Sunday

I have one very awesome daughter.

Actually, I have three very awesome daughters. And two pretty darned awesome sons.

I just happen to be concentrating on the middle daughter at the moment, because this blog is primarily about her.

Bink transferred back to Rhodes Recovery again on Wednesday. She rang me that evening.

“All the time I’ve been in the Priory,” – she means since she was sent back there in mid-December, having had a melt-down at Rhodes which terrified all the staff – “I’ve been trying so hard to be cheerful, and just been utterly miserable. Now it’s the opposite.”

“You’re trying to be miserable?”

“I feel fine. I have no idea why.”

“Brilliant, Bink! Well done. So you’ve learnt maybe you just need to persevere through the bad times?”

“They shouldn’t have sent me back to the Priory. It was a mistake. They should have helped me work through it here.”

“It won’t have done you any harm, Bink. It doesn’t matter that you didn’t enjoy it. It’s all helpful consolidation of what you learnt the first time around.”

“S’pose. But now I’ve got a grotty room. It doesn’t even face the garden.”

“Doesn’t matter. You’re not there for ever. Are there any garden rooms available?”

“Loads.”

“So negotiate a better one. That will be good for you, too.”

“’K.”

She also negotiated leave of absence yesterday, to join Alex at a boardgames party with some Cambridge friends, having first been told she couldn’t go. Me, I’d rather have my toenails extracted with a blunt teaspoon than attend a boardgames party of Alex’s geeky goofs. But then I’m not banged up in a loony bin, with only an outside wall to look at.

I was really proud of her.

Even more impressive, she had a volcanic panic attack when she was supposed to be going back, and managed:

To ring me, to get the number for Rhodes Recovery.
To ring Rhodes and tell them she was having a panic attack. Without inducing one in them.
To get in an über to get back in time for curfew. After, ok, missing the first über Alex called for her, because she was in too much panic to go downstairs without him. But he called another and she got in that, and last time I spoke to her, was on track to be early back.

Wow, fab, and well done Bink!

She was also extremely wise in something she said to me the other night. As she so often can be.

I know we’re all sick to death of the Robin-name-thing... but I told her how it made me feel every time I thought of it.

Sick to death, in fact.

The idea of all those therapists calling her Robin makes my blood seethe. It’s the memories, I said. Of what you put us through. When you were off being Robin.

“I think maybe,” she said, “we need to talk about that, more than what I’m called.”

“I think maybe you’re right,” I agreed.

“In the meantime, I’ll make sure I’m not called Robin by anyone you might come across,” she promised.

“You’re a star, Bink. Thank you.”

And the picture?

I came across this some weeks ago, looking for a picture of something else. It made me think of Bink. Hugely. I’ve kept it ever since, to post when it seemed right.

(When she was little, she made numerous beautiful copies of Arthur Rackham færies, beautifully executed. I would have framed them, they were that lovely… but she did them on rough paper, on the back of maths calculations and shopping lists, many of which still showed through.)

I’ve no idea who the little boy is. Perhaps some little boy not yet born?

(He looks remarkably like Bink’s nephew, in fact… but then all babies look the same to me. Ben, Serena… show me a photograph of any of them and I can’t tell them apart.)

Fly Bink (and little boy).

Fly!