Blessing Bette

Last Christmas (apologies if anyone else is now singing Wham.. I know I am).

Last Christmas, Sean, Abe, Betts and I went back to the UK. I endured 44 airplane hours and 19 airport ones with a 3yo and an 18 month old, in order to see my family and friends in the UK. Clearly, I quite like them.

It was madness, granted. But, it was also fate...

We were not going home. I'd been quite specific about that the last time we'd been back for Mum's funeral in 2016. Without her, not only was the UK a changed and more challenging place, that no one in our household was now going to be gainfully employed meant that it was going to be well out of our budget.

And so, I had resigned myself to the fact that I'd not get to see my newest niece Eden (other than on Skype) until she went to school. That I may never see my 90 year old Grandma again. That unless Primark launched the online shop they keep promising to, I'd be condemned to buying exceedingly expensive black opaque tights over here in Oz.

But, as is often the way with logical plans you can't fault in any way, they got utterly shattered by the universe and things didn't play out as I'd foreseen.

One day, while I was lamenting the fact that while they're not actually as good as Tim Tams anyway I still wanted Pengiuns and I couldn't get them anywhere, Sean posed the possibility of a trip back... Not specifically for Penguins, but for his 'summer break' placement. While there, Penguins (& tights) could be acquired. Nieces could be met. Grandmas could be hugged.

A trip back would mean that I could have a 'proper' - and by 'proper' I mean COLD - Christmas. I could spend happy hours at Home Bargains in Biddulph buying stocking fillers. There would be turkey. And sprouts. It sounded like a fabulous plan. Aside from the money aspect and the whole flying with smalls thing.

Since the money aspect could be deferred as if he got a hospital to agree to hosting him, the Uni would give us a loan to cover the costs of getting and living there in the end, I just had to get my head around flying - which I hate - with the kids - whom I do not hate... but who are easily 'the people I most don't enjoy the company of in small spaces for prolonged periods'. Given their propensity to like to sit on/ head butt/ wee on me and their own distain for any kind of confinement or noise restrictions among other factors.

In the end, the thing that really decided we had to do it for me (even beyond the Penguins) was the realisation that if I could do the flight, once we got there, we could hold a 'naming ceremony' for Bette just like I'd done for Abe. That all the people who got to meet him and celebrate his life and welcome him into the world could come and do the same for Betts. Well, all except one of course...

Bette's naming ceremony and celebration day was a happy day and a hard day. It was exactly as it was meant to be, and it was meant to be. It was a hugely healing trip and the day we recreated the New Life Church's Blessing Ceremony we had held for Abel back in 2015 for Betts, this time without mum, was an enormous part of the process.

Going home I got to eat good curry and hug the people I loved and those things this time were framed by Christmas and a blessing and not a Funeral and a heartbreak. I learnt that I was excited to go back to see other people too and while mum's absence was there of course, it was largely filled with other people who I love and fun. I understood that while 'home' will never quite be the same again, and nor will I, it will still be a place that I need to go to every now and then to fill up on time with people who knew me before GHDs and who saw me drink kiwi 20/20 - sometimes with alarming results.

At Bette's naming ceremony I got to look out across a room as I read my speech filled with the very same people who'd looked back at me as I'd read at Mum's funeral. I learnt that they too were a huge part of who I was and who I am. I understood that their presence that day was not only to meet and to bless Bette and get access to some bloody good cake, but to see me and support me too.

Below is the speech I gave in its entirety and the poem I chose for the day. Looking back over them now I am reminded not only of the blessings my family, friends and the New Life Church bestowed upon Bette that day but the blessing fate gave us to make this trip in the first place. A trip that I didn't know I wanted to make until mum pushed me into it by organising super cheap flights and a perfect placement in Paediatrics paid for on credit for Sean just down the road from Dad. I know that she was in some way responsible for getting us there by pulling the strings from up in her clouds and I'm glad that I trusted that making the trip was important because I came to understand while I was there that I had needed it.

That, while I can't help but feel frustrated by the fact that mum is missing from my world and never, ever got to be in Bette's, as I wrote about who Betts is and how I chose her name I see she is nonetheless ever present in it all...

"Thanks for coming today – to meet Betts, to hear a bit about her and to officially welcome her earthside.

Lots of you were at Abe’s naming ceremony three and a half years ago when I shared how we chose Abel’s name – and how long that took. I’d like to say that it was much easier when it came to naming Bette, and that Sean and I argued about it less…but that would be a lie.

Like with Abe, when it came to names we liked, there was very little common ground. I liked lots of lovely girls’ names. Sean, well, Sean put forward, amongst others, Susan.

