Of mothers and such

 Happy Mother's Day!

Let me start this by stating that I do have the best mother in the world.

Sorry, all the rest of you, but she was such a good mother, even when I was a spiteful teen hating everything in the world but with the focus on the few who loved me most?  She wasn't the top of my hit list.

Wasn't fourteen shades of that for EVERYONE?

Paris is 13 years and nearly 5 months old.  We are at a sweet spot this week.

I am choosing to believe it may last forever, because I do NOT want to be on the other side of that.

I mean, it may be my memory playing up on me, but I don't recall 14 year old 'Salina, and I am willing to plead dementia but I am hoping that it is instead that I had a charm.

Doing a bit of digging into the family foliage of late, but really don't have time and resources yet lined up to take it at all seriously.

However, I would like to pay homage to a few remarkable "Matriarchs" unearthed.

My great-great-grandmother Hannah, who at 8 moved with her family to the other side of the world from Cambridgeshire to Central Victoria; as a very young lady then moved to help extended family in the newish city of Adelaide; married, was widowed and had a baby - or vice versa - but within a few years was back in Central Victoria; met an Irishman and married him; left her daughter with her parents and had another 5 children during which time she moved between Victoria, the United States, Hawaii, New Zealand and Queensland, while dealing with the death of another child, the severe illness of another, the financial perils of being married to her husband; then was abandoned by said husband while she had a defiant daughter who had argued with her father about matriculation and attaining her credentials as a teacher - she won, he disappeared (I will never know if the two were connected), a second daughter who had nursed her while she had been bedridden for the previous several years (yet miraculously arose from said sickbed upon his departure) and two teenage sons.  Now, I don't have sons and therefore cannot even begin to guess what bringing one of them up must be like let alone two, but everyone survived.  GGG Hannah actually lived for another 30 years after her husband left her - and in that time her daughters were her most devoted handmaids and she got to participate in the upbringing of her three grandchildren.

The great-great-Aunts - these were the heroines of my childhood - the Great-Aunts (as my mother and her sister called them), or the Aunts as known by my grandmother, her sister and her brother (and anyone else who knew them) - were two of the most beautiful women in the world.  They were strict and staunch but also loving and kind.  They plucked these children from the wilds of the North and had ensured that they were clothed, fed, and most importantly, educated.  "Never Trust a Man" was their dictum, not (just) because they were harridan spinsters, but I now realise because they had lived experience.  Always have something that you can fall back on, and the most effective something that you can fall back on is knowledge.  Perhaps the reason that Aunt Jane had her family-famous ball of rubber bands was indeed because she had to account for every penny and every piece of string while still showing a front of being genteel and proper.  The reason Aunt Sarah was so terse about keeping within your lane was because she knew just what a tight grip you had to keep on your independence because you could never afford to let go.

 

My grandmothers and their sisters and sisters-in-law, who took turns in looking after not-always-lovable in-laws in turn, who did all the thought-load of a household pre-refrigeration, pre-electricity, pre-phones.

My mother and my aunts, who tried their best to give us skills in how to be the best that we could be and gave us the ultimate power of believing that we would always be safe because we were surrounded by people who would be there for each other at every turn.

Unwittingly or not, at some point in the above generations, the family story became  "perhaps a freak squall on Sydney Harbour" rather than "never heard from again and assumed dead when they had to sell the family home 27 years later" (or indeed "died interstate intestate and no mention of marriage or children on the certificate").

I am learning new awe of these people and just how they got through.  Happy Mother's Day to all of them, and thank you.

The garage, the grandmother and holidays

It's a long weekend here.

Monday is Labour Day.

Or the long weekend straight after Anzac Day that you never quite take enough advantage of. 

I remember as a kid wishing that the public holidays were more spaced out.

It's caught us unaware, to be frank, although what a welcome little bonus it is.

Double bonus is that we are child free tonight. Lush!

I have been dabbling a little in family history of late, with regular visits to my parents and contact with a - well, her father and my mother were cousins, so that would make me - what, third cousins?

