We have been having the grandest adventures. Lunch and a swim at Barraba Station. The moons of Jupiter at the Sydney Observatory, on the 400th anniversary of their discovery. Tonight we bundled the children off to Hyde Park, well after bedtime, to the consternation of our taxi driver. The capoeira and circus performances would have passed muster in the Mission, more or less, but the laser show in the Moreton Bay figs was genuinely wonderful. We shared a minivan taxi back to Double Bay, and one of our companions asked excitedly: “Did you see the lights in the trees?”
“Yes,” said Jeremy proudly. “That was my brother.”
A long plastic fringe as a flyscreen in front of a milk bar. Endless afternoons at the swimming pool. Christmas cake with marzipan and icing. A bruise-coloured cloud cracked by a bolt of lightning. Covert glasses of Baileys in our hotel room.
It is the Australia I remember from my childhood.
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With its art deco style and urbane hosts, the Playhouse Hotel is the ideal venue for a Roaring Twenties sex farce. Next time we should bring all our crushes, and no children.
“This is your inheritance,” I said to Jules as we piggybacked on ahead, moving quickly so the bullants wouldn’t bite my sandalled feet. “I’m sorry it doesn’t have more honour.”
“What is honour?” she asked, and I was enlightened.
Claire said: “I am against the white people, even though I am white.”
I said: “But some of the white people behaved very well. William Hobbs reported the murders, and Governor Gibbs prosecuted them.”
“It’s complicated,” said Jeremy.
—–
On the way home we rescued a snakeneck turtle from the middle of the highway.
The weather cleared in the afternoon and Barraba was a vast green bowl full of sunshine. Claire and Julia wore their Thanksgiving frocks. I wore the black dress I got from Jan, the ruby necklace I got from Mum, the pink pearls Jeremy gave me after Claire was born and the silver ring that Richard gave me just because.
“We’re eating outside,” said Andrew.
There were coloured bulbs in the grapevines on the trellis, and candles on the table. The lights twinkled from the bottles and wineglasses. Everyone had dressed for dinner. Ross had spiked his hair, Kelly was wearing a silver chain, Mum was wearing an indigo blouse with a red and purple enamel brooch. Their faces shone.
“Aly,” I said, “can I ask a huge favour? Jeremy left his camera at Sarah’s house.”
“We brought it,” he said, and there it was on Kelly’s lap.
Lamb roast on our last NYE at Cooper Park Road; fireworks; early to bed. Julia was ill all night and I slept, very badly, beside her. Up to write a book review and pack and zoom to the airport and jump in the absurd little turbo prop plane to Tamworth, where we found my Dad, my Dad! Intense conversation all the way to Barraba, and there were my mother and brother and sister and brother-in-law and niece and nephew! The kids formed a solid playblob for six hours. I gorged on Christmas cake and trifle. We played mahjongg. Now I am lying in bed in the Playhouse Hotel listening to rain on the roof.
It only took us four years to get around to filing for Julia’s Australian citizenship. The whole experience was as absurdly pleasant as if we were in Canada. When we parked the car near Central Station, a man who was just leaving gave us his parking ticket, still valid for an hour. Everyone in Citizenship was charmed by Julia, as who wouldn’t be, and we were filed and out of there in twenty minutes. The smokers had inadvertently started a fire in the rubbish bin in front of Immigration, but no one seemed unduly perturbed.
Julia grazed two knees at a playground in Bondi Junction, but is now proudly sporting Pooh and Eeyore bandaids. Salome is shaking her head sadly at this indulgence in branded merchandise. The girls and I just got back from the park across the road, where we set off the Christmas rockets and did some wushu and taiji. Claire is reading Raymond Briggs. Julia is turning the pages of a book and singing. I am stuffed full of avocados and mangos and may need to nap. We’ll be off to see Ric in a little while, and then Michael and Rachel and Patrick and Evelyn, and then tomorrow is Mark and Mark and Matt and Melinda and Aubrie and Jackson and Adrian and Sam and Korben and Tabitha…
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Decentish flight. The girls were awesome and Julia in particular completely won the heart of a 20something Turkish? Lebanese? guy sitting across from her. I watched Samson and Delilah, the first feature by an indigenous director to earn more than $1m. Wrenching, luminous. We emerged blinking into an overcast Sydney Christmas morning and I drove with great care to 7a. Julia flung herself into Janny’s arms. Claire was occupied in counting the stairs to the front door.
