Falling Upwards

After receiving shocking, horrible, awful, and devastatingly bad news last night, I did not wake up feeling very happy today as you could imagine.

But then my day turned into the most bizarre and surreal day I think I have ever had, ever.

I staggered out of bed and straight to the computer to Skype my daughter as I had received a message from her at 2am saying she wanted to chat with me and I knew with the time difference between Canada and Australia that 8am would be the ideal time of find her online.

So...

After the initial small talk, the conversation became serious. She has been away from home and alone for almost 7 months now and the home sickness is not going away. Well, that is a lie, while she is working she is too busy and tired to feel home sick but when she is between jobs (she is doing temping work), it comes back with a vengeance and today was one of those days.

Anyway... to cut a long story short, she asked me to come and visit her to cheer her up and I replied, as anyone who even vaguely knows me would expect,  ohhhhhhhhhh yes of course I will.

My husband had walked into the room right about the time I was saying ‘I would love to come visit you’ and she was replying ‘how soon can you be here’, with tears in her eyes.  So I turned to him and asked ‘can I go and visit our  baby in Canada?’ and his ‘whoa Nelly’ expression and his backing out of the room stance, and his confused look on his face, which she could see via Skype only served to make her burst into tears and feel even more hopelessly alone.

That was enough to break my husband’s heart which resulted in him saying to me, ‘Ok, you need to fly to Canada to be with our daughter, she needs you.’ Of course I didn’t believe him and I spent the next couple of hours waiting for both him and my daughter to change their minds, so I wasn’t getting my hopes up, after all, last night’s problems were still far too raw to me.

The day continued on in a curious manner. At 11am I had a physiotherapy appointment for my back, which my husband kindly offered to drive me to. But as we pulled up at the office, he said to me, ‘don’t be surprised if she doesn’t work on your back today’, which I thought was the strangest thing to say as I was already there and why would she not work on my back. So I gave him my confused look and walked into her office.

You can imagine my shock when the physio didn’t want to look at my back at all but instead wanted to work on my jaw. I didn’t want her to work on my jaw, yes it was sore but I wanted her to work on my back, my appointment was for my back, not my jaw. I queried this but she said, ‘no, I don’t want to work on your back’. It was the strangest thing.

So I left her rooms after her work on my jaw and when I had gotten back to my car I asked my husband why he had done that, and how had he done that, and was he happy now that his words had come true? His reply, ‘I had a feeling she wouldn’t do it today’ was all I got.

When we returned home he said now that he had decided that I need to go to Canada, I had to apply for my passport immediately. Well I just so happened to have an application form in a drawer so I got it out and started to fill it out before he changed his mind, which I just knew would happen sooner or later today.

When I got to the part of the form which said, supply a copy of your full birth certificate I knew I was in trouble, as I didn’t have one, I have never needed a copy of my full birth certificate before, I had always gotten by with the extract copy. So I told him I couldn’t go on as I needed my birth certificate. My husband’s reply to that was, well let’s go into the city and get one, now.

‘Now, right now’ I say, and he answered ‘yes, why not’. He decided that the train was the quickest option to get into the city at this time of day 1.30 in the afternoon. Then he went to a drawer in the kitchen and pulled out a train timetable and said, ‘oh and if we hurry, we can catch one in 15 minutes’.

Well I had to run to the computer and print out the form which I told him I could fill out on the train. Then I had to get changed, of course, do my hair and make myself beautiful before we could run to the car and zoom away to the train station.

Somehow we were out the door in what seemed like half an hour but in reality was only 5 minutes and we were speeding off down the street without a second to spare. We were taking a risk because in all honesty we knew we could not make it in time but we decided it was worth the change. Everything was against us, at the end of our street we uncounted a little old man in a very old car driving at a snail’s pace and blocking our path. My husband did a crazy move and somehow got around him only to be stopped a few meters on by a set of traffic lights. This red traffic light lead to not one more but every single intersection we approached on the way turned red as we were about to enter it. The traffic all seemed to be on a go slow day and every turn we had to make saw pedestrians crossing our path as well. We arrived as if by magic at the train station with two minutes to spare and not a park in sight. But that park materialised as if on cue and we ran to the platform as the headlight from our train appeared in the distance. But of course it couldn’t be this easy, I can’t be that lucky. The train was going to stop at a platform on the other side of the track so we had to run down to the end of the platform and climb over the bridge to reach the train. We had no tickets, and no time to buy one and I can barely climb steps on a good day let alone on a mad and crazy rushed day like today. But again, we made it up and over and down seconds before that train pulled up beside us.

My husband had a quick word with the conductor and the next thing I know, we are on the train, seated and my head is spinning by what we had just achieved.

Just over one hour later we arrive in the city and after a short brisk walk we enter the births, deaths and marriages office with half an hour to spare before closing to find the building practically empty. Apparently, according to the lovely lady who served us, it is unheard of to walk straight up to the counter without having at least a half hour wait to be served. But we were in and out of that building in 5 minutes and back at the train station and on a train home, only 15 minutes after arriving in the city.

