Days 0564, 0565 & 0566

My goodness, but I do live a long way from home.
16,000+ kms, 27 hours of plane-time, 15 hours of time difference, opposite seasons: sun at Christmas, no snow ever.
It’s a long long long way physically.
Especially considering I got here kind of by accident and I am such a homebody: I have no inbred need to travel. I think my parents’ love of 3rd class transit in developing countries throughout my childhood cured me of that.
In a way that distance can be good: no one ever just means to visit but doesn’t get around to it. It’s something you have to do and you have to do it for at least four weeks to get your money’s worth and make sure you adapt to the time change.
But there are times when it’s awfully hard.
It would be so nice to drop in on my parents for a cup of tea and some of Dad’s fresh baked bread and then continue on my way, but I can’t do that.
I am waiting to crowdfund someone to develop a transporter machine like in Star Trek but I have a feeling I was born about 50 years too early to be able to enjoy that.

Days 0541 & 0542

Uh oh. I am becoming – have become??? – one of those people who finds other people’s tiny habits annoying. Specifically I’ve reached that point where I’ve lived ‘on my own’ long enough that I actually expect to be the only person who moves stuff around in the kitchen.
This revelation is mingled and colored by being in a circumstance where I’m living with a parent at close quarters for an intensity of weeks.
There’s something vaguely unnatural for a middle aged middle class lady such as myself to live with their parent again under the same roof for an extended period.
The power dynamic is odd.
My parents both love me to the end of the earth. And I know it. So no issues of that type.
Just those moments where I’m used to being a grownup – hell the grownup – so when someone makes decisions that ‘that’s better over there’ or wonders ‘why do you put the coffee there and not there where I find it more convenient’ you kind of what to SCREAM.
Now that I’m a bit back on my feet, I would love to take care of my parents when they’re here for a visit. I mean, no objection to help of any kind, but I want to serve them for once.
But instead I get managed in my own nest.
And it’s aggravating with a capital AGG!
And before you say anything, I have tried to communicate this over and over again but that doesn’t work.
I think my voice must sound like ‘blah blah blah blah I don’t do it your way blah blah blah.’
Patience is required. And a lot of red wine.

Day 0525

I like my dad. He’s a good man who tells me he loves me. And shows me too.
That’s got to be a pretty precious commodity.
In many ways I am extremely FRICKING lucky.

Day 0465

I don’t know if it’s impressive or disappointing or both that Halfman-related anger can still creep into my thoughts and my skin when I don’t expect it.
Perhaps it’s the time of year recalling hard and lonely decisions, the Bruny Island Birthday of Betrayal, or just the fact that it’s sunny and I (in spite of my best efforts) know that he still exists, still thinks he’s charming, still bumbles about under the guise of a human being.

See, even that was nasty.

That’s the kind of angry I get: ‘stab you through the eye with sarcasm and nasty words’ kind of angry

It’s so ugly and unkind.

And I’ve made a decision that Kindness is the rule for me in life.

I don’t particularly want people to remember me as ‘nice’ but I do absolutely want them to remember me as ‘kind’.

And I think too I need to let go of trying to expect people to change to become kind. Some people just aren’t.

And I need to watch that trap where people appear kind when in fact they are motivated by what they want and are lucky it just happens to be kind.

This will sound petty as an example, but it’s the clearest one I have in my brain at the moment:

This is not kindness or generosity: Buying new stirring spoons for someone because *you* don’t think theirs are adequate, especially after you’ve asked them if they are happy with their spoons and they’ve said ‘yup, they stir and spoon things just fine so all good’.

This is kindness: Seeing a clearly harried mother standing on the sidewalk five metres from a tantrum throwing child and saying quietly to her as you pass “you’re doing well”.

Day 0385

It’s rather humbling how much we are our biology.
There is something terribly basic and completing about seeing my child spend time with my parents. I’m very lucky to have parents who are my friends and who I know love me beyond measure. And to be able to put that together with the little person I love more than any metaphor could ever hold slots some sort of Tab A into Slot B.
And the world turns at the right speed and very smoothly in that moment.
Much like when I put my arm around my child at the end of the day and catch a whiff of his scent: mud and grass and warmth and skin and school lunch boxes and a touch of eau de little boy.
It took me a long time – well a couple of months anyway – to feel that inside-my-marrow love for that kid.
I was so in shock and exhausted and traumatized by the whole thing.
I felt the responsibility from the first moment: that, that thing there, still slick and squid bed up from being inside me, that is for me to take care of.
The love, that took a while.
I didn’t even really understand that this baby and my pregnancy were connected – I understood it in my head of course, but I didn’t feel it until about 5 weeks later. Knew night when I was brushing my teeth. I was still in hospital as I had been except for two horrible days. In a hospital with all hanging points removed. With agitated and odd people. But there I was brushing my teeth, tasting that hot minty favour when … Aha! I got it. That sleeping bundle over there was the same one I had carried for all those months.
It wasn’t too long after that the LOVE hit. And I finally understood so many thing: I would step in front of a truck for this little thing. I would worry about him forever. I would imagine every single Worst Case Scenario for everything he ever did.
And the love I felt, the total wonder at how this piece of me had come away from my body and become a person in his own right; that’s how my parents looked at me. And felt about me.