The Fall

Out on the deck today I watched the frangipani flowers fall softly on the lawn.  Autumn is here. Usually my favourite time of the year.  But even the sun, warm on my face and the cat lounging about in the shade, the softly tinged daylight that suggests summer is finally over and it’s harsh glare gone along with it, even these things that usually waken my soul could not retrieve me from the fall.  There’s a poem I found in the “Tibetan Book of Living and Dying” about a hole in the sidewalk, it goes like this

I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost…
I am helpless.
It is not my fault.
It takes forever to find my way out.

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don’t see it.
I fall in.
I can’t believe I am in the same place.
But it isn’t my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it there.
I still fall in…It’s a habit.
My eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.
I walk down another street.

So I fell in again.  Except now I reckon I have set up a TV and the couch, made it really comfy so that I do not want to leave.  Everything is so familiar here.  The despair on the coffee table, the hopelessness in the lamplight, the apathy on the telly.  Depression is my comeback place, my default setting.

Here, I diligently swallow the medication, mechanically make my way through a routine of pulling my socks up, execute the grin and bear it, stoically stiffen that upper lip so that to the observer I appear quite together, even though it’s just foil, holding the broken bits of chocolate in place.

Here I cannot write, or create or think new thoughts.  Here, I revisit old woulds and salt them.  I nurture my sadness like a child.  Dress her up in garments of disappointment, hewn with golden threads of dead dreams.  Comb her hair gently, till it shines with melancholy.  Here I am the Baroness, at home with an empty womb, a tired heart and the endless chatter of a damaged psyche. Mistress of my desolation.

I’ve stopped waiting for someone to rescue me.  I have no expectations of salvation from within.  If only I could climb out immediately.  But I’m so at home here. So intolerably comfortable.  I wait for the monotony to irritate me enough that I’ll start the climb back up.

But until then, if you need me, bad luck, I’m here.

Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

‎”the only real failure is not to have tried at all and the true measure of success is how we cope with disappointment, it will all work out in the end…and if it doesn’t….it isn’t the end” Mrs Greenslade, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

Just home from a preview of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.  I’ve decided that I am now only ever going to watch uplifting stories about old people.  The beauty is…I feel young and they make old age look like something to look forward to.  Judy Dench particulalry makes me feel as though you can still be elegant, feminine, attractive and over 70.

Apparently you can still even have sex when you are old as well as fall in love and travel to exotic places.  You don’t need children to be happy either because, unlike in India, they won’t look after you when you are almost ready to fall off the twig.

In fact you can hop on a plane and immerse yourself in the paradoxical joy-shocks of India with it’s squalor and grandeur, vibrance and filth, poverty and grotesque opulence to finally accept yourself for all your defeats and faults as well as triumphant character.

All you need is a run down hotel, a few other seniors and Bill Nighy, who always manages to make me laugh (even when he wasn’t supposed to in Valkyrie) and you have a recipe for sheer joy.

Take me there I can’t wait.

This was the marvellous, life-affirming medicine I needed in a week that has been marked with complete and utter despair.

I’m off to India, or America or Africa or somewhere.  To find myself. To forgive myself.  To get on with just being.

Please Help

Dear Reader,

Could you copy and send this letter to your local MP and to The Hon John Rau, Attorney General SA, at agd@agd.sa.gov.au

Dear

I am writing on behalf of my friends (insert our names here).  They been approved for adoption and have been waiting for a child from China for 5 years.  At the current processing rate they will be waiting another three years and 4 months.  Added to this injustice is a new criteria that will be applied to them retrospectively, when they re register in 2013.  This new criteria will see them being deemed ineligible after waiting for so long.  This is simply cruel.

The latest UNICEF numbers for 2008 indicate that there are an estimated 132 million orphans (the 2006 estimate was 143 million).  Many of them die before reaching 5 years old, yet we are tied in bureaucratic processes that prevents two loving people who are financially secure and able to provide a good home, from providing this stable environment to a child in need.  This is a completely tragic situation and completely unjust

(insert our names here) would make wonderful parents yet their dream is about to be shattered by a new criteria agreed to by our Attorney General’s department.  This is completely unacceptable.  We ask that all potential adoptive parents be exempt from providing an official transcript of their driver’s history and instead be provided with a formal document from their transport agency that sites, where appropriate, “no serious infringements”.

