Author: Isolde

I took Rhea, Lara and two of their friends to a Billie Eilish concert a few weeks ago. We all reflected on the experience. Isolde: What was surprising about the concert? Rhea: Getting the tickets. Lara: I realized I was gonna go when I looked at the tickets, cause I wanted to see where Rhea was going to sit and I saw that she had four tickets. Mum said I could invite someone and I thought about who to invite. I wanted to invite Chloe but mum said I had to choose someone who really liked Billie Eilish so…

It’s been a painful couple of months physically, culminating in a day that saw me working from home last Monday. I started off working from bed at 9am and by 10am I was feeling like I was being pierced with pins in my bottom that took my breath away with their prickles. I was unable to focus enough to work at all, even after taking pain relief and using the cream that I have for such occasions. I called in sick and by 11am I was groaning out loud and had delegated the task of finding me a doctor’s appointment…

Back home after a month away. It was a month of connecting with families – Steve’s at the family holiday house, and mine when Duncan, Becky and their little boys Felix and Hugo had Hugo’s First Birthday weekend with us there. We went away with them to the south coast for dad, Maggie and my birthday in early December and met up for meals, but this visit was the longest period I had ever spent with all of them, and the longest I have spent with Duncan for, I calculated,17 years, when Maggie, Oli, Duncan and I touristed in New…

Lara and Rhea went to their first live concert at the age of thirteen, but they don’t play any instruments themselves anymore. We organized for both of them to learn the recorder from the age of five, as I did, then Rhea learnt violin while Lara studied the piano. Practice was negligible: when Lara’s last piano teacher asked her how often she practiced and she answered ‘three times a week’, he replied ‘why so little?’ We never got into a routine. Rhea’s violin teacher focused on posture and technique and Rhea established some solid foundations with beautiful round sound, but…

I have been enjoying a couple of new podcasts recently. The first is called Read This, with interviews of writers, many of them Australian. The second is Wiser than Me with Julia Louis Dreyfus interviewing older women about their lives. There are beautiful insights in every episode, for example in Read This, the writer Dylin Hardcastle talking about their 97-year old great uncle, when they told him they were gay. He broke into song and sang them  ‘you’re so beautiful’ and then said ‘and anyway, I’ve always known.’ Julia Louis Dreyfus interviewed Jane Goodall in the most recent episode I’ve…

Steve’s 60th was months in the making: his family and I took about 50 text messages to find a weekend that everyone was able to travel up and surprise him; and they were also involved in sending me photos so I could put a photo book together that would cover the whole period, and include all of the significant people in his life so far. I put the photo book together while on leave from work, doing it in snatches from our bedroom, the study or the lounge room and making the most of when he was away gliding during…

Before I start a six-month secondment, I’ve had a break from work for three-and-a-half weeks. I started with four days in Noosa enjoying the beach, restaurants, company of my parents, running, and watching the Olympics. After some time at home in which I saw the play Julia and the Australian Chamber Orchestra concert Rapture and Silence; and did some admin such as getting both girls their own bank accounts; I’m concluding my holiday with five days skiing with the girls and Steve. What a lovely interlude it has been. This morning, Lara and I had a ride on the alpine…

These school holidays, towards the end of our two-week stay with Steve’s mum in Melbourne, we had a night with Jessie at her acre block just outside Warragul. We hadn’t been to her house for more than six years – Jessie always drives to see us: either an hour across town to meet up somewhere, three hours to the beach, or a seven-hour drive to our house. We arrived at dusk, having left at around 4pm after my short work day. Jessie was finishing her teaching day but Jolan and Tara were home, with a schoolfriend, Sienna, whose mother Andy…

 In the depths of winter, the girls had their individual sleepover birthday parties, sandwiched by the family afternoon tea. The organizing and catering were less demanding for me given that the girls made and circulated their own invitations and Steve took each of them shopping for the party food. Each had Domino’s pizza and I baked some readymade garlic bread prior to Rhea’s party. Both sleepovers were at our house this year and we borrowed Maggie’s fire pit, which sat over its brick home at the corner of our now-landscaped garden and was a great spot that they all…

Just two weeks after having been there for our holiday, we drove to Melbourne for the weekend for  Jarrah (my first cousin once removed) and his fiancé’ Chelsea’s engagement party/ celebration of their ten-year relationship. I lived with him and his parents when he was just one year old, for one year, 28 years ago now. His parents were young and they were going through a hard time. It was a learning experience for me to see the sheer work involved in caring for a young child. I remember hearing a radio program about the domestic load that mothers carried…