Serenade for a Small Family Read online

my enormous decision. ‘It’s cool, Inky,’ she said, handing

  me a wedge of steaming homemade pizza. ‘It’s cool.’

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  The next morning, I sat on the edge of my bed and

  looked at my shaking hands as I faced the great big hole

  left by the band, and my new and scary empty world. I

  signed up for a uni degree and set out with uncertain steps.

  Starting all over.

  Leaving the band when I did was a good decision, but

  ‘starting all over’ was beginning to feel like my mantra.

  I was on the move again—in search of that elusive place

  where I would feel big enough.

  15 December 2005

  To our dear Family and Friends,

  Today Leo and Jordan are one week old. Overal , we are

  told they are doing well. They need help with a lot of

  things—breathing, eating, growth and getting nutrition.

  They have tubes in their noses going to their stomachs

  so they can be fed. They each have a dedicated nurse 24

  hours a day. They will be here until they are stable and

  independent, somewhere between March and April. Then

  we can take them home!

  At the moment we can touch them, read to them, sit with

  them and help with things like changing nappies, feeding

  them and other small things.

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  I N G R I D L A G U N A

  They are very different to each other. They are not in

  the same crib but now their cribs are beside each other. I

  hope they both know the other is there.

  Leo is much more of a wriggler than Jordan and is

  struggling more. He is always kicking around and frowning.

  Their eyes are not open yet. Leo is dark and Jordan is fair,

  and they are both very handsome. Jordan sleeps with his

  hand under his beanie and the nurses say he thinks he’s a

  big four-kilo boy and Benny says he thinks he’s King Kong.

  They are very very fragile and they are having medication

  for various things. They are both being treated to close a

  duct in their hearts.

  Their eyes will open in the next week or so. I have

  asked the nurses to call me when their eyes start to open.

  Benny’s threatening to shove me aside so that he’s the first

  one they see instead of me but he doesn’t stand a chance.

  We are so happy they are here and we are final y Mum

  and Dad!

  Please send lots of big strong love vibes to Leo and Jordan.

  With love, Ingrid

  On day three after the birth, I sat propped against pillows

  in the delivery suite, holding photos of Twin 1 and Twin 2.

  Neither baby was much bigger than my small hand, and

  they didn’t look anything like any babies I’d ever seen.

  Black Zorro masks covered their unopened eyes and they

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  looked as if their baby-bird bones would shatter at the

  lightest touch of my fingers. Tears slid over my cheeks and

  down my neck.

  ‘Three-day blues?’ A woman stood in the doorway,

  holding a mop in one hand and a bucket in the other. She

  had short, thick legs and dark hair dyed a bad shade of purple.

  ‘What?’ I blinked out dollops of tears.

  ‘Three-day blues . . . Is it three days since you delivered?’

  ‘Umm . . .’ I counted back the days. ‘Yes.’

  ‘All women get the blues on day three.’ She clanked the

  bucket down and kicked it along to the bathroom entrance.

  ‘It’s nay-cha.’

  I laughed, relieved. ‘Really? Well, that’s what I’ve got

  then—the three-day blues. There’s got to be a song in that.’

  An attentive young midwife was on the morning shift.

  ‘You really need to start expressing,’ she said brightly, with

  a swing of her ponytail. ‘I’ve brought you some pamphlets.’

  I was glazed and weak, and could not imagine how milk

  would come out of my boobs with a baby attached, let alone

  without. ‘I can help you if you like, just let me know when

  you’re ready.’

  She clicked the door shut behind her and I f lipped

  through the pamphlets: Transporting and Storing Breast Milk,

  Long Term Expressing, Expressing Breast Milk—Getting Started.

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  I N G R I D L A G U N A

  I waited to see who came on for the afternoon shift and was

  relieved when a more matronly older woman introduced

  herself and repeated the offer.

  ‘Okay, that would be good . . . Thanks, Ruth.’

  She disappeared, then returned wheeling a trolley with

  a blue pump machine about the size of a big toaster. With

  two fingers she massaged my breast in small circles down to

  my nipple, until a small white drop appeared. ‘It’s coming!’

  I shrieked. ‘Oh my god . . . look at that!’

  She hooked me up to the pump and I was reminded

  of the milking machine I’d seen attached to a forlorn cow

  in a shed at the Easter Show when I was little. ‘It can be

  helpful to look at photos of your babies while you express,’

  she said. ‘They say it stimulates your supply.’

  ‘Right . . . okay.’ I picked up the photos of our tiny

  foetal babies, barely able to make out their faces for all the

  tubes and tape. A lump swelled in my throat. ‘I just feel

  sad and worried when I look at these . . . I can’t imagine

  that helping.’

  ‘Oh, sweetie . . . It’s not easy, I know.’

  Afterwards, Ruth was talking with another woman in

  hushed tones on the other side of my door: ‘Twenty-three-

  weeker twins,’ I heard her say. ‘I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.’

  I tried to picture the road ahead, but I only got a blur and

  a very tired feeling, so I laid my head on the pillow and

  forced my eyes to close.