Everything was against us, yet we had made it and the day was getting stranger by the minute. As we sat down in that carriage for the ride home, we noticed someone had left a book behind. We looked around to see if anyone was nearby who may own it but no, only new passengers were entering the train. So we picked it up to see if there was any identification inside the book and found the most incredible thing.

Inside this brand new book was no contact details, no name even, just a bookmark. But upon further examination this was no ordinary bookmark. This was a bookmark from ‘bookcrossing.com’ and in bold large letters it stated – READ IT! REGISTER IT! RELEASE IT!

Someone had left this brand new unread, book here on purpose for someone to find. How amazing was that. Upon closer inspection still, I found that this wonderful person could have registered the book and then I could have logged online and told them I had found it. But they didn’t need the recognition, they knew that God would lead the right person to this book and that is what happened. This book titled ‘Falling Upward, a spirituality for the two halves of life, was exactly what I needed to read right now.

In the blurb of the book it says it ‘is a message of falling down that is in fact moving up.’ It explains that ‘the author explores the two halves of life to show that those who have fallen, failed, or gone down are the only ones who understand ‘up’. We grow more by doing it wrong then by doing it right.’

Wow, wow, wow, this book was jumping out to me like nothing had done for so long. I was amazed, thankful and humbled by this kind and generous anonymous stranger for doing this loving and astonishing thing, for me. What incredible people there are out there in the world. I am just speechless in this person’s caring and selfless actions today.

On arrival back home I was able to make an appointment to apply for my new passport on Monday morning which means I have to get my photos taken tomorrow.  I was able to go back online tonight and catch my daughter just before she was heading off to bed. I asked her if she had changed her mind about me coming to visit and she said ‘not a chance’. So I said ‘great, because I am coming over, I am coming to visit you as soon as I can get a flight over’. She was so happy, she was so very happy that she could barely contain herself.

I don’t know if it has sunk in with me yet, I don’t think I understand yet. I am going to Canada. I am going to Canada as soon as my passport arrives and I can book a flight out of here. I will be in Canada, my home away from home, in a matter of weeks. I am speechless. I am numb. I think I am feeling a tad scared. 

The Horror Continues in Hobart

Lottie

I wake at crazy o’clock (otherwise known as 8am) and as I stagger out of bed I am met by a frozen wall of icy cold air. My first task for the day is to get the wood fires stoked up and roaring so that I don’t freeze to death. I am to spend the next three weeks here in a 110 year old house with five very draughty chimney’s, that not only let the freezing cold air in if not roaring but also the rain, the birds, flies and the odd bee.  ‘What have I walked into’ I ask myself as I shiver uncontrollably.

My mother had just received a new delivery of wood a few days before I arrived which was good, but it arrived split in halves instead of quarters which didn’t fit into the fireplaces, which was bad, for me, as I was informed that it was my job to split it into fireplace friendly pieces.... faint... was she mad!

Now you have to understand that I don’t do things like this. I don’t clean the house, I don’t wash the cars and I certainly don’t split the wood. What was my mother thinking? I am a lady, not the local handyman! What will splitting this wood do to my nails for goodness sake and if I get blisters she will never hear the end of it. What if I chop my foot off, I have heard of all sorts of nasty accidents when it comes to playing with wood. I am not in the best physical health either. I have an illness, the consequences of which results in me being in pain every day, and I am weak. My back is bad, it goes into spasm if I climb stairs, so how on earth was I to wield a heavy log splitting axe about like a lumberjack. But my step father has recently died, my mother has a chest infection, probably bordering on pneumonia, due to the lack of heat in this igloo of a house and there is no one else to do it.

So out I go, out to the huge stack of wood in the back yard, to attempt to split one piece of wood, that was my goal, one piece. I have no idea what I am doing but I pick up the splitter which I can barely lift and attempt to hit the log. The upwards stroke was ok, the downwards stroke was ok, and it even hit the wood, which was ok. But it bounced off the wood with no more than a tiny indentation and landed half buried in the ground in front of my feet. I do a quick check of my limbs, yes they are still intact, so I give a huge sigh of relief, then prepare for a second swing. This time I hit off centre resulting in the piece of wood crashing to the ground as a little chip went flying through the air and the axe thingy landed sideways on the ground under the wood. ‘This is going to be a long day’ I say to myself as I pick the piece of wood up and study it to see if I had cracked it or split it or done anything at all to it. I hadn’t, other than making that little chip fly through the air the wood looked just as it had before, with that faint indentation from my first attempt. I put that piece of wood aside, after making the assessment that it just can’t be split and look for a new piece of wood. I find one with a crack in it and I think ‘ahh, this one looks easier’, and I take aim for my third hit.

The pile of wood

And what a great hit it was too, I managed to connect with the log, I managed to penetrate the surface, and I managed to get the splitting axe thingy firmly stuck inside the piece of wood never to move again!  ‘Oh dear’ I said to myself, ‘at least my limbs are still attached and my back seems ok, but how on earth do I get this splitter axe thing out of the piece of wood’? I attempt to lever it out to no avail, I attempt to counter lever it out using my foot as the counter lever but still it won’t budge, so I throw my arms up in the air and walk away.

After focusing, and figuring out how to detach the splitter from the wood, I manage to actually split my first log which gave me the biggest sense of accomplishment I have had in years. In fact I was so proud of myself I decided to split another piece of wood and started looking for the perfect piece to chop.

