Lack of communication

Now the funny thing about travel in the modern world (compared to when I travelled some twenty-five years ago) is the availability of email. When I went away it was a few addresses on your itinerary where you would hopefully wait for mail (and get it if you were lucky), or otherwise a post restante address. I do remember searching the V to W box at The Walkabout Club in London on the hunt for mail, and missing opportunities because my Dutch aunt wrote my name in such a way that my post was filed under D rather than V, and I only found my letters accidentally several months later when looking for mail for a friend of mine.

I wouldn't necessarily have expected any communications between Princess Sleepyhead and home because she's not that computer savvy and hardly ever uses email at home. But when we did have a few communications and knew that whenever she was going to be in Hanoi (which they're using as a home base) that she would have access, I became more hopeful. Only they've been told not to communicate, not to tell us anything about what they're doing until they're back.

Now, I understand this directive. The world can, at times now, seem too small a place, and not having communications adds to that sense of isolation, that sense of distance, of being in the wilderness, if you will, of being independent. But someone I teach with also has a daughter on one of these expeditions, and her daughter has been told the same things, but is emailing regardless. Oh, if only mine were as rebellious. Not often I'm wishing that from her.

I ought to have known. A few years ago, we were in Sydney and running late for a lunch appointment, prior to seeing Fiddler on the roof. So, there was my brother, crossing a deserted road on a red light, and me and his wife following, and PS standing resolutely on the kerb, unwilling to budge from it until the little man turned green. Neither my brother's entreaties nor his threats could make her move, and he was pulling his hair out with frustration. I had to admit is was funny to see him lose his temper, but even funnier to see her unmoved by it.

I should be glad she is not easy to persuade to break rules -- after all, ADD kids have a high rate of unwanted teenage pregnancy, and for many years this was The Gadget Man's fear for her. Now I see she is too much cast in my mould: too reserved and risk-averse (though she hasn't been risk-averse in physical situations that may have benefitted her to have been risk-averse -- but so far she has been lucky). So I shouldn't be cranky about not hearing. I really shouldn't. But I am. Well, not so much cranky, as frustrated. Just like my brother, really. 

Astronomy

How cool is this? Tonight (yesterday as I write this) we had a sliver (crescent) moon and two planets in close proximity: Venus and Jupiter, giving the appearance of a smiley face in the sky. Here's some photos I took on my new camera -- without a tripod. I do have a very old and slightly wonky tripod somewhere, but I'm not sure where it was. Image stabilisation helped me handhold (with the help of a post) with a 1.6 second shutter speed. These aren't perfect shots by any means but for handheld, they're pretty amazing. So we have the regular shot showing the smiley face, the close up, where you can see the moon's disc (and a ghost of it -- some kind of interference), and then one with a reflection, though it's too dark to see the water.

Having heard . . .

Surprisingly, we've had a few emails from her -- she's arrived safely, she's lost her journal (what? I spent hours on that, gluing in her itinerary on separate days, writing little notes from home, writing out addresses etc), she's bought a lot of DVDs. Silly girl. I told her not to buy anything until she's back from her two treks. Now she'll have to carry them!

We're all missing her -- even Sir Talkalot, which is the greatest surprise. I knew I'd miss her. I expected it. The Gadget Man's been reduced to rumblings about where she is, and consulting her itinerary every five minutes. All right, all right, that's an exaggeration! But he looks at the map at least twice every day.

We had her Opa's birthday, and put out a photo of her to represent the missing one -- because that's the one thing she said she was sorry to be missing. My, the bond those two share -- it's touching, but will be scary the day something happens to him. She's so devoted to him -- always has been. I still remember when she did have that febrile convulsion, and woke from unconsciousness crying, not "Mum, Mum", but "Opa, Opa". Yes, that made me feel really good! Made him pretty happy though.

And so we go on with our relatively uneventful lives, which seem that little bit less chaotic than usual, but quieter, more melancholic, and not at all living vicariously through all that she is doing. (Only because we don't exactly know!)

