Wives and Daughters

I got chatting to Robin online today. Robin was one of my first friends in Holland. Her daughter was in the same class as The Little One and we pretty much bonded over quilting, and a shared indignation of the premature adultification of little children. Those two interests don't have a whole lot in common, but it was a pleasure and relief to meet someone else who also wasn't keen for her 7 year old son to attend a birthday party to watch Austin Powers.

Robin introduced me to lovely people. And until I found a full time job, we'd meet regularly to quilt. She credits me with teaching her. I didn't really. The pleasure I used to feel riding Giselle the Gazelle, her basket loaded with quilting goodies, up the road to Robin's house in Blaricum, past farms and quaint houses, is something that has never left me. When we finished the group, they gave me a lovely collection of William Morris fat quarters. I made notebook covers out of them.

Today I got a lightning update on her amazing daughter, about to start grad school to become a professor of biology. A doctor no less.

I keep up with Robin these days on FB. I see photos of her in her various guises, mostly as indefatigable amateur athlete. It's a cliche I know, but it is difficult to reconcile how much life has moved on. I told her about The Sensible Girl getting hitched.
So it got me nostalgic (even though it was only two and a half years ago!) for the quilt I made.

Over the kitchen dresser that
The Little One rescued and renovated.

Diamonds and Stones

  

Some weeks are just shit.

Monday may start out well, but through a complex process of interpersonal interactions, disappointments, reality-checks, injustices and unreasonable deadlines, by the time Friday night comes around, the final assessment can be summarised in that one word. Shit.

I probs shouldn't use the word 'shit' in case my mother is reading. Although I figure I'm pretty safe given that she told me today that her computer's not working. I called in to see her on my way home. I just sat on the sofa that she's had since I was 4, drank the tea she made me, and listened to her catalogue of the week's activities of 'senior citizens' outings, Tuesday club, volunteering at a school and a church, and walks with her neighbour Amy. My mother has volunteered at the same school for fifteen years, ever since her retirement. It's a school for young people who, for a variety of reasons can't be in mainstream schools. And my elderly mother goes and cooks with them, and does craft with them, and goes on their overnight trips to exotic locations like Dubbo. That pretty much blows my mind. Then she showed me the new plantings in her garden and drilled me on when her bougainvillea would flower and what did I think of her new garden edging? It was a nice hour or so. And apart from the fact that the sofa could really do with either re-springing or putting out with the Council Clean-up, it was surprisingly comforting.

And now it's Friday night on my street.

And there's a tangello in the fruit bowl.

So what are you doing this weekend?

In Sydney, it's promising to be sunny. I'm going to the library which is about 100m from my house. I'm going to the library because I figure, if I am every going to counter my weird work-avoidance, that four hours there, will be worth eight hours at home.

And I'm going to eradicate the last remnant of the week from my bones and my being.