between the worlds

fleeting hint of autumn early this morn...

Last night we three had a swim at the little beach by the river mouth in Bruns, then got fish’n chips. We picnicked on the grass, and lay looking up at half a moon, and  two pelicans who were perched on top of lamp posts. Rainbow lorrikeets made a racket in the palm trees. The river turned silvery pale, the sky intensified into azure. The trees  on the other side of the river blazed golden then sank into inky silhouettes.  F shoe-ed the seagulls away, and I said to D, 

“ Remember when he was little and he always used to...”

“Yeah, yeah Mum”  F cut in, “ I know exactly what you’re gonna say now, you say it every time. About how cute it was the way I used to automatically chase everything”

As it happened, this was exactly what I was about to say. So I vowed solemnly not to mention it again before he is at least twenty one years old.

“Stop it Mum”.

Later, we get takeaway desserts - raspberry sago pudding, and sit in the picnic shelter. F says something to the effect that he can feel himself changing, getting older, and he can feel it sort of coming on that he is going to be really really irritated by us, his parents, but that we shouldn’t take it personally. (And that he really does love us - or did I make that  bit up?)

I remember feeling the same at his age  - though I wasn’t able to articulate it as well as he is. “I was embarrassed to even have parents at all when I was 13”, I tell him. 

. 

“Yup”, he agrees

“Even cool parents like us, ha ha”, puts in D. 

I can remember my mother singing some  song to me about being Just an In-Between, Too old for toys, too young for boys...which of course made me feel like killing her.

F moves between the worlds. There is  rap music blaring four letter words from his Simpsons poster-plastered bedroom. But today he’s re-reading his old TinTin books, lost in an innocent world of boys own adventures and rocket ships to the moon.