I knew you when....

I have this theory, it isn't mine exactly but I believe it. I believe that we meet people in this life, that we knew before.
I am sure we didn't just 'happen' that we come from somewhere, that we were made just the way the Lord wants us to be, we come here to fulfill a purpose and then we go on to continue who were are, for eternity.
I am sure that as we travel through this life, we come across people we already know.
For me, I meet people and I have one of 3 reactions, I love them, I recoil from them or I look at them and tell myself that this one, well, we'll see, nothing there that makes me jump back and run the other way but no spark, nothing to make me feel this is someone I will love. ( does this all sound like it's all about ME? Oh good, because it is.)
I have super friends, real honest to goodness friends and usually, I love my friends for always.
Sometimes I meet someone who seems lovely and yet, something doesn't gel, even though I can't put my finger on a reason, it doesn't get past the chit chat phase. That's fine because we can't be friends with everyone we meet, how sickly would that be?
Then, there are those times when you see someone, you bump into them and every sense is heightened, I love that, I love that those moments are not confined to age or gender, sometimes you can meet someone, quite by chance and you know that somehow you have always known that person, that this is just a reunion of sorts.
I did that today.
For a few years I have been online friends with someone, on a message board for mormon mums, I left that board forever ago but kept in touch with Karen, we have met up before on a crazy thanksgiving at our house and today I drove down to see her again before she moves from Cornwall, back to America, from whence she came. Her husband is in the US military and they are moving back to the USA, they had a couple of years in Italy and a couple more in England.
I was so glad to be able to see Karen and her family again, she has 3 delicious children, Natalie, Robbie and Clayton. I met Natalie and Robbie before on that busy thanksgiving day, both so little and Clayton is a teeny weeny boy, a new one that I hadn't met before ( oh tiny boys, is there anything nicer? I think not) Anyway, I didn't get lost, not really, I went the scenic route but I didn't get lost and I loved seeing the old familiar roads of Cornwall and some new ones too, the scenery and countryside is out of this world, truly breathtaking....









I stopped on the way home and took those pictures, I stood in one spot and took them, just look at how glorious that is. When I see countryside like this I know God exists, mistakes or explosions don't make beauty like this.
Anyway, I arrived and waiting in the tiny narrow lane was Karen and Natalie and Robbie. I got out of the car and Natalie came right over, she grabbed my hand and I felt that feeling.
This little girl has always been my friend.
We sat and chatted for a while and she drew me pictures and wrote me notes, the whole time I was thinking how happy I was to be near her, then she put down her notepad and she snuggled right into me, you know what you just have that urge to squeeze the breath out of someone when you see them after a long time? She did that and I squeezed her right back.
Then, she did something that was so touching it almost brought tears to my eyes, she got hold of my shirt, stuffed her face into it and she breathed in really deeply. Then she just looked at me and smiled.
I almost asked her if I was stinky but her little face showed me that I wasn't. ( and when I got in the car I sniffed right where she had and it smelled rather lovely of fabric softener and fresh air)
What a precious thing it is to feel that with someone, especially a little person because they are just so open.
There have been many times when I am so happy to see someone that I want to grab them and just breathe them in, take great big lungs full of their smell, squeeze the breath out of them and just have them know that I love them, without saying a word. Old age stops me doing that, which is a shame, after today I might just go with it because I feel like I won the lottery today.
The moment was over in a flash but will stay in my heart forever and I am sure that even when Natalie is old and married, when she is a mother and can barely remember living in England, I will still be her friend.
I asked her, after she sang me the sweetest song, on the way to school, if when she came home from school and I wasn't there, if she would sing that again and have her mommy put the video on the computer for me so I can watch it again and again and she said " Yes, she'll put it on Face Book because when you put things in the computer they stay there and you can look at them again and again, even when I am in America you can still see me if I am in your computer can't you?"
That's what I love about the computer, I get so many great things from my computer, a husband, great friends and all manner of treasures. I love that distance dissolves, it's so easy to forget there is an ocean between us as we chat and laugh as is we are in the same room.
I so love my friends, life is so much more colourful, more valuable when you have friends to share it with.
I love that true friendship is so effortless, nothing is hard work, it is entirely possible to go days, weeks even years sometimes without seeing or speaking to someone and then, when the chance arises, it's as though you were never apart.
I am so grateful for friends who understand me, who know without being told how I am, who take the time to tell me I matter. I am even more grateful for friends who don't need to tell me I matter to them because I already know. I know because I am pretty sure I knew them before, way back when.

