Late one Friday afternoon a couple of weeks ago, we went walking by the Brisbane river. Such a simple sentence, right? I have loved walking since I trailed alongside my dad as a kid on his morning suburban stretches, air infused with birdsong, drenched in fresh, untarnished light. But, in my younger years declaring ‘walking’
It was mid-1990. I remember it, in a pleasant, hazy sort of way. The Winter Olympics played on a small square television set (who knew then that flat screens were so much cooler), I was acquainted with the thrill of my favourite books, and the secure encirclement of parents who seemed intuitively to understand how
Our eldest comes into the kitchen, stands close beneath my chin and asks me if she can have some flour. ‘We’re not cooking now!’ I reply in my shout-speak. It’s a variation of my usual mum dialect, one I’ve developed on our recent interstate relocation in soaring summer temperatures. I like to think the new environment
And so, here we are again. You’d think, nearly two decades later, we’d know how to do this. This day. November 13. Outside my bedroom window the inner-city Sydney traffic huffs and sighs, rumbling toward afternoon’s end, and evening’s slow descent. Downstairs, our angel-friend Rocel clatters in the kitchen, helping us juggle this crazy end of
We almost miss out on getting in his taxi. A girl slips in front of us in line —a single, stylish girl with just one suitcase and highly impractical shoes that do nothing to impede her swiftness. Her luggage is already suspended mid-air when one of the fluro-vested airport guys intercepts her at the last