I found what I thought was the perfect piece of wood and naturally it was at the back of the wood pile, but that was not going to deter me, and I lean over and  pull with all my might and the log obliges and allows me to drag it free. Now just a warning, this is where things start to go drastically wrong.

As I am pulling on this piece of wood to bring it forward, it dislodges a second piece of wood and both pieces fall towards me. The ‘perfect piece’ was not so perfect after all because as I lift it up, it is far too heavy for me and I lose my grip. As the wood falls towards my waiting foot, the second piece of wood tumbles into my other leg, bouncing off and landed on my mother’s brand new tiny 4 month old puppy which had chosen this bad moment to run over to see what I was doing.

I was unaware of the dogs presence until I heard her scream (yes she screamed like nothing I had ever heard before), I looked around to find the back half of her body hidden beneath the huge log of wood. I totally freaked out and let out an involuntary scream when I saw what I had done. I was frozen there for what seemed like an eternity, screaming as I watched the puppy trapped there, as the realisation hit me, that I had just killed my mother’s puppy.

But then I realised that the puppy was still screaming and I was still screaming right along with her. I grabbed the piece of wood and flung it off her as she continued screaming and as she looked right in my eyes with so much fear that tears started to well in my own eyes. I picked her up, as we both continued to scream, and I ran towards the house, towards my mother who was inside. 

My mother was so calm, she took the puppy from me and said ‘It’s ok, I thought Lottie was inside with me, we will take her straight to the vet’. But the moment the puppy was in her arms, she stopped screaming, she calmed down and she wagged her tail. Mum placed her gently on the floor and she jumped up and ran straight back to my mother’s arms. I thought I had broken her back, I thought I had crushed her, I thought I had killed her, yet here she was running around and wagging her tail. We checked her all over, there were no broken bones, there was no blood and she could move every limb. She could bark and she could eat and she jumped up to my mother’s lap.

From the bruise materializing on my shin, it appears the piece of wood not only hit me first but that I had also taken the whole weight of it so it just came to rest on the dog in such a way that no damage was done. I started to shake, I couldn’t get the image or sound of her screaming out of my head for hours afterwards. I was in no condition to attempt to split any more wood that day, I just found the smallest pieces of wood I could and we made do the best we could.

It has been a week since the accident and Lottie is just fine. She is running around like nothing out of the ordinary had ever happened to her. She is as cheeky as ever but she tends to stay well away from the wood heap now, and hasn’t chewed off any pieces of bark to play with since that day. I don’t go near the wood myself unless she is firmly locked inside the house behind not one but two closed doors. I have manage to split a few more pieces of wood as the days go on, but I have also learnt how to squeeze huge logs of wood into a little fireplace and I have only burnt myself once so far.  I am here for three weeks, my first two days were a disaster, surely things can only get better from here on in.

Cheeky Lottie

Day one of 3 weeks in Hobart

The alarm rudely wakes me at 7.30am and I stumble out of bed and straight into the shower to wake up. My husband shouts from the bedroom as he opens the curtains that there is a blanket of thick fog outside. I wonder why he is telling me this but answer ‘oh is there’ and rush to get dressed and finish packing my bags so we can leave on time. I move slowly in the mornings, especially at ‘insane o’clock’.

Racing out of the house we manage to leave for the airport on time. As we approach the top of the hill just outside of town and enter the freeway, we see beautiful fog laying low in all the valleys of the pastoral landscape beside the road and I think to myself ‘Wow, if only we had time to stop and take photos’. It was so spectacular that I couldn’t have wished for a better morning as far as photography was concerned. I mentioned this to my husband as we drive over a bridge giving us an awesome view along the river disappearing into nothingness, ‘that I had never seen such magnificent fog’. And he answered, ‘Yeah, it’s amazing what you can see when you make the effort to actually get up in the mornings’. This ‘dig’ at me was the result of my very late nights of recent times spent on the internet resulting in me missing most mornings.

I was oblivious to the fact that this thick pretty fog was seriously threatening my departure just over one hour from now.  I didn’t realise this until the last possible moment, until I was walking to my plane on the tarmac (I was flying with Jet Star) and I thought to myself, ‘wow check out that fog, that reminds me of that TV show where the airlines are grounded because of the fog’. Then I thought ‘Fog, oh no, this could ruin everything’.

You see my schedule was far too tight in reality and had no room for errors, none at all.  My plane was to leave at 11.20am and was due to arrive at 12.35pm, my mother was picking me up from the airport and we were to drive straight to the hospital to drop her off as she had to be there at 1.15pm. She was having an operation, that is the whole point of me being in Tasmania, to look after her. The drive from the airport to the hospital would take 20 minutes if all went well so we had a twenty minute buffer zone up our sleeves.

Of course 20 minutes was, in reality, nothing. Although my plane boarded on time it didn’t leave on time, it left 15 minutes late. The door to the pilot’s cabin was open and I could see them looking at maps while a member of the ground crew looked on, it didn’t look good. I was thinking, gosh if they don’t know the way by now, we are never going to get there on time. I was getting nervous but we finally managed to get off the ground and the flight seemed to take forever. Usually on the one hour flight you barely get to finish reading the in-flight magazine, but I finished before they informed us at the half way mark that we had started our descent into Hobart and that decent seems to take even longer than the ascent.

