Pregnant

This morning my wife told me she is pregnant. Phew. We had just had sex and in the sticky afterglow she sort of let it drop and said something after she asked for the tissues. * Well there you go. Two girls already. Let's see what happens - it's a bit early in biological terms for anything on Facebook or whatever, but for all my alcoholic friends perhaps we can bend the rules a bit. * ;?More soon. Keeping sober and working bloody hard.

A Prayer for my Daughter

A light saber.  That's what she wanted.  Just like on Star Wars.

She unwrapped her present and started waving it around, flicking it out and doing yoga poses with a waving wand light saber.

Hazel turns five today.  She is shiny-eyed and tall and strong - a warrior woman with blue eyes and (her own words) golden hair.

*

When Hazel was born I was in the midst of alcoholism.  Smiling and patiently waiting through the times when we needed to see the doctor - knowing I would be not too far away from bring drunk again and back to normality.

Even the day she was born, a champion effort by her mother, my wife, (and me there in hospital greens counting down the time to get back home to start drinking syrupy shiraz until collapsing on the lounge room floor) I was distracted by drinking.

A slippery perfectly new human in my arms and fuck me if I wasn't thinking about getting out of the theater and back to the numbing safety of a wine glass...

*

That life has changed.  Hazel is now a vibrant young girl with nothing holding her back except an alcoholic father.

For now, it is my responsibility to be accountable for her, to introduce her to the world and share my favorite things.  So we can have a constructive, positive relationship that gives her the best chance of making the most of the opportunities that life presents her.

But she must know, at some point, that I am alcoholic.  I want her to know - she must sort of notice that what she used to call "Daddy's wine" isn't around any longer.  And that she doesn't get caught in the crossfire of when I used to be drunk and have to defend being drunk as somehow OK.

So happy birthday - and here's to being all too aware of the dastardly genetic inheritance you have been gifted and how it has brought us all a step closer to self realization and simply accepting life for what it is and forgiving ourselves and others for who we are.

I am grateful for my daughter and urge myself to be kind enough to let her only know me as a sober, wise 'old man'.  Not so much the fumbling fake sober, where I would be hiding my drunkenness and drinking, but a real light sober, which is I guess, getting close to the best I can be.

You're One of My Kind

There were times when he was going to die and it was clumsy and cluttered with hastily made plans and the best of intentions – all somehow subconsciously designed for him to delay it just long enough so that he wouldn’t actually do it. 

And after all the drama and theatrics and planning – nothing happened.  He woke up somewhere, in summer under some tree or during winter on some lounge, and he blinked and clicked his jaw a couple of times – yawned – and realized he was 'just' alive.

Now being 'just' alive is an almighty relief when he had spent the week building up to not being around much longer and toured his town with the indulgent sentimentality of someone leaving for quite a while.

But being alive brings with it the responsibility of actually being someone and doing something and all that shit.

And that was the problem.

What to do, who to be, what role to play – as though he had not yet chosen his role and the theatre of life was rolling on regardless.

He wanted it to slow down a little.