Wrinkles are the tattoos we wear made with ink mixed from blood and charcoal made from the tree of life.

How often in life do you ever get a genuine second chance? I was so happy to see my Mum today – she was in fine form and told us about how she’d had a marriage proposal while she’d been in hospital.

“Marriage?”

“Yes, pft, he was a much younger man.”

“Uh, Mum, how old do you think my new Daddy might be?”

“Oh, probably in his 70s – he was a nutcase, so I told him where to go!”

Despite this, Mum seemed quited chuffed with this – I guess when you’ve got it, you’ve got it; especially when you’ve still got it at 93.

Meanwhile, Mum has finally been able to enjoy the long awaited for cup of tea. Given that just over a couple of weeks ago we were discussing funerals and such things I am amazed by the restorative powers of tea.

I asked her what was her word of advice as a result of this experience – without hesitation she said, “Don’t wait, it’s later than you think. It’s always later than you think.”

Manifesto
20. Every day say thank you.
37. Every day fight for what’s worth fighting for. Pick your battles.
49. Every day is a good day.

Apparently Mum’s had a kind of heart attack, which has given rise to the paralysis, although that’s showing signs of diminishing. There is no explanation or apology for the treatment or lack of it. I’m torn between feeling angry and want to storm the hospital (in my mind something more akin to a third world clinic) and just swimming in the warm sea of good feelings that Mum has pulled through this far.

Not everyone gets a second stab at life. Reasons to be grateful.

Manifesto
14. Every day the ordinary can be the extraordinary.
20. Every day say thank you.
37. Every day fight for what’s worth fighting for. Pick your battles.

Mum some how seems better this morning. This doesn’t make much sense, because she’s had a stroke. She somehow is hanging in – winning her war. I don’t understand why the hospital is refusing to give her any tests. Nothing makes sense. Mum is at least getting some fluid (but not the cup of tea). We leave because we can’t think of anything more to add to the situation. I feel ok – my sister from Sydney is a warrior so I’m comfortable that Mum will be protected by someone who will ask questions and wait for answers.

We drive back home – three hours spent mostly in my head – thinking of 101 questions I never asked Mum and now these questions seem like the most important questions in the world. What’s your favourite song? How did you meet Dad? Stupid questions kids ask their parents.

I stand in the shower weeping until the water runs cold.

We all got through another day.

Manifesto
26. Every day take action. Every small step counts.
37. Every day fight for what’s worth fighting for. Pick your battles.
40. Every day give things a chance to work out.

Home. It’s a core idea for everyone. What it is, what it isn’t. Where you are, and who’s there. I’m heading down Thorndon Quay for the emotional reunion with our car – a full recovery effected by the nice people at the car hospital. There’s a sunset of biblical proportions.

Really feels like the start of something great – after the last few weeks of things not working as I’d like, the world really feels like we’ve turned a corner somehow.

Welcome home, car, thanks to everyone involved – a job very well done.

Manifesto
17. Every day look through a new lens.
39. Every day trust that there is a bigger picture. You are a part of it even if you may not know what it is.
42. Every day celebrate. Who you are. What you have achieved. Things that matter to you.

My sister, Diana, and I were deep in conversation when one of her son’s, Mario, walked into the room. As an aside Diana has five sons plus a daughter and no, the daughter wasn’t number six she was number four!

It was Mario’s lunch hour so he decided to pop over to the hospital to see his mother.

Our Mario is a man of few words. He sat there smiling as his mother asked him one question after another because he wasn’t forthcoming with conversation. Reluctantly he would respond to her questions but he’d only provide enough information to satisfy his mother and no more.

After a while he muttered something very quietly. I was surprised by what I heard.

“Did you say you were getting a bravery award?” I asked.

Mario looked at me with his big eyes and his beautiful smile. His mother hadn’t heard what he’d said so she was now surprised as well.

“Yes” he replied.

After some prompting, and lots more questions, my nephew shared with us the information we wanted to know. He couldn’t understand what the big deal was and why we were making a fuss about him and his friend receiving a bravery award from the local Council. I kind of think pulling people from a car, performing CPR on one man and bringing him back to life is a pretty big deal.

According to the newspaper article this is what happened …

Adrenaline, quick-thinking and a good knowledge of CPR combined to save a man’s life after an early morning road crash at Piha.

