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and last updated July 7th., 2001.
WELCOME TO MY DAY..
IT IS NICE TO HAVE YOU SHARE IT WITH ME...
Oh dear..it has been so long since I updated this page that I think I should be calling it "Welcome to my YEAR"!. Sorry, folks..I can only plead pressure of noncomputer pastimes..and, anyway, some of the faraway people for whom I maintain this newsletter were right here staying in the house!
It would be nice to be able to tell you that there was lot of sweet grandmother-granddaughter bonding between Sahar and me, but this just didn't happen. I'm not sure who she thinks I am, but this child has seen many changes in her short life, has travelled extensively, leads a rather privileged existence and is used to servants in the house. So I suspect it did not occur to her I was anyone important as I arrived home after work, or cooked in the kitchen, or attempted to pick her up or take some of her parents' attention. I certainly never got to hold her or talk to her. She remained very much her parents' child.
Our younger son, christened David, but now the Muslim Daud, flew into Melbourne in midJune with his pregnant wife Ruswana and Daughter Sahar to spend three weeks, coming from the Arab Emirates, and temperatures of 46C degrees ,to one of the coldest winters we have experienced for a long time.
They fitted so much into the time and tripped around a lot, even taking Sahar to the zoo in Sydney, and catching up with many old school, University and work-friends of David's, and THEIR children. So many children, in fact, that one of his few remaining- bachelor friends was quite bemused.
I must admit, I was, too, since I taught at the school the boys attended, and remember their friends as anything but sedate, doting parents...remember their feminist girlfriends, too!!
Nor did I get the chance to practice my story-reading skills, laboriously attained over 22 years as a teacher-librarian, though my storybook collection was well used by her attentive parents.
Pity..but there are other grandchildren, of course!
As it happens , we have seen a lot of the other grandchildren in the past few weeks, and not just because David was home. We seem to be needed to pick up and deliver children more than used to be the case, and, with Maddie working in the shop, and Stephanie helping with the stocktaking, distances decree that the girls stay with us more than used to be the case, and with Maddie learning to sew, and needing uniforms altered, grandmothers come in handy, too.
But to begin with, there was Emily's 5th birthday, held at a "Party Farm",
where the kids could feed animals....
cuddle animals...
Daughter Fiona has five children, and a sixth very close, and they all have their fighting moments, of course, but when we arrived at the house, the eldest, Maddie, was icing the giant fairy cake, and there had obviously been some effort by the other kids to clean up a little.
And the older kids were so very good with the littlies at the farm..never taking over from the intended party guests but always being on hand to help and encourage...whether serving the cake or pulling the donkey cart when the donkey proved unwilling!
One can't help thinking it would all have been so much easier had the construction beeen carried out in the summer months.
And then we found they had bricked over our toilet window!
This was a nice diversion in what has been a rather stressful few weeks at work, with our shop becoming the only throughway from the High Street to the supermarket as the building progressed, with first one door and then the other closed off and shoppers frustrated and disgruntled, and all the while no roof on the new building during the rain, and always so cold, and so noisy, and so much mud and mess! In fact, the builders' union actually closed the site down one afternoon because it was, they said, "too dirty".
But the new shops have glass in front now, and are being fitted out:
And the Railway Hotel bistro is doing a roaring, well-deserved trade, with the lady chef presenting some rather sophisticated country fare at down-to-earth prices.David thinks I am silly to ever cook at home when we could eat next door at the hotel every night after work, but we have different ideas about a woman's role, I think!
We ate there after work one evening with Dave and Ruswana and Sahar, and Jason, one of Dave's former schoolfriends and his wife and two little boys..and the kids voted the toy-filled hotel playroom the best ever!
And we saw those two little boys again when Dave and Ruswana gave a "birthday party" for Sahar at Fiona's house. It won't be Sahar's real birthday till late July, but the child had been singing "Happy Birthday" almost nonstop since her arrival, and her parents wanted her to experience a birthday party with her cousins..so all six cousins attended, plus her two new little boyfriends.
David had gotten hold of a cylinder of helium, and there were glitter-stringed floating balloons everywhere and the kids had a great time, though cousin Astra burned her nose as she literally swallowed the second, reluctant candle-flame when Sahar's efforts at more traditional means of extinguishing it proved unequal to the task. Later, the older ones demonstrated the effects of helium on the vocal cords, and set up
a choir, whose rendition of "We Wish You a Merry Christmas", though a trifle early, was totally hilarious, and served to demonstrate a few more of the advantages of raising a large family!
The next day, July 4th, the travellers had an 8.30pm departure scheduled so planned to do a leisurely packing and a bit more visiting.
For someone like me, who takes three days to pack for a trip away by myself, having to sort everything out for a family for an international flight in that time,care for a toddler and organize airport transport, is almost unimaginable, and I was suitably sympathetic, but quite resigned to finding my house in a terrible mess. We would buy TV dinners for after work, I told my husband, and watch "Titanic" on TV as we ate, and THEN we would clean up..
And there was another surprise, next day, when I took my car out, to find something showing up in my rear-vision mirror- something that had NEVER been there before, and which I do NOT wish to encourage, so that I am still waiting for my husband to REMOVE the KIDDYSEAT from the centre back of my empty-nester car!
And then I found out that the strange rattle in the boot/trunk was the helium cylinder, no doubt supposed to be returned to somewhere!
Love to everyone ,and everyone on our side!
-from
GREAT BRITAIN
U.S.A.
BUNDALONG, VICTORIA
U.S.A.
ATLANTA, GA.
BILOXI, MS.
HATTIESBURG, MS
U.S.A.
NEW ORLEANS, LA.
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robin_knight@bigfoot.com
©Robin Knight, 2001.
Next month has also Astra's third birthday, and her parents like to give HER great and unique parties, too. One wonders what the competitive sibling instinct will produce in the desire to be different!
Unfortunately the date is also the day that Fiona's caesarean delivery has been scheduled. When she wondered if she should change the date, I said it wouldn't be necessary since we could always take the kids to Astra's party, but it turned out she was more worried that we would have too many birthdays around the same time of the year, with Ruswana's second baby being due around the same time..
I figure that if that is the only worry we have with this late-in-life sixth pregnancy, we will have nothing to complain about as we wrap several gifts at that time every year.
Except that around noon I received a rather stressed call from a mobile phone in a friend's car currently speeding down the Princes Freeway..It seemed that on reading their agenda to book the airport transport, they realised the 8.30pm mentioned therein actually referred to their arrival time in Kuala Lumpur; their departure time was actually 2.30pm.
And they had left some nice munchies in the 'frig as well!
Together with a Basken-Robbins insulated bag in which the incredible ice-cream cake had been housed, but which, too , appeared to be merely on loan.
With my luck, these places will be charging fines for late return, like my library days of old..
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