toast for tea

It's four days, now, since you've visited. The garden is a ghost town without you, the quiet too stark a contrast to your exuberant activity and noisiness. My ears are continually on high alert for signs of you. I miss your full-throated guffaws heralding the family's arrival into the tree outside my kitchen window, or the fence surrounding the fernery – all four of you sitting in a row like swallows on a wire. Regarding me with your 'Well, we're waiting' attitude. Oh, Noisy One, first out of the nest but last to learn independence, I miss you most of all – your continuous caw, caw, caw, calling for fast food. I miss stepping out the back door to greet you with freshly cut strips of steak – only the best for a growing family – and watching you take the meat up in your beaks, ‘killing’ it before tossing your heads back and swallowing with gusto, you, Noisy One, always managing to score the biggest meal. I miss looking, in turn, into four sets of int

Today, before my shower, I vacuumed and dusted the whole house taking advantage of night-owl teenager sleeping elsewhere swept balcony and installed new outdoor setting disposed of old outdoor setting pruned overhanging plants beside balcony ate breakfast at new outdoor setting on balcony washed, ironed and put away clothes for four people potted new plants in hanging baskets re-organised fernery to accommodate new hanging baskets watered garden read and answered emails and cleaned out inbox wrote book review completed Pilates exercises and walked dog. It was the best day. I loved all of it. No shower (a scheduled swim didn’t eventuate), no make-up, no deadlines (Okay, the truth: one deadline – but the review was straightforward and the words, bless them, rolled out from under my fingers like silk). The day was relaxed and dreamy. Unhurried. With time for thinking. Such an ordinary day. I want more days like these. There – my New Y