Rescuer Bruce Simpson was bunking down at a mate’s place on Marine Pde when he heard a smash on the road outside around 2am.

The volunteer lifeguard rushed outside and found a vehicle in the creek.

The people-mover was upside down and under water when he reached it.

Bruce, 23, whipped off his shirt and jandals and dived in.

The doors were locked.

“I tried to pull them open and then kick the back window with my foot,” the Te Atatu South resident says.

“It was dark and I was right under the water.”

A passerby gave him a car jack which he used to smash the glass.

Bruce couldn’t see anything but reached inside where the car’s occupants grabbed at his hands. He managed to drag three to safety.

“They were screaming and crying, saying there’s still someone in there,” Bruce says.

“I told a guy on the bank to come in and hold my legs. I went under again but I was running out of breath.”

Bruce managed to get the fourth occupant out through a side window just as his friend, Mario Ozich from Swanson, joined him in the shoulder deep water.

“The guy was pretty much dead,” Mario says.

“We checked his airway and he wasn’t breathing. We put him up on top of the car which was the flattest place we could find to start CPR on him.”

The men were ecstatic when their patient started breathing again.

“He spewed up water and vomit but was still unconscious,” Mario, 22, says. “You could hear his breathing but it was really husky.”

The victim was lifted to the bank where an off-duty St John member took over.

The Westpac rescue helicopter arrived soon after and flew the man to Auckland Hospital in a critical condition.

Bruce received several injuries during his heroic rescue.

“I was bleeding everywhere from the cuts on my arms. I’ve got a big gash on the bottom of my foot.”

The pair are modest about their life-saving actions.

“It’s a bit surreal to think we saved people’s lives. It only kicks in when you talk about it,” Bruce says. “I’m just glad that we were there.”

Mario, who learned CPR at his construction job a year ago, knew one of the car’s passengers from his days at school.

“He Facebooked me and said how thankful he was. He also asked for Bruce’s number,” Mario says.
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The serious crash unit is investigating.

Source: Luke Parker (Friday 15 January 2010), CPR skills save a life, Western Leader, p.1

As I looked at my nephew asleep in the chair he seemed like an ordinary young man. Yet this man is far from ordinary – he did what he could to help someone in need. I’m so proud of him.

Manifesto
11. Every day do something for someone else.
14. Every day the ordinary can be the extraordinary.
28. Every day you will be tested.

My sister, Diana, and her husband, Miro, wanted me to come up to Auckland to be with them when they got the pathology results following her surgery. So much depended on these results – the type of cancer, the stage, had it spread anywhere else in her body and a host of other factors would determine what happens next as Diana tries to rid her body of the endometrial cancer she has been diagnosed with.

When I arrived at the hospital this morning we discovered that the results were not going to be available until the following week – after I had returned home! Imagine our disappointment and worst of all Diana’s waiting had to continue.

I am very close to both my sisters so being able to be there for Diana was very important to me. Only 48 hours earlier Diana had undergone major surgery. She looked so fragile as I walked into her hospital room. As always she put on a brave face and gave me the most massive smile. She is doing amazingly well physically but she is really anxious about the pathology results and this unknown is creating havoc with her mind.

As I sat with my beautiful sister I marvelled at the wonders of modern medicine and the ability of our bodies (aided by our wonderful minds and souls) to move beyond the invasive procedures performed on them and begin functioning again even when vital organs have been removed. I love how our bodies compensate for loss by utilising other organs and body parts to perform similar tasks. Slowly but surely with time things begin to function again and some semblance of normality is created. It can never be exactly as it was before – then again in many circumstances this is for the better.

As my sister showed me her wound that was held together by staples, as we went through everything that had happened and everything that had been said to her by the surgeon I couldn’t take my eyes off the white stockings she was wearing.

“I know you have to wear these to prevent blood clots, but why are there holes at the soles of your feet?” I asked.

“I have no idea,” she replied.

We started to think of possible reasons … I thought maybe to get quick access to her toes or maybe it was a manufacturing requirement or maybe  … who knows?

Later in the day we discovered it was to prevent anyone wearing the stockings from slipping when they were up and walking.

There you go – you can always learn something new even if it just a piece of trivia like this.

Manifesto
28. Every day you will be tested.
39. Every day trust that there is a bigger picture. You are a part of it even if you may not know what it is.
40. Every day give things a chance to work out.

