Cancer and Quilts

Just before Christmas 2014 one of my sisters was diagnosed with liver cancer.  On Instagram I had seen the Moda Modern Building Blocks quilt and had ordered a kit as soon as it became available.   I'd never done that before - never made a quilt from a pattern or with a specific set of fabrics, but this one appealed to me so much, just as it was and I couldn't imagine my own combination of fabrics could ever be as joyous and delightful as the ones it was designed with.
Between Christmas and early January we had some very anxious days waiting for my sister to undergo surgery.  Scans had shown a large tumour on her liver and a second smaller 'something' also on the liver.  Biopsy of the second 'something' was impossible due to its location.  So the plan was this - she wold go into surgery.  the surgeon would examine and biopsy the smaller 'something'. If it was cancer, he would close her up and proceed no further, because that would mean that the cancer had already spread.  'Treatment' at that point, would be palliative only.  If, however, the 'something' was nothing - benign, an artefact, whatever, he would remove about a third of her liver in a  very major operation and she would then commence six months of chemotherapy.
Because it was Christmas the surgeon and various members of his preferred team were on leave and we had to wait till early January for them to assemble and undertake the procedure.
Primary liver cancer is very rare, and googling 'liver cancer' is not encouraging.  The prognosis is generally poor.  A young colleague of mine, mother of two, had died the previous year from this exact same cancer.  I was not feeling optimistic.
While we waited for the surgery date to arrive, I worked on this quilt and listened to 'Serial', the podcast.  I didn't say to myself that I was making the quilt for her.  I knew that this quilt would take me a very long time and, if the first of the possible scenarios developed, she would not have a long time.  But in the back of my mind I thought to myself what a lovely life affirming quilt this was, and, if life was affirmed, what a nice gift it might make.
My sister went into hospital for the operation and we were in the bizarre position of hoping that the surgery would take a very long time and not a very short time.
And indeed, the second 'tumour' was benign and the operation was a success.
The first few blocks of this quilt are huge.  Early progress is easy - after about half a dozen blocks, the quilt, in size at least, in about half done.  Then come all the tiny fiddly blocks.
Chemo, they say, has a cumulative effect.  At first it seems not too bad, but each session takes a greater and greater toll.
As the months of chemo wore on for my sister, I worked on this quilt.  The blocks were very difficult for me - lacking the sort of precision and attention to detail necessary for such a project.  The cutting was also incredibly time consuming - lots of very odd measurements 5 and 3/8ths of an inch by 3 and 5/12ths of an inch = things like that.  I had to make cardboard templates for the pieces and none of the pieces was exactly the same as any of the other pieces.  Endlessly frustrating.
My blocks are skewiff, there is not a single perfect point in this quilt and all seams are wonky.  But I totally love it.
Mid year my sister finished chemo and I finished the quilt top.  It took another few months for her to recover her stamina and for the fatigue to lift.  It took another few months for me to get around to basting and quilting this thing.  It's the first queen sized quilt I've ever done and I wasn't sure how I'd go on my home machine, but it worked fine.  Given the complexity of the pattern and the riot of colours, I just went with straight line quilting and I think it looks right.

At Christmas my sister was pronounced 'cancer free'.  I gave her the quilt.

Christmas prep

Just a few snaps for me to remember Christmas 2015- before it's Christmas 2016.  For the firs time in 12 years all my siblings were together, with all the grandchildren.  We had the usual cracker-making and gingerbread decorating and letters to Santa by candlelight, as well as some new decorations (including a Terada Christmas scene I bought in Tokyo in January and painstakingly assembled) and the roll of toilet paper contributed by Basil. Basil has become such a recidivist chewer of toilet paper that we have had to remove the toilet roll holder and put it out of reach. Annoying.

Rottnest Island

things I loved about Rottnest Island :

• no cars - the kids could safely ride everywhere.
• the kids rode everywhere - on their own, with their cousins, in smaller packs.  Even Lily.
• no one owns Rottnest - everyone is staying in similar fairly basic accommodation, no one has more of a claim on the island than anyone else, no matter how rich or poor they might be.  It lends a very egalitarian air to the place.
• the beaches are unbelievable.  Really unbelievable.  I'm reminded again why it is really never worthwhile travelling overseas for a beach holiday  -unless you are going for super cheap massages and hair braiding, rather than the actual beaches.  The water was perfectly clear and so clean, the sand so fine and white, the scenery so spectacular and everywhere we went it just seemed to get better.
• my (extended) family.  We went with my brother and his 4 boys and his amazing wife, Jodi, a local Perth girl who has been going to Rottnest annually since she was a kid.  Jodi is the sort of person who effortlessly plans a week's worth of meals and snacks for 12 people and thinks to pack a decent knife and a cleaning mitt.
• the weather - perfect 23-25 degree days and cool evenings.
• walking through the salt lakes, to the lighthouse, down to remote beaches where there was not a soul in sight, listening to podcasts and getting my steps up all in one fell swoop.
• lino floors. The accommodation is basic and the fact that half the beach was brought inside each day mattered not a damn, when the floors are lino, everyone is wearing sandals and there is  broom that can be used every so often.
• Lily and Jack making sand balls for hours.
• the endless hunts up trees, in water, and in dunes, for the frisbee.
• our proximity to the beach.
• the way my 14 year old nephew spent hours fishing, rigged up some PVC piping to his bike so he could carry his rods, then filleted and cooked his catch for lunch.
• the little baby quokkas in their mothers' pouches.  Less appealing was the way they went through your bag at the pub looking for food.