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  I began to express every few hours, pulling up a screen

  and sitting between the twins’ cots in NICU (the Neonatal

  Intensive Care Unit). Benny danced in time with the rhythm

  of the pump action, sometimes impersonating a rapper, other

  times just improvising.

  While I was in the delivery suite, Ben was staying in the

  old nurses’ quarters in the rickety building next door, where

  noisy brown industrial air-conditioning units were stuck

  like warts to an outside wall.

  ‘So—what’s it like in there?’ I asked.

  He was in his favourite old red Bonds t-shirt, holding a

  yoghurt cup close to his mouth as he spooned in its contents.

  He scraped the bottom of the cup and licked the spoon.

  ‘It’s okay . . . Do you want me to show you?’

  ‘Yeah!’

  Ben wheeled me outside, into the building next door,

  and up in a lift to creak along empty grey corridors.

  ‘It’s weird!’ I said. ‘It feels abandoned . . . like a giant

  dungeon. Kind of scary.’ We turned a corner and stopped

  at the entrance to the shared kitchen, where a corn chips

  packet sat open on a table, surrounded by a moat of yellow

  crumbs. A stack of dirty plates teetered beside the sink, and

  brown liquid stains ran
down the sides of the plastic kettle.

  ‘Oh, Benny.’

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  ‘It’s not exactly the Hyatt. It’s not Inky-style, but it’s

  okay. You can see how I got lost after getting the call to

  come over to the hospital in the middle of the night.’

  ‘It’s a labyrinth,’ I said. ‘And it’s the pits . . . I had no

  idea. Let’s go over to the park.’

  We crossed the road and meandered through parklands

  to stop under a tree, where Benny poured me onto the grass

  and wandered off to watch a nearby cricket game. I lay with

  my knees up and my hands behind my head, looking up

  at branches. Ah, trees . . . I thought . It’s good to be outside.

  At first we talked about calling the babies Tuco and Raffi,

  but shortly afterwards we changed our minds. Benny had

  come up with Tuco from a favourite movie— The Good,

  the Bad and the Ugly.

  ‘Tuco was the Ugly,’ said Benny. ‘We can’t use it.’

  I wrinkled my nose to show empathy for his disappointment.

  ‘Anyway,’ he said. ‘You’ve had such a crap time. And you’ve

  liked the names Jordan and Leo for ages . . . They’re good

  names.’

  Woohoo! I loved those names! ‘Then Jordan is the first

  one and Leo is the second!’ I hugged Benny enthusiastically,

  pinning his arms to his sides.

  ‘Jordan and Leo,’ said Benny, when he was released.

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  In the days following their birth, flowers and hampers

  had poured in. (I imagined the conversations: ‘What should

  we write on the card?’ ‘Are we happy for them or sad . . . ?’

  Happy! Happy! I would have told them.) On the trolley

  beside my bed, a cane basket spilled over with fat mangoes,

  chocolate, grapes and jars of jam and chutney. Benny pulled

  out the chocolate: ‘I’d better check no one’s trying to

  poison you.’

  Within a few days I put on my own clothes and walked

  alongside Benny to the intensive care nursery, excited to

  see the new names handwritten on cardboard and taped to

  the boys’ respective cots.

  ‘JORDAN . . . LEO,’ I read out loud. Somehow real

  boys’ names made them more like real boys.

  Midwives taught us how to help with their ‘cares’,

  reaching through the armholes in the sides of each cot

  while we looked down through its clear perspex.

  Sue brushed the hair back from her forehead. ‘Individually

  sterilised wipes are in this drawer here,’ she said. ‘Clean their

  eyes by gently wiping from the inside out with a new wipe

  for each eye, and do the same to clean their mouths.’

  Benny and I looked at each other. ‘You go,’ he said.

  ‘Then me.’

  An alarm dinged and a light flashed on the cot beside

  Leo. Sue pressed them off. ‘I’m nervous,’ I said.

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  ‘You’ll be okay,’ she said, with an encouraging dip of

  her head.

  I took a wipe from its packet and reached in to lightly

  press it onto Leo’s delicate skin. ‘Oh, wow . . . I touched him.’

  Benny did the same, tentatively dabbing a new wipe

  over Leo’s mouth. We were taught how to fold their legs

  up inside their enormous ‘newborn’ nappies, to change

  their Barbie doll-sized tops, and to take their temperatures

  by holding a thermometer under their arms. We helped to

  turn their heads to face the other way, moving the ventilator

  and nasogastric tubing at the same time.

  Walking out of NICU that first time, I hooked my arm

  into Benny’s. ‘I loved that! It was so amazing to touch Leo!

  Can you believe they’re here? They’re here!’

  ‘They’re here,’ said Benny. ‘It’s good to be able to do

  something.’

  ‘That’s it,’ I said. ‘Exactly. To make a difference, or to

  at least feel like we’re making a difference. And to touch

  them! God, I’m in love.’ When Ben wasn’t working, we

  took turns to do cares; and whoever did them walked out

  of there beaming every time.