As we were landing I could see snow out of the window all over the mountains and valley floors, well it looked like snow. I had to ask the man sitting next to me, ‘excuse me, is that snow out there’? To which he replied ‘Yes I believe it is, and I am told it is only 5 degrees in Hobart also’.  This shocked me as I really hadn’t given any thought to how cold it would be in Hobart, it just really didn’t cross my mind. I mean I knew it was the last stop before Antarctica and I knew it was always freezing down there, but it just never entered my mind that I would be cold down there and I certainly never thought there would be snow.

So as the reality sunk in that it was snowing down there and I was in nothing more than a long sleeved t-shirt, it dawned on me that I really should have given this trip a little more attention.  But now was not the time, now, it was too late.

So the plane lands 12 minutes late and I forgot to allow time to grab my luggage. I try to phone my mother but there is no signal in the terminal. I look around and everyone else is having trouble and holding their phones up in the air to look for a signal also. The luggage finally starts to come out and I will my luggage to be one of the first out. Miraculously it works and I find super strength and grab that case like it was a tissue box and I am out that terminal door in a flash.

By this time it is 12.55pm and my mother starts the dash to the hospital. Somehow we get a good run and make it to the hospital only 5 minutes late. Don’t ask me how everything managed to work out but it did. Gosh remind me to never cut things that close again, it was far too intense.

But the drama was not yet over, I had to drive my mother’s car home, alone, a car I had never driven before. Find my way to her house, which I had only visited twice before, in a city I had never driven in before, down all those crazy one way streets. Then, I had to find my way later that night, in the dark, back to the hospital to collect her again.

Amazingly I navigated the roads well, found the house, released the dog into the elements and unpacked my bags. Then, I was alone, in that huge ancient, 100 year old house with nothing to do. The silence was overpowering, being alone was so foreign to me, I am totally out of my comfort zone and I don’t like it at all.

Hours later after dusk it is finally time to venture out and retrace my steps back to the hospital to collect my mother which I do surprisingly well. Mum is doing well but her pulse is only 45 so we have to wait around for it to rise a little. At last we can go home so I walk my mother carefully to the car which I have parked as close as possible to the entrance of the hospital. We climb into the car and I start the engine and put the gear into ‘drive’ to reverse out of the car space.

CRUNCH, as I look through the rear view mirror the car surges forward into the garden bed in front of me and as I slam my foot on the brake I am shocked to realise what I have just done. Mum, who is still under the influence of the anaesthetic, says ‘woops, never mind, try again’, and I quietly freak out as I select the correct gear and timidly leave the hospital carpark. Welcome to Hobart, Daisy.    

  

My Jaw, My Jaw, I Can’t Feel My Jaw!

       

A few weeks ago I eagerly awaited my half yearly dentist check up as I was having trouble with my jaw. Routine things like eating, sleeping and worst of all, talking were becoming harder and harder to do. All in all I was in significant pain 24 hours a day and not coping so well. To my amazement I discovered that my jaw was out of alignment and so much so that the dentist said I had to urgently find a physiotherapist who could work on it and put it back in its proper place before anymore damage could be done.

So naturally I put off making an appointment with my regular physiotherapist for a couple of weeks, as you do. But eventually the pain got so great that I was forced to make the call.

After phoning and asking if any of the physiotherapists did ‘jaw work’ and being assured that they did, I found out two visits and $130 later that actually they didn’t!

I did get to experience the horror of receiving a jaw massage... twice, which I was told just before she started it the first time, was one of the worst experiences you could go through as far as massage was concerned, and I would have to agree with her 100% on that point.

As any good physio will do, she found the most painful site I had by poking everything until I grimaced and roll around the table, and then she smiled as she got to work rubbing, pushing, poking, stretching and basically torturing me cheerfully for the next half hour or so.

It was at the beginning of the second session that she told me that my jaw was too severe for her to work on and I would have to go see someone who specialises in this area of work, then she preceded to inflict her horrible, horrible torture on me once more outside and inside my mouth before sending me on my way.

Again, I did not rush to make the appointment with this new physiotherapist as I did NOT want to go through that pain again. But of course, my jaw pain got the better of me and I was once more forced to make the dreaded phone call.

Which brings me to today.

One hour and $147.50 later I survived my first session with the specialist.... just.

My goodness, I thought the first physio was rough but this one made her look like a pussycat. I was given ultrasound on my cheeks to relax my jaw muscles so that she could start her work on them but it was a very messy procedure which resulted in warm gooey gel in both my ears and most of my hair.

As she roughly wiped barely half the goop off me she said that couldn’t be helped then she proceeded to contort my jaw. Her treatment was nothing at all like the first physio, there was no massage to find the owie bits, just sheer pain from the get go. At one stage she said to me, ‘ok now you are not allowed to bite me, you have to trust me and if the pain gets too much to bear, wave your hand in the air and I will stop’. Before I had a chance to say ‘excuse me, I don’t think I like the sound of that’????????? She had me in a head lock, her hand resting on my teeth and was trying to rip my jaw off. I thought I was either going to die, break my jaw or faint from the pain. When one tries you rip your jaw off in such a manner it actually blocks your windpipe and you can’t breathe, not a comforting feeling at all.

