The heartbreak of changing schools - part 1, the decision

We have moved both Bear and Mitts to a new school, following a terminal process that commenced when we first met the leadership and wondered whether this was someone we wanted to leave our children with.

I have been so careful discussing this on facebook, I do not want to hurt the feelings of the parents where we have been, so this has finally pushed me to come back to this site to unpack thoughts and experiences from what has been an incredibly painful process for beloved and I. I will write this post about the lead up, and a further post about the way this impacted our children and is now impacting our friendships.

I will not skewer individuals, that is a fair swap for writing under pseudonym, and besides, I hope to hear their names as little as possible. I share my feelings and opinions, and I know not everyone at the school agrees,

As decisions go, this has to be one of the hardest we have made as a couple. It has been a while since I last posted here, and Bear and Mitts had both settled into school and made friends. We have also made friends and felt part of our community. It is less than 10 minutes walk from our house, whereas we are moving to a larger school - still public - around 20 minutes by car, 40 by combined public transport and foot falcon.

I already knew rumours the school had problems, especially in the relationship between the leadership and many of the parents, when we signed on. After we had a tour, where my and Beloved's guts said no, I rang around both public and private schools in the area, gauging availability, before we decided to 'go local' and give it a shot.

My attitudes to going local, public schools, the education department - even wider beliefs around community, collective action and human nature itself, have all been deeply damaged.

I will not list the litany of complaints here, but I would say they span wellbeing, curriculum and other matters. It wasn't just 'a gripe'. I will say, as a foil to the now-dominant 'narrative of the problem parent', which I am now deeply cynical about, that dozens of parents have made formal complaints about similar matters to the Department of Education and Training in recent times as well as in the past. Those parents included teachers, OH&S officers, people working at other government departments and people who give hours of their time to NGOs. They were not some cliched gaggle of helicopter yuppies. They just wanted their kids taught well, and kept safe.

It wasn't just us: as I became involved with the small group of parents gently but persistently trying to achieve change (and feeling heavily smashed down at every step) I was approached by parents of older children who had been through the same thing over the years. The Department was well aware there were deep, long-term problems, but chose - chooses to look the other way or characterise the parents, despite the repetitive nature of the complaints, as trouble makers or prosecutors of a vendetta.

As they do to parents at numerous troubled schools around Melbourne. I have learned there is far more to the issue than problem parents, and most of the problems never see the light of day.

There were plenty of good teachers, but there is no leadership manual in the world that says good workers can make an environment great, on their own, in a steep hierarchy.

I spoke to a senior bureaucrat who effectively admitted there was a problem, but said that, essentially, nothing would change. I also got talking to parents from other schools and learned that our school's issues are sadly not uncommon. Some of the tales I've heard about rogue principals are simply awful, beggar belief, and make a mockery of the Department's publicly-stated policies.

This would not be sustainable without the consent of many, but sadly, despite being in an issue-aware Greens-voting area, too many people, for various reasons, walk past the standard they would not accept for their own children. I did not. Nothing bad happened to me or to my kids, at least not before I started asking questions and pushing back, but it did to others, and you can only rely on fortune to keep you and your children out of trouble for so long. This is fundamental to being a community.

Many parents took firm stances, some even stronger than ours, but others undermined - leaking or at minimum whining in the school yard about how the parents raising issues were lowering morale. Given many kids already had poor morale (just one example - prep kids holding on to pee all day because they were scared of going in the toilets), I thought this was a terrible case of sticking heads in sand and blaming the messengers.

Others again - possibly a majority of parents - just felt intimidated. They would approach the active parents in the playground and thank them (us), and tell us we had support, but when the moment came their understandable concern for how their children might be treated came first. Parents were scared, they still are.

Over the past couple of years a number of families left the school. Having sworn as recently as a year ago that we would not consider this, we paused, considered the reality, and ended up doing the same.

Our children only get one run. Disappointed with the gaps in their education, and with most of our trust gone, we decided enough was enough. 

Having decided to take such a big step, things like reputation, quality and curriculum became more important. Our trust in the public system was damaged and from my discussions with both bureaucrats and other parents it became clear there are huge variations among the schools in the northern areas of Melbourne. A number are barely dragging along, a number of others are excellent models of everything a public school can be. And the latter are nearly all 'zoned'.

We visited a school with wonderful music, language and overall teaching, the envy of the region. After ten minutes talking to the Assistant Principal, we were both nearly crying. It was so clear that we had been deluding ourselves for so long, and that our worst instincts were on the money from the beginning. You can tell when you are speaking to a passionate educator who loves their school and everyone in it.

The impact was so strong that, upon learning they were zoned to the nth degree, we looked at moving house. We have only recently renovated (how that would have been fine fodder for this blog if I'd been active!) but were realising just how much more important some things are. Then, on a tip from a friend, another parent already in the process of moving, we made some more enquiries and found a great school that could take our children.

If you had told me 5 years ago that I would shave and don a tie to meet a public school principal I'd have laughed. But when your children are on the line, and you've seen how inconsistent and unreliable the system can be, you don't take chances.

We have made the move and I am still unpacking and unwinding and releasing all the stress. I shake or feel sick when I think about it, writing this was not easy.

The impact on our friends and our children is still ongoing, and that will be the subject of my next blog post.

Extracts from a personal letter

I wrote a long and personal letter to an aunt and uncle who have always been close. They looked after me a lot when I was at boarding school, I remain friends with my cousins, who introduced me to underage drinking and heavy rock, amongst other important rites of passage. We have not seen much of them recently, but they have stayed in regular contact with my parents. Because of the particularly close relationship I had with them, and my aunt being my father's sister, one of the only people he might ever listen to in the world, I have struggled not to feel disappointed that they have not given me support as the rift with my father grew. This is selfish, I know, but I also know he feels vindicated by his sister's ongoing friendly relationship with him. And I have even felt some suggestion from my aunt that I should make a better effort to understand him, because of how his own father treated him (more than half a century ago).

