the squeeze in your life? How is your overall time pressure rating? Do you feel more time pressured at home or the work place, and why?  How do you ease the squeeze? What support networks help with time pressure?

Picture this scene:

Three ‘working mothers’ conduct a moderation meeting at a University. They find a family friendly room which is large and spacious and where they can close the door. A friendly admin worker offers paper, highlighter pens, chalk and books for the children to play with.

One mum supervises her 2 year old with craft and drawing while the other mum gets her 6 year old involved in working with the 2 year old…meanwhile the working mums talk about the various marking criteria for the students’ work they need to grade…the baby cries and the other mum who doesn’t have her children here that day, helps the 2 year old’s mum out by rocking the baby to sleep in the pram while they continue to compare essays and marking criteria. Meanwhile the 2 year old and 6 year old have snack time, draw on the board, are taken to the toilet and play with toys – while the two mothers edit and comment over the upcoming exam paper. One mum pops out to do some photocopying while the other mum supervises the kids. Meanwhile the baby wakes up and has his bottle and nappy changed. Two hours later the meeting work is done, the children have had a nice time and everyone is pretty happy.

But what I really want to know (as you have probably guessed I was one of the ‘working mums’ at this meeting) if you think that in this time period were we doing paid work or family work? It seems quite obvious from reading the scenario that we were doing both, simulatenously in what might seem like a messy, overlapping but nonetheless effective way.  This idea of synchronised time (observed by academic Alison Morehead) is evidently what many mothers do. Yet, most of the time use studies ask us to deliniate employment tasks from family or domestic tasks by putting our ‘time spent’ doing these tasks into different boxes or compartments.

What I would love to know is whether you have a tale to tell about synchronising your time – when you did both job and family work at the same time???

I’m sure its nothing new, just under-reported.

Dearest Blog

While it may seem like I have been ignoring you on purpose – nothing could be further from the truth. I think about you all the time. You remember that work life family balance stuff we like to talk about – well it just isn’t happening for me right now. Zip. Yes, I know you don’t feel like I have to make excuses or feel any guilt , but I do. As soon as I can take a breath from teaching at uni,  doing advanced statistics, tending to my PhD and preparing for 2 conferences before the end of the year, and taking care of the needs of my family, I promise, I really, really,  promise I will devote more time to you.

your loyal friend

aztec-rose

I was reflecting on Ruth Ostrow’s satirical article in the Australian Weekend Magazine on the power women have to draw sympathy or clout from their changing hormonal states, it reminded me of the way the female body and its natural cycles have been medicalised to the nth degree:  As Ostrow rather wittily points out -

The thing about peri-menopause is that it’s such a vague notion. One can be peri for a decade, then menopausal for the next decade. Thus 20 years of great excuses for just being a normal, rancid human being. Like my teenage daughter, who gets off having to do anything because, “Oh, she’s just a teenager.” Then, once she’s post-teenager, she can trade on being pre-menstrual, before becoming pre-menopausal, peri-menopausal, menopausal and then post-menopausal.  I feel sorry for men, who don’t seem to have ever dreamt up any good excuses for their lifelong, poor hormonal behaviour.

 

The darker side of these anecdotes – underlying the satire – is the way in which women’s reproductive capacities have become more ‘medicalised’ and processes including menstruation, PMS, pregnancy, childbirth, and menopause ‘pathologised’ rather than seen as normal life events. Sociologist Maria Zadoroznyi has written some interesting stuff on this…*

I wonder if this goes back to the time when the male body was considered ‘the norm’ by the medical establishment by which female bodies were judged as somehow aberrant ?

Zadoroznyi, M. 2004 ‘Gender and Health’ in Grbich, C (ed) 3rd edition Health in Australia: Sociological Concepts and Issues: Sydney, Prentice Hall

Possum showed off her growing competence with fine motor skills and unabashed pride in her personal creation! What could I say but - ’that’s hairtastic’.