Breath

I read a book by Donald Horne once (he was the one who ironically coined the term ‘the Lucky Country’ but people didn’t pick up the irony), in which he advocated that travel should be undertaken along themed lines, so if your theme was churches, you should only look at the churches of a city; or if your theme was gardens you should only spend your tourist time going to gardens. I think this approach is a bit narrow, but I wonder if I could stuff the holidays we’ve just had into any particular theme. Perhaps it would be Bike Riding, or Gardens, with a bit of Art on the side.

Every holiday I know I mention how exhausted I am, but I was completely depleted before this holiday; pushed to the limit in every respect. So I wasn’t sure that the interlude I had booked for the four of us to do some bike riding for a day between historic towns was actually a good idea if all I was capable of was lying down and eating. I wasn’t sick though, and it was so nice to break up our usual eight-hour journey with a mere four-hour trip, which also had the advantage of us not having to leave punctually early, and then arriving mid-afternoon so we had time to explore the town and eat some cake (I had vanilla slice with pink icing from the bakery and the girls had huge meringues holding some early small Easter chocolate eggs. We ate this on the bakery’s upstairs balcony overlooking the autumn street scene). Then we poked around in the touristy shops in the fading afternoon: shops selling woollen/cashmere/possum jumpers, homewares, paintings and lollies. It was a good way to wind down, before pizzas at the local brewery with a great kids play area, then retiring to our wooden loft house for the night.

The ride it turned out was largely downhill through varied countryside of eucalypt forest, green plains, wineries and beside a river, so it was a good idea after all. Lara was sick, she woke up with a virus and was feeling weak, so she rode on the tag-along-bike to start with. There was a bit of whingeing and resistance from Rhea, but Lara found some strength, we whizzed along and swapped bike configurations and I’m really glad we decided to take some time out before our beach and city holiday began. That part of the holiday reminded me of the cycle touring trips we did when I was at uni, in which a group of around ten of us would ride around in equally scenic locations for a week or so. We climbed the hills though whereas with the girls we availed ourselves of the pickup service which took us home to the loft house.

To a Gardening Australia Nature theme, as part of our beach holiday we visited Heronswood, a beautiful garden on the Mornington Peninsula that had it all: a low children’s tunnel made of petostrum; a sprawling elm to climb on; swathes of blue and purple flowers by the historic house; lawn and different areas devoted to vegetables; citrus (twenty varieties) and a pond, covered in pond leaf, that could be enjoyed from a wooden bridge.

In the city we visited a private garden that was also featured on Gardening Australia in which the owner has created a topiary-wonderland of dinosaurs, elephants, some striking tropical pink-leafed plants in pots and both bought and home-made sculptures. The artist/owner let us in to see the back garden, a secret garden on the same theme but with a bridge and pond incorporated, and when his friend asked for a small container of the Thai desert he was selling for Lara to try, he obliged. When we were leaving he asked if we’d liked his garden. My reply that we’d enjoyed it very much made him smile.

Steve and I are doing some productive work too on our holiday. We are working through the Parentworks online course to help us better manage the girls’ behaviour, which we have both found increasingly too hard to deal with. We are working on the modules on paying attention to and rewarding good behaviour and the one on addressing misbehaviour. On the first, we are working on giving a mixed bag of positive rewards and acknowledgement after good behaviour that addresses our key areas of frustration. On the second, we are implementing a plan of timeout after we have told one of the girls twice to stop doing a particular thing and start doing something else. It’s been good having a bit of time to devote to it, but even with this time I’ve completely lost my temper already. It’s very much a work in progress.

Other themes of these holidays could be Family, including Steve’s family who joined us for Easter at the beach, sometimes resulting in three-way conflict with their cousin, sometimes giving us much needed support in the care of children as they all hung around together and amused each other. Or Art, because I escaped one afternoon to the art gallery to see another brilliant fashion exhibition in the city, including perhaps the loveliest dress I have ever seen: an Yves Saint Laurent creation of cream silk fitted elegantly to the model down to her feet, her shoulders encircled by a delicate long wrap of jaunty ostrich feathers in the same colour – pure bubbly froth. The whole vision was soft as breath, delicate as a light kiss.

And then I met up with Jessie and her little girls, with mine, at an outdoor sculpture park, on the last day of our holiday. At times I caught my breath at an unexpected piece around a corner: a labyrinth of low stones, inviting its path to be trodden; or a functioning but buckled set of traffic lights with a mangled bicycle tangled against it.

It’s so sad, but necessary, that holidays have to come to an end. It will be hard to get through a week of work, I’m trying not to think about it and the girls are also hating the idea of having to go back to school. I’ll have to keep busy and plan a few things to look forward to to get me through.