great expectations

gratitude

is seeing what you have
and knowing without it
you would be less

Today, i was angry. In the silence of now, and in the shadow of a day that has passed.. i do what i always do... relive my actions. Feel guilt and rationalise that i know i can't take back what has already been done... tell myself i'll do better next time.

I've never been in a real partnership. My boyfriends of past- i've always kept segmented from the rest of my life. There was us and there was me. I liked my spaces. It kept me sane.

Now these last 6 years have been a lesson in sharing- a lesson i'm still learning on days where the encroachment on my spaces are fringed by the expectations of little lives and the oftentimes unfair division of responsibility.

What gets to me though, is the idea of settling. I always felt repulsed by the word 'settle' - i didn't ever want to be the person that 'settled'. I always thought i'd keep demanding more from myself and more from my life.

Lately i feel like i have settled. That makes me resentful and resentment leads to blame and anger.

That's part of it.

The other part is, i share this 'job' of raising kids with someone who is half responsible for their creation, i never really had an image of what this would be like.

I did have an idea of what my ideal relationship would be like. I know ideals aren't always realistic, and yes we have to be fair... but there's the basics right?

The thing about Zane and I is that we got together - and people called us 'the rebound relationship' and i got pregnant and we had a baby - and even if we both knew it wasn't a rebound... honestly we never got to know each other as individuals before we became fused together forever by a creature that combined our DNA. Then two more shortly after that.

Sometimes out of frustration i tell him over and over, that the person he knows now is a completely different person to the one that existed BC (before children).

I struggle with who i have to be as a mother COnstantly. I'm not used to being the yeller, the hassler, the destroyer of dreams and play with a resounding NO!... it makes me sad to think that i've replaced adventure with 'it's too much trouble', and joy with 'don't do that you'll get hurt/dirty/sick'... freedom with threats.

Who knows how to do this shizz properly.

Anyway, i don't know where this is going... but today- i lost it at Zane yet again, for all the things i expect - and the reality that my expectations often lead to disappointment.

All i want is for him not to be that person who lives their lives taking all the important things for granted, until those things one day are gone.

I panic for him that he will be filled with regret one day, so i try sometimes in an insanely frantic manner to make him see... see that once this day is gone, once these years have gone... you can't get them back.

I scream at him to stop and i see all the things i tell him not to do, mirrored in my own actions. He to them and me to him.

ANd i falter. Yet again. Stuck. Unsure of how fair i'm being.

One part of me says Demand more.

The other says, you ask for too much.

Expectations that are unfair, whatever happened to acceptance.

Why accept, why settle.

It's a never ending battle.

My heart is weary. Heavy with all the things i don't know how to be.



I forgot my camera battery in the charger, and couldn't take photos of the kids.

I lost my phone so couldn't take any photos at all.

I found Che's lego camera and took photos only to somehow corrupt the lot and lost them all.

It was a lesson in letting go of what i was used to doing, of learning to quieten the voice in my head that told me to drive home and get that battery.

One day would not be the end of us all.


So the kids, they wore halos of sunshine. They ran and rolled on grass and looked like freedom should.

At the park where the silences between us cast shadows on the day and made the colours muted.

Tivi had a hat on that framed her long hair round her face, her eyes dark and beautiful, her lips shimmery with gloss that Aunty Phuong had given her the day before. She would have made for beautiful photos. So long and far from the toddler she used to be, except for when she climbed the walls to balance on them- she still had the movements familiar to me of the child she used to be. Oblivious and wild. I wish i could have frozen the moments - where the sunlight caught in her hair and cast an aura around her, the way i imagine she would look - if i could see past reality and into the spaces where she truly lives.

Che, his face etched with awareness as he rode on his bike. Black and grey sweater over a red collared polo and his helmet that he clipped on himself. I can do it mum, he says to most things now. Helmet buckles, seatbelt buckles, lego constructions, toy gun mechanisms. He's become a do it himself man. A little boy and not my baby any more. He loves the hills, but is cautious by nature, does everything through repetition. You can see the stress flash on his face when other kids become the variable in his equations, he calculates the slope but is distracted by a scooter or another bike rider he didn't account for. I watch him for ages, my heart holds it's beat for him. Wanting so much to give him the confidence to just ride, trust himself. Be free. The photograph in my head of him today is one of narrowed brows, head turned to watch another kid go by, before peddling to the edge of the slope. And another of the smile as he realises he did it.

Jacie, with the cap he loves in black and red, sitting on his quad bike, 'Everyone loves my car mum.' he says as i walk along beside him. He has those droopy eyes he wears when he's sick, i watch him decide where to go, who to follow... then choose completely his own path.

I love their laughter as they roll down the grassy hill. Love their made up games. Love the way they run, the way the sunlight wraps itself around them.

I am thankful for the moments where my life is surreal. I'm watching a film clip of these three beautiful kids, hysterical and lovely. Then they step into my thoughts, climb on me, and say Love you mumma.

And for them, i want to try again. Harder. For them i demand only the best of myself.

And then forgetting my two left feet and sense of rhythm we start the dance over.