On being rich.

They say pride comes before a fall, I suspect I am in for a big one then. Right now I am bursting with pride, because this is my blog I am going to trumpet my pride and be darned.

Being a parent can be so hard sometimes, I honestly didn't have a clue just how tough being a mum would be. I envisioned the sleepless nights ( which miraculously haven't been too much of a problem for me, I have children who like to sleep as much as me, they wake early but they go to bed early and they sleep, usually)

I imagined terrible twos, chickenpox, teething I wasn't too far off in my imaginings. Piece of cake.

It's all that other stuff I didn't think of, all the emotions and the angst, the hand wringing and sleepless nights when they were all slumbering like, well like babies.

Anyhoo, that aside, as time goes by, now I can look back and see how things are now, right now. My goodness it's great.

Daniel, my first boy, 23 is about to start a whole new life. At 16, he started working in a Hotel as a kitchen assistant, very quickly he started training as a chef, he then trained in management and has been manager of a Hotel for a few years, he is very good at his job and he hates it. He is incredibly frustrated by inefficiency and pretty much most of the things he has to do at work.

For three or four years ( I am so in touch with my kids aren't I? Could I be more vague? Shall we pretend that this is all for their protection rather than the fact that time is so muddled to me I have no clue? Yes, let's pretend that.) he has been a community police officer, all his spare time has been working in the police force, he loves it. He has won awards and been in the paper, he works hard and has many friends and lots of stories.

On June 17th, he starts work and training as a real, honest to goodness, full time Policeman, pointy hat and all.

He left school with pretty much no qualifications, all the way through his school life he had reports that said how glorious a boy he was but hmmm, never seems to do any work, funny thing.

I'm not sure how much my attitude to school helped or hindered him, truth be told and what the hell, I don't care too much for numbers, grades have never interested me ( except with Seth, because I know he is brilliant, if he gets poor results, I am going to care because it means he is not trying, I mind when my kids don't try.) If I hear that my children are happy, well adjusted, trying hard, are sociable and polite I'm satisfied. With the big kids, having seen all the trauma they endured, the fact that they were happy and just at school, doing normal things made me ecstatic, I didn't give a fig what grades they got.

With Dan, what worked for him was learning because HE wanted to, as soon as he was able to leave school, he went back because he wanted to...and when he wanted to, he did beautifully.

I am so proud of him.



Jordan, middle child, ( of first batch of babies!) 21.

Jordan has never caused me any heartache, he was a bugger at 14, I saw that he was headed for a whole load of teenage naughtiness, in the nick of time he went to live with his dad, back in England, he left L.A and flew to England 2 weeks before I had Isaac, my heart broke when both he and Dan left and I didn't see them for 21 months, I pined for them the whole time and I couldn't let go of the feeling that I hadn't finished raising him, that I had missed so much of his life. His dad, I have to admit, did a great job with the 2 boys in that time, he is much tougher than I am ( or was) and he helped those boys become good men.

Jordan, like Dan started working as a kitchen assistant in the same Hotel as Dan, he is now an incredible, chef, he went to college and worked in the kitchen and now he is a proper cooker. He cooks great food, really great food. Last week he made dinner for Jimmy Osmond, giddy heights I tell you.

I am so proud of this man, he is such a loving man, he is kind and generous and he is the most fantastic father, he adores his baby who loves him right back. He runs a home and he works hard, he is thorough and funny, he is a joy to me. He is great with his money, his house is beautiful, he pays the bills and the rent, he fills the cupboards and he never, ever asks for help. He is a man, an honourable and lovely man. He is 21.....he amazes me.
I love that my sons are such gentle men, you'll notice the space between gentle and men because they are not gentlemen..... my children seem to have inherited a common gene from their father, not from me, I am a lady, through and through ( heh) I take full responsibility for the way they know how to treat women.

