cyclone

Waiting For Alfred

/ annamurray / Leave a comment

Wednesday. Early morning walk. Not nearly as busy as usual. Very few bikes. Ferry terminals with closed gates. Mentally earmarking the trees I think will come down before the weekend, and the buildings they will damage. Overcast. Quiet. The sort of quiet that I imagine happened around the first Easter. 

No birds.

All the dogs on edge. Sirens cutting through at 11.10am. Taking girls outside in the morning and afternoon to run off anxiety and be in a larger space than inside. Scooters and strollers and bubbles. Every time a gust of wind made its presence felt, C would look up and say, “The cyclone’s here”. 

Cyclone prep. Making a candle. A candle so bright in its pinkness I can’t look at it directly. Knowing each one we make helps C feel a bit calmer and prepared. Tidying the balcony, which turned out to be a much more massive task than anticipated. So much dirt. Noticing that the much narrower balconies of the next door townhouses are not at all cleared until we are nearly finished with ours and then magically people appear to pull their outdoor furniture inside and rearrange their plants. 

Experiencing the differences in my girls, magnified. Being aware and mindful of the way each of us is coping, or trying to cope, and trying to function, and how the experience is being processed for each of us.

S is the easiest to deal with. Cuddles. Long cuddles. Mummy or daddy, doesn’t matter, but cuddles. When we are outside she is more likely to just sit and watch, not participating, not doing her own thing. Just watching.

C is needing the comfort and escape of iPad time. Watching shows. Arcade games. Mathletics. Or reading real books. Needing to play with her toys like never before. Needing quiet time as sensory overwhelm is a real and big thing for her and sensitivity is high.

Which would be easier if E didn’t get her anxious out with loud and sudden sounds. Do you want cereal for breakfast? OKAY! Does anyone want to help me make a candle? ME! I WANT TO HELP YOU! And being set on what she wants, too, so that nobody can share whatever it is with her.

Glenn is coping by organising food to the max, and by almost obsessively scrolling to find all the weather information as well as the tidbits of what our local friends are posting.

I am anxiety-crocheting. At least twice a day I need some time out from being a cyclone mum or a sick kids mum and just have the comfort of the rhythm of skip ch, 3tr in next stitch, et cetera.

I also realise that it will be nice for all girls to have a comfort blanket of some sorts for when the winds are rough and loud. C and S already have a leaf blanket so now is the time to finish E’s. Once girls are asleep at night, I am sewing. It helps.

Thursday. Is it Thursday? I’m not sure. It’s even worse than that week between Christmas and New Year’s. It could be Thursday. What date is it? Brain is getting fuddled reading cyclone warning updates. Checking phone for the actual date. 

Cyclone fatigue has set in. Waiting is hard. 

Early morning walk is overcast but still. Very still. The hotel on the corner opposite the river that always floods has finally removed its outdoor tables and chairs and coffee cart. I note there are zero sandbags about though. Not as many people out as usual, and far fewer cyclists. Usually I see about 100, give or take (yes I count them, don’t you?), but Thursday’s number is 12. 

Bubbles are the new favourite thing outside. An upstairs neighbour calls down from her balcony to see if we are ok with storm prep. She smiles at the girls and the bubbles and the twirling. C is swinging wildly from being really easy going, flexible thinking, problem solving extraordinaire to the most stuck. Please give her the ball. She clearly wants the ball. Why are you refusing to give her the ball? “Because you told me to carry it inside”. I have since changed my instructions. Give her the ball it’s just a ball.

Inside, and I need some relaxation crochet time. After a few stitches, S is on me. Settling in for a long cuddle. She falls asleep on me. When she wakes, she stays, and E joins us. E possibly has an ear infection. Is anywhere even open for help? She is in so much pain. Pain relief, then she falls asleep. I extricate S and myself and we prep some chocolate chip cookies. We won’t lose power until the winds are much stronger.

Glenn calls from the shops. What about dinner? What about dinner. My brain is stuck. I just – nope. No thinking is possible. Thankfully he understands this and can make thoughts and decisions and plans. 

I try for a nap after lunch. I take my crochet into the bedroom just in case I am just needing time away from people. S insists on coming in with me, and being under the quilt, and her head on my pillow, and so I give up on any napping and sit on the chair. E wakes and needs me so out I go. For the next half hour or so, S just lies on my bed, looking out the window. Watching.

Obsessively looking for all the updates on Facebook. Groaning when the predicted landfall stretches out from what was initially late Wednesday to Thursday, to Thursday, to late Thursday early Friday, to now being late Friday early Saturday. Come on already. Waiting is hard. 

Starting to see memes of waiting. The skeleton with its feet up and “Just waiting for Alf” sticks with me the most. 

Starting to see the stupidity that I suspect is peculiar to Australians in wild weather. People naturally out to watch the wild seas and look at the eroding beaches but then getting into stupidly dangerous situations. Like the woman who walked her dogs on the beach and one of the dogs nearly went out to sea and she nearly went out to sea trying to save one dog and someone else nearly went out to sea trying to save the dog for her. 

Starting to see destruction. Trees down. Cars flattened. Do I show these to the girls? Do I keep them from seeing this? Will it help them understand the strength of a cyclone or will it worry them even more? Part of my cyclone fatigue is trying to accomodate everyone’s personal sensory needs and trying to work out what will help them process this and understand it and what will make it worse for them. The advice of “tell your children in an age-appropriate way” doesn’t really help me work out what to tell them. And as I am learning that C is someone who copes by knowledge, I am trying to give her bits of knowledge while also trying not to worry her with bits of knowledge that won’t apply to us here. 

This is tough. Waiting is tough. Navigating all of this is tough. Now excuse me while I open Facebook and check for another update.

