1.8 Getting Older

Nazari

    Once baby Becca arrived, time seemed to fly, but drag at the same time. Having a baby and a toddler and a moody teenager was hard work! Sometimes it felt like all I ever did was deal with tantrums! Teenage strops, terrible twos, and teething screeches. It felt like the walls were closing in on me, could I even sing anymore? I couldn't imagine how much dust was on my guitar... I had a whole new appreciation for my mother though. Geneva wasn't half as much of a nightmare as I was, I mean, fair enough, my mum didn't have two younger siblings to deal with, but she had two rebellious teenagers and she did it on her own. There were a lot of times I'd think of my mum, wonder what kind of grandmother she would have been to my girls, there was so much I regretted saying to her when I was young. I hoped she knew I never meant all the 'I hate you's, because they really hurt. And wow, I did hate her at one point. Really truely did. When she kicked me out just as I turned sixteen, with a tiny baby and no job. But I'd never change it for the world now. I was an awful child, and I needed that reality check.

   But if it wasn't for Ernesto, I couldn't be doing this now. Never going to school had really come back to bite me. An illiterate mother is useless at schoolwork. But Ernesto loved helping Geneva with her studies, he was far better at older kids than the dirty smelly babies. Pig. It made me jealous that he could pick and choose what parts of parenting he'd do, whereas I was stuck with the bad jobs. But I knew that soon the money would run out and I'd be back at work and he'd be alone with the kids. Hah!

   And before all too long, Becca was pulling herself around and starting to babble. Aria would show her how to play with the tin cow my father had made for me when I was her age. Becca couldn't communicate too well with her, but Aria didn't seem to mind and would just invent in her head that they were talking simlish to each other.

   And of course, Ernesto still had the magic touch that sent babies to sleep. He was starting to get less mobile, and kept complaining that his back was giving him 'jip'. That always made me laugh, nobody says jip anymore, but it also made me sad when the reality that he was so much older than me would come flooding back and I'd have to be without him at some point. That didn't bear thinking about.

   As winter battered the city, Aria began to blossom into a beautiful and intelligent school girl. Yes, school girl! Although school was out because of the snow for the moment, so when Becca was down for her nap and Geneva was texting boys, and Ernesto was snoozing on the couch, me and Aria would go out in the snow and play. We'd sit where the sandpit was buried, and mix the sand and snow together into a slushy, muddy mess, and make icy sand castles. Sandcastles that ice princesses would live in until an evil being would smash it down below the depths of the snow and back into the sand pit.

   Soon enough, I went back to work. Never again, I told myself. Never again would I be on maternity leave (Or eternity leave as I called it...), now I could focus on what I loved, singing and performing. Not that I didn't love my girls, of course I did, but at home I was a frumpy trailer-trash mum. On the stage I was a young and glamorous superstar. Everyone would cheer my name and not because they'd pooed and needed changing. It was a different world entirely, but I still loved coming home to our snug, overcrowded one-bed trailer, and seeing the little family I'd created.

   With time flying by so fast, I thought it best we take a trip to a photographer. It wouldn't be long until Becca was at school, and worse, Geneva would leave school! Aria was particularly annoyed at the idea of posing for a picture, but I told her she could be front and centre and she soon perked up! The prints turned out to be more expensive than I'd thought, so we could only afford one in the end, but it was what I wanted, this moment captured in time forever.

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It's true! Geneva is nearly an adult at this point, and the others aren't far behind! (Infact, as I actually post this Geneva is an adult, and Aria and Becca are teens, but I'm a few chapters ahead in gameplay V story lol.)