I wrote a long letter in chapters. I felt the need to be brief and understated in raising the issues with my parents. I talked about Christmas and this is how it went...

I resolved to keep discussion of my folks brief. I sense you have seen enough tortuous family relationships that you don't want to hear the sounds coming off the strained piano wire between my father and I, or the dischord around it. I will summarise enough that the bits of news and any other updates you hear make some sense, then move on.

We went up for Christmas. My mum has always banged on about wanting a family Christmas and even the father brought it up, so, although they've had a pretty decent share of one-way visits it was something I really wanted to give them. It was hard work, though I believe as pennance for my sins I have done the right thing in not telling them it was so. They had a few nice moments together here and there and I will do my best to let them keep those memories.

It was very hard graft though. There was a lot of harshness towards the kids, and for some reason both of them can be particularly unpleasant towards Mitts. I am not sure where this comes from, no doubt a psychologist could have a field day. Efforts to join in, play, or otherwise interact were modest, so the experience for us is one of carrying the kids over eggshells much of the time, then playing with them while my folks wander off elsewhere, read magazines, and so on. It was similar during the previous visit. Lots of presents, of course, but that doesn't really make up for other things, not when you get to the end of Christmas day and your son looks at you with sad eyes and says 'Christmas is poo poo'.

I know there are thousands of reasons for all this and I acknowledged you don't need to hear much of it. I just want you to know enough to understand that while I know about the past and can try to forgive, for myself, these are not things I like exposing my wife and children to and that this will affect the amount of time we can spend visiting them. We will take a break for a while. Most likely next time, for everyone's sake, we will stay in an apartment nearby, as you did when [cousin] went up there, and organise measured doses of time in which, hopefully, we all make the most of it. Explaining that to my mother without casting aspertions on the last visit will be a tricky exercise in diplomacy…

On a better note, we did have some nice moments on the beaches nearby, or playing around the pool. I noted the father come up and attend to some tasks near where the kids were playing a couple of times, and I know this to be one of his ways of interacting. Things like exploring Mon Repos beach, watching the turtles, or even heading out fishing when they are a bit older may be ways they can bond a little. We took ourselves on to Hervey Bay for a few days afterwards, and it was lovely - the beaches are like landing strips of sand shining with sun on the puddles left by the tide. For the kids, running barefoot and chasing crabs, it was slices of heaven in rainbow sauce.

The Guilty Christmas and the bitter aftertaste

"Christmas is Poo Poo!" was a Boi's summary, at the end of a day with my parents. He was angry and upset. And I was wondering why I did this to him.

We spent last christmas with my parents in Queensland. Now this blog, as anyone still following knows, has in the past few years been dominated by, even poisoned by my issues with my father. This escalated after his grand statement that he would never come and visit us (and he hasn't). I unpacked fragments of a life of self-loathing and doubt here, I also took the plunge and spent quite a few hours with a counsellor.

I reached a sort of resolved, unilateral settlement: I would simply try not to have any expectations, take what little emotional interaction is given without going on the front foot, avoid any discussions of politics or education or career that have the potential to turn ugly, and continue to potter away at the relationship, largely for my mother's sake. And the sake of black-and-white memories of standing by his side fishing, or grasping his hand to be hauled up on top of the escarpment somewhere in my bush childhood.

We remain on speaking terms. He and my mother have both been on-and-off unwell; recently he has successfully fought a round of cancer. Although our previous trip to visit had been more miss than hit, I felt they deserved another, a Christmas, partly on the basis that they might not have many left. Guilt, and some hope.

You catch two planes to get to the small, difficult location they moved to well after we started having kids. The bill for the family is well into 4 figures. We allocated one of the small handful of precious, childhood Christmases. And hoped.

If expectations were most firmly rooted in actual, recent experience, empirically observed, then the result was exactly as I should have expected.

My father ignored us much of the time, reading the paper or pottering. As he did the previous time we went up.

He did manage to growl at Boiboi and be rude to Beloved. As well, there were the usual attempts to pick fights with me, although notably heightened and emboldened this time - moving on to the front foot again, probing for that sore spot to open. Now, it's like he's gone into that old man thing where he thinks fuck it, I'm right, I've always been right, fuck him.

Tried to hector us on our plans for raising the kids, and when I made plain we will do it our way and do our best to turn them out ok, he sneered: "We'll see..."

But, those aside, he was mostly mild (this may give you a sense of what mild means in my family). The real fun was with my mother. I have spent a lot of time blaming my father, who as you can tell is a control freak with some undiagnosed misfire in his neurons that periodically spits out nasty, for my mother's oddities. Yet she was in a league of her own over Christmas. Obviously pleased we were there, yet she spent her time Berating Boi, making perhaps unintended but rude digs about our parenting, favouring Bear, berating Boi, snarling at Boi, taking herself off and not actually doing much with the kids most of the time, berating Boi...

Did I mention a bit of a bias against Boi? Still, he was almost 4, who would think he'd not be perfect. And female.

In the way they've always been, they were nothing if not generous with presents. Certainly quantity. We asked that the selection be modest, and thoughtful. Instead there was a large pile of plastic - about a foot and a half off the ground - which made our presents and those from Santa look trite. But then how can you not be a loving grandparent (insert 'parent' in my own narrative) if you pile up the presents?

Pile up all the presents you want, but if you growl at him through the day your grandson will still conclude that Christmas was poo poo.

At the very end, the airport, my mother starts saying to the kids how much she enjoyed their visit and would they please come again? "Daddy" Boi said, "Can we come back, Grandma wants us back!"