You can make this happen.  You can also address the issues endemic in the whole inter-country adoption process.  We ask that you take action to redress these injustices

Your sincerely,

More Letters

More letters to MPS

The Hon. Mark Butler

Minister for Social Inclusion

Minister for Mental Health and Ageing

Minister Assisting the Prime Minister on Mental Health Reform

Australian Labor Party

House of Representatives

PO Box 6022

House of Representatives

Parliament House

Canberra

ACT 2600

Dear Mr Butler

Further to my previous letter regarding inter-country adoption, to which you have not responded, is another complication.  I have appeared on Today Tonight regarding this issue, and did not mention that you have not responded to my letter so I would appreciate you responding this time.  Attached is the letter I received from families SA.  I have also attached the letter I sent to you over a week ago and have as yet received no reply.

China has now requested the drivers history of all applicants and are applying the eligibility criteria of five or less infringements retrospectively for ALL applicants.

China has requested the drivers history of applicants before, but having been lodged under the old criteria, where it was not a requirement, we were still eligible.  China has been changing the criteria for some time.  Having been lodged under the old criteria 5 long years ago we have dodged the new criteria of “no history of cancer” and no “mental health issues”.

China is well aware that most western cultures view these issues differently and also knows it will disqualify many, many hopeful parents.  This latest criteria is cruel in that it will be applied retrospectively to all applicants.  What is most distressing is that our attorney’s general have all greed to this new criteria.

While the China adoption program remains precarious and China seems to be looking to close it down slowly, (this is my view not an official one) the Attorneys General could have voiced opposition and required a diplomat to negotiate on behalf of the prospective adoptive parent.  But, as there are only 320 of us I suppose they didn’t consider this to be many votes.

I cannot correspond directly with China as this will jeopardize my current file.  I have been regularly silenced on this issue.  Some prospective parents, especially those without violations, will in fact be angry with me for voicing any opposition as this can upset the program altogether.  Please do not mention me in any direct correspondence with China as this will be the final nail in the coffin for our dream to become parents.

China has literally tens of thousands of applications from America and these retrospective criteria are probably designed to reduce their numbers significantly.  This is small consolation for me.

What I would like to see happen is that the attorneys general allow prospective parents to submit a formal document in place of a driver’s history from their local transport authority stating “no serious infringements”.  In our culture what is deemed serious is different.

There must be some way to work around this requirement.  The Attorneys General’s offices having agreed to this ridiculous criteria need now to come up with a way to protect the hopeful couple waiting.

When I first joined the queue it was a 9 month wait.  It has been blowing out every year so that now we have been waiting 5 years and the rate they are processing it looks as though this new criteria will rule us out.

The Chinese officials do not even have to tell us if we have been deemed ineligible.  We will only find out when our batch date arises and they can tell us bad luck, you’ve waited nine years but you are no longer eligible.  The whole system is cruel.

This may not register on your radar as an important issue but it is destroying my life.  I wish to be a parent.  I am a voting constituent and I want you to be my voice in a situation where I feel powerless.  I am hoping that this time you will respond because your silence is adding to the heartbreak we are already experiencing.

Yours sincereley

TC

Deputy Premier

Attorney-General

Minister for Planning

Minister for Business Services and Consumers

Dear Mr Rau,

Attached are letters I have sent to my MP.  Having agreed to new criteria dictated by China with regard to prospective adoptive parents, I am asking that you take action on our behalf . The new criteria will devastate the hopes and dreams of many waiting prospective parents, not just myself.  This is a desperate situation.  We have been waiting for five years and at the rate China is processing we will have to submit our driver’s history when we are reviewed again in 2013.  6 years after beginning this process.  This will make us ineligible.  This is so unfair.  We have jumped through every hoop to be approved as parents, and been waiting patiently and silently for five long years.  How could the Attorneys General agree to such criteria knowing full well it will disqualify many hopeful couples.  This will destroy us.  Where are the diplomats to China? Why are they not negotiating on our behalf?  How could we agree to such ridiculous criteria?  We may be a small minority of people who you consider to be unworthy of negotiating for because our votes are so few, but this a humanitarian issue and should not have been treated as a political rubber stamp.

Please read the attached letters and respond promptly.   I am not interested in the delicate nature of negotiations with China, I am only interested in the action you will take to protect the many desperate prospective parents who are waiting in the China queue.