Good morning, Vietnam!

She's gone. After all that planning and all that scrimping and saving to get the funds together, after the school's concern that she's not punctual enough, and all the medical clearances (because of her scoliosis, her ADD, her allergy to bandaids, the fact that she had a febrile convulsion at age two, and one other thing that I can't currently remember) we've had to get, she's finally gone.

She stood in the car park, loaded up with pack and daypack, and I don't know who was more nervous: her or me. But I didn't let her know that I had anything but the utmost faith in her going on this journey. My mother said that she wouldn't have let me go at PS's age. And she's not very mature for her age -- but then neither was I. I did a lot of growing up on my travels (but then I was 24!).

This expedition will try her, and there will be times when, no doubt, she will be lonely, homesick, and wishing she had never gone. But there will be times that will exhilarate her. Times that will challenge her and make her grow. Times when she has never felt more alive.

Am I nervous about her going? You bet -- and if anything goes wrong then I'll never forgive myself. But neither would I forgive myself if I held her back. Two days I gave her the most precious gift a mother can ever give: I gave her the world.

Our day in the mountains

Here's a typical day in our chaotic life:

(i) Drive Princess Sleepyhead to choir rehearsals for a concert she's not going to attend because she's going to be overseas. The drive is 3/4 hour each way, and we should, of course, for good measure take a wrong turn and not have the Melways with us!

(ii) Many hours later, pick PS up from the rehearsal and cajole her into going on a trek up in the mountains (even though it's late) as training for her real trek that's happening in far too short a time.

(iii) When we (all four of us) arrive at the mountain, have PS refuse to go on the walk.

(iv) Let The Gadget Man and Sir Talkalot go, but before driving to the top to meet them (because it is, by this time, very late), decide it is silly for us to sit in the car for an hour or so when the whole purpose of the exercise is for PS to do it.

(v) Send PS up after them to tell them to come back.

(vi) Find a car park (no mean feat) and sit at the bottom for half an hour, and realise that PS isn't coming back.

(vii) Presume she must've caught them up and been convinced to go on, so drive up to the top, and find the boys already there (even though The Gadget Man has said it's a 1 1/2 hr walk up).

(viii) Ask where PS is and realise, with horror, that they haven't seen her.

(ix) Find out there are two separate tracks up, so let the boys take one each down, and meanwhile drive back down to the bottom and find another car park.

(x) Find within five minutes of arriving that TGM, on the steep path, has run all the way down. No sign of PS.

(xi) Start worrying in earnest. But not panicking yet. She might still be on the main path. She must be, right?

(xii) Realise there is a third track going off sideways. Let TGM, who grew up in the area, take that.

(xiii) Wait. No PS. No Sir Talkalot.

(xiv) Finally, spot PS coming from behind me and find she'd gone up partway, couldn't find them so decided to come back. Then she couldn't see the car and was cross with me because I hadn't waited, but noticed a whole chain of car parks, so went off investigating those, in case I was in one.

(xv) Wait for the boys.

(xvi) See ST arrive, and then realise his hand is streaming blood. He'd been coming down with his hand on the railing, and there was a protruding twig that went through the webbing between his thumb and hand.

(xvii) Wait for TGM.

(xviii) When TGM finally arrives, call in briefly at his dad's and clean up ST's hand.

(xix) Drive an hour to our local hospital, so they can glue his hand up and tell him he's not to stretch it for a week. He has a piano exam next Saturday, which he isn't ready for, and the doctor absolutely forbids him from practising, so now I'll have to let the teacher know.

Just another typical day in the suburbs really.

Schools: part 2: the high school saga

Choosing the right high school for your kid is hard. When they're in about grade 3 or 4, you start making the rounds at the various Open Days and thinking about what's best. Do you want the school with top VCE marks? (That might seem a no-brainer, but it's really not.) What about the one with that's strong on PE? Or has a fantastic performing arts studio? It's hard -- and it's very much horses for courses.

