Serenade for a Small Family Page 4
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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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 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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Serenade for a Small Family
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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I N G R I D L A G U N A
&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