Alfred Is Coming

/ annamurray / Leave a comment

Soooo funny story. You know how C has quite a high level of anxiety? Yeah. That. And last week, or maybe the week before that, we were talking about cyclones. Some of you will know where this is headed, but indulge me. C was really worried about cyclones and the possibility of a cyclone and us being in a cyclone. 

“You know what?” I said. “Cyclones don’t actually come this far down the coast. I have never experienced a cyclone in Brisbane. We get the cyclonic effects of more wind and rain, but that’s as far as it goes. We’re safe from cyclones here”.

Ha. Ha. Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. 

Sunday. Wow it’s windy today, isn’t it? It’s like autumn has been waiting for March to happen and then, BAM. Autumn has entered the building.

Sunday afternoon. Facebook notification the QPS is live. Huh. That usually only happens around extreme weather events. How far north is Great Keppel Island? NO IT’S E’S TURN NEXT YOU JUST HAD A TURN.

Sunday evening. Glenn trying to talk to me while dinner is on. Never a smooth conversation, but this was about the news about the weather. The storm chasing guy is having conniptions because the cyclone that’s off the coast (what?! Oh wait that makes sense now) is set to make landfall in a few days (ooh yay more cooler weather) and the eye is set to pass over Redcliffe. Wait, what?! Redcliffe? That’s, like, really really close. Like, we could be there in an hour or so and we know people and CYCLONES DON’T COME THIS FAR DOWN THE COAST but apparently now they do. Girls kept eating dinner. Oblivious.

Monday morning. On the way to daycare someone passed us, talking on the phone. Talking about taping up windows. A sudden realisation hit that C was going to be hearing a lot of talk about cyclones and emergencies and cyclones and disasters and flooding and cyclones and high winds and destruction and general excitement from others as well as, most likely and could even make a bet on it, gross exaggeration on the part of many of the boys and not a few of the girls, that would have C – who takes most things quite literally – actually thinking that whatever these kids were saying, would happen. Like that the school is going to be washed away. Or that snakes are going to be flung through bedroom windows. Or that we’d be walking in sewage. Ugh. I don’t know. But I know that there is a part of society that seems to be peculiar to boys of a certain age that will make the experience as gruesome as possible. I needed to talk to the girls.

Sure enough, the word “cyclone” made C wrap her arm around mine like a pretzel. “Remember, mummy and daddy will do everything we need to do to keep you girls safe”. I’m still really worried about the cyclone. “This is just a prediction. Often when they develop, they reduce and become just really big storms”. Oh good. That’s what’s going to happen here. “But it also might do as the professionals are predicting, and come in and be a cyclone. We have to be prepared”. I’m really really worried about the cyclone.

I think I managed to reduce her fears by enough that she could function, at least. School was fine. I suspect she is not the only kid in her class with anxiety. She came home happy and unphased. Phew. Of course, I had watched much of one of the live emergency services sessions and gone to the recommended websites and looked at what we need to get and talked with Glenn about it and found the resource on preparing children for it. Thank goodness it is just one highly anxious child. E and S seem most concerned about whether I will let them play at the park, regardless of their level of sickness or the level of wind.

Glenn went to the shops twice. The first time he was surprised by how few people there were around the shopping centre and how busy it was inside. The second time, he started sending me photos of the lines inside, and reporting on the lack of this and that. Pre-cyclone panic buying.

Tuesday. All the girls are sick. Glenn had an early start but thankfully an early finish as well. Blueberry and chocolate pancakes for Pancake Tuesday. I was not at all sad that all the girls had to be home, but girls not at school or daycare meant my plan of doing some shopping early in the day had to change. A shopping trip with well girls is hard enough, let alone a shopping trip with sick girls in a busy and slightly panicky shopping centre before a cyclone in an area not used to cyclones. Thankfully, Auntie J offered to pick things up for us and no way am I turning that one down. It was such a help. C was still worried that the cyclone will hit now. Not until Thursday, we kept telling her. Is the cyclone coming tonight? No. Tonight will be fine. 

Work. Yeah, remember that thing that pays the bills? I had already had to bail on the daily work. I was very glad to be having a delayed job to do, due Thursday. Hm. I also started to worry that I would not be able to complete it on time. Deeeeeeep breaths. Okay. Power is likely to go out Wednesday afternoon. Unlikely before then. Okay. So Monday evening I had started it, a civil case involving a car hire claim following a traffic accident yawn sorry what ooh that was interesting. I still had a good chunk of it to go on Tuesday. Like, possibly three hours of my time. With sick girls. And a deadline thanks to nature a day and a half earlier than official. Deep breaths. Then amazingly, after morning tea on Tuesday, girls were watching movies and NOT fighting and building cubbies and NOT screaming and actually working out those little things like your leg is touching me or your ear is in front of the screen I can’t see. Wow. I snuck to the bedroom where I work and thought I would just get a little bit done but I finished all the typing. All. The. Typing. Emailed work to say this is the situation. Checked and submitted the job after girls were in bed Tuesday night. Satisfaction. Relief.

Random weather. Clear skies. WINDY. Clear skies. Dark clouds. Sunny and windy. RAIN. Sunny cloudy sunny cloudy sunny cloudy sunny windy.

Emergency plan sorted out. Sure, we need to do things like put all the loose bits of everything on the balcony into some storage solution, and washing needs to be done now before the power goes out and before the weather requires it be not outside and candles let’s make candles and what activities do you girls want to have available when we have no power, but mostly, which movies shall we make sure to download so that if we have no internet you can still have something to watch.

Trying to follow the advice for dealing with children. Trying to stay calm. Trying to be honest about what’s coming but reassuring them that we will get through this. Once Glenn was home in the afternoon, there was a real feeling of we have the whole family together. We are hunkering down together. We’ve got this.