The One-Size-Fits-All Life

May 15, 2015 by the sibyls Leave a Comment

by Penny Cook

One Size Fits All!

In this world of litigation … how useful is that term? Can I assume that I am included in ‘all’? So … what if the ‘one size fits all’ garment doesn’t fit me? Can I go to the sales person and say …’hello. I’m ‘all’ and this doesn’t fit?’ I haven’t had this experience yet but as I’m ageing I’m thinking it might happen soon’… In fact, I know it will. Would it not be better to say ..’might fit all’.

As a consumer and shopper of garments … I don’t want to be misled. Don’t tell me this will fit everyone, without saying ‘yes..,it might fit you but it will look awful’. It’s hard enough to live with my changing shape, but don’t mislead me. If you say ‘one size fits all’, shouldn’t there be some social accountability?

Ditto life. As we age, should ‘One Size Fit All?’ More significantly, are we then pressured into fitting the bland and limiting one size mold?

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Penny Cook has been an early childhood educator for over 30 years. She loves to travel – anywhere. Penny is a mother and ‘Nan Pen’, who is continuously fascinated and amazed by her two young grandchildren. She has always wanted to live in a tree house by the beach …..it’s never too late!!…….

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Photo source: Little Robin Photography (links unsourced)

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Why mothers drink!

May 5, 2015 by the sibyls Leave a Comment

Mother’s Day in Australia is on 10 May 2015.

Photo source: Unknown

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Welcome to The Chemo Ward

April 21, 2015 by the sibyls Leave a Comment

by Jules

As I walked into the chemo ward for the first time my heart sank. I was overwhelmed by the smell of medicines, and the sight of everyone tethered to their chairs by towering drip stands. I wondered how I’d manage 6 more months of this place. It seemed like such a depressing sight. But immediately I sat in one of those ugly recliners I noticed people chatting, the nurses joking with them, someone offering sandwiches and drinks on a little tray.

I felt an enormous mutual respect, and a complete sense of calm as my fellow chair people calmly as their ‘weed killer’ (as my partner refers to it) coursed through their veins. Gradually over the weeks I spoke to my neighbour – a different person each session. I met grandmas making books of family photos with their grandchildren, a man writing his memoirs with his grandson, another man who’d been coming in for chemo for 11 years after lymphoma with his lovely wife from Uzbekistan, all sorts of interesting people with all sorts of amazing life stories. I began to enjoy the atmosphere, if not the side effects that came on even as I chatted…

Various chemo buddies came with me from time to time- My friend Delores who has recently been through a leukemia journey insisted on coming, though I didn’t want her to have to go back into the chemo zone. My wonderful sisters came to stay and we worked on various knitting projects and crosswords together. One woman said to me, after we’d exchanged pleasantries, ‘If I get run over by a bus tomorrow after all this I’ll be furious!’ My sentiments exactly! And we laughed together.

By my last session I felt quite at home there. It’s not the place, it’s the people in it that make the difference. Everyone has a great story to tell. And they are all battlers, battling to stay alive, just like me. The TV drones on in the background, ironically telling stories of war zones and people wanting to kill each other as we are fighting the battle to just stay alive.

Jules’ other insightful post, Chemo Journal I, can be found here.

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Jules is a perceptive observer and an irrepressible positive force as well as director and publisher for the Neuro Orthopaedic Institute, Adelaide, SA.

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Photo Source: pinterest

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Truth found in odd places

March 11, 2015 by the sibyls Leave a Comment

The Sibyls

Photo Source: Funny graffiti flickr (Photoshopped to remove pole)

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NO WIFI: What can we do grandma?

January 5, 2015 by the sibyls Leave a Comment

by The Sibyls

Two thoughts for the New Year:

1. You can never have too much fun.

2. Life was funny, so funny, before wifi,

but you had to be there.

How to Toddler Tame the Rug Rat of All Evil!

August 7, 2014 by the sibyls Leave a Comment

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Why it is good to be old!

August 7, 2014 by the sibyls 1 Comment

By Kerry Cue

In, At Seventy, her journal chronicling the year that began on her 70^th birthday, American Poet May Sarton noted that aging offers an opportunity to become more fully ourselves and , more not less, individual. (How to Age, Anne Karpf, The School of Life, p9) Sarton wrote the quote (above) when she was 85 years old.

Yet this celebration of the Self that embodies a quiet acceptance – rather than Me-glorious-Me narcissim – is something rarely articulated in our culture. We are presented with images of age as a ‘hideous ruin’, what sociologist Mike Featherstone calls ‘a pornography of old age’. See The Portrait of the Mother by the Artist

So it is a delight to open a newspaper and discover an article titled: On turning 70 by Liz Byrski (SMH 3 AUG 2014), which celebrated aging. Byrski begins with “Seventy feels like a reward for patience and perseverance, and I am determined to make the most of what follows.” While other milestone birthdays in Byrski’s life – 21, 40, 50 – did not deliver a feeling of change, waking up on her 70^th birthday was a liberating experience.

‘I’d arrived; something had shifted’ she wrote. A pair of high heels was symbolic of this shift. A symbol of ‘discomfort and restrictions of conformity’, she chucked them out. She became more herself. Byrski does not shy away from the physical challenges of old age. But insists ‘we are living proof for young people that ageing can be a time of pleasure, satisfaction, opportunity and yes, even new horizons.’

We, THE SIBYLS, declare Liz Byrski an Honorary Sibyl for her open spirit, contagious vitality and willingness to explore that philosophical question ‘what does it mean to grow old?’

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Liz Byrski is a WA-based broadcaster and an author of both fiction and non-fiction books. She started writing novels in her late fifties based on interesting and active older female characters as, so often, the stereotype of older women in novels were limited to the nosey neighbour, interfering mother-in-law, frail and dependent burden, or lonely miserable spinster.