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“Samu! Brush your teeth!” 

My bellow follows the fast-paced clatter of his bare feet pelting down our hallway as he rushes, alas, not to the bathroom, instead performing a sharp, last-minute U-turn to the bedroom.

“SAMUUU!”

Swift as a cattle dog who knows her foe, I head him off. My hand fits to his flying blonde head like a socket to a ball as I gently, yet firmly, redirect this flying juggernaut towards his hygienic fate.

“Brush your teeth!”

He bounces up the small plastic steps, reaches the top level and and keeps going, with the aim of resting precariously on the handles of the bathroom cupboard. First one foot finds purchase, then the other as he makes a grab for the toothpaste. His sister’s toothpaste. The grown-up toothpaste. Any toothpaste tube that is not his own and which can therefore be used in a frustrating dance of obfuscation and procrastination.

I restrain him with one hand as I fossick around in the broken-handled toothbrush mug for his toothbrush. In my addled haze and with fugged morning brain I grab the wrong bamboo stick. Which is his again – the pink or the yellow? Ah hah. That’s right. The most dog-eared and bedraggled specimen. The one with the pink band.

While I fight an internal battle with my ailing cognitive powers he seizes the moment to find something to grab and examine – a hair clip, my moisturiser, something, anything to distract him and me from the task at hand. Almost instantly an object is seized, it is removed, in a wordless mother-son dance that we both know well.

As I fumble to retain child, toothbrush and sanity I reach again for *the correct* toothpaste. 

He tries to bolt. I restrain him by voice and my steely arm. He climbs back onto the step ladder. My hand glances over one tube, then seizes the other. I flip the cap, one-handed, with the dexterity and efficiency of a parent of two small children with a chronic case of mum-thumb and splodge red toothpaste onto the tattered receptacle. My arm is poised. My preschooler primed…

“Open!”

His mouth opens. A crack, a sliver. I stab the toothbrush into the reluctant slot, cantilevering to allow for better visuals.

“Open!!” 

I dive first for the left side bottom molar, jiggle the brush with agitation, try to work my way down the tiny surface of neat, yet pitted molars, around and to the other side. His mouth expels the invader.

“Shppppt! Shppppttt!” he cries through clamped teeth.

Samu leans forward, perched as he is and spurts with gusto into the sink. A stream of globulous toothpaste, half foam and half wasted potential, ejects into the basin and I go in for another bout.

This time I head for the right bottom molar.

There will be more skirmishes before this war is won.

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From my bedroom window

Our garden nourishes contrasts. Light and shade. Colour and muted earth. A mass of green waste discarded amid the verdant life of the weeds and natives that have serendipitously found home on our patch.

Pine needles and broad-leaved beauties shiver in the breeze and everything is alive with movement. A bird cries out, sounding as if it belongs more in the jungle than amid the lawnmower hum of suburbia. 

Shadows dance on the black lid of the compost bin as the spring sunshine warms its surface. My mum’s voice rings out: “Lila! Be careful!” and I imagine her cheeky, rotund personage pottering amid grass and earth. 

Next door’s lawnmower ramps up a notch and I imagine the smell of fresh cut grass – life’s most satisfying and universal suburban cliche. I can see snatches of white and blue mottled sky between the branches and I hear the swish of the occasional car as it takes the curve in the street below. 

I notice the dry patch of brown grass on the neighbour’s slope, the odd, hopeful daisy breaking up the russet with violet edged, cream fronds. They have escaped the neighbour’s landscaping machinations. The camellias are finally starting to recover after last year’s machete spree which left a gaping view to her house that was once filled with blossom. 

Mick the pee-wee, or his brethren, chirps questioningly (my mum thinks her dad was reincarnated as a magpie lark). The bromeliads are starting to look a little jaundiced and off kilter, their spiky harshness contrasting with the bright splash of the merry clivias. 

It’s autumn here, in Paradise, and our garden is a haven that welcomes all. Birds, insects, roving toddlers and invasive species alike.

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