So. This is life with a kid. In this life, I wake when she pads up the stairs at seven-thirty in the morning, and I can only be grateful it is not seven. (Some of us are very tired.) It is a funny life – and a sticky one, too, as plum juice runs down her arm. Tonight at dinner, we tried to make her eat one last bit of risotto, one last bite, just one last spoonful. “Eat some more, Pokes,” we said, CC and I did, cajoling, and she said, smiling widely before running off to balance on the top of the sofa: “Tough.”

This kid, in this life, whines and stamps and crosses her arms tightly in displeasure. She interrupts relentlessly. She wants me to be a cat, her sister, a baby, a rabbit, she wants me to order rubber sushi from her red-roofed playhouse, she wants to play dominoes – no, trains – no, doctor – no, painting, she wants to scale every height, to ride every bouncy animal in every park playground across town.

She is unturnoffable, this kid, this pixie with the bright eyes and the ready laugh. From a running start she torpedoes herself towards my legs; with arms wide open she launches herself into a huge smack of hug. She draws cats with a frenzy – pages of stripey cats, smiling cats, six-legged, fat-tailed cats. She pokes. With her index finger out straight, she pokes, decidedly and seriously. She likes glitter and lip gloss. “Look at my lips, Ee-ee,” she says, and then she cocks her head and puckers. She has a set of self-adhesive moustaches, one for each day of the week. Saturday is ‘The Grandpa’, a dapper curl of grey. She likes this one because it is fuzzy.

In the late afternoon, sometimes, we play pretend among the thick roots of the old trees at Elkington Park. Down Fitzroy and its sweet terraced houses, the park is lush and green with biblical leaves, and its cliffs lead down to the Parramatta River and its leaning sailboats, its sturdy ferries. There is a tree to climb, here, and space in which to run around in circles. There are swings to swing, higher with each push, till the ground disappears and our feet are framed by the sky.

“Ee-ee,” this kid says, “I like you,” and I say, “Pokey, my sweetheart, my sweetest of hearts, you are A plus.” She is generous with her kisses.

I’ll tell you, though. Nights, CC puts her to bed and then we stay up too late with date mamouls and rose pu-erh tea, or Turkish delight and a flowery jasmine. Two days a week we drop her off at playschool. These days are very nice days.



Last Thursday at the Bourke Street Bakery on Broadway, we had to tell no one to keep her hands out of her mouth. We didn’t tell a soul that chairs are for sitting on, not for jumping on and shaking one’s booty on. At no point did we have to lunge forwards to catch a cup slipping off the edge of the table, and at the end of it all, after the flat white, the hot chocolate, the rhubarb danish, after the jammy toast, no one whipped out a baby wipe to clean off the grubbiness and smears.



We walked up Bourke Street and down Crown, stopping only for pink and yellow biscuits and blue sandals and some very fine objects. The morning’s grey sky had turned into wild rain, and it wasn’t letting up. By the time we reached Danks Street and the wide, warehousey façade of Fratelli Fresh, we were an embattled troops, wet in the foot and empty in the stomach.

We ate slowly, savouringly, while the rain came down outside. There were berries and a wobbly buttermilk pudding. The macchiato was small and dark. We ate savouringly, slowly, while the rain came down and down and down, outside.