Monday 6 January 2014

SHIFTING SANDS

I hope everyone of you had a good Christmas and New Year and I wish all my readers a very Happy 2014.

Today I wanted to talk about life and its changes.  As I have grown older I have realised that life never stands still, no matter how much you may want it to.  When my grown up children were little I used to wish desperately that time would stand still and just let me hang onto those precious moments with them but it doesn't and the only way to keep moments is in a photograph or your memory.  I watched them grow into young women and head out along their own paths which is only right and proper and I am fiercely proud of the people they have become but oh how I do miss them even now.

My two older daughters are 30 and 28 now.  The younger of the two is married with a family of her own but it is still a physical wrench when I leave them in their own homes or say goodbye to them when they have come to visit.  I want in my heart, to talk to them every day, I don't because I know they are busy and have their own lives to lead without mum chipping in every five minutes.

I used to feel somewhat bemused at my own mother worrying about me even after I had left home, it seemed a chore to have to ring her and we didn't always see eye to eye.  Now I am older it is different.  I miss my mum and I do feel regret at having felt that way towards my parents when I was younger.  Now I understand how she feels.  Even though I am 51 and she is 79!

I realise now that you never stop being a parent, never stop worrying that your child is happy, warm, safe, not hungry, not short of money, not tired.  I realise that my daughter who is married has her husband to share life with now and her children and that it is to him she will turn if she has a problem and not me, again as it should be.  I have to say that the day she got married I really grieved afterwards.  Whilst half of me was overjoyed that she had found love and happiness as I had when I married her stepfather, the other half of me was so upset that she was moving further away from me. 

My older daughter still comes to stay with me for weekends and we talk more often because she is still single and has more time.  They are both a big help to me when I need it which is wonderful.

This Christmas seems to have brought home to me so much more that I am missing my daughters.  Im unsure as to why this year should be so much harder but I just wanted to gather them up and keep them with me.  Its not always easy to spend time with my married daughter as we are both so busy, she works part time, I work full time and the children have such a social whirl of activities despite being very young. 

In turn I don't get to see my own mum as often as I would like, (dad passed away a few years ago now). 

These are what I call shifting sands, life constantly changing with time, nothing stays the same forever.  How I wish when I see parents in the street screaming at their children and pulling them along that I could show them a time when they will regret their actions, although maybe for some of them there wont be any regrets!

Things have changed for us, they are growing further apart as are my two younger daughters, now 14 and 12, their lives are moving onwards, the older one only having 18 months or so left at school.  I suddenly feel lately as though I am standing alone on a path and everyone is moving away from me, I suppose in reality we are all walking alone in life but sometimes alongside others for a while.  Its the chance to see things from the bigger picture, from above perhaps and not in the midst of,  I hope Im making sense here. 

My late husband used to say that if you didn't know what to do about something the best thing was to stand still and the answer would come, things would happen and then it would be sorted.  He was quite wise in some ways and I do try now to do this.  I feel that I am at a point in my life this year where things are changing I need to stand still for a while.  Im hoping the answers will come.

In the meantime I wish you all well and hope you are dealing with your shifting sands.