Four Hour Brunch
We hug tightly, reluctant to let go. Months have passed since we’ve gathered, the four of us deep in the trenches of mothering in all different stages. We’ve shared so many versions of ourselves across the 17 years we’ve been friends—our highest highs and lowest lows. A group chat is all that connects us these days, littered with random messages at any hour of the day or night.
We transitioned to a double bed; she’s been escaping her cot!
First put down was pretty shitty, but the night wasn’t too bad. She came into our room at 1:30am and I jumped into bed with her.
Anyone have any kindergarten recommendations for 2025?
I’m slowly coming back from the dead, been sick all week, now just a cough left!
How’s your Saturday morning? We’re just riding around looking for diggers, backhoes, and dump trucks.
How do you store all the 100’s of kindy artworks?
Honestly, I bin 90% of mine when they’re not looking!
The topics are vast and wide at this brunch; a recent beautiful wedding partnered with hangovers of deathly proportions, eggs benny, how to access free or funded therapy for one of our recently diagnosed ADHD, possibly-on-the-spectrum children. Navigating an unfriendly and expensive system that doesn’t particularly support the neurodiverse or their families. Art therapy for an anxious five-year-old, who broke her clavicle on the slide at kindergarten, no longer feeling safe there. Accessing an occupational therapist for a spirited almost four-year-old; with six-month waiting lists. The success of play therapy for a ten-year-old neurodivergent boy, learning to self-regulate and name his needs and limitations, and to self-identify his strengths—his superpowers. A frighteningly fearless two-year-old escape artist who can unlock the front door, sometimes running out onto the road, but who has had the most seamless stress-free transition into daycare.
We go through five jugs of water in this sitting, our throats parched from all the gasbagging and laughing, each of us traipsing to the bathroom in consistent intervals, our bladders now weak post-childbirth. We laugh until we cry at the realisation that these days we’ve swapped wine for water—a comprehension of biblical proportions, making us laugh even harder.
We share tears of joy and sorrow. The profound insights of our little people, their emotional intelligence and kindness, so disarming, we’re stopped in our tracks. Grief sits at our table. We welcome it. The recent loss of a beloved Father and Grandfather. A Mother and adored Nanny with late-stage dementia. We mourn lost versions of ourselves.
Mid-brunch we move cars to avoid parking tickets because we’ve gone well over the one-hour limit in this sitting. Six missed calls from a husband equals the worst our imaginations can conjure after one Mum’s hellish night with an unsettled baby—might be an ear infection—might be teething. Turns out hubby just couldn’t locate the dummy for the afternoon nap.
What a dummy! We laugh. Not a hint of cruelty in our cackles. We discuss the weight of what our partners carry, the responsibility of mortgages. Bills, bills, bills. Jobs, not passions. The mundanity of adulthood. Fatherhood; limited time with their little ones. The financial load.
Our mental loads. The appointments. The scheduling. Our roles as social directors. Why can’t our partners make friends in adulthood? What’s up with that? Perimenopause. Hot flushes. Exercise. Latte after latte.
Better not have a 3rd, my heart might explode!
Panic attack here I come!
You’ll be off chops! Just like Golden Plains.
Oh what I would give to go to a music festival again! Last gig I went to was The Wiggles!
We pause, in reflective remembrance of long-gone versions of ourselves from lifetimes ago.
We’re happy to let them go—but we miss her. Oh, how we miss her! The freedom. Reckless abandon. Our hearts hurt a little in remembering.
Suddenly, four hours have slipped by. It’s time to leave. We hug tightly, reluctant to let go.
I cross the street with my friend whose birthday we’ve been celebrating. Fifty-two years young—you don’t look a day over 51! I tease her.
Before our paths diverge, with a sudden lump in my throat, I grab her hand and squeeze it.
“You’re doing an incredible job of mumming. I’m so proud of you.”
And I mean it. I want to say more but I can’t. I want to tell her that she’s a phenomenal advocate for her son. That she is embracing and celebrating his neurodiversity like I wish the world would. That she is an inspiration. That she is brave beyond measure. But my words are bound tight by the weight of the emotion that floods me.
With watery eyes, we unlink hands. She blows me a kiss. I pocket it dramatically. Theatrically.
She laughs and laughs.
I don’t know when we’ll see each other again.
But whenever it is, it will be like no time has passed.
About the Author
Michelle Fitzgerald is a mother, writer, and performing arts teacher, rebelliously raising her 3-year-old daughter in Geelong, Australia. Michelle’s writing was recently featured in Eclectic Words: a 2023 writing anthology from Geelong Writers, Howl, and Ramona Magazine.
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