Hello world!

Today I begin a journey to the USA and Canada. Someone has to be brave enough to fly on September 11th so I am setting an example.

This time last year exactly, I began another journey to the USA to begin a book tour in New York on Sept 13th. I stayed in Sydney overnight, cried myself to sleep with grief over my very ill dad, and woke early next morning to news of the disaster via a phone call from my husband. A few hours later I was home again, overjoyed to be with my father. I focussed on nothing else. The rest was a blank. It was strange to understand eventually that Something Else had occurred. As I sit here at the bottom of the world, on this sunny peaceful morning, remembering this time last year, my heart goes out to New York and all who suffered in that shocking tragedy.

I was about to write an impassioned paragraph about war and peace but my book Feathers and Fools says it much better. I just hope my book doesn’t become true, that’s all.

I have been home for many magical months, writing new presentations; reading novels; reading exciting new research into early reading; writing and re-writing the Green Sheep story until I wished the sheep would end up in an abattoir; planting my spring garden; attending my exercise class religiously twice a week (thanks for my new shape, Katherine!); walking on the beach with Malcolm and cooking scrumptious healthy meals every night. It has been the Ideal Life but all good things must come to an end and it’s off to work again today in Wyoming and Vancouver, both of which I am very much looking forward to. It’s my 71st visit to the USA.

A day after my sister’s divine wedding in Italy we heard that our mother had fallen and broken her hip back in Australia. She will never walk again and has lost the will to go on so The Great Fade has begun. I am calm about it since I wouldn’t want to be alive either, if I couldn’t walk or read, if I were 87 and my husband had died this year. I visit her every day and read her poems that she used to love like ‘Abou Ben Adhem, may his tribe increaseŠ’ and I get very noisy and excited when she fills in a line that she can remember. She looks at me as if I were out of control, which I am, I suppose, in my effort to cheer her.

Chloë and Malcolm are particularly gorgeous and particularly happy and particularly well. As you know I can’t speak about Chloe really because she teaches high school girls, and it’s her life after all, not mine to broadcast to the universe.

I know the news around the world is terrible. I know that Sept 11th was terrible (unless it’s your birthday: if so, have a happy one!). I know that we are probably on the brink of a hideous world war. I know that 30,000 children die every day in various parts of the world from drinking unclean water (now who will remember them, or care?). I know my darling dad is dead. In spite of all this I have never been happier. It’s not a puzzle, it’s just my character, which allows me always to let go of the bad stuff and cling to the good. I’m a 7 on the enneagram scale and a teacher/leader on the Myers-Briggs scale. I just can’t help being cheerful. If you don’t know who you are, as it were, it’s fun to find out on HUMANMETRICS
Happily yours, in spite of everything,

Mem Fox