Carousel c.1900

And when we emerge from the body temperature therapeutic pool, Callum tolerating being dunked over and over, loving it, his face full of glea, smiles erupting, laughs shrilling with excitement, I feel as if my fears have subsided, my head is clearer and happier. Back in the classroom, the three little swimmers munch on lunch and with the hunger brought on by the healing waters, we envisage them asking "Please sir, can I have some more".

Collecting Reuben from his school, a mother I don't know comes running out. "Are you Reuben's mother", she asks. Wondering what I have in store I hastily but proudly reply "Yes". "Oh my son is friends with Reuben and really likes him. Would you like to go to Disneyland one day for a playdate?". My heart soars again. His little playmate, Joseph, is about a foot taller than him and a year older, beaming ear to ear with striking huge brown eyes and a shiny black bob. I quick capture them both standing together with my camera. I'd glanced earlier at the yearly pass beside me and had contemplated going that day. "We'd love to". And that was a date set. And what to do now though, I think. I do these things. We're out and about, the boys are well again after another week of being off school with little but reoccurring nuisance colds and on days like this, the world feels like my oyster and with absolutely no planning, I lusciously grasp it.

The fog is settling in over the bay of Santa Monica and we peer over the icerink, Reuben signing "walk" so I scrape off a little and say "ice" and he signs back "ice-cream" so I fingerspell "ice" to him.

In Zara, I stock up on Christmas presents for nieces and for the boys, a trilby hat for Reuben which he won't take off and is so impeccably him, little ties for Callum's upcoming Baptism and pinstripe waistcoats. The look is dapper, Sherlock Holmes and I love it. Their patience through my shopping is incredible, despite pulling all the hats off the hatstand! I'd promised them all along the 1922 carousel and Reuben will not let me forget signing "horsie" all along our brisk, fog shrouded walk to the pier, as they sit nestled in the tandem stroller.

What joy I see in their faces when they run to the horses, I lift them up high and they sit either side of me, buckled in with leather belts. For a moment, often with noone else in the carousel hall, I'm transported to another era, back to the Roaring 20s and in that time, time stands still. I peer up to the glistening lights, open my ears to the music that fills the hippodrome, watch their faces, delight in the moment, beam with happiness and want it never to end. And with icecreams from the parlor that sits alongside, Callum engrossed in cookies and cream and I in an espresso ice-cream with hot fudge sauce, the dream goes on.

"Would you like to go on the carousel again?" I ask.

Surely the best $2 you can spend anywhere.

Tonight I watch Clint Eastwood's Invictus and I'm brought back to a different era. In the 80s as a passionate liberal teenager, I campaigned at the massive Nelson Mandela rock concert for his freedom and again in the 90s, to celebrate his release. I think about him standing on stage and the ovation, that incredulous moment I experienced along with 30,000 in the stadium. And I think back to my studies at university, in part, on South African politics and apartheid. I think of the man, the legend, the intolerable experience and the belief which kept his dream alive, thus inspiring his homeland and weak team to win the rugby world cup in '95. What things we can do if we dream, if we believe, if we go over and above. Reuben does that every day.