I went to a co-ed high school (state school), and I always insisted my kids would go to co-ed schools. I wouldn't even consider a single-sex school, regardless of statistics of whether girls got better education in single-sex environments, and that was largely because I don't see school as a place that is purely about education but rather social conditioning as well. (And I can see evidence from when my left-wing brother did a business-type course and came out at the end right-wing.)

What I was after for Princess Sleepyhead was good pastoral care -- she was a kid who was always going to benefit from a bit more care. A friend recommended a Christian college -- said it was the most caring school she had ever taught at, if we could stomach the religion, which she said she couldn't. Couldn't be that bad, I thought. Till I saw the prospectus. Every subject was centred around God. PE is where students celebrate their God-given gifts of athleticism and suppleness; art is where they worship God through drawings and paintings. Hmmm. A bit full-on. And then the history room with the timeline that told that the world only started a few thousand years ago. Hmmm.

I don't have a problem with a school that teaches creationism if they do it in the RE classes, but this school was teaching it in Science. I do have a problem with that. (Especially when they tell you there's no proof for either theory. I know what the more evangelical Christians say about the fossil records, but still...)

"You do teach evolution as well?" I asked, knowing they had to say yes.

"Yes, because if our students go on to university they need to know what they have to argue against."

That was the final straw. No, really, I think I was just pursuing the argument; the timeline had really been too much.

On the plus side, I had been very impressed when the principal, in his talk, spoke with pride about the child who had just failed VCE but who had far exceeded everyone's expectations. (It was a student with a learning disability.)

It's very easy to be bamboozled by schools with great scores, but you do have to bear in mind two things:
(i) that such schools often preclude students who are not doing well from sitting for VCE (and if they're private schools, there's the added indignity that they've accepted money for the right to educate your child for so long and then are prepared to ditch them because they may not reflect well on the school's results record)
(ii) the selective schools get good results because they start with the cream -- this is not to say that such students won't thrive among like-minded, dedicated people, just that you have to expect that the results will be better anyway.

PS has never been a particularly academic student. She was not going to thrive in a school where all the emphasis was on academic achievement. We looked at schools that seemed more proud of the architecture of their new science wing, than of the attitude or dedication of their teachers. We looked at schools that impressed us in their variety of subjects but which we didn't think she'd cope well with. In the end, we settled on a Catholic school with excellent pastoral care, somewhat surprising because we're not Catholic. This school has a mandatory RE program, but with a much more moderate view than the other school we looked at. I don't have a problem with a school that teaches all about a whole lot of different religions: Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism etc rather than trying to brainwash kids into any particular ideology. This school is also single-sex, but I know this was absolutely the best thing for PS (even if she didn't think so herself). As I said, horses for courses. Of course, the worst thing about a single-sex school for the parent with a girl and a boy is that when it's time to place the second-child you have to get back on the Open Day merry-go-round and start all over again.

Schools: part 1, the primary school saga

When I was a kid, our parents (most people's parents) sent us to the nearest state school, and that was it. No hard decisions. Nothing. I do remember, when I finished primary school, wanting to go to a private school because one of my friends was going there, and my mother just dismissed the idea out of hand. "We can't afford it," she said, and that was that. Then, when I was in year 10, she said, "You know, if you still want to go to that private school, we could probably send you next year."

Hmm. Trouble was that by then I was firmly ensconced in my friendship group. I said, "If you send me to another school, I'll drop out." And I meant it.

When the Gadget Man and I first married, we chose to build in a new area, and one of the first things we made sure of was that we were going to be near a public school. It wasn't built yet, but it was scheduled to go up, and would be walking distance when we finally had kids. Beautiful. Only then came a change of government, and the school, slated to soon begin, was put off, and there were talks of the block being carved up for housing. We were horrified.

In the end, the school did open a year before we needed it, and all was good. I remember walking around with three friends and our small children, thinking, it looks so small. And one of the other mothers said, "It looks so huge." Perhaps it was just my perspective. Nope. By the time Princess Sleepyhead was in Grade 3, they had run out of classrooms, and weren't able to acquire any portables but got the go-ahead to build. Great. All would be well.

