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Showing posts from April, 2007

When Papa comes home

The call usually comes at 430pm. My mobile phone spews out its Nokia ditty, and all three of us at home stop what we are doing because the sound of a ringing phone is so rarely heard around here. Once I end the call, I grab Dee's pink toy stroller, bundle the kids into their jackets and shoes, head out with the house keys in my fleece pocket and nothing else. For we aren't going far. Just 100 metres down the road, at the end of a tree-shaded lane, to Bardon Park; a place we very imaginatively call the "green field". Straight to the centre of the field where there is a cricket strip, I sit down watching the darkening sky as the kids take turns to push the stroller, draw faces in the sand with twigs and play with the many dogs who are chasing tennis balls. Then KK appears over the crest of the hill. Backpack on, sweaty from his 30-minute trek from school, the University of New South Wales. That's what everyone is waiting for. Squealing, the kids abandon twigs and st