Thankyou

Sincerely

TC

Broken Hearted

Any of you who know us well, or even if you have read my blog you will know that we have been waiting in the China inter country adoption queue for five years. China was the only country who would accept a non-religious couple of our age. Today I received an email stating that The powers that be in China have decided to make it an eligibility criteria that all prospective parents must now prove they have had no traffic infringements in their entire driving history. Our state and territory governments have agreed to this change in eligibility criteria, knowing full well this will disqualify many hopeful couples. This means that Leon and I will be deemed ineligible in the near future. We are both heartbroken. If you feel you could, we would really appreciate you writing on our behalf to your local MPs to protest this situation. If it doesn’t help us it could help someone else. Thanks to you all. TC

See the letter we received below

Angry Wannabe Parent

Here is a letter I have emailed to Mark Butler, Mick Atkinson and Tony Abbot

Talky Chalky

 

The Hon. Mark Butler

Minister for Social Inclusion

Minister for Mental Health and Ageing

Minister Assisting the Prime Minister on Mental Health Reform

Australian Labor Party

House of Representatives

PO Box 6022

House of Representatives

Parliament House

Canberra

ACT 2600

Dear Mr Butler

I am a prospective adoptive parent in the Inter-country adoption process.  I am also historically a Labor voter.  I am also a resident in your constituency and I ask that you read about my situation with compassion and consider what action the government can take on my behalf and on behalf of other parents who are locked in this ridiculous bureaucratic nightmare.

We have been approved for adoption and have been waiting for a child from China for 5 years.  At the current processing rate we will be waiting another three years and 4 months.  In 4 years and 6 months I will be fifty.  I cannot see how the government can allow this situation to occur.  Why do we still enter into a program with China when clearly their waiting times are ridiculous and untenable?  Why do we only deal with countries who have signed the Hague convention when clearly these are not the countries with orphans who are in dire need of love and care?

The latest UNICEF numbers for 2008 indicate that there are an estimated 132 million orphans (the 2006 estimate was 143 million).  Many of them die before reaching 5 years old, yet we are tied in a bureaucratic process that prevents two loving people who are financially secure and able to provide a good home, from providing this stable environment to a child in need.  This is a completely tragic situation and completely unjust.  Deborah Lee Furness stated that Australia has an anti adoption culture and I agree.

Adoptive parents are a voting minority and consequently have no voice.  But I am a voter and I will exercise my vote for the opposition should nothing come of this letter.   Families SA has been unimpressive in this process.  I have received emails suggesting I don’t bother about complaining because it upsets people unnecessarily when they can’t do anything about the situation.  In other words we have been asked to remain silent while we are institutionally abused.  The situation is not bearable, Families SA should just “suck it up” and listen to the justifiable anger of prospective parents.

I have had to deal with a revolving door of social workers.  I have listened to them blame China and Mick Atkinson.  I have attended workshops where the facilitator could not even spell the words that were being brainstormed and he was a senior social worker, who then said he was a product of his education, by way of apology.  The same social worker expressed disappointment (and I quote) that there was “not more robust discussion in the group”.  Even though these were the same people who were to interview us for hours on end to make judgments about how fit we were as parents.  Did he really think he’d be challenged in a situation where the power relationships were so obviously biased?

I have inquired into foster care and Anglicare told me I was too old to foster babies and that if I wanted to foster older children I would have to make sure there were no renovations going on in my home because that would be disruptive???  They then told me that this was not their restriction, but that laid out by Families SA.  But having Guardian of the Minister children languish in homes with a round the clock revolving door of carers is preferable???  I know this occurs because I have witnessed it first hand with a 6 year old at the school where I teach, for whom they are unable to find foster parents.

I have complained before.  I received a letter from Mick Atkinson’s bureaucrats stating in verbose and inarticulate correspondence that, once I digested it, I was able to condense to “we can’t do anything about it, it’s China’s fault, sorry you’re frustrated but bad luck.”  I have worked in the public service and I am well aware of the pachyderm-like machinations of large bureaucracies but this is a ridiculous, cruelly abusive situation.

I would like to know, where is the voice of the prospective adoptive parent?  Why is Australia allowed to show such desperate cowardice in the face of millions of orphans who could be saved by the wealth and opportunity afforded us in such a country as ours.

I completely abhor child trafficking and am well aware of the risks programs encounter. I am also completely and utterly convinced that children ought to be brought up in a culturally sensitive context and most preferably by their biological parents and in their country of origin. But this ideal situation exists in the mind of fantasists.  The orphan crisis is abhorrent, but it is real and needs addressing.  Of course ideally we need to fix the problems at their source.   We have international responsibilities and moral obligations to support our neighbors and countries who have growing poverty and desperate situations.  Why is adoption excluded from strategies to counter the orphan crisis and why do aid options not provide for the desperately poor, war ravaged places where children regularly die unnecessarily.

