Are we there yet?

by Diana Jenkins

So. Here we are: it’s 5 October and I missed a really significant writing deadline at the end of August. The deadline amounted to an incredible opportunity to by-pass the slush pile at a major publishing house – a chance that really just fell from the sky, in a way that happens to absolutely no one, ever – and I completely blew it. Not only was my YA manuscript redraft incomplete on 31 August, it remains incomplete now, more than a month later. While I’ve managed to read several novels across the same period, because I can drop into a book whenever a spare second presents itself, the sustained focus that’s required to fix what ails my own work…well, that demands a potent combination of time and energy I currently do not have.

What happened? I like deadlines and I usually work best when they’re firmly in place, so what went wrong? First the deadline loomed, then it exploded right in my face and finally it dribbled away to nothing. It’s all been very depressing – very – but it’s where I find myself. As you may recall, my four-year-old broke his leg while we were on holidays in Europe, and this is where our story really begins.

I have pointlessly replayed, over and over again, the precise moment the perfect storm broke. We had been in Paris under an hour and hadn’t even checked into our hotel. Headed for Musée Picasso, we took pity on our eldest, who hadn’t seen a playground in weeks that wasn’t baking in Italy’s heatwave conditions. This playground was at the end of our rue in Le Marais, overlooked by rather stately buildings of likely historical and architectural significance. My husband took one look around and decided to leave us there while he “inspected the facilities” back at the hotel. Exit Stage Left.

Immediately something curious struck me: there were no children in the playground. An empty playground is not in and of itself noteworthy, but this playground was full of people. There were just no little people. We were last in Paris in 2012, at the time deciding it is not the world’s most child-friendly city; I can only say this trip confirmed that assessment tenfold. The place is lousy with boutiques selling adorable children’s clothing, but the kids themselves? Not so much. A French woman once told me that babies start crèche at six weeks and that might be a solid lead if ever you were hunting les enfants de Paris. In fact, the playground reminded me of that village in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, with the creepy man who steals all the children – except here, no one seemed disturbed by their absence. Terribly chic adults doing a good line in noir sat all around the circular perimeter, chatting, eating baguettes, drinking coffee, smoking – the childless playground transformed into a kind of post-modern art installation, a surprisingly effective comment on contemporary Parisian life.

There was a truly terrifying, high-rise piece of equipment consisting of two parallel bars angled straight to the ground; looking up at my high ceilings at home, I’d say these bars were about a storey high. I call this contraption the Black Run, though I have no idea what it’s supposed to be called (I’ve named another the Wheel of Menace – I call ‘em as I see ‘em). Kids – and these must be very game and much older kids at this dizzying height – are supposed to tuck a bar under each armpit and whizz to the bottom, legs dangling. My son tried to mount the bars. You can imagine how well that was working out. Oh, good: I’ve just found this image of the same playground online:

Certain he was going to, well, break a leg – or worse, pitch right off the top head-first – I talked him down, swallowing my rising hysteria and cursing my husband’s endless ablutions, coaxing him toward a relatively benign-looking set of monkey bars. Once he was hanging from the bars, he really didn’t seem very far from the ground. I was standing beside the pram tending to our baby, Atticus. At the precise moment I bent down, reaching for the camera – so happy to see Iggy playing at last that I wanted to capture the moment – he swung off in a kind of ninja jump that went badly awry. His pain threshold is very high, so when he unleashed the scream heard around Paris, I knew it was bad.

I texted my husband: ‘Iggy’s fallen. You need to come back now.”
‘Is he okay?’
‘Not okay.’

Meanwhile, the collected sophisticates turned their cool gaze toward us for a moment before returning to their conversations. I had the baby, the pram, the screaming, crying child writhing on the ground, clearly in intense pain, and no one rendered any assistance whatsoever.

It turned out Iggy made a proper job of it: a spiral fracture of the tibia, requiring 6 weeks in a full-leg cast and currently another four in a ‘walking cast,’ supported initially by a wheelchair and now with the addition of a walking frame for short distances. He and I curse that playground and whatever sadistic mastermind designed it. We like to do that daily.

Two days after it happened, my husband returned to work, kicking off with what seemed to me like a rather merry week in his company’s London office. What was originally supposed to be a week’s sightseeing with my full-strength, supremely active boy and his baby brother – a final northern hemisphere hoorah – became one of the most challenging weeks of parenthood I’ve known. Iggy was still in a lot of pain and unhappier than any child should ever be. I was stranded with two gigantic non-mobile babies, managing doctor and hospital visits and struggling to cope with inadequate disabled access across the city.

Fortunately, travelling friends who’d so generously lent us their home found me an emergency nanny, without whom I couldn’t even get both kids safely out of our friends’ terrace flat. The logistics of negotiating multiple heavy doors, different floors and double-brick blind spots – just to get both boys out on the street without leaving either one too long alone on a footpath opposite council housing – still make my eyes smart. Needless to say the nanny was a GODSEND, but the patient wouldn’t let her anywhere near him, so I was very pale and shaky by the end.

