Datcat

I have always been a fairly relaxed mum. First day of school, I stood at the classroom door and waved, not a tear in sight. I have watched this beautiful young woman grow and grow, becoming confident and self assured. I have clashed heads with her, I have held her when she was hurt, I have shook my head in absolute stunned confusion as she applied her incomprehensible logic to life. I have struggled to teach her to cook when she doesn’t want to learn. I have unconsciously tried to mould her into a girly girl, only to have my attempts fail …… she did not like dancing, will not wear frills, takes absolutely no care of her nails and wears makeup under extreme sufferance. And all in all, I have coasted through this parenting stage, looking (mostly) confident and happy.

So today, I dropped her off in the university grounds, for the start of her orientation week. There was no backward looks, no worry or concern, absolutely no fear of the unknown ….. In that moment it hit me …… she’s not my baby anymore, she is an adult, and off on her own journey. I may not have cried on the first day of school ….. but I do now.

Sis and I are very alike ….. at times scarily alike. We look similar, laugh in a similar way, and have a very similar outlook on life. We even have partners who look very alike.

It would make sense then, that our children would look similar. And certainly my niece’s dark hair matches my children’s hair. But there the similarity ends. My niece and my son are barely 8 months apart in age, but a world apart in size, body shape and looks …… its amazing.

On the whole “blog roll” standards, I am pretty tame ….. I have a couple of blogs I visit, but I don’t have a big long page full of them, and I don’t always comment when I do. I visit “Hear Mum Roar” regularly, because the blogger is a good friend, and I value her articles. I have a new blog I have taken to visiting, “Snappy and Savvy”. This gorgeous lady has an eclectic style that appeals to me, even if I am not quite brave enough to take the style steps that she does.

Visiting both these sites, has made me think that perhaps I am not putting enough of “me” into my blog. Oh sure, I write, I waffle on, and occasionally I really reveal myself ….. but images of myself .. are fairly rare. I don’t take risks, so I keep it written, and I am firmly convinced that I am not photogenic. What images I put up ….. tend to be the lucky shots, that show me in the best light. But perhaps I need to be more ….. risky. Perhaps you want to see the real me occasionally …. with lanky hair, double chin, and shiny skin with no makeup. Even if you don’t want to, perhaps I need to …. for myself.

Back when hubby and I were first married, we lived in Barcaldine. For Easter in 1990, we invited my sister to come up and stay with us for the holidays, as mum was struggling a bit, and it would be a good break for both of them. The summer had been the wettest on record, and the ground was waterlogged. After a few weeks of constant rain, a huge low rolled into the gulf of carpentaria, and then just continued to come down through inland Queensland. And so we had the 1990’s floods, a 1 in a 100yr event. The Sanderson Dam held thank goodness, and Barcy has some localised stormwater but no river flooding in town, but Longreach and Iilfracome, Jericho, Alpha …. and many many towns were totally swamped. The Mary river was over 1km wide at the bridge, and the highway was destroyed, with great gouges 100’s of metres wide taken out of it, bridges gone. And so …. my sister spent nearly 4 weeks at our place, including going to the local school.

And as a present for xmas, we bought a plane ticket for my niece (my sister’s daughter) to come down, and spend a week of the school holidays with her cousins. She arrived last Saturday. This year, after the wettest spring and summer, Queensland has been hit with a huge flood crisis. My sister and her family lives in Toowoomba, and of course the destruction there has been astonishing. Along with the damage to the town, has been the damage to the range road, and now with the Brisbane River and Bremer River flooding … the damage to the Ipswich/Brisbane roads …. there is no way of getting from Toowoomba down to the airport. So Miss11 is stuck here for the moment. At this point we are only talking about a week or so, but the reality is, it may very well be a couple of weeks …… in which case she will have to come to school down here.

Its so amazing ….. that history would repeat like this. First with my sister, and then her daughter.