It broke my heart.

I know I need to add an uplifting postscript. So. After that we drove to Hervey Bay. It was lovely. The end.

Driving back on the Hume Highway with road songs

Early Paul Kelly, a surprising amount of noise, I thought; accoustic, low key, folk-country but he gives sax and snares and guitar solos and dirty rock as well.

Family can be heartbreaking. Now I am in a better place and my role is to squeeze Beloved's arm and to help her steer through and beyond the broken timber into open highway. We drove for a long, long time, across two borders, for negligible returns measured in thimbles of warmth and cold spaces between hours.

I spoke to Beloved's mother. I asked for no more letters that represent the continuing tumble of psychological abuse and mental illness from generation to generation in that family. I heard about how my Beloved is unilaterally wrong, on everything, and how not one such thing could possibly taint the efforts of her mother. I noted the language of favouritism and rejection, the unpacking, in a few minutes of frankness that family never engages in, of years of building resentment and defences based on a false narrative, on a martyr complex, on an obsession with hating the former husband and shifting his ills to one of his daughters. I quietly, carefully (for my oft-assertive personality I was an angel of subtlety and restraint, I promise) pointed these things out. Perhaps the only person to ever do so. A sad, messed up but ultimately abusive person wrung her hands and refused to agree to even trying to meet her daughter half way, to conversation, to any sort of compromise, before walking quickly out.

I am glad we had this discussion. I repeated thrice that there be no more correspondence which, coming from such a place, can only be designed, no doubt subconsciously, to manipulate, draw out guilt, and cause continuing pain. She seemed to agree to this, if nothing else. Beloved, exhausted from 36 years of effort, did not complain about my uninvited intervention.

The JJJ hottest 100 is eclectic and that is a boon on a road trip. There is no sinking into a mood, an artist's favoured key or time signature, and becoming hypnotised by the gum trees. There is M83, and with that breadth of sound bringing to mind (in this time of 80s revisionism) Tears for Fears, and a ripping, screaming sax solo, I was disappointed to learn 'they' is just a 'he'. Starting to skip Gotye, out of familiarity but not contempt. Appalled at finding Lana Del Rey in my earworm.

Beloved lost her Pop, the children's Great Grandfather. For a variety of reasons, perhaps visible in the previous paragraphs, he and his now-deceased wife were quasi-parental figures for her. Dominating her childhood memories, providing a needed bedrock of stability and unconditional love. A sad life that commenced with more than a dozen kids living in a small shack, survived the most brutal battles of Papua and Borneo, lost 2 brothers in a terrible car accident when he got back from war, evolved into that of a successful farmer, husband, parent and, through the prism by which I knew him, much loved and stellar grandparent.

Gentle explanations of loss and death, hints of reflective comprehension from a 5 year old Bear. The generations assembled in the park opposite his hospital, in the final hours, and the joy of Bear and Mitts as they played with so much family they see so little of was ironic, but perhaps, as a celebration of continuity and the goodness Pop has left behind him, appropriate.

Why does it sometimes take a funeral to bring people together?

Beloved likes Emma Louise, Jungle, best of all. It takes her directly to Offspring, to cosy couch evenings stretching back through boxed sets of Secret Life and Love my way. It is strong, but also soft and reassuring. It is all I want to be as we ease in next to our house, back in suburban Melbourne, our children safe, excited cats already talking from behind the door, heater waiting to be fired up and a month's worth of chocolate to be eaten.

Bear starts school, and everything suddenly....

Exit bankerworld. It started tugging at my sleeve during transition, and has crystalised during the first few weeks of school. The difference.

The difference undermines your settled sense of balance. Sure, it bites that we can't be there more often, leaving the kids with others several days a week, but hey look everyone else's folks are in the same boat.

Except they're not.

Our mostly professional friends, the members of Beloved's mother's group, and importantly most of those other parents at our lovely, supportive, arty, just-right childcare centre all seemed to share the struggle. It was life, inevitable, we were just part of the flow. And compared to many fellow travellers we had things on a reasonable keel. I had my 4 day week for ages, generally I'm home before bed time, we both do some work at home, but if you're comparing with barristers, bankers and businessy whatnots who hang out for rare quality time when court is cancelled or the deal is done early, and otherwise bond by 'taking the child to swimming classes' on Saturday, it looks fine. Enough. (ignoring that nagging voice in the deepest part of your parental soul).

Bankerworld was buried down at the opposite end of our council's jurisdiction. The end where all the streets have speed bumps or signs telling you not to turn between 8 and 9am (in Melbourne this being the surest sign of money and influence). Beemers top and tailed with Lexii.

School is at the other end, where we have moved to. Sure there's a banker or two, there are also teachers and nurses, artists who can't afford that other end which abuts so many galleries and bars they ply their trade in. A farmers' market. And people who don't work, some of them men, and others who work nice, soft, genuinely flexible hours, allowing them to spend real time with their children, drop them off, pick them up at 3.30pm, attend those parent morning teas and twilight sports events that are not scheduled to work with Collins Street.

Like the one scheduled for 5.30- 7.30pm that I arrived half way through to be told I'd missed almost everything. In my office arriving at 5.30 means leaving at 4.30 which is like taking a half-day off.

Like the drop offs and pick ups largely being done by the au paire. Daddy I want you to drop me off said Bear, my little mate, and I can't and I want to. And the frustration of being told we can't afford to live on my income, which is well above the national average, so Beloved won't ditch her job, but she - understandably - doesn't want to go full time either so I'm rather stuck and,

...now, at our friendlier, more corduroy, farmers' market-hosting school, we are now in the minority with our au paire, our expected shift into after school care, our turning up late to things in a suit. There is a community here, and I like it a lot, and I want at least one of us to be able to settle into that community, that pace alongside our children.