She took a break and I took that opportunity to say ‘I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t breathe as you were doing that, I couldn’t breathe’. She ignored me and said ‘ok, don’t bite me, trust me, and wave your hand in the air if the pain gets too much to bear’, and got back to ripping my jaw off again before I could take a breath, jump off the table or wave my hands in the air.

Well the last thing I could do was think of waving my hands in the air, all I could think of was that I didn’t have time to take a breath, and if I wave my hands in the air she would probably break my neck, and I thought I was going to black out which would be a good thing as I didn’t really want to be awake to hear my jaw snap.

Just as I had gotten to the point of not being able to take any more of this ‘abuse’ she tells me she has finished and is very happy with the results. She thinks she can help me, but I need more work next week as my jaw is still terribly out of alignment.

She suggests valium would be good to relax my jaw, I think to myself valium would be good to knock me out while she rips my jaw off again next week.

Finally I am able to stagger out of there after she gave me a list of do’s and don’ts, a list of exercises to do at home and more pain that when I arrived. Although I am in all this pain, I actually can’t feel my jaw as my face is all numb yet tingling and throbbing at the same time. I think my jaw is still there but I can’t be sure so as soon as I got into my car, I checked in the rear-view mirror, just to make sure. Yes, I still have my jaw, that was a relief.

I am so not looking forward to next week’s encounter with Kara. 

Tai Chi day

 

‘Thank you, bye’ I say as I hang up the phone.  ‘weeeeeeeeeeeee’ I jump up and down and clap my hands together excitedly. I am very excited, very, very excited. So excited, so, so, so overly excited. Stops to take a breath.

That was me just over two weeks ago, all jumpy and excited. I had just enrolled into a new class which I started a few days later. I was actually counting down the days until it started because I was told it would be very good for me, and I needed something that would be very good for me, and I needed that something right NOW. So I was counting... Today is Saturday and tomorrow is Sunday, that makes the next day... Tai Chi day!

Ommmmmmmmmmmm, I wondered if they ‘omm’ in that class. I felt like omming, omming would be fun. But first things first, let me start at the beginning, on day one just before the class.

Finally the big day had arrived and I got myself all ready for the class. I couldn’t wait to get there, I couldn’t wait to feel better. So I arrived 15 minutes early and practically skipped into the venue with a big grin on my face. As I approached the reception desk the lady was staring at me, I guess I looked too excited or something. But never mind I didn’t care, I was in a great mood.

‘Hi, I’m here for the Tai Chi class, the beginners class’, I said cheerfully. ‘Oh’ she replied with a strange look on her face and an overly long pause before saying. ‘You must be Daisy?’ “Yes, yes I am’ I answered warily as the huge grin disappeared from my face. ‘Sorry’, she said, ‘but that class started half an hour ago’. ‘But how could that be, why wasn’t I told. Now what will I do?’ I blurted out as I felt my happy feeling sinking to the floor with every word I spoke. ‘Sorry, but you weren’t notified as you were overlooked’, she said with a little smile on her face, and after saying that she stared at me... she held my gaze and just stared at me, it was the most bizarre thing I had ever seen.

I was kind of confused, I was trying to figure out how I could have been overlooked, I was trying to figure out how I would catch up with everyone else having missed the first class, I was trying to figure out how I was going to scoop my happy feeling up off the floor and walk out of that place with a shred of dignity intact as I was so devastated, so overwhelmed with instant sorrow that I just wanted to curl up and die. But I was mostly trying to figure out why on earth this lady was staring at me so intently without letting up and with that little ‘almost smirk’ on her face. When suddenly without warning she jumped up and said ‘it’s ok, I will sneak you into the class, it is only half way through’. Before I knew what was happening she was on my side of the counter and grabbing my arm and half leading, half dragging me down the hallway to the class.

So much for the ‘sneaking’ part as when we had arrived at the room she burst in through the double doors, which she flung open with both hands, announcing to all far and near in her outdoor voice, ‘I have another one for you!’, stopping the whole class completely, resulting in everyone turning to stare at me and leading the instructor to say ‘oh, but she has missed so much, she will never catch up’. Then with a big sigh she told me to ‘Go to that empty place in the back row and try to keep up with the rest of the class’. Which I did, but secretly wanted to melt right through the floor, I was so embarrassed and still quite shocked and devastated with what had just happened outside at the reception desk. As I took my place and the class got back underway, all I could say to myself was ‘Welcome to Tai Chi, Daisy’.   

As things turned out that first day, it wasn’t that bad at all. From what I could gather, mostly what I missed in the first half of the class was the boring ‘let’s go around the room and introduce ourselves’ and the history/background of tai chi and the other thing it appeared we were to learn as well called Qigong. So all in all, they actually did me a favour not informing me of the change of class time as I HATE the whole ‘who am I and what am I doing here’ thing. I had no trouble keeping up with the class and it appeared this tai chi thing would be ok after all.