Give me a head with hair, long beautiful hair.
Shining, gleaming, streaming, flaxen, waxen.
Give me down to there hair, shoulder length or longer
Here baby, there, momma, ev’rywhere, daddy, daddy.
Hair, hair, hair, hair, hair
Hair, hair, hair. Flow it, show it,long as God can grow it, my hair.
– Hair, The Cowsills (1969)

Hair … something that grows on top of my head. It needs to be managed and groomed. I don’t tend to think about it much, that is until it annoys me.

The fact is my hair grows like a weed. It is thick and full of bounce and in many respects it has a complete life of its own. It resists being managed and finding a hairdresser that knew what to do with it hasn’t always been easy.

I used to grow my hair long. Then one day I did the unimaginable, I had it cut to shoulder length. So began my gradual descent into the world of short hair. As far as I was concerned the shorter my hair was the better, although my love of this kind of hair style was not shared by others. Every now and again I would start growing my hair longer but it would always reach a point where it didn’t feel right and I knew it had to go.

I never much think of hair as a statement but it is. Our hair styles tell a story all of their own – of a time and place in our own lives and in history. When we look back on old photos we invariably laugh at how we look. Our hair and our clothes were different then. We may even ask ourselves, “What was I thinking?”

When I stop to think about it I realise that my hair has served me incredibly well over the years even with minimal expenditure of time and energy on my part. I’d like to stress that doing anything with my hair is not something I particular enjoy, it is merely something that I do because it needs to be done (I’m still vain and I want to look good). This attitude of mine was highlighted to me when one of my daughter’s said to me many years ago, as I was doing something with her hair, “Let’s face it mama, doing hair is not your forte. You should leave it to us, we do it better.” After initially bursting into laughter and agreeing with her a huge sense of relief overtook me. I was pleased to hand over this daily task. Ironically, I was always the mother backstage in the changing rooms putting every one’s hair into buns (hairpins, bun nets, hairspray all became my friends) before ballet performances. I’d also be strategically placing whatever accoutrement needed be on every one’s head – and make sure it stayed there for the entire performance. I would also be able to manage changing hairstyles throughout the evening. This kind of hair stuff I was good at.

When my son, Damian, was undergoing chemotherapy (as a 10 year old) he had to face the reality that he was going to lose all his beautiful blonde hair. He was told that when it grew back it would be different. Apparently it tends to grow back darker and curlier. That would have been okay only his hair never grew back apart from a few wispy bits here and there on his scalp. So from the age of 10 my son Damian has been bald.

Damian’s hair began to fall out fairly early on in his treatment regime. His party trick was to put his hand to his head and pull out chunks of hair. Everything was covered in hair during that time – in fact I was amazed as to how much hair there actually was on that tiny head. I had to use the vacuum cleaner to get rid of all the hair from his clothing and bedding before I washed it otherwise everything in the machine would become hairy.

During one visit to the hospital to have the latest chemo cocktails fed into Damian’s veins the doctor suggested to him that he do something radical with his hair before it all falls out.

“Why don’t you dye it different colours or have different shapes cut into it?” she suggested. Damian looked at her stunned and said, “Do you think I’m crazy. I’m not doing that.”

Today’s photo of the mannequin in the Adidas shop window display reminded me of all this.

Hair … we love it …  we hate it … we don’t think about it … we can change its colour, its style, its length … whatever we do with it we can usually undo it – we can shave it all off if necessary and start again … for most of us it will grow back. Whatever we do is only short lived but it says so much about us and our lives. No matter what our hair will be different tomorrow because we’re different.

As an aside, I will never forget as a young woman going to the State Opera House here in Wellington (oh, this is so going to age me) to attend the live stage performance of the musical show Hair which brought us such great songs like Let the Sunshine In, Aquarius and of course Hair itself … so this is a little trip down memory lane for me. I hope you enjoy it too.

Manifesto
12. Every day love yourself.
45. Every day you are a different person.
48. Every day there are things you can’t change. You can change the way you think about them and deal with them.

My son Damian has fought off the big ‘C’ – leukaemia, to be more specific. He was only 10 years old when this insidious disease decided to ravage his tiny body. The day of his diagnosis is still a vivid memory for me even after 16 years have gone by. Damian battled hard to rid his body of cancer. Watching him suffer was equally as difficult. I wanted to take it all away from him and I used to wish it was me lying there and not him. The only gift I could give Damian that had any real significance was my undying love and support. I was there for him every step of the way and I still am today.