There are certain types of job that own you. Lawyer, even if part-time, or working for the government, is like that. Everyone is out to take your job, or file that urgent notice to produce documents when they know you're on leave. Two people in jobs that want to own you is a bad recipe.

My hours of themselves aren't ridiculous. I could work slightly more, in fact, if it meant Beloved could be there all the time. What I resent now is being trapped in the mid zone where neither of us feels we have room to move, or give. It is, to be technical, plainly shite, and now we can see that there are lots of other people who have rejigged something and made a bit more room in their lives to be human. I am buying The Age again, flicking across pages of community, teaching, local government jobs, for ideas, for either or both of us...

As days become years

As Beloved peeled off to bed, I went out for a walk. Like so many evenings capping days that drag on, circling around the screen, files, briefings and other bureacratic occuclutter. Evenings that fail their promise of something to make the day seem worthwhile. Worth more than merely paying the bills.

We are tired. Everything makes sense. But that doesn't change the wait each day for the third part of life, the one where you are adults with your own agency living your own life, to engage, even if just for an hour.

I told an older relative, with a comfortable looking nuclear family life in Surrey, England, that we are thinking of getting someone in the bungalow out the back, perhaps an au pair. It sits empty, unvisited, and we thought if there was a boarder who could babysit from time-to-time we might be able to do things like go out on occasional dates.

...Beloved and I, to be clear!

And anyway (as Bear says when you pause in a conversation with her) they replied that it sounded like I was pining for the past, going on dates and all that; better to adjust to life as it is now. And not for the first time in recent months I found another person's helpful view of my stage in life almost suicidally depressing. And realised that even a happy-looking twee family in Surrey can be the post-script to some compromise that forever consigned some romantic notion like, well, romance, or affection, to a cold little graveyard in the far corner of the park.

Perhaps going out together is not important to those people. Perhaps all of it became less important. But in the words of a Black Crowes number I've been messing around with a bit on my old, scarred, nylon-string:

She don't know no lover,
No man I've ever seen,
To her that ain't nothin',
But to me it is, it is everything.

I walked along the ridge above Merri Creek, where the street lights are infrequent and muffled by dominating trees. It was dark, quiet. Now and then a house was fantastically lit with Christmas lights. A lone skateboarder peeled off into a driveway. A couple of dogs murmered unconvincingly.

All my closest slept. No war threatened them, no fire or floods approached our suburb. There was food in the cupboard. These things are all good and I am thankful. But we only live once, and if we spend our days apart, grinding our faces into computer screens in giant hives, then at some point surely we need more.

After transition, a transition

We are just weeks from school. Bear tries on her dress, I well up. She is excited. I am, and yet. It is the start of it all.

We went to transitions together, Beloved being in a new job. Daddy daughter mornings of nerves and bouncing excitement (respectively). I milled awkwardly with instant coffee and biscuits, staff room life, chatted to the odd parent. Mostly mums, many knew each other. I shuffled my handouts, listened to the primers about how good it will be. I am sure it will. And yet.

Bear bonded, mostly with her buddy from this year's prep. And a tall girl who can already use the monkey bars. Like me, Bear is quite a bit of work off being able to use monkey bars. She drew, listened, had fun. Then we walked home together, put on the kettle, I made her a hot chocolate, and we sat on the step that edges our back garden, side by side. Questions and anecdotes. She told me about her classes and I asked about friends. We pottered a while there each day before I put on my suit and took her to childcare, an afternoon of obiter, chronology and general administrain waiting in the office.

Work was extra hard those days. I direct my hopes to her fortune. I hope she is happy.

Grandparents in Queensland - a brief (dis)engagement

We went to Queensland. A few months ago now, this blog has lost some of its grasp on chronology.

It was fine. Fine in the sense that nothing catastrophic went down. I avoided the big topics. My parents made a modest effort at times, while hardly making our considerable effort, emotional and logistical, worth it.

With 4 days to share with the kids, neither of them could be bothered hanging out in the play centre when it was raining heavily and there was no-where else to go. It seemed to be too much to just be. With the kids, just be. At the huge playground next to the lake they made fanfare out of feeding the ducks. Always feeding the ducks. They lingered long after the kids moved to the swings and climbing frames, focused on the ducks.

At the gardens they engaged while showing us around. The steam train was a hit. Then we fed the ducks again. My father snarled at Mitts for throwing a large piece of bread to the ducks. Apparently it can harm them. Apparently feeding them bread is otherwise a good idea. Apparently snarling inappropriately at your 2 year old grandson because he failed to correctly apportion bread is less concerning than a duck being overfed. I moved in between, creating distance while commenting on 'grumpy granddad'. I resisted the strong temptation to shove him into the water, a real, visceral temptation derived from a strong sense of my need to protect my son from such unapologetic unpleasantness.

We got to a playground, a perfect context for relaxed engagement, big seats, shade, palms waving overhead, a benign and calming context. They both walked off and sat in the nearby cafe for an hour.

There were some nice moments. Mitts found some pumice on a beach nearby - again we were there sans grandparents, who thought it might be easiest if they just waited at home - and was keen to keep it to show granddad. Look granddad, Pu-misss. Yeeers, says graddad, allowing half a smile. Not many though. So much berating, not sitting on furniture properly (those 2 and 4 year olds are so out of control these days!) was a big one. Our efforts to get them to move dinner forward slightly to have it with the kids were mostly resisted.

We went to Hervey Bay, just us, not them too. The beach was long, wide, uncrowded. Sand in toes &c, its a common cliche for a reason. Saw the tails of 2 dolphins or Waloos from the beach. That was nice. More of that please from this day forth.

