Overwhelmingly, a Twilight Phase

A beautiful, safe beach is accessible from our beach house via a short track through tea trees. The vista of the beach opens up at the end of the track like a magical discovery. My eldest daughter used to be the first one down the beach, with a net in her hand and the desire to catch a toady – these are small annoying little fish of the Cow Fish variety, but are easy to catch. Once caught, my kids put them in canal systems, connecting pools and holes purposefully built in the sand, where they stay until released or until the tide comes in. I have a motion picture of her in my memory stalking these fish for hours in the shallows and lunging with the net, always with success. She became so good at it that she would often leave the toadies for the other kids and focus on smaller, faster fish that we assume are whiting. 

These days are over. She now wakes on holidays at eleven, but would sleep longer if I didn’t wake her. (I don’t want her becoming completely nocturnal – she has to go back to school next week). After surfacing, she spends a good part of an hour in the bathroom, emerging only when her hair is perfectly styled and her face is made up. If not for me insisting on her eating breakfast she would be content with a can of Pepsi max (which I never buy!! She snuck a six pack of them into the trolly last shopping expedition). 

These changes in my children are often more visible to me on school holidays in our beach house. Its probably because I reflect upon it, and because memories of other times in this familiar place surface to juxtapose themselves against the present. I remember curling up with her on the couch down here when she was eight to read her Harry Potter chapter-by-chapter. Towards the end of book two, I continued to read after I put her to bed. It was one in the morning when I finished it and could finally put it down. When she became an independent reader I read to the younger ones books she had read on her own like Deltora Quest. Now all of my daughters are independent readers. If I didn’t have my youngest daughter, these days of lying down in bed with a child and reading would be completely gone. 

My eldest no longer reads. She has myspace, Gaia Online, a mobile phone and a drawing pad. Daughters numbers two and three are the avid readers now. But Harry Potter has long been superseded. Here and now is the Twilight phase!

Twilight is a series of four books. It has captured the imagination of my two middle daughters. Each of them in turn have not been able to put it down. Both are obsessed with this perfect girly fantasy about a vampire (Edward) and his love (Bella). They await the next series (which tells the same story from Edward’s perspective), and the film. The trailers of the film caused a sensation in our house yesterday when Emma found them on the internet and watched them over and over again, before holing herself up again with the fourth book.

Change was in the air

I was feeling different. I had survived the turmoil that was my mid life crisis. I had learnt (and changed), and decided it was time for a New Chapter.

I have opened Comfort Food like a new piece of slate upon which to start afresh. I can’t predetermine the content of this new blog, only that the things I choose to write about here will reflect the differences I feel. Some of the epossums themes will be left behind and new ones will begin.