I remember as a child starting a diary with great enthusiasm, intent on recording my every movement, thought and wish in the sure knowledge that anything I had to say was so important as to deserve a permanent record.
As an adult I kept a diary through my travels, the disintegration of my first marriage and the blossoming of my second. As each child was subsequently conceived I would start the diary again - renamed "journal" - sure in the knowledge that these large events necessitated a thorough description of all emotions.
And now as a daughter, wife, mother, it has become so very clear how beautifully circular our lives are. I am now living in a little house not 300 metres from the first house in which my own parents resided when they first came to Australia. I too have two girls and a blonde boy. I too have a husband who has left work due to "health" reasons and threatens to stay that way. Until about half an hour ago, I was terrified that I had become my mother.
Tonight I sat in absolute awe as we watched Brideshead Revisited. As Sebastian and Charles trundled down country lanes through summery England, I felt my heart crack a little as I remembered the innocent and totally irresponsible days when my second husband and I first met. We had yet to be married, have children, a mortgage. We were living in a little cottage on top of a hill by which pilgrims used to trudge on their way to Yorkshire, and next to which was an orchard and a laneway full of cowslip and hedges. Seeing the sleepy greenery on the screen not only reminded me of my own happier days, but the nights many years ago in my childhood home, watching the same programme and watching my mother smudge away sneaking tears as she too mourned the loss of her country and happiness.
I understand now that far from being ashamed, I have an opportunity to embrace and love our similarities, and finally and truthfully understand all that she came to be, and all that I can be.
As the child of this mother, I can make right all that went wrong for me as a child. I can provide illumination and understanding where for me and my own siblings there was confusion. I can provide steady love and loyalty, where for us there was insecurity and a constant fear that someone would leave, or die and leave the rest of us with all the shit.
Well, it was Mum that did die, and I am left with the shit. Ironically, the same man that caused her so much anger and grief is still here, not twenty minutes down the road, and my own husband is doing a very passable imitation of the father that made such an unhealthy impact on my early life.
Until half an hour ago, the unfairness of my life was almost too much to bear, and the responsbility of taking care of my family's emotional and physical needs has been pressing down on me with a force that can't be countered. I had reached the stage that while I recognised that I had, in fact, married my father, that knowledge did nothing at all to temper the sheer fucking anger I feel at the two of them.
Then suddenly, I was my mother. The sadness, the unfairness, the sheer bloody irony of it all struck me so hard that I am still reeling. And in that moment I came to love her and understand her more than I ever did my whole life. I can feel her at my shoulder, egging me on, imploring me to not make the same mistakes that she did.
And so, a journal. I feel like I can see through the mist sufficiently to record this effort I am about to make. (I am so tempted to call this a "journey", but will resist, happily). It does feel like an effort: as if I am in training, and need to pump my muscles, heart and lungs full of oxygen ready for the strain of what I am about to do.