Approaching 40 - time to give up?

"If you have not self actualised by 40, isn't it time to give up?"

I had been dealing pretty well with being in my late 30s. I had no 40 issues, really none at all. Until that statement, made by a well-meaning late-20-something.

Perhaps it is time. Perhaps that last rung on the hierarchy of needs is an illusion. Many seem too obsessed with it, with something they haven't yet found. If 'too' is defined by missing the good things right in front of you.

But when I toyed with the notion, not writing that novel or thesis, losing the idea I've been gnawing away on that I might look again at career with the kids in school, consider the possibilities like an undergraduate, when grasped it and peered in, I saw a hard, lightless landscape, I saw slowly lifting one foot, then the other, forwards, towards the same. It was just bleak, a shade of ashen grey about 3 shades short of black.

It was a statement made with the same sense of certaintly I felt at that age, by now I would be everything I am and more, whatever more is, and perhaps most importantly of all I would have 'found it' and would be entirely sated by what it is that I put my energy into. Not only that, but money would be bouncing off my shoulder blades and as I straddled a perfect balance of material sufficiency and ethical purity. Saving the world, then recuperating on a ski field in Japan or a reef off the coast of Manado. As I write it the words are silly, the utopianism self-contradictory and absurd, yet it was a firm belief.

The young person, the sense of certainty, both are easy to put into perspective. But the words pierce my defences against a far broader sweep of pressures that are less passing, less easily ignored. From family, from Beloved, my kids and my own guilt, outwards.

Should I be mourning the 30s as the last time in my life I might have been entitled to do something radically different? Are the unfinished 8,500 word novel, the Masters that never turned into that Phd scholarship, the two writing jobs for which I got to second interview stage, the dream policy role that came at the wrong time, the artefacts of the final period of settlement on the rest of my life?

I have so much I am happy about. I know I should be grateful. I just don't know what I can tell my children, in complete honesty, it is all for. I know some of you have the answers, have passed this date by a while and will find the very notion here perplexing or even offensive. I hope so anyway, as I need to hear something that isn't from the maw of conservative late-30s career-life, a maw that presently has me in its teeth...

The Age of Divorce

There was a time of heightened marrying, and among those unmarried several equivalent partnerships. You know at the time that they can't all last, perhaps, in some cases, you already know they shouldn't.

Then there were children. Parenting is by necessity myopic and distorted, everything appears behind the lens of a world that so completely envelops your time and energy. You mingle by mutual interest: mother's groups switch everyone's attention to a group of others in the same place, and even within existing friends fathers seek each other out to compare notes, reassure, share an understood release over beer-soaked conversation from quarter to quarter.

Now a succession of separations and divorces. I should not overstate it, there are only 3 on my mind although a couple of other unions are clearly on the rocks. They all have small children. In at least 1, probably 2, it is a result I might have predicted if I were forced to lay down money back then. The couples, indeed the children, may be better off, and having brought wonderful children into the world through those unions there must be a caveat on any regret. In one case they are working well together to share responsibilities and avoiding vitriol.

None of which reduces the general melancholy I feel when I look across that landscape of friends and imagine the disappointments, the sense of failure most would feel, perhaps deep down the speculation - no doubt quickly suppressed out of guilt and love for their children - as to how things might have been different.

Happy photos now weigh heavily in albums, threatening to push through pages. Smiles seem strained, sunny beaches a prelude to storms. I want to hold mine close and never leave the afternoon in the back garden, grass, gently-clunking toys, Beloved with a handfull of snippings under the olive tree.

The prodigal son drags his family north

I have blogged about my father. Hit 'personal', go back, it's there. I am now in a better place. He has received the all-clear after an encounter with cancer followed by enough chemicals to kill the Great Barrier Reef. They are both pretty unwell, and against some better judgement we are paying them a visit.

Despite the one-sided nature of the effort involved, I feel I have to give the possibility of a relationship between grandparent and grandchild a chance. A small, guarded, chance. And my poor mother, stranded in a town she never wanted to go to, deserves something.

I have not fought with him for many months. I refuse to talk about work. Or asylum seekers (or anything touching on race, not that he's a racist, but..). We have some ongoing contact and it is tolerable.

As once suggested on this blog, by Zoe I believe, I took a few sessions of counselling directed specifically at our relationship. It was good. Partly from that, and from reflection, I can see things from a slightly removed place. I have additional perspective and it helps. In particular I spend less time fretting about whether our relationship is part of some adoption issue. That may be there, but it is also a lot clearer to me that I am only part of an immovable story of control and inflexibility.

Counselling helped me see wider patterns. Anything that can't be controlled becomes a threat. The only child he could have raised and never fought badly with would be one who never fully grew up, never pushed out and became an individual. No matter how similar their wiring (to use his phrase), one decent step towards independence and it would be on. My mother's acquiescence in so much of his crap frustrates me, yet I can see that it is a survival mechanism for their relationship. As he gives no room, and offers no mediation between positions, any serious push back would be like a car hitting a wall. No give. A mess.

I know what I would probably do if I were her... well I know because I have effectively done it. I said 'no thanks', 'stop saying that', 'I don't want the same things you do', 'I disagree'. Started saying it at the end of my teens, and have had a turbulent relationship since. The normal adjustment into the adult-adult relationship is not possible, because there can be no adjustment. So where I have learned from those fights at 18, 19, and long since moderated many things that led us there, he has barely changed one iota. He has pulled out insults long since buried, as if we hadn't done the burying by going through a hostile, stressful, awful process of razorblade iteration.

But. Months of carefully circumscribed conversation, the insights of counselling, and my own reflection have brought me to a better place. There are limits to our engagement, and I know I can't improve on that.