This situation must end now.  I, and my husband, would be wonderful parents.  Isn’t Labor about working families?  When this process was managed by private industry, waiting times were 9 months.  Now that it has been taken over by a government bureaucracy I am looking at 9 years waiting.  How can this be a reality?  How can this incompetence be allowed to continue?  Why is the ALP doing nothing about this situation?  I realize this is a busy time where you are deciding who should run the country, but I believe this situation to be as important as the Prime Ministership and would appreciate it if you would please let me know what action you (not one of your employees to whom this letter will reach, placed in a numbered file requiring a satisfactorily vague and non-implicating response) but you, what action will YOU be taking as a result of this letter.

Thankyou.

Yours sincerely

Talky Chalky

Family.

One of the wonderful things about extended family is how normal they make you feel.  I’ve always felt somewhat resentful that my family emigrated to Australia and left an extended network of family behind.  Recently a cousin came to visit and it was wonderful to compare similarities, personality traits we can now attribute to genetics instead of feeling guilty about them.

Like me she still feels regret about things she did ten years ago.  Simple things like forgetting to say thank you in a note to a relative or not saying what was on her mind at a particular time.  We both cannot be silent in the face of racism or sexism and our politics are on the left as is most of that side of the family.  Yet I have been away from their influence since I was nine years old.  When we speak up, we talk from emotion which gets us into to trouble because it sounds irrational. Even as words are pouring out we know they are coming from the felt meaning of things rather than an objective, scientifically reasoned point of view.  So we have to take a deep breath and really search for that objective perspective which we know exists if our hearts  would only just stop pounding and loudly drowning out our reasoned arguments.  Like me we were both annoyed by our emotional selves but have come to accept it as part of our identity.  That which makes us compassionate and full of empathy, also reduces us to tears just when we need to be stoic.

Its so comforting to see I am not alone.  Because while I love my home and the man with whom I share it, the sandy beaches, the hot weather and all the comforts I have because we moved to a big brown land full of opportunity, family was a cost that I wonder was far too great.

While I can still remember the snow and feeling so cold my hands and feet were numb.  Walking carefully on iced over pavements so as not to slip and break something. The brutal winters where it would be darkening as you were leaving school at 4 o’clock.  The summers that would last a few days and then disappear forever into a miserable, rainy grey.  I also remember once, when we ran outside at Christmas to see the snow fall, it looked like walking through falling archways of gold as the snow was illuminated by the street lamps.  I can remember lazy sundays with cousins and grandparents after the roast lunch had been consumed and everyone sat around the fire to chat or watch tv.  Are these the romanticised memories of a nine year old or a deeper longing for family.

Now I find myself alone on most Sundays, just me, the husband and the cat which is enough most of the time.  But I long for family, and, with one set of parents at each end of the suburbs and each with a new set of families to contend with, I find myself often alone.  If we had children we probably would have an extended network of other families with kids, but the childless couple are not an easy fit.  And while we wait endlessly for the day we may be able to parent, its such a lonely road.

So seeing a cousin from back in England has left me with a longing for family. People you can call your own, without question.  People who will not disappear because you’ve said the wrong thing but will stubbornly reappear and argue with you again at the next family gathering! People who share your blood so you can sagely nod when they reveal a misdemeanour, a personality quirk, a feeling, a silly mistake because you have done exactly the same thing at some stage.   As I did when my cousin talked of conflicts with friends and coworkers, or laughed about an over reaction.

When we skyped a great Aunt and we laughed as we both held our indignant cats up to the camera, I realised how similar we were.  She without children, with a love of cats, with an intolerance for too long in the company of strange others.  But she has always regretted not having children.  But even if her family were scattered, like mine from one end of the country to the other, in her part of the world they are never really far away.  Here, huge deserted swathes of land and ocean separate us.  I think I understand the tyranny of distance for the first time.

Now that my sister is dead I can no longer ring and tell her how I feel.  I can no longer discuss what it is to be part of our family.  Can’t laugh with her over our foolishness, can’t compare petty jealousies, cannot nurture her child because he is so far away and lacking the kind of connection to family that mothers ensure.  That kind of distance is intolerable.

I spent my twenties trying to escape my family and now it’ s odd that what used to embarrass me and make me want to sever the bloodlines that bind us now make me smile, make me feel content to be part of something bigger albeit imperfect.  Whatever will we do when a child from another country comes into our lives and we adopt them to satisfy our need to nurture another human being?  We will have taken them away from family and their bloodlines.   I hope we can make up for that. I worry whether we will we be too old and not around when they need us most. Will we be able later, to offer reconnection? Will the rest of our clan be adopted too? Will we be good for that child and will that child whisper away our loneliness with the promise of family?     Is that selfish?  Yes it is.

Will we do it anyway?