Author: Isolde

 It has started. Birthday party invitations. Birthday party weekends. The first one was about a month ago. Another little blond haired, blue eyed girl from the girls’ preschool, Kirsten, was turning four and invited the whole class to the party, with an invitation that the parents come too. It was held on a cold, grey winter’s day at a play centre on the other side of town: a couple of small rooms and a catering kitchen opening out onto a fenced area containing a playground and sandpit. It was bedlam. After being welcomed inside and given name-tags to fill out…

Monday Morning: Steve: ‘OK darlings, would you like to get dressed now? It’s time to get ready for preschool.’ Lara: ‘No! Don’t want to get dressed! I’m eating my bweakfast.’ Rhea: (Runs around the house in the opposite direction). Steve: ‘Finish your breakfast quickly, Lara, it’s time to get dressed. Rhea, come here, darling, I need to get your clothes on.’ Rhea: (Still running around giggling. Meanwhile Lara has got distracted from her breakfast and is now playing with the doll’s house beside the dining room table.) Steve: ‘Rhea, it’s time to get dressed, we’ll be late for pre-school. Lara,…

Autumn, and a week off between Easter and Anzac Day. Back to Steve’s family’s holiday house via a day-long drive, with busy activities with all the cousins. After the adults had blown more than a dozen eggs, the children painted them – and some of the adults including me too. Lara painted five consecutive eggs including two purple ones, outlasting everyone else (unfortunately only one survived: it was multicoloured and the first one she did). Rhea loved the waves, even when the air temperature was only 18 degrees. And after the extended family had left, I supervised the girls playing…

I’ve been reading a few books recently. The first by Susan Cain, Quiet: The power of introverts in a world that can’t stop talking is about how the cult of the extrovert arose in Western society, why we shouldn’t ignore introverts, and what we as individuals, teachers, parents and societies can do to nurture this half of the population. The second book, Anne Summers’ The Misogyny Factor, is about how after more than fifty years of second-wave feminism, our society is far from egalitarian, as illustrated by how our first female PM was treated and statistics regarding women’s status, earnings,…

February, and our land is bleached, torched, scorched. Heatwaves longer and hotter than last year fill our days and nights. Our plans revolve around escaping the heat into air-conditioned buildings, going to the pool, and keeping our skin away from the sun. In the midst of this, on 3 February the big day arrived. The day when Lara and Rhea started preschool. Not just two mornings a week preschool, but the real school-like preschool: 9 to 3.15pm, five days a week. We’re sending the girls to fulltime institutional care in a progressively French immersion program at the tender age of…

‘Would you kids shut up! We’re trying to sleep!’ I was about 10 years old and my brother and sister and I had arrived earlier that day at my uncle’s house on the Gippsland lakes where he ran an isolated guesthouse accessible only by boat. The three of us and our three cousins had the whole summer ahead of us, largely left to our own devices, and we were so excited that we had been talking until the early hours in the room we were all sharing: two bunk beds containing three beds in each. The cousins lived a good…

Rhea and Lara have ticked off some milestones this year: they were weaned at 32 months; they are completely toilet trained (just the odd accident during the day); they felt OK with being dropped at school (i.e. no more distraught crying or barnacle/limpet impressions) two weeks before the end of the year; they can dress themselves; and they made their first friend. I have also passed some milestones: transitioning myself back in to work; turning 40; and being a local aunt again. . . It’s been a big year. You might like to eavesdrop on some of the special moments…

Twenty years ago, in February 1993, my grandmother made some apple jelly. I found it at the back of our pantry when I was cleaning it the other day, unambiguously labelled ‘Apple Jelly Feb ’93.’ It isn’t mouldy but I’m not sure if I’ve ever eaten it. I will try it one day – it looks OK, jelly is meant to be drier than jam – but in the meantime I like having that connection to my grandmother. I like knowing that she made it with her hands and I could eat those apples that she chopped and measured and…

Following a ten day survival experience that was compulsory in Year 9, my friends and I became keen hikers and I continued this hobby during my university years. Out of Sydney and Melbourne where I studied and Canberra where Maggie and her like-minded friends were based, we would periodically put trips together and set off into the nearest National Park for a weekend away. We trekked along rivers and streams, beside pine plantations and through eucalypt forests. We slept on thin rubber mattresses in two-man tents, dismissing blow-up mattresses, however thin, as for softies. Car camping, with eskies, camp chairs…

The airport has been modernised and expanded and now you can’t see any airplanes from the big windows unless you go through Security. Lara had been sick that morning so we were late, and we had just arrived when we heard a cry ‘hello!!’ in the near-empty luggage collection area. It was Maggie, back from Seattle for good after nearly six years away. I hugged her. The girls eyed her warily. At the car we stuffed her three suitcases in and I gave Lara another drink of apple juice – a rare treat to keep her hydrated. She threw it…