Visiting is not ideal. I need to consciously avoid both trigger-topics and opportunities, which usually come in the form of initially-benign conversations, in fact often pleasant, a glass of scotch in front of each of us, with my mother and Beloved wandering off to do other things, and my defences going down, and then the poison comment arriving like a concealed screwdriver through the ribs...

Signature noises and tweety-bird pogues

Mitts has a sound, everyone is impressed and Bear is slightly put out. He raises a warble at the back of his throat, I think it's his tongue flapping away loosely, and can raise it, lower it, pretty much sing tunes with it. I would write rrlrrlrrlrrlrrlrrlrrl or rdlrdlrdlrdlrdlrdl or simply rrrrrrrrrrr, yet none really capture it.

When I sing to him he say "STOP SINGING". However on my looking offended he sometimes relents, "Sing Daddy". He relented for Nature's Boy, a version involving his name every couple of lines and references to sitting in a tree (he and Bear have discovered that it's fun to be stuck up in the fork of the tree out the front by Daddy, who then sits under them fretting and waving his arms around behind them ready to make some attempt at catching).

Bear decided her signature noise would be speaking in a high squeaky voice, which is a bit of a thing she has, perhaps not the one I'd have chosen to show off. I'd have gone for some singing instead. She pulled out a few Coldplay lines the other day, but the best moment came from sitting in the very same tree, telling me she was a bird, then singing:

Tweet tweet tweet tweeeeeet,
Tweety tweet tweet tweeeeeet,
Tweet tweet tweeeeeeeeet,
Tweety tweet, twe-tweet....

and so on, being, OF COURSE, Dirty Old Town by the Pogues. Note for note. Which we had on in the car a few weeks ago.

A Bear likes her music, in her own way. My little brother was with us. He was out the back playing and singing, very nicely, a very talented lad. I was feebly picking along improvising, feeling very outshone. But Bearsy, every time another song started, demanded 'Play your notes Daddy' before she would dance.

Enjoying every moment.

.... Enjoying every moment apart from trying to change Mitts' clothes and apart from being woken violently at 6am...

Hard for a boy, it is

Mitts is struggling with life at 2. He has started being physically and verbally assertive (to put it mildly) and I am sure the collective weight of correction from both ourselves and others is getting him down. He can't get away with hitting or shoving. On the other hand with the bulk of his playmates being girls there is a tendency for him to be at the rougher end, noted as such by the parents of girls, without necessarily being the instigator. Part of learning is not to hit, part of learning is not to snatch or boss other kids about. And dare I say being hit by their friends when they try to wrestle a teddy away from them is one of the ways kids learn that they aren't an island. Which is to say that it ain't always his fault.

Still. He can't hit and we will keep making that clear. And there are a few ways he is testing ground, asserting himself, pushing boundaries, most of which need some curbing at the fringes. But perhaps we need to add some other carrot. I think a boy is sad and world-weary.

He held on today, as he now often does, at childcare. His chin slumped on my shoulder, yet his grip around me was firm. The new normal, before which he was better than fine and he'd adjusted well to childcare from the start. As with Bear who hurls herself in, loves her kinder teacher, and currently strikes a nice balance by waving to me from the window but then leaving to return to her friends before I have driven off.

Men have a lot of lessons to learn as they grow up. There are a lot of contradictions in those lessons. He will be baffled many times. My job may be to guide him through those lessons, teach him to be a decent man, but it is also to make sure the weight of contradictions and the size of the task of tackling life itself don't overwhelm him. At first, he needs love and reassurance. While keeping the rules firm, I need to find more ways to give him that love and reassurance.

And hang out throwing mud and stuff.

With a sick boy at midnight

Not that bad the Doctor said, but by 5pm sheer tiredness overwhelmed him and he slept. Until 11pm.

A succession of thumps announced his awakening. He stood in the dining room squinting, thrown by the lack of routine and order. Saw us approaching and smiled.

Beloved was wrecked and left me to put him to bed. He was awake and needed to adjust before sleep might come again. Clutched a bottle of water and asked to sit with me. I hugged him close, flicked over the channels but realised nothing was suitable, least of all the biker violence I had drifted into. This late I wanted a compromise, no Fireman Sam or In the Night Garden DVDs with my remaining Shiraz. We settled on A River Somewhere and sank deep into the couch.

"Car", "House", "Moo Daddy Moo" were pointed out to me. He leaned his head back on my shoulder and I told him I'd missed him that day. As Rob Sitch and Tom Gleisner waded up the Howqua River, water spraying off their airborne fly lines, he asked: "Daddy and Mitts did it?"

Perhaps one day little man- if you aren't a vegetarian. But it still made a small warm place in me. After the episode he asked for "read it?" and we snuggled through a couple of short kids' books. It was midnight. He wanted more. We stood together, he wrapped his arms around the back of my shoulder, and I went into the bay behind the curtains. Outside it was dark, cold and still, the world on pause.

"Sleep time". He still wanted another book but the protests were weaker. I tucked him in and kissed his forehead. Bear snored peacefully beside us. He smiled and blew kisses with an audible smack as I walked out of the room.

Eva Cassidy, Clare Bowditch, and the Fields of Melbourne

Beloved came home from the Eva tribute breathless with excitement, almost teary with emotion and told me firmly I was to go see the final show Sunday afternoon. She would mind the kids and it would be done. I simply could not miss it.

Eva Cassidy has perhaps the most beautiful voice I've heard. Her story is told elsewhere, but it is short and tragic, and reflects not only the essential unfairness of life but also the cold, anti-creative machine that is the music industry. I discovered her posthumously, like almost everyone, at the tail end of my time in London.

I am a closet singer. Correct that, there is nothing closet about it, I've had lessons and sang a song I had written at my wedding. But closet in the sense that if I had half Eva's (or Clare's) voice I would be weaving tales of woe through the venues of northern Melbourne on a regular basis.

