At the start of May, P and I hosted our three children, their spouses, and five grandchildren aged 3, 2, 1, 1, and 1, in a house in Port Douglas. I’d been resigned to a mixture of wonderful times and some tedium, but the entire week was low-key bliss. Even now, I can’t isolate the most precious memories of the toddlers and their sunny temperaments. Port D is a tourist hellhole but we were mostly insulated from all that. Swimming in skidding surf (within flags and nets, it was stinger season), walking among tiny beach crabs, being woken by little feet, joyous dinners, pool pleasures, birdwatching primers for the two oldest, reading books galore (Monster Trucks!), parrots at the wildlife park … on and on spool the memories.
On Day 2, a pool prank resulted in my nose being broken. Notice the kink? P from Darwin drove me to Mossman Hospital and two jesting doctors sedated the outside and inside of the nose and then snapped it back into line with two consecutive clicks. I wore a small, white sticky bandaid across the top of the nose for the rest of the week, and I remember how the grandchildren stared, wide-eyed, at the “sore nose.” I’ve speculated since: will they remember that bandage in adulthood? I doubt it but I hope they do. I hope something warm and kind and gentle and loving persists in their memories from PD 2021…