When I was 21 I decided to meet with my mum’s psychic and have a session. Her home was in the Blue Mountains. At the time my mother was living in North Richmond at the base of the mountains. It’s a small town on the flat near Bells Line of Road, a main road up into the mountains. When you drive up this steep road the bellbirds call to one another across dense trees.
At this time Mum was still a lecturer at the University of Western Sydney. In a few months she’d end the disastrous relationship she had with a faculty professor who loved porn. And she’d also be diagnosed with cancer.
The psychic seemed a rational woman with a stable family life and comfortable home. She was grounded and kind. In fact, that year she stopped doing readings to focus on her art, as according to Mum she found the responsibility and burden of her psychic connection too much. I have a dim memory of Mum saying the psychic didn’t want to tell people about their futures anymore. Had she really been able to, anyway?
I sat down in her room; the psychic connected with her guide then started the tape recorder. I have a copy of this conversation on tape, moulding away in a box under the house. She told me that I’d make a wonderful mother. There was a hint of sadness in her voice, which I wished I’d asked about. I remember just thinking, Yeah, I know I will. Nothing wrong with this; I liked this information about good mothering. Then she said that at around 40 years of age I’d say That’s enough to mothering and write poetry. At the time I just shrugged and thought, Cool, I have kids, not sure about poetry though. Next I asked about the children’s father and she said I’d spend the rest of my life with him.
Back in the cancer present this conversation played again and again in my mind: the comments about poetry and the rest of my life. I projected my son’s situation onto it and questioned, Was this destined? Could I have changed this? I dropped this thinking quick smart.
The thing that kept bugging me was poetry at 40. I was terrified, as if my life depended upon it, that I wouldn’t get to write again until I was 40 or, worse, that my writing would lead nowhere. Plus I was no poet.
When I was told, You have invasive ductal carcinoma, I didn’t feel I’d achieved what I was capable of or wanted out of life. My mother felt the same.
Throughout recurring bouts of breast cancer Mum struggled with letting go of her near-complete PhD so that she could focus upon her joy, which was felting. I used to joke that if she could have felted her PhD, it would have been completed in one year.
Mum stretched out her PhD until it flaked at the edges. She died with a chapter and a half left before submission. So much of her research and years spent thinking and writing went unrewarded. Mum was supposed to write her PhD while living in the Northern Rivers, recovering from cancer. Five years on from my mother’s death I was about to pick up my master’s after finishing major cancer treatment. I didn’t want to die with unfinished work. I didn’t want to die at all.
Physical intimacy: what is sexuality?
The saying is true: ‘The empty vessel makes the greatest sound.’
William Shakespeare, Henry V
No one – not even breast care nurses – told me my vagina might shrink to the size of a raisin. When my oncologist explained the barrage of drugs required to suppress my body’s natural production of oestrogen, I dived into the literature on sudden menopause. Anything vagina-related took third place or lower in medical literature and personal accounts of psychosexual issues for women post-treatment. The focus was on hot flushes and low libido.
The heat surges I’d covered; the dry martini I had not.
In daily life you’re rarely aware of your vagina, snug and warm between your legs, unless, of course, it’s titillated or develops thrush. However, after chemotherapy I noticed a chafing sensation. Or worse, after my first forays into riding a bike, a sore feeling, as if I’d been cut. Basically she had a dry throat and thin skin that only false lubrication could quench.
I returned to the vagina literature. There were a few lubricants recommended for women with hormone-positive breast cancer. I only needed the occasional KY to make myself comfortable but there were others: Replens was an oestrogen-free, long-lasting moisturiser. Sylk was a natural personal lubricant that helped end the ‘dry spells’, as it said on their home page. Or there was Astroglide personal lubricant. This lube had the most interesting backstory.
Dan Wray stumbled on the product while working on the cooling system of a space shuttle at Edwards Air Force Base in 1977. He tried to remove the oil from anhydrous ammonia and ended up with this substance. As a joke he gave a colleague some in a glass jar. The colleague later returned, red-cheeked, for a refill. This was the beginning of his multi-million-dollar affair with gliding gel. What I wanted to know was: the caustic ammonia bit was gone, right?
Part of saying goodbye to my sex drive and part of my sexual identity as a woman was recalling my sexy 20s, when I did experiment and have sexual partners. My body was very fit and healthy from rock climbing, and I revelled in sharing its pleasures.
Chemotherapy and my maintenance drug regimen made me blasé about a diminishing sex drive. I never thought this possible. Who? Me? My falling libido meant I didn’t care that it was lowered because, well, it was lowered.
In a way it came as a relief. Our sex drive can drive so much in our daily interactions. An attraction at a party can lead to an animated conversation,