Such a great holiday.

Canvas

by Ruby

by Grace

by Nina

by Lily

Over the Easter break Kim got the girls to do a painting on canvas.  Thank god for Kim.  Once I was that mother who got the paints out more or less daily, made playdough weekly, did endless craft projects with the kids, sat them on my knee letting them guide the fabric through the sewing machine, displayed their work in an endless rotation on walls and on this blog.  And I didn't do it out of matyrdom or because I thought I should. I really liked that stuff.  I loved nothing more than hauling all the craft stuff onto the kitchen table and getting all the kids involved in some messy project.  It was my number one way to pass an afternoon.  When other kids came for plays it wasn't unheard of to sew bags or make potato prints, or stick bits of pasta onto cardboard and paint them.

Now it seems all my kid-crafting mojo has left me.  After more than a decade of parenting I just cant be bothered.  Painting seems like a lot of mess and hassle, and then what do we do with the finished products?  The art work on the walls has remained unchanged all year.  The idea of sorting through it fills me with ennui.

Maybe that is just the way it is - we are moving onto a new stage and lingering in the last one isn't so interesting (for me).  Unfair on Lil, who is forced to listen to chapter books when I'm sure the others still got picture books every night at her age, and who doesn't even get to watch half the favourite movies of the others because they've all grown out of them.  Movie nights on the whole are more difficult now - the tastes of a 12 year old and a 5 year old rarely intersect.  Do we just abandon the idea of a family movie and run it over two nights instead - little kids and big kids? I dunno.

I think I peaked too early, went too hard, too fast and left nothing in reserve.  

Easter Break 2015

My camera  - my proper digital SLR camera broke some time ago. I can't even remember when - was it before Christmas?  Actually it didn't break, I dropped it and after that I kept getting an error message.  Google tells me that this is a common problem with this camera and its a relatively easy fix.  I just need to drop it into a camera repair shop but months have passed - maybe even a year - and I haven't done that.  As a result, the only photos I take are on my phone, and I rarely get around to downloading them onto the computer.  So when I do occasionally decide to blog, I use the phone blogger app to put in the photos and then, at some point when I remember, I'll write the content on the actual computer, because I've got to the age where I now have to put my glasses on top of my head to use the keyboard on my phone.

The point of this rather lengthy introduction is to explain why, at the beginning nearly of June, I am writing about Easter.  I actually did put these photos into a post but they didn't upload and next time I visited the blog on the computer, there were no draft posts waiting and it wasn't until I bothered to go back to check the phone that I realised.

Because this blog has become an intermittent sort of journal for me, I feel an obligation to jot down, occasionally, what goes on.  Truthfully, at least part of this is pure guilt that my older girls will have a significant amount of their art work and odds and ends about their interests and lives recorded and, unless I make at least the occasional effort, Lil will have next to none....

So we went to Little Sheoak for Easter - Gracie and Lil wanted to take their old fashioned dresses, and though it was entirely impractical and they were bound to get muddy and dusty I let them, as I knew exactly that they wanted to prance around in the bushes and play orphans and other romantic games wearing them.  I didn't regret it.

We usually see koalas there and I'm always especially keen to show off 'our' koalas to visitng friends It still gives me a thrill to suddenly spy one in the crook of a treee.  Well friends did come and we saw 4 koalas!  It was nearly becoming old - oh there's another one. And another one.  I'm always so happy, though.

The insane kookaburra that dive bombs the windows came back after the first couple of days and this time we had our old dog Winnie with us, who, in her aged confusion, could not figure out how to get back in through the very door she had just exited, and instead would walk round and round the house, whining at the windows.

On Easter sunday we did the Otway Fly zipline.  It was a  considerably longer drive than we had expected, through the very windy Otway roads, with children who tend towards caresickness and some of whom had eaten way too many easter eggs.  Not naming names but let's just say I was very glad to have an old plastic bag handy.

Gracie and Lil spent hours drawing a zoo and then creating animal enclosures out of cushions and blankets and things.

Nina read the Diary of Anne Frank.  I can't even remember what I was reading then, but I just finished A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler (oh how I love Anne Tyler) and My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrente which I also loved.

Autumn started slowly, then, just as the leaves turned, we had a hugely windy wet couple of days and they were gone, at least from our vine. It was a bit of a pity, they normally hang round prettily for a few weeks at least.

In other news I moved offices - just to the other side of the floor, but it means I look out west, over the big ferris wheel that is finally up and running in docklands.  Each day the city turns on something new for me  - lots of gorgeous sunsets, sometimes impressive storm fronts, and now that it is getting dark before I leave, the light show on the ferris wheel.  I find myself taking an insane number of photos of the view from my office, most of which look a bit crap.  Also my office window badly needs cleaning. There are these big pylon things in the distance behind the wheel which move about all the time.  I have no idea what they are  - I guess something to do with the docks?  But it's quite a lovely view. I've always been a bit partial to the industrial aesthetic.  For many years Craig and I lived across from the flour mill in North Melbourne that operated 24/7 (except for good Friday - we had so tuned out the constant humming that its absence seemed suddenly eerie).  I liked looking across at the big silos, with the sunset as a backdrop.