Diary Entries

I’m struggling with all the juggle now. So I could have punched the air and sung hallelujah out of the car window as I heard the news on the radio about the full time return to school next week. The drive to take Miss Eight to school is 30 mins each way, but I don’t mind, it’s the only peace and radio time I get. I’ve avoided listening to the radio and news when the kids are around to limit them hearing endless adult anxiety about the corona virus and its consequences. It works by the way. We answer all their questions truthfully but don’t indulge in panic. I worry enough on my own about how to do life competently and sometimes, frankly, feel a level of despondency at how quickly we’ve gone from being okay to uh-oh. I quit a steady arts job last year because it impinged on my family time to the extent I was working most evenings and weekends and my children complained that they didn’t see me anymore. It took me 9 months to find a suitable casual job that enabled me to also be present for my kids. We have no family support to lean on. And in no time at all , that casual job as a holiday let booking assistant had me counselling guests and would-be visitors to the Blue Mountains on the fires surrounding us, while keeping our own kids informed enough not to panic about the fires, but ready enough to leave at a moment’s notice. Months and months of that, followed by local floods and damage to the train service when a landslide skittled the line at Leura. Some businesses were barely clinging on. And then, COVID-19. There have been better years than this one.

7.30am. After the tea tray was organised, and first cups poured, after sourdough toast pulled from the freezer was slotted into the toaster —on defrost— & timed to work with the eggs boiling to a soft set on the stovetop, there was an almighty crash at the dining room window. A confusing glance of dark I couldn't make sense of. I think I screamed. The kids followed it up with screams of their own. My fault. The ball was made up of three birds, two grey butcherbirds attacking a blackbird. The blackbird hit the window at full tilt. The butcherbirds’ impact was cushioned by their prey —like an airbag in a car crash, Miss Eight later observed— they were still holding onto it when they hit the window. All three crashed to the ground, momentarily stunned — as were we. And then, the butcherbirds were up and back into the attack. Have you ever seen it? Horrified, we charged out as a group to save the helpless blackbird, scattering the two butcherbirds into the branches of the box elder above. It was already too late. If it wasn’t dead already, it soon would be. We ushered the kids back inside. 'We cannot save the blackbird', we told them, 'and the butcher bird is a female with her young. They’ve worked hard for their catch. This is what nature does', we said. But also, 'let’s not look', and drew the curtains. Our teen twitched them aside, fascinated. Lacking religion to put this moment into context our kids discussed how angry Mother Nature must’ve been when she created them. When the butcherbirds sang to each other over their kill, a soft melodic pattern of notes, it was oddly beautiful. Conflicted, toast and tea caught in our throats.

A small relaxation on restrictions kicked in last week — 2 adults and their dependent children can visit another household, for ‘care’ purposes, recognising human beings need contact with each other for good mental health. And so today, my sister, her partner and their son are coming up to the Blue Mountains from St Peters. The kids could barely sleep last night, so thrilled to have visitors it might have been Christmas. Thankfully a few chapters from “The Extremely Inconvenient Adventures of Bronte Mettlestone’ by Jaclyn Moriarty gave expression, release and relief to their excitement, chewing up time before bed and offering delightful distraction into sleep & dreams. We made a mushroom & spinach frittata for their visit this morning, M made his sourdough, and our family arrived with a selection of pastries from Sydney as a treat. We made a pot of tea and ate the pastries before we walked down to the fire trail leading to Hazel Falls. We passed an abandoned camp. It’s eerie—the sleeping bag and old coffee tin layered in dust, untouched for a time, under a stone ledge. My kids want to explore it but we call them back. An officer told me there were many such camps, and itinerants circulate through them, moving from one to the next on a never-ending cycle. Some of the family reached the waterfall ahead of the rest. If you stand at the bottom and look up, you have the uncanny feeling of being inside a giant ceramic bowl, such is the layering of dark stone and moss. It is wet-walled, a rainforest growth, and it was briefly quiet—the first of the group were lucky enough to see a big, beautiful, blue yabbie in the pool, before the noise of the boys sent it scuttling for cover.

It’s 7.30am. I’ve been up an hour and already I have poured the chicken stock I made with last night’s roast chicken carcass down the sink, having left it on the bench to cool and forgotten it overnight. It sat in the grey light of the morning, an accusation of waste and neglect. I poured it out and took the soggy remains to the bin outside. It’s rubbish collection day. Yesterday, I read somewhere it has been 7 weeks since restrictions began. Yesterday my eight year old daughter wrote a line as part of her remote learning English lesson, that said: The kids at my school used to play chase (before the virus came). And I wanted to cry. I made toast and eggs for breakfast for the kids, a pot of leaf tea for M and I, and soaked homemade muesli. The eggs come from a friend’s farm, delivered once a week along with veggies and fruit. I ‘pay’ for this on a barter system. I manage their website. It’s working well. Most things are homemade now. my husband began making sourdough bread last year, having requested a sourdough bread making workshop for his birthday. He’s been making it ever since and it is divine. I lost my casual role as a booking assistant for a holiday letting company three days into the beginning of the domino days of early corona virus. I didn’t mind really. We’d already been asked to keep kids home if we could and I have one high schooler with ASD2 and one primary schooler. How does anyone teach, work, and run a house? Clearly people do, but how?