As I was driving home from Ballarat late Saturday afternoon, with the sun low in the sky behind me, I crested one of the hills on the highway and beheld a panorama of Melbourne and its surrounds. There in the distance was the city, its skyscrapers reflected white, outlined much like a child’s painting. Closer was the suburb Sunbury, with the planes circling around as if they were flies, waiting for clearance to descend to the airport tarmac. It was beautiful. In spite of my tiredness, or because of it (even though I was desperate to get home), I took my foot off the accelerator to take in the view for a second or two longer. Then the road wound its way down to flatter ground and it was gone.
August has been hard. Sickness has come and gone, only to return again. This is hardly news or anything out of the ordinary for winter, I suppose, except when you have two members of the family who normally have immune systems of vault-like impenetrability. So when Keira and Adam get sick, they go down hard. In between the sniffling, the fevers, the barely eaten dinners and listlessness I’ve kept the show going, barely being able to leave the four walls for forty minutes at a time – except when I’ve been able to leave for work related reasons. I don’t think I’ve ever sat down in a train seat with as much relief I could have forty-five minutes of peace.
While annoying, it’s not been horrible either, and I’m coming to the point of this post here. On weekends, on the odd day when everyone was able to muster the energy to leave the house to take in some air, it was lovely to also be able to appreciate these times. For how much longer will the kids be happy to walk along the street hand-in-hand with us? Be willing to have stories read aloud to them in public? Already, when she is in a more robust frame of mind, Keira is keen to ditch me as we walk to school, striding off in front, grumbling at her perceived lack of independence.
Please don’t wish it away, I thought. Don’t make the time pass faster than it has already.
Back at home, we have new couches. Don’t ask me what model they are, what fabric, what the official colour is (um, grey?) – I’ve forgotten already. Once the decision was made, it becomes irrelevant. What’s important is their width, their flatness. The kids sprawl out, better than they could on the old ones, and my mind imagines how their limbs will grow, what future shapes their bodies will take. Even Adam and I can cuddle up on these, impossible before.
So for everything August has thrown up, we’ve been able to wrestle back into the Pandora box it came from. And it is sunny today, I’ll be able to open the windows, let the wind blow through, in hope for the succour of spring.