But then, as with all new classes, I had to go back again the next week. It was not so much fun that next week, the teacher was flustered with one of the students, Patrick, and staying for the whole hour was harder on my body than I thought it would be. Basically we had to semi squat for the whole hour with our knees just off the lock position, not a good thing when you feel like you have two knives sticking out of both of your knees. Also we had to repeat each movement at least five times each, which was not so great on my damaged shoulder, and the pivoting on the feet kind of made me feel like my ankles were breaking. Bending down to pick up my handbag after the class was no easy feat and walking home was sheer agony. I thought tai chi was meant to be a gentle exercise, not pain educing torture I grumbled to myself as I hobbled all the way home.  

The third week everyone is becoming very chummy with each other, one lady even knows all our names which we applaud as she introduces us all to the instructor who has no clue as to who we are because she has left her class list at home. May I just say that even with her class list she has no clue as to who we are as we keep changing places and for some reason this confuses her.  

I should mention here that when I think of tai chi I think of an ancient little old Chinese man in black kung fu attire leading the class, not a middle aged Australian lady named Sue. Sue wears the black kung fu attire and says she has studied tai chi in China, but I find that a little hard to believe. Call me a sceptic but she doesn’t strike me as someone who has studied in China, but I may be totally wrong.

Lee, that is the lady who knows who everyone is, told us to stop applauding, she says she has to try hard to remember things, all things, every day, as she has MS. We all stop clapping and mumble ‘oh’ under our breaths. Actually the class is filled with eight very different people. Lee, is in her late 50’s her real name is Elizabeth but she prefers Lee.

There is also another Elizabeth but she prefers Beth. Beth is also in her 50’s and kinda overweight. I like her because she called me slim and no one has called me slim in a couple of years. Everyone was trying to figure out where to stand so we could all see the instructor and Beth said that she couldn’t stand at the front of the class as she was far too tall. I said, ‘but I am much taller than you and I am here at the front’. Beth replied ‘oh but you are tall and slim whereas I am tall and fat’. Awww what a lovely lady, she made my day, no my week, no my year.

There are two young girls in the class, both in their early 20’s I would say. One is Sky, but I don’t know the other one’s name yet. I know Sky’s name as she has a weak bladder and has to run to the bathroom about three times each class. I think she is also a tad strange as she always wears a black fitted dress to class whereas the rest of us wear sweatpants. He friend, thingy, had a baby just two months ago, yet is so slim and actually, she wears a pair of jeans, a t-shirt and a  puffer jacket each week, I guess they are both a little ‘different’.

Next is a little old lady who is all of 4 feet nothing tall. Roma is at least eighty years old, but has more energy than I do, she also takes advantage of her lack of height. I am guessing that she has survived on the ‘cute factor’ her whole life, but she seems like a lovely lady.

That leaves Patrick and Pauline. Someone asked Pauline if she was Patrick’s carer and she said yes, but I am sure she is his wife too. Pauline is tired and grumpy and rolls her eyes a lot every time someone talks to Patrick. She also throws her arms up in the air a lot too in reference to Patrick. I don’t think she is very happy with Patrick.

Which brings me to Patrick, Patrick is blind and the instructor has no idea what to do with him, thus each week she gets more and more flustered. Patrick is only partially blind, he can see from one eye and only if you stand directly in front of him, so I guess he has tunnel vision. He wants to be treated ‘normally’ but the instructor is so out of her comfort zone with him that she fails terribly at trying to be cool and calm and collected around him.

Oh and of course, there is me... the tall SLIM one... giggle. As I look around the class at everyone I have to give a little smile, what a sight we are in that class. Let me see if I can paint you a picture.

Sue, our instructor arranges us all around Patrick, so that he can ‘see’ her. Only she always places him at the front right hand side of the class and he ends up seeing nothing but he won’t complain because he wants to be treated like everyone else. Sue also places a chair behind him just in case he feels faint, because he is blind! All the chair does is get in the way of both Patrick and the unlucky person standing behind him. Pauline, mutters something from across the room that he doesn’t need a chair and just let him be, but she won’t say it out loud so Sue continues to fuss. When we finally start the class after Sue has rearranged us all a few times for Patrick’s sake, we are all wanting to throw our arms up into the air in frustration with Pauline.

We start the movements with heaven and earth, followed by open heaven and earth and the breeze moving the branches. Looking around the class I see that Lee has the wrong feet, Pauline –thingy has the wrong arms, Beth has stepped far too wide and is stuck in a split like stance and Patrick is waving his fingers in front of his face in the form of ‘spirit fingers’ from the movie ‘Bring It On’. As we continue on through the movements and change direction for repulse the monkey, Patrick is facing backwards still waving those spirit fingers, Roma is completely lost and Sky runs out of the room to the bathroom after giggling with thingy over the name ‘repulse the monkey’. Sue stops and looks around the class, smiles broadly and says ‘great, great, you are all doing great’, as she walks over to Patrick and turns him around to face the front as he almost trips over that silly chair.

Yep that is my tai chi class, I wonder if we will actually end up learning all the 18 movements in this shibashi by the end of the term. I am truly amazed that everyone has come back each week as I really expected a few to drop out. But we are all there and we are doing our best. We are the tai chi beginners... hear us roar (or should that read, stumble). 

