The Practice Baby by LM Ardor

Author:LM Ardor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Critical Mass
Published: 2018-03-25T04:00:00+00:00

34.

Through the whole four-hour drive from Sydney, Beatrice, Oliver and Eleanor complained as though their own mother were a kidnapper. School holidays and all they wanted was to sit indoors on their phones. Or go to parties because ‘everyone was going’.

‘What about nature? Don’t you want to lay with the sun on your back to watch a seagull hover inches above a crest of sand? There’s an ocean pool enclosed by breakwaters and a long wild beach to walk along.’

‘There’s a party at Sam’s—everyone will be there,’ from Beatrice.

Ollie had a sudden spasm. ‘This place has got wi-fi? Mum, please tell us that this place has got wi-fi.’

Dee pressed her lips together then forced herself to take a deep breath. Her favourite memory of childhood was looking up at seagulls hovering just above the sand dune that separated the rocky pool from the long wild beach.

What kind of unnatural creatures had she brought into the world?

She could cancel their mobile phone contracts. She pictured their reactions, slugs shrivelled up in a pool of their own juices when salt was poured on them. There’d be noises too—loud squeaky screams of existential angst. The images gave her the forbearance to keep driving rather than stop the car and leave the three of them on the side of the road.

Family holidays as a child meant camping at Moruya Heads with Mum and their cousins. There was one shop and cold-water showers but Uncle Bill took them fishing and there was a safe place to swim between the breakwaters. There were bush tracks and lizards and birds’ nests and rock pools and crabs. All the kids left the tent in the morning and, apart from quick raids for peanut butter sandwiches, came back only when it was too dark to see. Did kids these days ever escape supervision for a moment?

At night they lit kerosene lanterns and played Ludo or Monopoly. As they got older they were called in to make a fourth for 500 or Gin Rummy with the grown-ups. No phones, no TV, no internet, no electricity. The holidays at Moruya were the high points of Dee’s childhood. Her three would never experience nature without the protective filter of technology.

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