In The Thick Of It

In The Thick Of It

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In The Thick Of It
In The Thick Of It
Swings And Roundabouts

Swings And Roundabouts

How two things can be true at once.

Sandi Sieger's avatar
Sandi Sieger
Feb 23, 2023
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In The Thick Of It
In The Thick Of It
Swings And Roundabouts
2
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Yesterday, I opened a letter from my bank and baulked. Rising interest rates have added $1500 a month to my mortgage repayments. ‘Effective 16 March 2023’ it shouted and danced on the paper in my hands.

‘Thanks, cunts,’ I muttered under my breath. Now, don’t confuse me, or my words – I am grateful to be paying off my own home. I am fortunate, beyond measure. Acutely aware that a home of one’s own is increasingly becoming a privilege. I am not complaining. But fuck.  

Perturbed by the news, I hit the garden and began furiously weeding a patch outside my kitchen window. And then my phone rang.

It was my nephew, M, calling to tell me he was coming over in a few weeks to paint my bathroom ceiling and fix my doors. ‘Start making me a list of all the jobs you need done,’ he said, ‘and I’ll tick them off one by one.’

‘How lovely of you,’ I said. ‘Swings and roundabouts,’ I thought. Swings and roundabouts.

Something that has become abundantly clear to me over the past six months is how two things can be true at the same time. I always kind of knew it. But now I get it.

I am thirty-eight years old and, for the first time in my adult life, single. I am no longer a wife. I do not have a husband. I am not married. I am a single mother. I am a sole breadwinner. I am alone.

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