Today I Think Golf Is In Order

In my head, I am the coolest, bestest, most awesomest golfer in the known world today. In short, I am a STAR. No, correction, a SUPER STAR.

But in reality, well, let’s just say that I don’t really live up to my own expectations.

To understand what goes on in my head where golf is concerned, we have to go back, back in time, way back. Back to when I was a small child surrounded by a family of pennant golfers and club champions with handicaps in the single figures all the way down to ‘scratch’ or ‘one’ for those of us unfamiliar with the golfing handicap system. It was a time when only the boys in the family were allowed to play golf and the girls were permitted to look on in awe. Or as in my case, sneak away from mum when collecting my father from the 19^th hole on Saturday nights, run amuck and causing havoc by stealing golf balls as they came falling from the sky at the 18^th hole, throwing them into the rough, and laughing and laughing with excitement as only an innocent little kid can, until I found out that what I was doing was wrong, so very wrong.

On the odd occasion we were granted the opportunity of being in attendance at either Heidelberg golf club or Huntingdale during a tournament, I longed to be able to grab a club and have a hit but I was never allowed, so I settled for washing all of my father’s golf balls in the fascinating ball cleaner at every opportunity.

a golf ball washer at my club

Zoooooom, now we go ahead in years and I am a grown up (in years if not in attitude) and I have never lost the desire to be a brilliant golfer like my father, uncle and cousins. Over the years I have played ‘golf’ at any venue I can find.... yup I have played ‘put put’ golf and mini golf all over Australia, and in the last 10 years or so I have become quite the player, I can tell you.

When my kids reached primary school age, one of the end of school year activities each year was going to play Par 3 golf and parent assistants were always needed. So naturally I jumped up and down the highest and loudest ‘ooooh pick me, pick me’, and got the opportunity to further hone my skills, thus my appetite for playing golf was ignited once again as I merrily trekked down to the golf course with 20 bored kids in tow.

Zooming ahead a few more years and voila we are back to the here and now. Last year when I was ‘sickish’ a friend suggested randomly that maybe going to have a hit of golf out in the fresh air and sunshine would do me a world of good and curiously at the time, I readily agreed. And so, a star was born again out there on the Par 3 golf course. My friend said I was amazing and a natural player as each time I teed off my ball would get so much lift and mostly stayed straight and on the fairway whilst hers would zig zag all over the course, find each and every hazard or sometimes fail to even leave the teeing off area. Yes, I was surely meant to be a world famous golfer.

I played a few times last year and 4 weeks ago I decided to make a habit out of it and so currently I am playing once every week. Now this is where the story saddens, this is where I let myself down, this is where reality sets in.

The way I saw myself can only be compared to the character ‘Hal’ from a movie called Shallow Hal, but in reverse. Hal was so shallow in general life all he saw was the outside appearance of people and not the inside. Whereas for me, I had waded out of the shallows and was in so far over my head in the ‘deep within me’ that I found that I was drowning in the fantasy that was my lifelong obsession with golf. All I could see was the inside of me and not the outside. I was attracted; no I was in love with the brilliance, the greatness, the awe inspiring golfer which was deep inside me busting to break free. I could not see past the vision of me as a mighty golfer. I could not imagine myself as anything other than a great and natural super star on the golf course.

In my mind, I wanted so badly to be to be a super dooper golfer that I had convinced myself that I was, in my mind. I was certain that I was such a natural player, that once I started playing golf regularly with my husband he too would be in awe of my ability and talent.

But then, the truth abruptly revealed itself to me... to my horror!

Instead of hiring my clubs the first week, my husband bought us some second hand clubs to share. He bought us right handed clubs and I am left handed, I think, aren’t I, I thought I was, maybe I’m not? I’m sure it doesn’t matter, greatness can overcome anything.

We get to the first hole and I run ahead, because naturally I will tee off first. Silence everyone, a star is about to tee off... silence please, SILENCE... a hush falls over the entire golf course as I line up my first shot.

I drop the ball down in what looks like a suitable place and pretend that I know exactly what I am doing. I place the head of the club behind the ball and adjust my hands. Then I adjust my feet a few times and wiggle my bottom, because all the best players do that, that little wiggle thingy. I look at the ball then I look to the flag way down the fairway, then back at the ball. The tension is starting to build. I am ready, let the game begin, Daisy is in the house.

I take my swing at the ball, it is a perfect swing, such power, such style, such.... erm, hang on, is that my ball, down there by my feet. I missed the ball. I totally missed the ball! But I recover quickly and yell out to my husband... ‘That was a practise swing’... phew, that was close, but now, the pressure is on. I am confused, I am almost faint, and I can’t believe I missed the ball. I take a deep breath, then go through the whole ritual again, rock from foot to foot, adjust my hands, wiggle my bottom, then swoosh another huge swing.

This time I connect with the ball but I only connect with the top of the ball and instead of it flying through the air with incredible lift and distance, it lazily rolls along the ground and comes to an embarrassing halt maybe 4 metres in front of me. I gasp with shock, I am speechless, I am confused.

