Category: Getting Older
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On death done well.
I reflect on my dad, as always, as we approach the anniversary of his death. How is it seven years have passed already? I had to look it up. It seems impossible, but time is relentless. It moves us away from things and blurs them in our memory. I have the sense of him often…
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On doing, rather than being…
The thing I am not very good at is sitting. Being still. Waiting, contemplating. I tend to jump right onto things, without thinking too much about why. I am restless, I suppose. I rearrange the furniture a lot. I believe I am a person who likes an action plan. I like to know where I…
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Winter in Sydney – Biennale 2018
Notwithstanding the fact that right now it is absolutely bucketing down, Sydney generally puts on a pretty spectacular winter. Still, even when it is grey and glum, there are some soul satisfying things to do in Sydney in winter. Like, the Sydney Biennale. For Mothers’ day, I managed to wrangle the family out into the…
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Life lessons from the Mud
There was mud, a lot of it. Stinky, sticky, slurpy mud that sucked off people’s shoes and clung with a desperation of an addict to legs and feet and knees if you happened to sink that far into it. There were heights – tyres and ropes and walls to be scaled. There were small spaces…
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Snowy lessons in Christmas.
Christmas Day dawns quite unceremoniously in Cervinia, nestled in the outstretched arms of the Italian Alps. While this quaint ski-town is bedecked with sparking white lights, and the odd decorative reindeer, the shops will be open today and people shall go about their business with, apparently, scant regard to the occasion. This was the first…
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Growing up – the both of us
Something’s happening in my house, and I’m not sure I like it. I am becoming increasingly irrelevant to my tweeny-child. Irrelevant is perhaps not the right word, but it’s hard to think of one that better captures my feelings. She turns her nose up at suggested activities that were once a mainstay of together time…
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Navigating guilt: The art of motherhood.
It’s getting to be a bit of a habit, this sneaking off for some adult holiday time sans the kids. Well, not really a habit, but it’s happened twice in 10 months, compared to twice in the past ten years… so naturally the guilt has set in. It didn’t help that, after plans had been…
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The art of holidaying
We have different holiday styles, my husband and myself. His involves a lot of sleeping and reading and resting and relaxing, while mine seems to moving, doing, visiting, seeing, achieving. I think he may have the right idea, but I don’t seem to have the skill set required for restful recuperation. I am trying though,…
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Game Hunters
There is something faintly absurd about rattling around the largely unspoiled African bush in a rickety, open land rover in search of wild life, when it would be much more convenient and reliable to see the animals at the zoo. A game drive is an exercise in patience. For 90% of the time all there…
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Kylo Ren’s Lightsaber cake… and lessons in letting go and being a better mum
It’s another birthday party in our house today. My son turns 9 (nine! what?), and has requested a lightsaber birthday cake. Not just any lightsaber birthday cake mind you. Kylo Ren’s lightsaber. “You remember what that looks like from the movie, mum?” he asks. Ahh, no. But google does, of course. There are plenty of…
Midlife Unpacked 