Scared and Powerless

Today I am living in a kind of bubble. It's a bit like how I felt when I was a week overdue with a baby: not really participating in the world; seeing the world as if I was looking in through a lighted window from a dark, night time distance.

Tomorrow we go to Rotorua, to the family court, to find out what the next step in the ongoing dispute between my eldest son and his ex-wife over their children. It is very scary.

When I got married, I knew there was a possibility that it wouldn't last, but I thought, and still think, I could have handled that. What I find incredibly more scary, because I am powerless, just an onlooker, is the falling apart of my son's marriage, and the fighting over the children. The accusations and counter claims. The bitterness. The meanness. The tragedy of it all. No one starts a marriage with this end in view. We all start out with love and the expectation of living happily ever after. A child's birth is celebrated by all, the baby loved and treasured.

Now here I am waiting, dreading the worst - that I might never see my beautiful grandchildren again, hoping for the best - that my son will be able to have his children live with him again.

What we will probably end up with is yet another interim state of being, another compromise while some other action and reaction is sought, more stress, more instability.

I feel scared, impotent and very old and tired.