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Monday 11 May 2015

tui

The tui is back. He's been gone for a little while, but just now I heard his liquid song for the first time in a couple of weeks. I'm glad he's here.

Prince Harry is touring New Zealand, watching rugby and visiting Stewart Island, the site of our last whole family holiday at Christmas 2013. I'm so glad we went on that trip. I enjoyed it at the time (my god, the number of tui we saw there!) and I'm even happier we went now. There's a new poignance to the memory of the walk just Dad and I took to the far edge of Half Moon Bay, where we climbed up a rock and watched the waves of Foveaux Straight demolish themselves over and over and over again. 

I went home on Thursday afternoon and returned again this morning. The trip home was nice (I love my husband & my cats, of course) but I was on edge the whole time. We were at a christening yesterday and there was discussion of the death of an elderly relative of the baby -- I couldn't bear the platitudes, even though I know that for her relatives in those circumstances all the platitudes were helpful and probably based in truth.   I thought of my father, sitting in his room, articulating as best he could to the doctor that he wouldn't let his cattle be treated this way.

P spoke to his mother last night for Mother's Day. She lives in the northern hemisphere, so hasn't necessarily been privy to the detail of what's happening with my family. She asked after Dad and as I heard P underplay the situation a little I filled with rage. Absolutely impotent -- there's no benefit in being as bald as I would like about it (he's dying, it's shit, there's fuck all we can do would hurt P's mother unnecessarily when we can just say that it's not looking good) and P had no idea how I felt. I've stopped wanting people to ask how I am because I cry and I don't want to. I've stopped wanting people to ask how he is because I find I can only spill the unvarnished truth or else risk feeling like a fraud, I suppose. 

More backwards and forwards over the next two weeks. I'm going to need a travel dispensation from my midwife when I see her on Thursday as I'm starting to get looked at with raised eyebrows on the plane. My back aches from time to time and the baby is very active now.  I have woken with leaks from both breasts. Eight and a half weeks until my due date, less than six until term.  I'm struggling to picture life beyond next week and I'm tamping down (ha, tightly compressing more like) worries about what happens when the baby arrives.  

In the interim, I take pleasure from the tui's song.

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