Categories: uncategorized
Date: 07 June 2005 21:24:39
You're right, Jack. It is indeed baby Edythe, my second great-niece, the photos of whom arrived yesterday. I've gone all googly-eyed and broody. Although as I reminded a friend of mine last night - a sure cure for broodiness is to remember that they remain tiny babies for only about a year, they remain teenagers for seven years (at least! My Smudgelet is a teenager already at the age of eight!)
I must admit to feeling slightly robbed of the babyhood of my children, and resentful of the women who nursed them on their knees and yet didn't give them the care they needed - maybe not a good feeling to be experiencing right now as I write my annual letters to the birth families, but an honest one none-the-less and exacerbated by the fact that I seem to be suffering perimenopausal symptoms at the moment (possibly for other causes, however... must remember to make that appointment for the blood test results!) and it rubs in the fact that I shall never have babies at all. But then, I wouldn't be without my Smudgelets... no matter what I told them to the contrary tonight at bedtime!!!
Tomorrow Uncle B goes home. I shall miss him - it was wonderful spending time with someone who was such a fundamental part of my childhood.A shame Dad was so poorly while he was here, but at least I managed to take him out a few times - this afternoon dropping them both at Osborne House for a stroll in the grounds in the summer sunshine, yesterday driving them on a whistlestop tour of the beautiful downs and the southern coast of the Island. I'm glad to have been able to share with my children the joy of having this lovely man surround them with love just as he did for me when I was their age. I'd love for him to stay for longer, to read them stories and play with them as he did for me, and to share a bit of my grown-up life too. But I can imagine it must be distressing for him to see my Dad brought so low - and so miserable and argumentative (with me, not with B - fortunately) - when he himself has aged so well and the two of them have always been real comrades-in-arms. Certainly the contrast has brought it home to me in a big way.