“I wanted it to last”.

That’s what I said four months ago when we finally decided to sell.

The rooms were empty when I met my friend Kim to look and see how best to present Bourke St for sale.

My eyes searched across the living room to the bookshelves.  

My memory saw the Christmas tree, the couches heaving with our kids and their friends, the kitchen table and scenes of 25 years of meals filled with wild and spirited conversations.

No whispering at our place!

New Years, no matter what the weather, we delivered a daggy party, on the terrace, or sheltered on the front verandah with pouring rain, lamb on the bbq and lots of red wine.

There were summer parties where up to 25 drunken women journalists, editorial assistants and sub editors would guzzle Flaming Red Hen cocktails and Mr Pattie’s home brew, fall from our chairs and somehow keep down my famous Tiramisu…except…

“I wanted it to last,” I sobbed into Kim’s shoulder.

Four months later, last Sunday on the eve of my 60th birthday, we went back to Bourke St to say goodbye.

We had agreed to combine the two, get the kids home, bring our dearest friends together and celebrate the end of our Bourke St days and my 60th.

Yep. Nothing like emotion.

I’ve felt this amazing emotional split between the joy of our new, compact, funky inner town space and the rambling happiness of Bourke St.

I eventually realised what I ‘wanted to last’ were those messy, crowded years of friends and children and a full house. An only child, I loved the chaos.

Ironically, I discovered the Mews and led the desire to move and naturally, it’s been me who has missed ‘home’ most.

Sometimes life is a little too tricky or wildly predictable?

Last Sunday was perfect.

It was sunny and our grand home, she loves the sun!

We numbered 25. We had a simple plan.

Five guests would bake lasagne, five would bake a cake or dessert, five to bring salads and five (adult kids) would bring bread.

There’s got to be a better word than perfect.

But it was perfect.

Perfection came from knowing that in kitchens in Launceston, Longford and Hobart friends were connected by the baking of contributions to our shared lunch.

Perfection also on Saturday afternoon, when our son put John Denver on to play and started baking his apple pie.

Perfection when brother and sisters argued with their father about where we would place tables.

And again, perfection, when I stood back on Sunday morning and looked at two long tables with white cloths, lemons and apples set for 25. Tamar Valley spring.

My daughters, perfection, when they hugged our friends, spoke wise words of the deep meanings of friends and family.

The food. Five perfectly different lasagnes, Persian love cake, apple pie, raspberry pie, fruit salad and a towering croque-en-bouche carried (carefully) up the highway from Hobart!

All perfect, like the tiny cedar table from my only-child life, 29 red roses from my husband who remembers when I was 29.

The tiny table sat three of us for 19 years, but now aged 60, I filled two tables of 25 friends, ‘the family we choose for ourselves’ .

More perfection when my husband stopped me to look at the full moon as we left, and still, I couldn’t believe we were saying a final goodbye.

Perfection.