Trouble was, by the time she started Grade 4, the building, which was supposed to be nearly finished, had only just started. The principal's letter told us it would be finished by the end of first term. We looked around and thought, nup. No way.

In the meantime, short of classrooms, they had bundled three Grade 4 classes into two rooms, taking out the divider in between, which meant there were around eighty kids and three teachers all together. Now, for a kid with ADD who was struggling to stay up this was going to be a disaster.

On the Thursday of that first week of school, I went and spoke to her teacher and asked when he expected the buildings to be ready. Really ready.

Not before half year.

Right. That was a no-go solution for us. Half year was best-case scenario. (As it was, they weren't ready till the beginning of fourth term.) The next morning, with our hearts in our mouths, we rang the new school that had opened up in the next estate. They could see us straightaway. It was a forty degree day, with a fierce north wind. The school, without any lawns yet in place, was like a dustbowl.

Class size at the new school was currently twelve. What? Wow. (Within a few weeks it had hit the twenties.) Perfect for an ADD kid. We said we'd give her a week to get used to the idea, and the principal assured us we were much better to move her straightaway, before she formed new friendship groups. "Start her on Monday," he said. What? Things were moving fast. Way too fast.

So we drove back to the other school to make an appointment to see the principal. She could see us straightaway, they told us. Hearts in our mouths, we told her of her decision. "You should take her out of class to go and see the new school," she said, "to get her used to the idea." Now? Now.

So we fronted up to her classroom. Poor kid had no idea what we were thinking and thought she was in trouble. We had no appointment to take her to the other school, but fronted up in all the heat and dust with this dazed kid who must have thought we were taking her to the school from hell. Ah, well, I thought, it will be a new start for her. Only one of the kids, when she was introduced to the class told the class who PS was, and that she had ADD. Great. (That same kid went on to bully her at high school.)

We were very happy that first year with our decision. This school had a much firmer hand on bullying than her last, where she had had her finger broken. The new teacher was terrific, even if we didn't see eye-to-eye on phonics.

At about this time, one of my students and I were comparing notes. Her daughter, also in Grade 4, was at a Steiner school. The previous year she had been telling me how wonderful it was -- all about the great things the kids were learning, and I was jealous. But this year, she was more bitter. "Oh, yes," she said, "my daughter can tell you all about Greek mythology, who this god is and who that one is -- she knows more about it than I do -- but she can't read or write."

My daughter had also been in an at-risk literacy class. "What, not at all?" I said, surprised, and thinking she meant not read and write well.

"Not at all," she said. "We're about to move her to a state school." And here I had been wondering if that might have been a good solution for PS. All children are different and have different needs, and some systems work better for some children than they do for others.

By the time PS was in Grade 6, we were moving suburbs. We didn't want to interrupt her final year, so left her at her new school. Her brother was only in Grade 4 and still at the old school, which we were less and less enchanted with. The decision to move him to our new local school was easy, only he refused to go. Of course, parents get the last say in such things, and we did move him, but not without angst. And he went from being the top of his grade to the bottom of his new grade, which said a lot about how far ahead they were at the new school. The new school put both other schools to shame. It had a fabulous arts program, a fabulous performing arts program, a fabulous sports program, and the most committed teachers I'd ever met. At the first school, all I'd ever heard from parents was grumbling; at the second school, I'd heard a mixture of grumbling and praise; but at this school all I ever heard was parents raving about what a great school it was. I felt like I was in a position to make a judgment (naively or not) because I'd experienced three schools, but these people didn't need convincing about how lucky they were. They knew it.

Sir Talkalot went off to school on Day 1 unwilling and unhappy. He came home that day loving his school, and was soon saying how much better it was than his old school. He never looked back, but when we say how PS struggled in her early years at high school, and how ST's school ran a transition program, we wondered how it might have been for her if she'd gone to that school for a while, if they'd both gone there all along. Better, I suspect, but we can only make the best decisions we can make at the time.