quiet

By On · Add Comment · In blog, children

Tonight I don’t leave the house until twilight is falling.

I am never out at this time; when we walk home from school the mid-afternoon sun shines in our eyes and later dinner preparations render me housebound. When all those tasks are complete and the baby has been put down, it is night.

But on this evening the smaller children are having a sleepover, the teenager is with his friends, Mark is surfing. When I return home with my bit of newspaper and bag of chocolate the house is still.

Why, this is what it will be like when the small ones are teenagers and the big one is grown, I think.  All this quiet for me to fix my own dinner and do my own work. No rushing around to feed small mouths before they cry, no sports games sounding from iPhones or kids cartoons singing on and on on the TV.

Just me.

And all the time in the world.

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happily ever after

By On · 2 Comments · In blog, children, family, mama says, single mamas, writing

Once upon a time there was a woman.

She lived in a town with other women and children and men. She had her own man and child that lived with her, she called them family and loved them with all her might.

One day the man left/she left/she could no longer take the fighting/he could no longer take the fighting/it was hard to live with another person who wanted such different things/it was hard to see themselves through the eyes of the other/it was hard to see themselves.

And so it came to pass that she lived by herself, with the child.

And it was lonely.

And when the wolf howled in the night or the sound of feet echoed too close to the little hut where her child slept in the darkness she was scared.

And she thought, how can I do this all alone. Just me in this world. With this child that needs everything — so much more than I can give. And she cried.

Yet the child grew.

She taught the child everything she could think of to teach and hugged the child every time she remembered. She told  the child the truth about the world; about the good that exists in all people at the beginning and about the rules that their kind made to keep themselves dancing and singing and loving and feeling.

One day when the child was nearly grown the woman woke in the middle of the night to find the hut empty. Fear gripped her heart as beasts and predators pranced in her head.

When the light returned so did the child. Why have you done this? the woman asked. The child could not answer and for a time every night was a time to be afraid; a time when all her love was not enough.

Then one day the child turned to her and said, ‘What I believe in is you. What I am thankful for is you. And everything that you are I try to be and for everything that you have done for me I am grateful. I am a good person. And so are you.’

Once upon a time there was a woman.

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thinking + motherhood = blue milk

By On · 5 Comments · In mama says

“There was something so valuable about what happened when one became a mother. For me it was the most liberating thing that ever happened to me. . . . Liberating because the demands that children make are not the demands of a normal ‘other.’ The children’s demands on me were things that nobody ever asked me to do. To be a good manager. To have a sense of humor. To deliver something that somebody could use. And they were not interested in all the things that other people were interested in, like what I was wearing or if I were sensual. . . . Somehow all of the baggage that I had accumulated as a person about what was valuable just fell away. I could not only be me -– whatever that was -– but somebody actually needed me to be that. . . . If you listen to [your children], somehow you are able to free yourself from baggage and vanity and all sorts of things, and deliver a better self, one that you like. The person that was in me that I liked best was the one my children seemed to want.”

Toni Morrison.

I have a new blog crush and it sounds like this.

Start with the ‘about’ …especially if you think the F word is not for you.  I’d love to know what you think.

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why, there’s a bridge

By On · Add Comment · In writing

“We’re existentially alone on the planet. I can’t know what you’re thinking and feeling and you can’t know what I’m thinking and feeling… the very best works construct a bridge across that abyss of human loneliness.”

David Foster Wallace

fuck it, let’s do it

By On · Add Comment · In writing

I have been meaning to post this video ever since it first came out earlier this year. I don’t want to look too closely at the irony that lies within the delay — but let’s just say it’s never too late. Besides my newborn(ish) baby this might be the best thing I’ve seen all year. Watch it. You won’t regret it.

That Ze Frank.

Pencil poster from the ze frank store. 

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mother of a man child

By On · 8 Comments · In babies, birth, blog, children, family, mama says, personal

Once upon a time, on a chilly winter’s day in July, I gave birth. And I became a mother.

Raindrops formed delicate grey dashes on the high glass window of my hospital room. I stared at an obscure Monet print and screamed.  The goldfish I’d bizarrely brought into the delivery suite to ‘focus on’, swam in circles, forgotten.

This little boy that I brought into the world was like no child I had ever imagined,  but from that very first moment, indeed  even before that first moment, I loved him with a purity of heart that promised to keep me on the better side of humane for the rest of my days.

That moment when eternity smiles at you and your heart cracks wide open.

And the little boy grew, as little boys do.

Fifteen years past.

On his birthday I woke him up in his den still of boyness. He had cake and presents and wore the gold paper crown I placed on his head. When he went over to his dad’s house in the afternoon, I drove him. It was his birthday. It was our birth day.

I drove into the driveway, the same driveway, the same house I had brought him home to  all those years ago. But this time I would drive away and he wouldn’t follow until he was ready.

When I turned to hug him goodbye he squeezed me tight in a way he never, ever does and picked me up. He picked me up! Off the ground. And I wanted to cry. Because how did he get so big? And how did this all come to pass? These fifteen years, gone like that, this man child — my son?

All grown.

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controlled crying

By On · 9 Comments · In babies, blog, personal, sydney

This morning I was feeling that ordinary kind of malaise that comes when the winter days are short and the rain has poured down more hours than not.

When I finally left the house with my unwashed hair and cheap ugg boots, Adrian at the coffee place asked, “Nothing’s changed?” and I had to convince myself that he only meant my order. I wondered if I should go back to Uni early. I wondered if I should get another job.

I fed the baby her lunch – a new development. She rolled the mashed avocado and banana around in her mouth in a decidedly bovine manner and stared at me.

In every corner of the house messes lay in wait; Max’s never-ending drawings, my old maternity clothes (eBay? Vinnies?), dust, piles of shoes, wet washing that hung limp on the drying rack.

I laid my phone on the table, bundled the baby into her carrier and got my keys.

Above the street a faraway sun glimmered through spindly black branches. I stopped to admire a flower sprouting over a backyard lattice, it’s papery orange petals craning towards the glow.

Someone called my name, I turned and said hello.

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that would be the sound of my youth passing

By On · 3 Comments · In blog, personal

Do you consider yourself to be young? Still in your youth?

I think  that maybe that moment has passed for me.  Passed two weeks ago to be exact.

Two weeks ago my eldest son came to me laughing, saying there was a, “Really funny video you have to see on YouTube, Mum. With this guy, saying this thing.”

He’d just discovered Gary Coleman saying that line. You know, the one that everyone said all through school.

Two weeks ago I was sitting at a cafe in Bondi.  Next to me a trio of super lithe ladies with tangled hair and leggings-as-pants were smoking cigarettes and sniggering. “Did you see American Beauty on TV last night?” One of them squawked. “New favourite muhvie!” That was my favourite movie too, when I was about their age.

Two weeks ago  I happened upon a post on Instagram. I love Instagram. A young whippsnapperin’ hipster hairdresser had posted a still from a film he’d just discovered. The still was of Cher, Winona Ryder and a nine year-old Christina Ricci. Also my favourite movie when it was originally released. In 1990. Which I keep thinking was about 10 years ago.

Two weeks ago I realised that if the assessment of ‘my day’* having come and gone could be measured by the cultural norms of my youth having become quaint retro fancies of today’s youngins, then consider me measured.

Goodbye youth. You were ridiculously misspent.

*As in, “In my day we walked for five miles in the snow to get to school.”  Never mind that there is no snow here. Or imperial measurement.

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