Mirage

We took a trip to Dunsborough with the kids and the dogs. A weekend camping under the stars to escape the pressure of daily life.

It was a beautiful mess right from the start.

Three kids, two dogs, one cramped camper, and a man allergic to routine.

The boys had their own little gang, riding around the holiday park on their pushbikes, sunburnt and free. Robbie enlisted Nathaniel to gang up on Dion and I, sneaking in and peppering us with pistachio shells like tiny machine-gun bullets. 

Westley was impossible to get to bed that night. Every time we thought he was finally asleep, he’d pop his head out from between the curtains with that enormous cheeky grin, and we’d all dissolve into helpless laughter.

We stayed up until midnight playing cards by candlelight, the boys giggling through the canvas, all of us annoying the other campers. 

We passed easy hours playing Make Me a Sandwich, which is the world’s most ridiculous card game. Whoever lost had to make everyone else a cheese toastie.

I must have misunderstood the rules, because even when I won I still happily ended up making them.

At sunrise, everyone ended up piled in the same bed kids, dogs, limbs everywhere. Jackson, the puppy Rottweiler, launched himself up onto the bed in a heroic attempt to join the cuddle pile, then promptly fell through the canvas edge right out of the camper.

We laughed until we cried.

It was family.

The kind that little girls dream of.

I believed in it with everything in me.

On the drive home, we pulled into Palmer’s Estate Winery. A spot sacred to me. I shared with Dion how I’d bought a bottle of port there for each of my kids when they were born, sealed and waiting for their twenty-first birthdays. I wanted to share the ritual with Robbie, to fold him into something permanent and good.

Dion gave that thoughtful, soft half-smile. “You and me are so similar, you know that?”

I wanted to believe that meant he’d stay.

He did a pastel drawing of me that morning in Dunsborough.

Warm tones, sunrise behind me, hair wild, smile easy.

I was happy.

I was in love.