Damian survived the leukaemia but unfortunately the story doesn’t end there. He continued to have all sorts of unusual health problems until some years later the doctors eventually worked out what was wrong. Sadly this new condition he was diagnosed with has no magic cure, no treatment. So little was known about the road ahead except that the long term prognosis was not good, with only a few known cases surviving into adulthood. The doctors  painted a grim picture of how this might all unfold. Damian was born with an extremely rare chromosome disorder (Nijmegen Breakage Syndrome) and our journey with him was going to lead us into uncharted territories. Once we got over the shock we got on with living. Every day is after all a fresh new day.

Damian lives a unique existence. He relies totally on us and he is unable to live on his own. Some part of his body malfunctions regularly. Our “normal” won’t be your “normal” but that is okay. Every day I treasure my son’s life and there is nothing like those moments when he puts his arms around me and tells me he loves me. He lives in his world. We live in ours. We coexsist. It works.

As you can imagine visits to the hospital to see one specialist or another are a regular occurrence. Today we had a skin specialist appointment. Damian has already had some skin cancers cut out so they are monitoring him rather vigilantly for anything that looks suspicious. I am apparently meant to check his skin regularly, as well, to see if any of the myriad of moles and other skin pigmentations he has all over his body have changed. I find this a daunting responsibility. To tell you the truth I have no idea what I’m looking for and how does one tackle asking their 26 year old son to let their mother inspect their body on a regular basis!

When the doctor asked Damian to take off his clothes so he could check his skin I stood there stunned as I watched my son peel off layer after layer of clothing. First was the padded rain jacket, followed by a thick hooded sweatshirt, then a tee shirt, followed by a long sleeved thermal top, and finally a singlet. The pile of clothes on the floor formed a miniature mountain at this stage and he still wasn’t finished disrobing. Then we discovered he had thermal long johns on under his trousers. He also had on two pairs of thick woollen socks. These are moments that make me smile inside. They are memories I always carry with me and they really help during the hard times.

When I questioned Damian as to why he had on so many layers his response was, “because it’s cold”. He looked at me over the top of his glasses as he so often does. “Didn’t you know that?” was the unspoken message.

He was right, it was cold. In fact today has been bitterly cold. I just looked up the temperature and it is only 6 degrees Celsius outside. Snow is falling in the hills not far from where we live and severe weather warnings have been issued by the Met Office. I cannot believe we are almost into October and it is like winter outside. However, inside me it is a different story. I am smiling that today went well. All is good in our world tonight. I am so happy about that. As for when spring is going to arrive I don’t know. Maybe we should name a new season – how does Sprinter sound?

Manifesto
05. Every day is now. The present moment.
25. Every day your light shines for others to see.
28. Every day you will be tested.

The response was instantaneous. The sheer joy on my son Damian’s face overwhelmed me. He was so ecstatic. This was a life changing moment for him, and for me. No picture, no video, nothing could have adequately expressed the depth of emotion in that hospital room this afternoon.  Damian’s words said it all: “I can hear!”

Since that moment that’s all I’ve heard, over and over again. I can hear. I can hear. I can hear.

I can hear … you walking, the door opening, the toilet flushing, the water coming out of the taps, an aeroplane flying overhead, the car engine, the wind, the birds, the rustling paper, clapping … sounds we hearing people take so for granted.

Then came the statement that brought me to tears – I can hear myself talking, I can hear me.

It turns out that Damian has a severe hearing loss. Today he was fitted with two blue Sumo hearing aids. He has been waiting for this day for quite some time.

As I write Lynsey and I can hear Damian in his bedroom singing. Normally all we would be hearing was the sound of his television set blaring so loud that we could hear it at the other end the house. Tonight we are all experiencing a peacefulness that we haven’t known before.

“I can hear” never sounded so good as it did today.

Be thankful if you can say “I can hear” because when you can’t the world is a very different place. I discovered things about my son today that I never knew before but always suspected. He hasn’t heard for a very long time and today was definitely a Fresh New Day for him.

Manifesto
05. Every day is now. The present moment.
14. Every day the ordinary can be the extraordinary.
30. Every day use all your senses. Touch. Smell. Taste. Hear. See.