My husband tells me I can take my turn again but I refuse and indignantly tell him, ‘I do NOT cheat, I HIT the ball, I have HAD my turn’. My husband shrugs, says ‘fine’ and takes his turn. Now, right about here I should tell you that he has never played golf before and never had any ambitions, or desires, or thoughts in general about golf. He is just ‘tagging along’ with me so that we can have some ‘together time’.  He is just here because this is the game I chose to play. Right, let us continue with his turn. Breathe Daisy, BREATHE.

He does no practise swing, he does no adjustments, he does no ‘wiggle’, he just hits the ball... all the way down to the other end of the fairway, on his first hit, at his first game, on his first hole. Then he apologises and shrugs his shoulders.  

I pretend that I don’t mind, I am happy for him. ‘Well done’ I say in my best pretend happy voice with my best pretend happy face as I walk the 4 metres to my ball to have my second shot. I do better with my second hit and finish that first hole with a respectable amount of hits, and to my delight it appears that my husband is very bad at putting and so far I am much better, so far.

The more holes we play, the worse I seem to get, the worse I seem to get the more upset and disillusioned I become. Until half way around the course, after yet another swing at the tee fails to make my ball soar through the sky, fly all the way to the green and place itself happily into the hole thus giving me that hole in one I have imagined myself achieving effortlessly on so many occasions previously, I can take no more and find myself throwing my golf club in utter despair and anguish over my poor inexplainable golfing game.

Those of you who know me will realise that this behaviour is out of character and I was shocking even myself at the loss of control and dignity which I was displaying during this first game of golf. My husband was lost for words as he watched me deteriorate in front of his very eyes.

I started to blame my golf clubs. Surely they were too short for me, the wrong ‘stick’ entirely, and above all else, the wrong handed. It must be the clubs as it couldn’t possibly be me, for in the words of Muhammad Ali, ‘I AM THE GREATEST’, aren’t I? Right now I am faltering, I am becoming weak, I can’t understand what is happening to my imagined superior golfing skill. I want to cry.

My putter is flat sided so I start playing left handed at every green and I find that I am able to hit just as well left or right handed. Instead of calming me, this makes me more frustrated... am I left or am I right handed, how can there be no difference, why don’t I feel more comfortable, more ‘natural’ in one stance or the other. I am thoroughly confused. I am that confused in fact that I have to ask my husband if I am playing a shot left or right handed as I have no idea which is which.

one of the water hazards with two duck families

I manage to get through that first game of golf with barely a scrap of humility left and dragged my feet as I walked back to the car licking my wounds. My husband ‘thrashed’ me by 10 points to claim MY victory. I managed to congratulate him and he promised to buy me some left handed golf clubs before our next game which we scheduled for one week from that date.

Strangely by the time I had arrived home I had forgotten the stress of that first game and told my husband how much I had enjoyed golf, what fun I had and how I was eagerly looking forward to our next game. He looked at me curiously and said ‘if you get as upset as you did today, I won’t play with you again’. Me, upset, pfft, what a bad sport he was, I thought to myself.

Bring on next week, next week would be my week to shine, I was certain of it. But next week was not my week to shine, neither was the third nor the fourth week.

The second week I played half the game left handed and half the game right handed and still I was unable to A) beat my husband and B) control my frustrations at being such a bad golfer.

The third week I decided to be left handed the whole time and my husband said if I don’t stop being so hard on myself there won’t be a fourth week. Apparently shouting at the ball is just as bad as throwing a club! I decided that I don’t like to be angry, there is no point to anger and besides, it just makes me play worse and surely I couldn’t get any worse than I already am at golf.

By last week, the fourth week, my eyes were wide open and I was shattered. It seems that my dreams of grandeur on the golf course were just that, dreams. I was no Karrie Webb, Jack Newton or Greg Norman, I was Daisy, just Daisy, I wasn’t even my father my uncle or my cousins, I was just Daisy and Daisy is barely an average player, Daisy has to work hard at golf, very hard.

Having said that, each week of playing golf my score has gotten better by a couple of points a time. Last week, week four, I was the calmest I have ever been. I guess once you submit and stop fighting, there is nothing to be passionate about and thus there is no point in throwing a club or shouting at the ball to ‘go go go go go’. My husband said it was pleasant to be around me while I was so calm and polite and that our fourth week was the best so far. He said he would be very happy to continue playing golf with me if I remained civilized as I had done that day.

Hmm...  But I am Daisy, and Daisy isn’t really truly ‘civilized’ by nature. I like to be childish and impromptu. I like to skip down the fairway after my ball or shout out ‘Nooooooooooooooooooo’ as the ball veers off course after it has left the tee. I like to bellow out ‘BOO’ when he starts his swing and laugh when HE misses the ball. I think I like golf, I think I like the drama and the raw emotion of that silly game and that awful little ball that refuses to do as I say. I haven’t landed a ball in a water hazard yet and I haven’t come across a snake in the rough yet. I think I will continue to play golf even if I am NOT a super star after all.

And... next week I think I might just try being right handed again. You never know, maybe next week I will be THE GREATEST player on earth today, or maybe I will just be Daisy. 

at just over  one metre long this tiger snake was very scary outside the golf club