Finding home in a new land

Today is the first day of spring. I am at a playground, sunning my winter skin. My four-year-old is pretending to be a shopkeeper. She piles tanbark into my one-year-old’s palms. He shovels some into his mouth and she demands 63 dollars from him in return. They are free to live in their imaginary world (albeit one where tanbark costs its weight in gold).

They look nothing like me, my children. They have milky skin and waves of gold-flecked hair. My son has just learnt to speak but the few words he uses have a distinct antipodean twang. My daughter, with her blue eyes and dimples, wouldn’t be out of place running along a beach in some Tourism Australia ad. In reality they are half Lebanese, a quarter Chinese and only a quarter Anglo-Celtic Australian. But they are Australian-born and, for now, there is no ambiguity about their home. The only house they have ever known is a single-fronted weatherboard in inner-city Melbourne.