After a hard week spent carrying him up, down and around London’s long, narrow, winding stairwells, I just wanted to come home. Daily now I am awash in gratitude and relief for our mainly able-bodied lives. I’ll never forget this experience and I see the world very differently now. There are many more wheelchair-bound people trying to navigate and negotiate a public life than I’d ever noticed before. Once you’re in the club you suddenly see that wheelchairs are everywhere, and some places and spaces are a lot “friendlier” than others.

I’ve learned that plenty of good can come of repressing traumatic memories, so let’s not dwell on the flight.

Safely back in Sydney, home had its own surprises in store.

Pro: we live in a ground-floor apartment in the flattest part of Manly. What a good idea that’s turned out to be! Little did we know when we bought this place a decade ago that we’d be cheering the decision – actually high-fiving our genius – thanks to its perfect qualities for wheelchair access. These days we’re fairly good to go. My son can even get himself out the front door with one little bump and once we’re on the beachfront, he can wheel himself a good distance toward the village. Take that, tibia!

Con: the preschool said it couldn’t manage my son’s needs, so until a fortnight ago, he was only able to go in the morning on his three days a week. That decision was a blow: I’d been banking on his return to preschool for the restoration of sanity and silence. I badly needed those hours for the MS. I love my son, he’s a wonderful, special kid, but he’s a demanding little son of a bitch even when he can take himself to the toilet. I admire a great deal about the way he’s handled himself throughout his ordeal, but some of his behaviour has been unbearable. Feeling thwarted, trapped and isolated, he became increasingly tyrannical as the weeks in the full-leg cast wore on.

“Poor kid,” everyone said. “It must be so hard for him.”

And it was. It was really tough for a 4-year-old whirlwind to be stilled. But it was hard for me too. Mostly I wanted to scream, “POOR ME!”

I don’t think I’ve ever felt sorrier for myself. I can’t abide habitual victims, they give me the shits, and I’m sooo tired of hearing my own complaints – I truly can’t stand myself at the moment – but my spirits dipped in tandem with his, dropping a little further every day that passed without his being able to walk or my being able to work towards the deadline:

Here it comes, here it comes, here it comes…here it is… a-a-and… there it goes.

Iggy’s mood has improved since the cast upgrade restored some measure of mobility, but he’s currently a damaged daredevil, a danger to himself and others. That’s very tiring for whoever’s trying to ensure that no one gets hurt, neither my son nor some unlucky child connecting with his swinging cast-clad leg, and that person is usually me. I am duly tired.

Some people are effective at night after a full day’s work or as a full-time parent. I used to love writing at night, I’m nocturnal by nature, but parenthood has changed me in many ways and this is another: I’m unable to function by the time both children are asleep in their beds. A few weeks ago, the extent of my exhaustion finally worried me enough that I went to my doctor and had a whole bunch of tests done, but so far there seems not to be one single, treatable cause. All I know is, I’m unnaturally fatigued all the time. Exhibit A: it’s 5.02 pm and I’m nodding off as I type. It’s taking a huge effort of will to keep my eyes open and not lie down while my husband and kids are still out.

I’d like to succumb, let the lids fall, and have me a little nap, but they left so that I could write this feature and so write it I shall. In other words, a wobbly work ethic is not my problem. I have many issues, but that’s not one of them. I’m here writing this now because I have the chance RIGHT NOW. I take my chances. Anyone who’s at home with small kids knows you just have to, whether you feel up to it or not. It’s just that I can hardly stay awake. So 9pm – when they’re both semi-reliably semi-asleep – really isn’t a chance anymore. It’s just an hour to eat something and catch a glimpse of my husband before I finally get to go to bed.

Having resigned myself to working at night once the kids are done for the day, I discovered instead that I’m currently incapable of doing so. Incapable. There is no way I could sit here at my desk and make meaningful, sensible changes to my MS at that time of night. In fact, there’s no way that I should be making any serious decisions about anything of any value whatsoever. I’m completely off the air. My son isn’t the only one limping toward year’s end – I feel like there’s a good chance I’m going to hobble over the Finish Line on my hands and knees.

I don’t know what to do about the lost opportunity. When I realised I would never be able to make the deadline, I emailed the person who gave it to me and explained what had happened. On Deadline Day itself, I emailed my apologies, the synopsis and the first 100 pages. Two weeks after that, I sent a direct message on Twitter just to confirm receipt, but there was no response there either. The silence has been total.

I’ve never been any good at interpreting dead air, but I hope the message is: I have nothing to say to you until you send the redrafted MS in its entirety.

I hope the message isn’t: I have nothing further to say to you, now or in the future, because you fucking blew it, you fool.

Of course, worrying about all this gives me insomnia, one of several things currently disturbing my sleep, which perpetuates the very exhaustion that makes it impossible for me to think straight, let alone carefully rewrite over 80,000 words.

Round and round we go.

The good news is that my son returned to 3 full days at preschool two weeks ago. Any time I’ve had help with the baby on any of those days, I’ve worked on the MS. I’m a sucker that way.