Fraught return to routine
SCHOOL goes back this week. Three more sleeps.
We have been at home this summer.
It has been the first summer for a long time where not only are the children on holidays, but one of those children started holidays in the first week of December — resulting in seven weeks where she was home and needing to be kept busy.
Much of the joy of the school holidays is the lack of routine on the long and lazy summer days.
But this summer has been characterised by several themes.
Two of our children have become completely addicted to the Big Bash.
This is a new phenomenon and one in which I cannot profess to be the slightest bit interested.
With half the house as Stars supporters and the other half as Renegades supporters, seemingly every night since Christmas has seen hours and hours of cricket on television.
We have even attended two of the matches, one in Geelong and the other at Etihad Stadium.
I have decided that while the reduced over format is certainly more exciting than Test cricket or one-day cricket, it is still cricket. And no matter how many fireballs you set off or how many disco tunes you play between batsmen, it is but a momentary (albeit welcome) distraction from what is still, undoubtably, cricket.
One of the greatest benefits of living in Geelong is how close you are to beautiful beaches. Our family love the beach and, weather permitting, we have been fortunate to spend some lovely days jumping waves and boogie-boarding and reading on the warm sand in the sun.
There is something about the beach. Its very existence is about holidays and melting ice cream and laughter.
It also has a magical quality that causes tiredness in children, which means that fights about bedtimes — even much later holiday bedtimes — are eliminated on those days. This summer at home has also meant spending time with friends who have joined us with their tribes | for a barbecue, usually on their way to or from the coast.
School friends, old work friends and even friends from university days have made an appearance. Catching up is always full of laughter and reminiscing.
What is also lovely to see is watching your children and the children of people with whom you have grown up and love dearly also becoming friends as they play backyard cricket or computer battleship or, in the case of the teenagers, become Snapchat friends or follow each other on Instagram.
On Tuesday, when the school bell sounds, routines that have been missing for weeks recommence.
There is joy in the ringing of that bell. The children are reunited with friends and again engaged in the business of learning new things.
Parents are liberated by the same bell and you can hear, all over Geelong, the sound of parents highfiving each other.
Our liberation however, comes at a price.
Routine is predictable and reliable, but also means that lunch boxes have to be made every day for three children — all of whom want different things on different days.
In talking to mums this week at various sporting events and trainings, it is the thing they dread the most.
The mums roll their eyes and mimic their children’s exasperated tones when they declare that they no longer eat rolls/sandwiches/ wraps/ anything in the house that could reasonably be found to be included in the lunch box.
The imminent drudgery of the lunch box is palpable.
Our liberation must also be balanced against the logistics of managing to get three children up, dressed, fed and at school, as well as the logistics of the after-school sport frenzy.
In preparation, I drew up a chart last weekend to ensure the dogs and guinea pigs got fed before school and to ensure the multitude of afterschool sport that we have again somehow committed to can be facilitated.
At the point where your chart is multicoloured and resembles the aircraft log of incoming flights in the Melbourne Airport air traffic control tower, you know you are in trouble.
But, prepared or not, school does begin again next week and with it the real 2018 begins.
Good luck, save a high-five for me — and if you have any lunch box inspiration, please, let me know. Rachel Schutze is a principal lawyer at Gordon Legal, wife and mother of three. [Ed’s note: Ms Schutze is married to Corio MP Richard Marles.]