We had Christmas lunch at Lulworth. I barely recognized Ric. He has lost a lot of weight and is mostly in a wheelchair and hardly talks any more, although he did ask very characteristically “From where did their flight originate?” The children were buried in toys. After a brief recess we resumed festivities for Claire’s birthday and dinner and cake. If I woke at 6am on the 23rd and flew out at 11pm and the flight was 15 hours and then I was awake from 9am to 9pm, I think that makes about 54 hours of Christmas? In the event it was just about one hour too long. I retired to bed and slept for a year or so.
Woke to the sound of birdsong and rain. Called Kay and Thussy and arranged to see them; bundled up the kids and Jeremy and Jan and went to the lovely Randwick Ritz, a beautiful old Art Deco cinema palace, where we finally saw Where the Wild Things Are. Clearly, I am a boy pretending to be a wolf pretending to be a king; it all makes sense now. We went to one of the cafes on Bronte Beach for lunch and saw a hundred or so white sails against the grey sky as the yachts set out for Hobart.
It’s no secret how I felt about this decade geopolitically; a decade that started with massive election fraud (not that liar Lieberman would have been a better VP than Cheney), that devolved into state-sponsored mayhem and murder, that saw the ocean rise up and swallow a quarter of a million people and flood one of my favourite cities on earth.
Funny brilliant daughters. Optimal husband, restored from Shanghai. Cat with IQ of a pickle. Family in Oz, that I will see soon. Friends, art, music, books, horses, Bernal, progressivism, public libraries, state parks, community gardens, single-payer health care (where applicable). Physics, astronomy, maths!
Jules: “The world is beautiful!
The sky is so pretty
and the trees are sweet
like my mom!
“Mama do you like my song?”
Me: “I think it’s the best song I ever heard.”
*
Fall! And the hills are green and the leaves have turned and the air is clear and cold and the sunlight pours out of the sky. Since we started going back to Australia for Christmas again this has become my favourite time of year; pie and butternut squash soup and the chill in the air all carrying the promise of summer.
*
The new swim school is insanely great. Claire can now jump in from the edge and swim loops around her instructor. Julia and Milo can each swim a couple of feet unaided.
It’s like watching them learn to fly.
*
My favourite moment of Julia’s ridiculously awesome fourth birthday party was watching Jamey, Liz and Shannon’s niece Shelby compare their spongiform tonsils.
*
Best little mare Bella is for sale. CHRISTMAS HINT, PEEPS. I’ll be sad to see her go but if ever a little copperbright horse deserved to be some lucky girl’s own beloved pony, it is Bella.
*
Reviews to come of Aaron’s residency in the Headlands, Colin’s exhibition of photos of the Berlin Wall coming down, Jennifer’s trio playing at Socha and McKenze and Hallie’s recital at Noe Valley Ministry. We live in such a fantastic neighbourhood and have such incredible friends.
We bought the girls’ alarm clocks and imposed new structure on bedtime and the morning routine in the hopes of getting more shuteye, because we are all a bit psychotic from sleep dep.
Apparently the clocks gain quite a lot of time, because this morning they went off forty minutes early.
7:00am Wake up and sofa snuggle
7:10am Get dressed for school
7:15am Breakfast, one episode of TV
7:45am Put on shoes
7:50am Brush teeth and hair
8:00am OUT THE DOOR, ON THE BUS
EVENING SCHEDULE
3:00pm Home from school
5:30pm Homework
6:00pm Besos y abrazos por Blanca
6:30pm Piano practice
6:45pm Dinner and one episode of TV
7:05pm Dessert
7:15pm Put pyjamas on
7:20pm Brush teeth
7:30pm BEDTIME
To support the project, aimed primarily at More Sleep For Everyone, Jeremy got a frog alarm clock for Claire and bees for Jules.
After the recital Jeremy and Claire finished their centipede robot – pics to come – and today I got Light Industrial published. What a talented family! Nerds.
R: “I find myself unexpectedly very sad about Ted Kennedy.”
J: “Yeah, me too.”
*
Claire clocked heads with a kindergartener today and came away with a black eye and some shallow cuts. She spent the afternoon at my office and we wandered over to AG Ferrari for lunch.
R: “That’s the earthquake memorial.”
C, remembering earlier conversations: “Your grandmother was born three days after the Great Earthquake! I bet her mother was glad she wasn’t in San Francisco. Your grandmother’s mother is my great, great… wait, let me gather my greats.”
*
R (as I finish recounting this to Jeremy): “And then I exploded. All over Third Street. A fine red mist.”
(A clarification: I exploded with pride in my daughter, who gathers her greats; and not, as my father assumed, in a temper tantrum.)