In the exchange of new information from both sides, understanding of what has happened in the past makes you realise that documenting of things tell the stories that make history.

I have, through my own hoarding through the phases of my life, plastic boxes of writing and paperwork and filing and photos and projects that I am going to get around to one day.

When I have nothing better to do. Long weekend possibilities.

I have learned many things this week, including something that would have devastated - or delighted - my grandmother, revisited another family secret that has so many layers. 

I have also remet through my third cousin one Christmas of my childhood.

The Sunshine Coast in the Seventies was an event for us, and a week at Christmas very much anticipated.

School holidays were impossibly long, with 2 months of nothing to do (if you were a City Mouse) - or first needles, Christmas, branding, school shopping, covering books and naming clothes if you came from the bush.

So Christmas at the Sunshine Coast in the Seventies was a spectacular highlight of my childhood.

I do recall - correctly or otherwise - we were inadequately catered to carwise for the trip, having a sedan and three kids going away for a week at Christmas.

Add to that Summertime heat, pre-air-conditioning, gravel roads, roadworks...

These days, this trip would take quite a comfortable maybe half-day with stops? Then? It felt like weeks.

Again, I might need to check Dad's diary but I do believe that that particular road trip that day was that sedan's last - and our saviours that day were my mother's cousin and his family.

See, we knew that we were going to meet them that holidays - but not like this.

We had imagined well thought out outfits and good rest prior - as, no doubt did my parents - not hot, sweaty, untangling our legs from detritus and overcoming car sickness.

Looking back through the lens of time, my mother's cousin's wife - my third cousin's mother - was probably pretty upset that her quiet evening at home with her own little family before the craziness of hosting a huge family Christmas - especially when the crazy family mainly belongs to your crazy husband's side - was rudely interrupted by the influx of an additional two adults and three children around your dinner table.

They had a trampoline. There were boy cousins my age! I didn't know cousins came in boy! We didn't have that many cousins at that point and my age and above were all girls.

My third cousin was the oldest of the whole generation. She had long hair and was a proper teenager. We were in awe.

This was the Christmas of the tree.

Several days - and swims and adventures involving shops and/or ice cream and/or cars and/or tyres and/or feasts - later, we went to their place for the Christmas feast.

I remember someone got a slot cars game. I remember that the pool table was converted to being a dining table as there were so many there.

But I mainly remember the four cousins. Or four third cousins.

The sophisticated teenager. The 2 boys. And the to die-for cute toddler who wanted to be with us all. 

So yes, ready for the long weekend. 

In between the mowing and the reclaiming daughter from being a modern teenager. And cooking.

Ready your dragons

 Happy St George's Day.

So lovely to share my celebration with George - pretty impressive based on his write up.

When I was a kid my birthday always fell on a holiday - the local show always fell on my birthday (as it did this year - I didn't go)

And I have met many a top person - so many special people in MY life who are 23rd-ers, even a few who share the day.

Oh my yes.

 I know that I am so much older today for I just discovered that I have slipped from the generation that had elders only celebrating "on this day!" but now the list is all "what the heck is a tick-tock star?" (and yes, the generation that knows bloddy well what a tick-tock star is THEORETICALLY but kinda wishes they didn't)

Shirley Temple is apparently no longer a relevant name - nor Shakespeare.

I got to do so many things that I love today - I got to stay at home, and when your life gets about hither and thither (and when I compare myself to some who thither far more crazily than me or there) staying home is a desire.

Both of my girls and v were with me but not in your face sort of with me but in the general vicinity sort of bliss.

I got these flowers

I also got a shopping trip sans everyone yesterday courtesy of 'Salina and Paris doing stuff together while I went and got what I wanted with no regard to anyone being bored, hungry, tired, in pain or on their phone.

I got to solve a phone mystery with my Dad. He rang me on his mobile because someone had called him - did I remember Pat's nephew - but he couldn't get his number which he wanted to pass on to someone as the nephew hadn't heard that Cyril had died and Cyril had been so good with Pat but all I can find is Molly's number.

