Remember that time a year ago when I balked at moving to Sydney primarily because The Kid had made so much progress and I was afraid of regression in the land down under?
Ha. I mean…really.
When The Husband and I visited our future home last year, it was winter. We walked along a cool beach and ate dinner outside the Opera House next to a heater, but nothing felt too cold. I didn’t even wear a coat for the fifty-something nighttime temps (still can’t convert to Celsius). I smirked when Sydneysiders spoke of their dread of the season, how ready they all were for spring. That’s not winter, I thought to myself in a Crocodile Dundee accent as I imagined snow-capped Februarys in New York and frigid Christmas Days in Atlanta and wanted to say, THIS is winter.
Apparently I am adapting, as the temperature here as topped out in the mid-sixties today and my sock-clad feet are nearly purple. Everything’s relative, right?
But despite the houses not really being built for it, and the people not at all up for it, I have to say…the winter here isn’t bad.
On Saturday we drove to Manly Beach to meet another family for brunch. TH took TK and Little Brother to a natural rock wall, following behind the other boys and their dad, and I waited for TK to turn around and come back to the safe sand. Instead, he climbed the wall. LB, ever the support staff and attention-seeker in one, hustled up after him then came back down to jump off too-high rocks and take my breath away. We all walked along a path beside the ocean and watched the surfers and divers, weaving through other walkers. Later the next night TH and I returned to the suburb for an anniversary dinner in a tiny Italian restaurant recommended by a friend. I marvelled again at how Sydney seems to be a mix of two of my favourite places: New York, and the sea. City and surf. This combination that seems made for us, and there we were walking with light coats on through the winter night. Brutal.
And maybe it’s just the increased Lexapro talking as I enjoy the newfound distance it’s placed between me and the cliffs, but the beauty seems to chase after us here even more than the anxiety typically does for me. On Monday morning–the blight of the week–I walked across the pitch at TK’s school with him on one side of me and LB on the other, practically dragging the toddler who wanted to go home and the school kid who hates the loud assemblies in the sun, and another accented voice (I guess I have an accent too?) reached me: the Ukrainian mom of one of TK’s favourite friends. “It’s beautiful,” she said, gesturing to me and the boys. “I’ve never seen the three of you holding hands and walking beside each other. You all look beautiful.” And I wanted to snort because I had just been thinking about how I might send them both to the airport with a one-way ticket to Far the Hell Away from Here but instead I thanked her. And looked at us anew.
We’ve missed the Stateside eclipse, which is strange, not participating directly in the phenomenon that consumed so many we know and love, not sharing it with them in person. And yet it’s fitting, the idea that for us, right now, the sun doesn’t get blocked. That yes, there have been plenty of times we felt like something stood between us and its light, and there will be plenty more in the future, but here–in a regression-less year and a bearable, beautiful winter–we are enduring the beams of love without interruption for a season. For the season that, before, always seemed to be the one most barren of light.
Yesterday I drove the boys home from TK’s therapy centre. They asked for the God song again, the one they can’t seem to get enough of–and I need to hear it too. We hit the patch where the roads are beyond full capacity, where a place aptly named Traffic Jam Galleries sits. Stuck there in that moment, I looked at the paintings for what may have been the first time: beauty right where we sat, unable for a time to escape it. I looked through the rearview mirror at the boys’ rapt faces, their taking in of notes of love. No, winter here isn’t bad. Not when it’s so full of new life that you’d think it’s spring.