Yesterday was the first day of the school holidays. Usually we leave town as soon as possible but we were staying for mum’s 70th birthday dinner celebration, and during the day I took the opportunity to spend some time with a good friend I’ve known for a long time. She also has two girls who bookend our girls in age: one two years younger and one two years older. Lara and Rhea usually find younger children a bit annoying (apart from babies of course, who are endlessly fascinating). The older girl, Frances, they get on really well with. She greeted us from her garden by saying ‘I have dresses just like that at my dad’s house but they are a bit smaller. . . oh’ as she realised that these are in fact her outgrown clothes that her father had passed on to us.
All four girls disappeared into the garden while I sat in my friend’s lovely courtyard with her and her partner and we relaxed in the welcome spring sun. We talked about techniques for learning to read, which seem to be quite different in each of the schools our children attend. We discussed our respective jobs – my exhaustion from the long hours required in my current job – not taking lunch breaks – and what next jobs we would like to have. We talked about having difficult conversations with our managers and colleagues at work – how to have them, how empowering they are. The girls played hide-and-seek outside, got bored, fought a bit then decided to paint each other’s nails. We all nibbled and grazed on pitta bread, hummus, cut up veggies and leftover cake that we had brought over, and drank tea.
When I started feeling cold without my jumper, we moved inside to a sunny spot that was a bit warmer and the girls played a tag game called Marco Polo in the adjacent kitchen. They got bored again and we suggested they go to the playground across the road. Frances led the expedition without us, holding their hands and crossing the road carefully, and they returned feeling proud of themselves and keen to tell us about their adventures. My friend and I discussed movies we’d seen recently: my friend deconstructed Bad Moms then I described Sully about the pilot successfully landing his passenger plane on the Hudson River in 2009 after engine failure, and the impact of that experience on him shortly afterwards. I recommended Bridget Jones’ Baby which I saw this week and really enjoyed. Escapism pure and unadulterated.
Eventually we had to leave as the little one had a birthday party to go to next door. Steve had mown the lawn, hung out the washing and packed the girls’ clothes back at home, and after a quick siesta (by me with Lara), the girls finally finished the drawings I had been coaxing them to do for mum for weeks – texta renditions of children in a playground below acres and acres of blue sky – and we inserted them into the frames we had bought. We added Oli’s crayon drawing of yellow flowers and the girls finished helping me to wrap the presents (I had also bought The Art of Eating by MFK Fielding, and a subscription to Gourmet Traveller magazine) and write on a card. Then we hurriedly got ready for the dinner. I wore the white, fine silk top I bought in Paris in 2009 with the brown cotton trousers and wrap printed with an image of the Canal St Martin. The girls added necklaces and hair clips to the dresses they had been wearing, and we set off.
We had a lovely dinner in a Turkish restaurant set in formal gardens and a water feature. Our whole family was there, including Duncan who had flown in from Singapore as well as a dear family friend who had flown from Canada. Maggie read the girls stories when they got bored and we all swapped seats so we could mingle a bit more. I think mum had a good time, and she appreciated the artwork created for her by her grandchildren and the other presents. The girls fell asleep in the car on the way home, and we sank in to bed shortly after them.
It was a sociable and invigorating beginning to our short holiday. I’m looking forward to us all recharging in the big city over the coming week.
