On being cursed
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Laurence Fearnley
My son was born in Würzburg, Germany, at nine seconds past midnight on the first of January, 2002. Two and a half months later we boarded an aeroplane at Frankfurt, one that would deliver us home. We had been living in Germany for four years and we were looking forward to seeing our families, and introducing them to our only child.
The journey, of course, was long and tiring. I nursed Harry, Alex changed him; we took turns walking up and down the aisle. Somewhere between Bangkok and Sydney Harry started crying and for an agonising half hour nothing we did would calm him. Then, suddenly, he fell asleep.
The aeroplane made a stop at Sydney before continuing on to Auckland. We filed into the transit gate-lounge and as I queued to go through the metal detector a passenger from our cabin approached me, placed her hand on Harry’s head and, speaking calmly, said, “Suffer and die.” I recoiled but, thinking I had misheard, asked her to repeat her comment. This time she looked at me, and in a steady voice said, “ I hope your baby suffers and dies.”
First on the scene: the Westdene Dam bus disaster
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Dr Jill McIlraith
As a fifth year medical student at University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, I was one of the first on the scene when a double-decker bus carrying 72 high school students went off the causeway of a small suburban dam in March 1985. 42 children drowned that afternoon.
I lived opposite the Westdene Dam and was at home that Wednesday afternoon, having been up late the night before doing my emergency medicine attachment at Johannesburg Hospital’s Casualty Department. Hearing a woman yelling for help, I went outside to see a handful of people in the water, some clambering onto the just-submerged roof of a bus.
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‘Taking my mother to the opera’ by Diane Brown
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Diane Brown
Diane Brown explains how writing a poetic family history brought her parents springing back to life.
A friend who rang on my birthday asked what I was doing. Writing a blog about Taking My Mother To The Opera, about dementia and brain damage, I said, so a nice cheery day.
In truth, I found writing about my parents difficult and sad at times but also funny and strangely joyful. Dementia had taken some of my mother away and my father had died by the time I began to assemble the book with old and new poems. It became a way of re-engaging with them as they miraculously sprang back to life.”
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Revitilising the confounded mind: Korean solutions to urban stress
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Jessie Neilson
When I was straight out of university I headed to Korea for the English teaching experience, now a rite of passage for many. Later I returned for a second year, and since then have continued to visit regularly. Korea is part of me. Every time the plane starts flying low over the ridges of Kumgang or Taebaek, however, apprehension sets in: the land is so beautiful, yet a haze of grime often pervades; apartment buildings, vehicles and construction projects cluster in the valleys between the lovely mountain peaks as the Asian tiger languidly stretches out. Lonely Planet concedes that Busan, the second city, is little more than a “concrete jungle”.
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Emily Siedeberg, New Zealand’s first woman doctor
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Barbara Brookes
The question of the propriety of teaching women medical students first came before the medical staff at Dunedin hospital in 1891. If the decision had been left to them, Emily Siedeberg, New Zealand’s first woman doctor, might well have not been able to pursue her chosen field. Having been admitted to study medicine at the University of Otago, Emily Siedeberg wrote to the Trustees of the hospital to enquire if there was any objection to her attending the hospital as a medical student. The trustees canvassed the opinions of the hospital staff who sent their responses in writing.
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