I took a deep breath. You can do it! I told myself.
PART FIVE
Melbourne
1995–2012
I just kept going, day by day, with sheer determination and focus and one goal in mind: I wanted a conversation with my daughter.
12
We landed in Melbourne with our eight suitcases piled into a maxi taxi and drove off to our new home in Park St, South Melbourne. It was now winter and it was freezing. Driving from Tullamarine Airport, the landscape was flat and dull, and as we came into the city, it looked more like a country town to us.
Dom was waiting on the doorstep to welcome us. My once baby brother was now a tall, handsome 27-year-old man working in insurance. I had always wondered what it must have felt like for him to be the baby of the family, and here he was now, all grown up. I was so proud of him, and it seemed that none of the years that had separated us had made any difference to our relationship at all.
The children raced in and I looked anxiously at Li as he walked in the door. This was the first time he’d seen the house. ‘It’s a bit small’ was all he said. I knew he was thinking of our spacious house with the wraparound porch in Houston. I liked the new townhouse. We now owned a bit more than half of what was originally a grand double-storey Victorian terrace house. It was painted beige with green and rusty-red trim on the traditional iron lacework around the balcony on the second floor. A brick path led through a small garden to the red front door. It was newly renovated and we could still smell the fresh paint inside.
I tried to shrug it off. ‘It will feel more like home when the furniture arrives,’ I assured him. Our belongings would not come for another six weeks. The only really important things were Sophie’s cochlear implant – batteries, coils, magnets, FM and rechargers – and, of course, Li’s ballet gear, and we had these with us.
Li’s attention soon turned to food. Luckily, Dom had bought us a little shopping trolley and directed us to the nearby South Melbourne Market. It became an exciting discovery as Li found the market had several Asian grocers. A trip to the market was going to become a weekly outing for the family.
Then it was our first night in our new home. I pulled out some quilts from the suitcases and attempted to set up makeshift beds on the floor. By the time we were fed and had put the children to bed, Li and I both collapsed onto our patchwork quilts on the floor. As I lay there, I wondered how our lives would pan out from here. Little Tom would be fine. At nearly three he was developing so well and he was ready for kinder. But Sophie. What lay ahead for her? What lay ahead for us together? And how would Li settle in Australia after being in America for sixteen years?
We only had a few days to get things together before Li started at the Australian Ballet. I worried he would look back on his old life and think our move to Melbourne was a step backwards. He couldn’t even find anywhere that sold the Wall Street Journal! Li was a household name in America so I was also nervous about him having to start again professionally in a new country. This was difficult at the beginning of your career but even harder near the end. He would be turning thirty-five in January.
I was thrilled when Li came through the door on the evening of his first day, beaming. ‘You’ll never guess who’s working at the company, Mary!’
‘Who, darling?’
‘Jiahong Wang! One of my old teachers from the Beijing Dance Academy. He’s the company ballet master. I didn’t even know he was in Australia. His class was amazing! And his wife, Shuyuen, is a teacher at the Australian Ballet School. I can’t believe it.’
‘That’s fantastic, Li!’
‘And Emma Lippa is still there playing music for the company,’ Li added. Emma was the brilliant former principal pianist of the Bolshoi Ballet, who Li had enjoyed working with in the past.
How marvellous for Li to have Jiahong there as his new teacher at this point in his career. He befriended Kenneth Watkins, who was relatively new to the company as well, working in development. I could hardly wait to get to the Australian Ballet to see for myself what it was like there. But first, I had to get the kids settled.
I called Brig for advice about Sophie’s schooling. Brig was a passionate schoolteacher who by now had two young children. Grace was four and Mary Rose was seven months old.
‘I’m going to take my time looking around for the best school for Sophie,’ I told her. ‘I don’t think I want to start her until the beginning of the year.’
‘Don’t wait, Mary. There are good Catholic schools in every neighbourhood. Put Sophie in one as soon as possible or you’ll go mad,’ Brig advised.
The nearest local school was Galilee Primary School. I met the head teacher, who explained that through government funding they could provide a speech therapist for an hour a week. Great! I enrolled Sophie in Grade 1 for the last half of the year. The school was very sweet and the children were really kind to her.
Sophie befriended an older girl called Ksenya Masendycz, who looked after her. I was so pleased that Sophie was making new friendships. It was a good step forwards. I met Ksenya’s mother, Liza, too, and started to learn about the situation in Australia for young families. It was wonderful to be able to talk with them to find out what was going on at school, as Sophie could not tell me. I could already see we were living in a neighbourly community. We could walk to lots of places – parks, schools and other activities. No more having to get in the car for every outing.
I soon discovered that Sophie had been put in a Grade 1/2 composite class. This worried me as she was not yet reading or communicating at Grade 1 level. She had quite a few words but was still babbling, unable to put them into sentences. Li, Tom and I were the only ones who could really understand her. I also started looking at what hearing services were available for Sophie. I called Australian Hearing, delighted to learn that they were able to supply batteries and help service Sophie’s left hearing aid.
Next I contacted the Cochlear Implant Clinic, the birthplace of the very first cochlear implant. It was located at the Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital in East Melbourne. There we met Shani Dettman, a brilliant audiologist and speech therapist who was in tune with what was happening in the world of cochlear implants.
Shani was straightforward in her approach and honest. It seemed that she was very good at what she did, so we began visiting her once a week for therapy. I went to every session, sometimes filming them for future reference. Tom was stuck with me in those early months. Once the lesson finished, we would go home to start all over again – the same routine every week, just as we had done in Houston.
Soon we formed another close community at the Australian Ballet including Jiahong, Emma, Kenneth, Steven Heathcote and his wife, Kathy, and their children, Sam and Mia. Sam often played backstage with Tom as we waited for Li and Steven to finish. I found that Kathy and I shared the same challenges and difficulties with our partners being principal artists touring for nearly half the year.
We both enrolled our boys at the same kinder for two days a week. It was around the corner in Albert Park, not far from the bayside beaches. Tom was in his element, settling in quickly, and making a few good mates.
I had learned early on in my marriage that with Li’s ambitions, dreams and endless projects, he couldn’t always be there for me. Not only was he the breadwinner and very conscious of how important that was for his family, but he always had a huge work ethic as well. I was on a different trajectory, raising our children, which I believed to be just as important. I also strongly believed in the importance of friendships, grateful of support we’d received no matter where we were in the world. Soon, through Tom’s kinder, we met some other parents who became my closest friends in Melbourne, such as Bronwyn Morrison and Nadine Hibbert.