Every morning the Little Sister rides her bike out to the dam and back. Every morning she asks me to join her. This morning I did. It rained overnight and the track was heavy going, we raced there and back. No prizes for guessing the winner.
Made breakfast and set about marshalling the kids through their morning routine. I was concentrating on measuring the yeast for a loaf of bread, when the Little Sister told me she had a comb stuck in her hair. I told her to pull it out, she said she couldn’t. That’s when I looked up and saw it – a tangle of biblical proportions. Immediately recognised this was above my pay grade, sent an SOS SMS to a hairdresser mate asking for any magic tips and headed out to the shed to ask Bearhands for help. He used some tin snips to cut the comb into pieces and shorten the tynes, while the Little Sister expressed her discomfort. Then she and I headed back inside and set about the tedious process of freeing her fringe strand by strand. Never a dull moment, huh?
At school, our morning ritual of complaining about writing continued. Eventually both girls finished with time to spare and we all headed to the back paddock for a brain break – the Big Sister on foot.
The afternoon was uneventful, save for the moment when the Big Sister, frustrated by the noise in the office, took her laptop out to the paddock and finished her classroom zoom in peace.
In the early evening, we headed to our friends’ farm to deliver some seafood and stayed for dinner. It was wonderful to be able to sit across the table from each other and share stories and good food and wine.
Woke at 2.30am with terrible garlic breath, an unquenchable thirst and a headache and it all felt so deliciously normal.
We’re taking baby steps, but it feels like we’re on our way back.
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