I love having grown children, it is such an incredible feeling to see these adults, these real people that I gave birth to, who have grown and are independent of me and to watch how well they live their lives. I don't even care that it means I am getting old because it is just so great to be the mother of these people.

Talking of getting old. I am. Seriously, just look at our drugs cupboard, you'll have to admit right along with me, it's getting to be a veritable geriatrics dream I tell you, I even have sachets of laxative now, no kidding. I never thought it would happen to me but it has.
I have been having all manner of tests because I am in such pain, real bringing me to tears pain, every day, when you know that I have babies without pain relief and shoot those kids out with hardly a break in routine, I have had surgeries that I am told floor the toughest of beings and just get right up and on with life, no pain killers and yet here I am, most days reduced to a grizzling puddle of whatisits??? Everything is coming back normal and with every 'normal' result the thinking is that this is all just a case of getting OLD, wearing out, arthritis and just plain old nothing we can do about it, take some pills and put your feet up.

I went to school last night to watch Seth and Isaac in a production, sometimes I feel like such a seat of the pants kind of mother, I know that there are mothers out there that are so involved with every aspect of their childrens' school lives. I'm not. It's partly because I don't feel the need to know everything they do and then we have the way the boys think, this is SCHOOL...butt out, school is school and home is home and we don't like to mix it all up.
About a week ago Seth came down about 30 minutes after he had gone to bed and said " I learned my words"
It was then we discovered that he was in a production, that was it, no asking for help, no details, he said he needed his suit for a costume and he was done.
Isaac said he needed some of his regular clothes, yeah right, like he was going to get changed or even get up and join in or something. We went along with him because we hope that one day, well he will actually do something. We learned that the show was going to on Tuesday afternoon, wednesday afternoon, also wednesday and thursday evening. Yes, EVENING, you know, dessert time and finishing after bed time and .....uh oh.
So, wednesday evening H took them and came home at 8.30 and then he told me, in his full of detail way "Hey, you know Isaac did it. He moved his arms too! " he did tell me that he could hear a few other parents commenting on the fact that Isaac was there....dressed in his own clothes and indeed singing. Then he was done. What? He told me what happened right?
So thursday evening I went along, with camera and a small excitement to see if this was true, that this boy was going to actually join in.
Oh, did he join in.
My heart was so full, he was so sweet and I was so proud of him, I love the way he would sing,




then he moved his arms,



then he just went for it,



when the song was over, he would grin and then heave a massive sigh of relief. Phew.
He didn't panic at 7pm ( dessert time) and he didn't worry about bedtime ( although he did ask if he could stay up for 10 minutes when he got home) he did his job and he held my hand ( I was sitting right opposite him throughout the show, he was sitting at the side of the stage, in a chorus of children, there were 118 children aged 7, 8 and 9 who were in the show.
HE would tell me when he was about to sing again, he checked the programme often and told me where we were and what was coming and he was just wonderful.

Seth, well he just blew me away, because I was sitting right to the side I couldn't see the stage very well. When Seth was on the stage I couldn't film him well because so many children were in the way.
He had SO many words, a pretty huge part and for goodness sake, he even sang a duet with the tiny Mabel, who makes Seth look like a giant.
I am thrilled because the production was taped and we can buy a copy of the DVD which means I can see him in all his glory.
HE takes it all in his stride, even the praise, he is very " Yeah yeah, big deal" about it all, I lavish the praise anyway because who knows, it might just make him feel a little pleased, deep inside.

I must say that right now I am so proud of my children, each of them is making such great strides, growing and showing the world what they are capable of.
I especially look at the grown up ones and I can't help but see and understand just what treasure their dad walked away from. It's perhaps a good thing that he isn't terribly bright and is shallow and doesn't ponder on the deeper meanings of life because actually, if he were ever to really see what he is not a part of, what he walked away from and lost, in his fruitless search for whatever it is he is still chasing, I believe he would lose his mind.
How stupid are people who see treasure in worldly possessions, such things are lovely, fun to have and great to own but this, these people, these eternal gems that are our children, this is the real treasure, the most glorious and precious of things we can seek and hope to have.
I feel so rich lately. I like that feeling.