We worked out that it would be best that I called him back on his landline so I could talk him through the finding of the number. 

I am that child who is "the techy one" so I get all the techy questions. This is despite me also being "the android one" in an apple family who ensured (through the age old indoctrination method of passing along an old phone)  that he have an apple.

I settled in for the long haul and told him to press buttons that I could only imagine while he gave me his findings. 

No elusive nephew's number.

A light bulb then flickered.

"How did he have your mobile. He called you on the landline, didn't he?"

Ah yes.

So I video called him so he could show me the handset - theoretically much easier.

Except - have you ever had to explain to someone where the camera is on a smartphone so they can show you the image of something? With an elder? With my Dad?!

It's not a problem that his generation had to encounter.

I eventually saw enough of the handset to ascertain we had something similar - and I was able to give the right instructions for him to locate it.

Once he had written it down he offered to "hand me over to Mum". The wrong phone was transferred.

I cooked a cake.

I enjoyed the sun and coffee and phone calls and messages.

I used appliances and made impromptu coleslaw and koftas and meatballs and happy sauce.

My girls decorated

I had a bath. I got presents (true, none were a surprise but all were appreciated).

We feasted.

Just what this girl wished for.

And in 3 months today we shall be thithering ourselves, but at the other end is a kitchen that my hostess (& also a loved one) will be willing to share which is my idea of the perfect holiday destination.

crone

Not quite, but the signposts are getting clearer (or is that too fuzzy? Stupid little fonts they use these days!)

I no longer care about my cleavage, and I have decided to embrace the grey. 

There are bits that move and you think "that needs a good oil" (but not in a dirty way) (see, getting old)

There are bits that move that shouldn't.

As motoring enthusiasts (& not so enthusiastics) know, there comes a time when you notice the repairs are getting a little more intensive. I'm probably going to need new belts or something equally sinister (can you tell "motoring enthusiast" does not come to me naturally?). 

The sort of service that might have that "No longer economically viable to sustain" judgement be made - in a car.

Phew. 

Don't pull the pin.

There are good books to read. I just finished "An Afterlife for Rosemary Lamb" by Louise Wolhunter. Goodreads page on it an author page

I have also recently finished the audio book of Burt Bacharach's autobiography "Anyone who had a heart - my life and music". That was interesting.

Am going to Mum and Dad's for a quick weekend visit. Be in the same general vicinity of my siblings for 24 hours. Get about 5 hours of an audiobook and drive with Paris.

Bought tickets today to fly out to see V.'s mum and brother (and no doubt other people) but such tight time constraints for work and school and working people wide mean that it will really only be a few weeks once you factor the time that it takes in getting there and back.

And then you realise that this is very much a "21st century problem" (or are we up to 22nd now? Is 21st so last century? I can't remember if that is one of those stupid math rules or a sensible one)

Darn. Glitch in the app means a swathe of my book blabber has vanished, but believe that it was good and would have piqued your interest in "The Birdman's Wife" (Elizabeth Gould) and "An Unconventional Wife" (Julia Sorrell)

So your take " taking it gracefully" or "kicking and screaming"?

Or old enough to think naught of it, what will be will be.

shall I compare thee to an Autumn day

It doesn't really have the same ring, does it?

And these Autumnal showers over the Equinox after steaming days don't bring to mind "Fall".

Anyhoo, updates:

• The carseat covers got back onto the seats before the service at the mechanic's. Auspicious.
• 'Salina's softball team won their semi-final on Saturday and we got to watch.
• I got to spend a weekend with my folks and celebrate my sister's birthday - and see the last of the next generation in a photo of the first of the older generation and their main link, Dad's goddaughter/Bub's mother - my cousin.
• Laptop is not dead!!! On the way home from their place yesterday, Paris sent her love via text - 
  
  
  
• When I got home she said "guess what" and I said "what" and she said "I fixed your computer" and I said "how" and she said "I plugged it in".  (I can't seem to link a pertinent IT crowd link)