Read Online The Long Hot Summer by Mary Moody - Free Book Online Page A

have carved the words ‘Up the Revolution’.

9
    Our seventh grandchild, Isabella Rosa, with her Italian ancestry on her mother’s side and her sweep of burnished red hair from her Celtic side, has all sorts of medical problems. She was conceived by our youngest son Ethan and his partner Lynne on the eve of their departure for France on an extended working holiday. The only hitch was that they had no idea Lynne was pregnant as they set off with the expectation of exploring Europe in between stretches of working wherever they could find employment, as well as doing some basic renovation to our little village house.
    Lynne felt ill from the day they first set foot on French soil and after six weeks of blaming her symptoms on jetlag, a virus and even the local water, she tentatively bought a home pregnancy testing kit at the local pharmacy. The result was positive.
    It was not a good pregnancy because Lynne was either vomiting or felt nauseous for most of it. She gained weight, but not nearly as much as the local midwife she consulted every four weeks would have liked. The French medical system is verythorough and she underwent all the routine tests. One of them, taken in her fifteenth week, indicated that she was in the ‘medium to high risk’ category for a baby with a chromosomal disorder. An amniocentesis was recommended but given their age (both in their early twenties) and positive attitude towards the pregnancy, they decided to decline. In any event, even if a complication was confirmed, it would be too traumatic to do anything about it this far into the pregnancy. So they waited it out with great optimism.
    At seven months, they cut short their European adventure, after bravely exploring regions of Holland, France and Spain despite Lynne’s permanently queasy stomach, and returned to Australia to prepare for the birth.
    Ethan and Lynne have always been a very mature couple despite their tender years. They have been together since they were seventeen and travelled north to the Lismore region to undertake their tertiary studies at an age when most young people are still living at home, expecting their Mum to cook their dinner and do their washing.
    Indeed I used to worry about their sober and responsible attitude to life, thinking they had grown old well before their time without ever having been outrageous, irresponsible kids. One chilly winter evening when they were first living together I called around to see them and was startled to find them cuddled up knitting a blanket – out of cast-off scraps of wool they had been given by Lynne’s Sicilian grandmother – Lynne at one end, Ethan at the other. I went home and said to David, ‘I’m really worried about those two. They’re like an old married couple. They should be out having fun, not sitting at home knitting. They’re more settled than we are.’
    Or ever have been, I probably should have added.
    They were always good at managing money and saving. From the beginning, our family nickname for Lynne has been ‘budget woman’ for her uncanny ability to save even on a student income. Unlike our other children who, from time to time in their student years, got into financial scrapes and called out for some urgent parental assistance, Ethan and Lynne have always managed brilliantly under their own steam. It was this resourcefulness that enabled them to save enough to fly to France and to travel as much as they did during their foreshortened stay in spite of the fact that Lynne had been too unwell to work after they arrived.
    Now, of course, we are thankful for their maturity and their ability to cope with whatever life throws at them. For they have accepted not only that their first-born is profoundly disabled, but that she will probably require their care and devotion for the rest of her life.
    There isn’t a definitive diagnosis for what ails Isabella, although the pointers are towards some sort of rare