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Day 18 Perspective

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  Last night we all slept in a tent in the garden. Gray and Eva had made a very cozy bed on boogie boards under the palm tree and we pitched a tent next door. Gray was the first to buckle and join us in the tent and then Eva joined us when a frog jumped on her face.  I'm not going to lie, it wasn't my best night's sleep. My mattress options were two ill shaped couch cushions pushed together (and they so happened to be on a slight slope), or our cheap camping mattress that is so synthetic that one just slides off it.  I went for the camping mattress. Day two after a gym workout hit somewhere at 1.00 in the morning coinciding with Eva giving up her fight against gravity and rolling down from the couch cushions onto me and the kak camping mattress.  Judging by the contented snores and sighs of the rest of my adventurers it appears to have been a good night for everyone else.  This morning I woke with the ubiquitous dew halo on my head from the condensation on the t...
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Day 17 Babies

Two children, aged 7 and 11, have slept together in a cozy nook next to their mom's bed. Its about 6 o'clock in the morning and the sun hasn't risen. Their mother hears her last born whisper to her first born, 'Lets have a midnight snack.'
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Day 16 Inside Joke

Yesterday I was in the St Marys parking lot loading Eva up after her first piano lesson. My brother Tom happened to arrive to watch Holly play hockey.  We both had other places to be.  But for a good 10 minutes we spoke absolute crap to each other. Every possible irreverent inside joke was thrown, relics from our childhood were dredged up and anyone who didn't share the same home with us growing up might have thought we had actually lost it.  I haven't laughed that much in a while. A laugh where none of the humour needs to be explained because it is literally in our DNA.  I know Tom has had a hectic week. I know I have had a hectic week. Being an adult is hectic.  But the blessing of siblings is that we carry in ourselves safe places for each other. We carry all our shared experiences together. And sometimes a brief moment in the past is all we need to feel safe in the present. 
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Day 15 Gone Fishing

Stephen is going on his annual fishing trip with his good mate Andy, who also happens to be a botanist.  While other men plan their golf trips, and their hunting trips, and the bars they're going to hit, and the fines they're going to give each other, my Stephen is planning which ready made soup to buy and which flies to pack and which dam to hit first. Bless him. 
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Day 14 House Hunters

Gray and I love a good house hunting show. He doesn't like the British ones because it seems that the inside of every British house has a fairly cramped TV room, with a half baked greenhouse conversion off the pokey kitchen, that leads on to a small block of grass.  I like the house hunts where the top of the list to look for is a house with a view. I am happy to live anywhere as long as my windows face the expanse of the world.  Gray however will be happy to live anywhere modern, grey or black with clean lines and a lot of masculine heaviness. There's no room for brookie lace on his house.  Come to think of it I suppose the houses we look for and like are pretty accurate reflections of who we are as peoole. I need to see everything and know what's going on for everyone, everywhere. And my Gray needs a big strong fortress where shapes make sense and the frills dont matter. 
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Day 13 Trampoline

The skeleton of a trampoline lies below our bedroom window. The sides that hemmed our children in, giving them the freedom to first fly, have tarnished ripped and torn. This weekend we got rid of the supportive structure altogether. Now its just the frame and the actual trampoline. No safety net. And I suppose that's parenting in a nutshell, the slow removal of safety nets until one day they will fly. 
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Day 12 Nap

Its Saturday afternoon. Warm winter sun streams across my bed. I've slept, undisturbed for over an hour. The laundry is drying. The children are somewhere. We have no plans for Sunday. 
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