My version of crooning was wrapped up in my early romantic haze with Beloved. The first night we got it together, I asked if I could get her something, she joked 'sing me a lullaby', and I picked up the guitar in the dark and warbled out 'Van Deimen's Land'. She wrote home about that effort! The night before she was to leave, on a separate journey to our chosen home in Melbourne, we huddled together and rocked on the step of the bathroom, and it was 'Waltzing Matilda' (the sad, reflective version not the rugby cheer squad version!).

As she left she handed me a present, Songbird, and told me that when we met she expected me to have learned, and to sing to her, Eva's version of Fields of Gold. And I did. And we are married with Bear and Mitts. So there is back story...

I couldn't help tearing up in that song, beautifully rendered. Clare did a wonderful job. The show intersperses songs with anecdotes about Eva, and some from Clare's life that are a bit like the one above, symbolic encounters that give subjective response to the narrative. The musicians were exceptional- you could hate the songs and Clare's voice (well you would be a robot, but anyway...) and still enjoy seeing several incredible musicians. This was perhaps the only time I can remember when I had an emotional - in the soulful, balladic sense- response to drumming!

When I bought Clare's album afterwards, and asked her to dedicate it to Bear and Mitts, she added 'Top Dad'. I was rather chuffed. I decided to spare her the story about how she got the last 2 car seats in Darebin right in front of Bear in the queue.

I came home and picked up the guitar. I was still singing in the car this morning. Dreams and all that. Although the conclusion I reached is that with musicianship like that around I would do better to put my creative energies into bonsai.

"Sorry I'm late sweetheart"

"Daddy got held up at work"...

Bear rolls away, faces the wall.

"You always do that".

...

*stomach tightens*

"Sorry luffy, it'll improve soon..."

In fact work has been getting a bit saner. But that doesn't stop the parent guilt or my desire to improve things further.

That feeling stayed with me all the next day, I was running for the lifts when I finally got out. Got home just in time, but thankfully Bear gave out a big hug and seemed satisfied with my efforts. But I swear she said something like "Improvement..." Mitts just laughed and tackled me, as always...

And now your kids are slightly cross...

They are stepping up to a higher level of crossness, and we are being held to account!

Beloved went on a well-deserved couple of nights away staying with a good friend, and the kids were fine, asking a few questions, but generally having a good play with me and behaving. I was a little surprised, as it is the first time mummy had been away for more than a few hours (I know, she needed it!). But then she got home, and with Mitts it was on. "Naww" he grumbled, waving his hand 'away', as she repeatedly tried to bond and catch up, while latching onto my legs and frowning at her.

Harsh. It probably took over an hour for him to soften and let her have a proper hug.

I had a couple of late evenings in a row with work, and it was Bear's first Kinder day, so I called up just before bedtime to ask how her day went, and she wouldn't speak to me. She said something odd like 'Don't do that ever again', and I think she knew I was calling because I couldn't get home in time, and was saying 'that doesn't count'.

I got home and went straight in to check on them and she was still slightly awake, and she squeezed on to my hand then said 'Tomorrow daddy I want you to come home from work early'.

!

It stayed with me all the next day and I did, indeed, come home early to a wonderful reception.

Work has been relentless and as always the balance between boredom and insanity seems hard to find in a job. I'm glad I'm here, but hoping for change down the track as I get better.

And I'm not looking forward to the reaction, from Mitts in particular, when I return from a week away next month.

On re-acquainting with my family

I have spent time with my family. Consecutive days worth of time, without the buzz of work in my head, playing with my children all day, chatting with my wife at night. It was good, a little too much so, as I return to work and the grind.

I was bored and sought out a new job. It is a good job, actually it's in many ways the best I've held. The work is high level, relevant, and I like reading the judicial decisions and journal articles that form the intellectual underpinning of my daily bread and butter. But work is so often all or nothing, or as a famous KC (going back over a century) once said of being a barrister; all bed and no roses, or all roses and no bed.

I'd settle on a nice bundle of herbs and a reclining chair as a compromise...

So I went from having 1 page letters changed over and over by people who couldn't write, to being out on a limb running things well beyond my ordinary capability, and although I didn't take on the kind of hours common to the Paris end of Collins, 9 and a half hour lunchless day followed 9 and a half hour lunchless day, week after week, with my arse in the wind as I ran things well beyond my comfort zone, and I was often still staring out of a scratched train window as Mitts went to bed.

At the same time Beloved's work, family unfriendly at the best of times, went manic, and her official (ie paid) 3 days a week went from the usual 'in practice' 4 days over 3 to something approaching full time, picked up in late night telephone conferences and urgent documents turned around on weekends.

By the time we got on the Spirit of Tasmania, we'd just about had it. The holiday didn't start at that point, not with long delays getting on board, rough weather, and the realisation that for a boat full of families with kids they'd provided 1 tiny annex room with a few toys, while a huge casino area and multiple bars hosted a handful of over-serviced adults.

But once we'd cleared Tassie customs (all I can say is !! - they claim it's about fruit but I think it's just that the process remains as hectic as it was back a decade or two ago when aboriginals and homosexuals were being weeded out) we were off and for the next 10 days we were on the island, away, mobile phone (in my case anyway) largely left off, bantering with the kids about Santa, relatives, maps, music on the car stereo, and slowly losing the toxins of several crap months.

I barely thought about my father and his issues- I've been putting some work into that, an old suggestion of Zoe's, and am gradually bedding down the new paradigm (it's really just the old 'understanding', with some new clarity, after my stretch of hope and expectation that came with the kids). I barely thought about work.