  Ben returned to Alice for a work meeting and to pack

  some clothes. While he was gone, I found an apartment

  close to the hospital. Mum pushed me, still anaemic, across

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  King William Road in a wheelchair. The sign out the

  front of the apartment block read ‘COMFORTABLE

  ACCOMMODATION’.

  ‘I.e. cheap but okay,’ I said.

  ‘Looks alright,’ said Mum. We checked in and parked

  the chair at the bottom of a flight of stairs, then made our

  way up to our first floor apartment.

  ‘I’m coming. I’m coming.’ I leant against the rail to catch

  my breath, and as Mum went on ahead I thought how glad

  I was to have her there. Mum had a way of making scary

  new experiences into an adventure. She brought out my

  courage, and I liked who I was in her eyes. She had dropped

  everything to be here with us, to prop me up, again. How

  would I be doing this without her? I shuddered at the thought

  and pushed it aside.

  Apartment 19 had a homey feel. Corny lace framed a

  small window set into a partition between the living room

  and a space just big enough for a double bed, and a modest

  cane couch sat beneath the window. Zooming traffic noises

  rose up from the intersection. I did a lap of the living room,

  nodding my head. ‘I like it.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ said Mum. ‘It’s a bit dark . . . but it’s good!’

  ‘Oh, what a relief. I’m sick to death of hospitals. Halle-

  fuckin’-lujah.’

  I lay down on a neatly made single bed in a corner of

  the main room. ‘ Gezel ig,’ I said. It’s Dutch for ‘cosy’.

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  ‘ Gezel ig,’ said Mum. Our eyes met. I don’t know what

  my face was saying but she said, ‘It’s okay, darling.’ As much

  as she sometimes drives me crazy—her chaos, her refusal to

  address her shitty childhood—Mum’s reassurance has never

  failed to bring me comfort.

  ‘Thanks for being here, Mum.’

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  4

  I grew up in a big family—Mum, Dad and us four kids.

  We were the Lagunas—an entity, big and special. Up close,

  like most families, there were cracks; but that was up close,

  and we didn’t come a gutsa until later. I was the third child,

  with an older brother and sister, Stefan and Sofie, and a

  younger brother, Alex. Mum and Dad were outgoing and

  charismatic, with intellectual and arty European friends, and

  big brush strokes for life. Mum’s Dutch and Dad’s Polish.

  Dad was a doctor (still is), and Mum was a mum until she

  became, to her relief, an artist (and still is).

  We were lucky—until I was eleven we lived in three

  different two-storey houses, all beautiful, in stunning bush

  and beach locations in Mosman, Sydney. We had a Bang and

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&nb
sp; Olufsen stereo, a golden retriever and a Volvo. We travelled

  around Europe in a van, and spent time in London, Holland

  and Poland. We went on houseboats on the Hawkesbury

  River, and to Lord Howe Island.

  Mum either cooked by candlelight so she could pretend

  she was somewhere else (not in the kitchen), or we ate at

  Chinese or Mexican restaurants, or babysitters cooked for

  us while Mum and Dad ate out. We had boisterous family

  Christmases with a stack of cousins, aunties, uncles and

  grandparents—priceless, despite the sharp tongues and jibes

  on both sides of the family.

  Sofie and I were best friends with Ella and Sarah, who

  were also sisters. We coyly invited neighbours to our

  concerts. We gave them plastic cups of yellow cordial, then

  charged them ten cents each and sat in a semicircle at their

  feet to perform Abba songs. We took turns to kiss a boy on

  the cheek in our cubby house—our first kisses—and more

  than once sat on the ground with splayed legs to compare

  fannies. Sarah and I set our cubby house on fire when we

  made toast over a candle under crepe paper decorations,

  and Ella got stuck in the laundry chute at our place—a

  massive drama. (Shortly after 000 was dialled, Ella’s mum,

  Sue, rang my mum to ask how the kids were going—Mum

  didn’t want to worry her, so she didn’t mention that Ella

  was stuck in the chute. Over the phone, Mum could hear

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  sirens wailing in the background as police and ambulance

  vehicles passed Sue’s place on their way to ours!)

  I remember snacking on arrowroot biscuits and dried

  apricots at Ella and Sarah’s place, where Sue served roast

  lamb with mint jelly and thinly sliced lettuce for dinner.

  Things seemed ordered there compared to home, though

  nowadays Ella groans and swears it wasn’t.

  I was six when Dad left the first time. Alex was eighteen

  months old, so he didn’t understand. Sofie got migraines,

  Stefan got a stiff neck, and I got excited because Dad had

  a pool at his apartment and we’d be getting twice the

  presents. When he came back two months later, we bought

  a weekend farm at Windsor and a red Ford truck. Us kids

  were piled into the back and blasted with Dolly Parton and

  traditional Greek dance music. Mum and Dad also loved

  Rod Stewart, Leo Sayer, Carole King, Liza Minnelli in