Trying to think more ‘The Ice Storm*’ and less ‘Mum’s Taxi’ bumper sticker

We’ve moved to the suburbs and not just any suburbs, the same suburbs we spent our adolescence plotting to escape. We used to shudder at peers who clung on to these suburbs long after they’d moved out of home. Hey, there is a whole world out there you could live in losers, let go of your high school years. Uh-huh. We are the people we used to scoff at.  

But the house has character and its much prettier than I had even hoped for. Its almost a tiny bit Fallingwater-esque in feel. Feel, not look. OK, that’s still a big stretch but our modernist stuff looks happy here and the place looks a bit weekend retreat-ish. He chose the house and we were in such a rush I never got a chance to see inside it before we moved in. I can see leafy trees from every window but not the houses in the street we live on. I can hear birds but not the angry drunks spilling out of the pub at closing time. I guess the suburbs have some benefits.  And already we’ve been rewarded by our families with the kind of generous support exclusive to those who live within 10 minutes of the familial home.   

On the downside I happened to be driving with my daughter past a certain fast food outlet when I recalled that my first boyfriend used to work there.

– Yep Lauca, didn’t Mummy come a long way?

*Incidentally, Rick Moody’s The Ice Storm is a faaaaaaantastic book. Tom Perrotta’s Little Children wishes it was The Ice Storm.  And while I’m talking about Little Children, what’s with the ending? The feminist mother is the only one who doesn’t get a happy ending? The town paedophile gets a happier ending. Hm, sorry about the spoiler.