Like with Abe, many of my names were vetoed for being ‘dog’ names. Missy, Etta, Dolly. Actually, I think Dolly was vetoed as a sheep name, but you get the idea.

Sean wasn’t very compliant when it came to christening the baby. It’s a trait he’s passed onto Bette. Non-compliance. So far, she’s had the temerity to not be a carbon copy of Abe in terms of personality, so I’ve had to re-learn how to do everything and she bucked statistics and arrived three and a half weeks before her due date. Technically premmie and while Sean – who’d calculated the odds of that happening at less than 5% - was a 5 hour flight and three hour drive away in Western Australia for work. Great work Bette. Great work.

Not to be outdone by her brother as a new born, Bette also spent a few days in special care after a traumatic delivery and having had to be resuscitated… don’t expect to be attending another Plunkett baby naming ceremony.

So, how did we arrive at Bette? Well, miraculously we both liked it. I’d never taught one which was another win for that choice. And apparently it’s not a dog name. Elizabeth was out on the second point though – and to be honest, the idea that after all the arguing about a moniker she might well opt to go with another nickname than Bette down the line if we called her Elizabeth didn’t seem just to me either. So, Bette it was. With an e and not a y because that is actually a standalone name in itself and while I don’t follow many rules, I do make an exception for grammar ones.

Sean was concerned that she’d always have to explain whether she was a Betty or Bet, but I reckon it’s easy enough for her to tell anyone who asks she’s Bette as in Davis and not Bette as in Middler if she needs to. And what fabulous women to be associated with as you introduce yourself.

Bette means ‘God is Oath or Promise’ and so her name appealed on that level too. To me, God’s oath or promise to mankind is the very foundation of Christian belief and is a promise that means even more to me since losing mum – to know that one day I’ll be where she is and I’ll see her again.

It also incorporates the idea of God’s promise to Noah after the floods, and the symbolic rainbow sent as a reminder of that promise. A promise of hope and peace. A promise that after a storm or suffering comes beauty and vibrancy and a new beginning.

Betts is a rainbow after hardship and she’s certainly bright and vibrant. Or wilful and difficult depending on what she’s done!

Her middle name, like Abe’s which is Otis, we wanted to have a musical reference and eventually, we chose Zephyr after listening to the Red Hot Chilli Peppers song… A song about escape and letting go and journeys into the unknown. All things that at the time I was pregnant with her, I was striving hard to do having learnt that there really isn’t all that much that we can control in this world.

A Zephyr is a west wind. A spring wind. A wind that brings change. And she certainly arrived at a time of big change in our world. Around the time she was born, not only did Sean leave the industry he’d been in for almost two decades and go back to Uni to study medicine, I finally took a leap of faith and launched my own business while she was just a small baby.

Into all that change, Betts of course brought more. I no longer only had just one ‘routine’ to manage and just one kids stuff to tote around in the nappy bag. I no longer could do just one crèche drop off because each child had to be delivered to a different age zone. I no longer could use nap time to recharge my batteries or deal with the state of my house because nap time never fell at the same time for everyone. And after Betts had been home for three days Abe helpfully gave naps up altogether for me anyway…

But as well as those kind of changes, Bette did also bring a lot of positive changes into our world too. She’s a curious, inquisitive, funny, and engaging little lady who has taught all three of us a lot. And in turn, the changes she pushed us to make, even before she was here, we hope will teach her a lot too. About taking the opportunities you can. About belief and trust and trial. About having faith in yourself and the universe to help you navigate your way through whatever you dare to wade into. The idea of a west wind also acknowledged the influence and impact on her life that you all have too. Her friends and family far, far, far - did the flight with these two, I know just how far- west over here in the UK.

As with Abe, your letters, cards, packages, messages have reached us and touched us and remind me every time that while she might have a huge nanna shaped hole in her life, it’s filled to the top with the kindness and generosity and love of people who until a few months ago when we decided to make this trip, didn’t even think they’d get to meet her until well after she started school.

Today we might be officially blessing Bette, but she’s been blessed from the moment she arrived."

Francis Bacon. Extract from William Blake's Auguries of Innocence.

Know you what it is to be a child?

It is to be something very different from the man of to-day.

It is to have a spirit yet streaming from the waters of baptism;

It is to believe in love, to believe in loveliness, to believe in belief;

It is to be so little that the elves can reach to whisper in your ear;

It is to turn pumpkins into coaches, and mice into horses, lowness into loftiness, and nothing into everything, for each child has its fairy godmother in its own soul;

It is to live in a nutshell and to count yourself the king of infinite space;

It is to see a world in a grain of sand, And a Heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour;

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