Leaving this morning I realised how long it had been since I spent so much consecutive time with my family. I didn't get sick of it at all. I was not happy as I walked to the train. However, inside, I'm a whole sunbeam happier than I was a month or so ago.

Happy unears...

About 9 months since my political divorce

It has been an uninspiring year, hasn't it?

I suppose various wikileaks have backed the Rudd removal a bit. Well, they've confirmed things people would already know, if they exercised some judgement.

Australia, the party I left included, are sh!thouse at foreign policy. And lie and lie about it. Afghanistan being just an example.

Be prepared to go to war with China, we've said. Well. Be prepared for an entire generation to be wiped off the face of the Earth, on the basis of assurances given by panic-stricken politicians incapable of independent analysis.

China has basically told us they're just supporting North Korea in public, but view them as nuts. So why, knowing even China is working on them, would the US indulge in brinkmanship on their terms?

We learn nothing. Nothing.

Anyway, over that, now I'm just a dad, tired of the world, happy when I'm in my garden, watching my kids run around. Sitting there this morning with my feet on the grass, quartered vegemite sandwich in front of me. Mitts sits beside me, then shuffles up against me, Bear sits on the other side, we all eat our vegemite as the olive tree rocks gently in the morning breeze.

Or with all of us in the city, Beloved holding Bear's hand and me with Mitts on my shoulders, the way Bear was 2 years' ago, looking at the Christmas windows. Mitts looking around in awe- at the city, the buildings, all those trams, all that pointing and naming. The friendly, uncommercial Santa who's always in the square below Collins.

Or when I bent down to scoop one of them up and they both hugged me as hard as they could.

I still notice politics. There is just no home for me there at the moment. Not for a while I suspect. And 2011 does not fill me with optimism.

Breaking Sad

'Something's gotta give.'

So Beloved declared last night, as we found ourselves half-seriously considering a suggestion that we move to Cairns. She'd caught up with a friend who lives there, having moved from Brunei after her Aussie pilot husband explained that cheating was just part of the pilot lifestyle and shrugged.

The friend had offered to babysit, all the time, as she loves kids but is over the relationship game for a while, and frankly that's the best offer we've got on the table.

I've been a bit perkier lately, since starting a new job in which I'm well over my head but at least feel stimulated and surrounded by what seem to be *touch wood* nice people. I still talk to my father, though despite the great 'offence' he took last year, where I 'got him wrong' and mistook his words for criticism, he has since made several nasty attacks on my career (a topic I don't even discuss with him any more) and dug up his intense dislike of music with the suggestion that if I encourage it in the kids they'll wake up in a gutter somewhere with a needle hanging from their arms.

I'm attempting to keep him at arm's length without cutting him off completely, and the idea of counselling to find ways to deal with this is becoming attractive.

But Beloved is also disappointed. Her parents keep making excuses to find other things to do on their weekends, watch aeroplanes or dig garden beds or other priorities. They are choosing not to be a meaningful part of the kids' lives, and I think we are both still struggling with this.

My birth mum used to talk of moving to Melbourne. She has a great bond with Bear, and makes a great effort when we visit. If she came up, even for a couple of years, she could be part of their lives, and ours. But I know for a range of reasons this is improbable.

I think being wandering, independent types we probably underestimated the amount we would want family. Now we have kids, and see other families where everyone gathers around and is involved, even families where everyone is interstate where the effort, and enthusiasm, is on another level. I think also because they banged on for years about how much they'd like grandkids, we never imagined Beloved's mum choosing to potter in her Canberra house weekend after weekend, instead of spending the mortgage-free largess on a few 1 hour plane tickets to Melbourne. Or my mum choosing to stay in Bundaberg when my dad refused to come down for Christmas.

So. Why don't we move to them? Well, in the case of my birth family, in Hobart, I would have too much guilt, it could wreck the already uncertain relationship with my parents in Bundaberg. Unfortunate, as I get the sense we would get some support there. Parents in Bundaberg- my mum would try, but you don't have to read back far on this blog to get a sense of the ongoing poison that drips from my dad. Despite hints of caring and reflection coming through in recent times, as he works through the darkness of chemo. That might work well for years, only to have him tell Bear she needs to lose weight when she's 9 or something similarly in-character, whereupon I would probably do something that would risk my incarceration.

Beloved's dad and stepmum make a pretty good effort, when we're there, but apart from my concern that their love of money, expensive aeroplanes, cars and the like might rub off, they live in the middle of nowhere near a small, sad, violent town. Beloved enjoyed growing up there, but the ball might bounce differently next time around. And Canberra, her mum, sister, other family? I probably could have been tempted, but the ongoing mediocrity of interest shown by her mum has not only put that option to bed, but is slowly but surely pushing Beloved further and further away.

Perhaps, as it is for me and my dad, what was previously tolerable now just looks unpleasant in the light cast by small children.

We work, relentlessly. She works about 4 and a half days and gets paid for 3. Late night phone conferences are frequent. There are no breaks. We go out maybe 3 times a year together. Time with the kids is lovely, there is never enough. It is lost standing on crowded trains that are stuck, yet again, at Clifton Hill. We get up, we process the day, we flop into the couch, we sleep. Day after day, week after week.

I know you might say what people always say, what we already know, that we just need to get over it, stop expecting more from family, adjust. I know. We want to. It just isn't easy, the disappointment clings on hard.

Last night I watched a show about kids who are selectively mute. A granddad was taking so much time out to be with his granddaughter, taking her boating, chatting to her, patiently trying things until one day she speaks into a phone and leaves him a message. His eyes watered. So did mine. At him, his devotion and care.

So. Cairns? Adelaide? Volunteers Abroad on a small island? The UK?

Or just hang in there and hope it gets better, easier, one day...?

Something's got to give.