childhood&crafting

I really enjoy my children, having children in my life really has been the making and saving of me. Thier sweetness, silliness and playfulness always reminds me of these qualties in myself and their presence helps create the conditions I need for developing patience, creativity, strength, responsibility. Again this week so far has been jam packed with kids, my own and others, baby sitting, visitors, last nights dinner table reminded me of a school camp!

When my children are not with me I think of them a lot, I feel okay and am pretty much the same person, but I carry them about in my mind, they are inside of me. A friend of mine told me about some memory loss phenomema called the "out to lunch sydrone." Apparently mothers memories become less sharp, and the more kids the more an effect it has on the ability to recall. I am sure there are brillaint scientific reasons for it all and blah, blah, blahdy blah, and I know my memory is definetely not what it once was but maybe it is because we have something really lovely on our minds instead. We are filled with our kids lives, not just our own thoughts.

A leaf print on the footpath.

One of my favourite childhood memories is of when a friend of mine and I wandered through some paddocks filled with a native flower, that we knew as belly buttons(?) We had a lovely time gathering loads of them, there were hundreds growing wild, with long stalks and round pom pom shaped yellow flowers. I am sure her parents had a word with us afterwards because there could have been snakes and we had slipped away without saying where we were off to, but, hee,hee I am glad we did it, it was beautiful.

I am reminded of it by a vacant lot near the Northey Street city farm. (A great market for buying fresh fruit and veg and where I studied horticulture-www.northeystreetcityfarm.org.au/)

The vacant lot is usually filled with dandelions, which Luka loves. I park near it when we go to the organic fruit and veggie markets on Sunday mornings and we have to cross through it. He can't, simply can not walk through it quickly. He stops and picks, wanders and studies the flowers, picking each one with special care until he has a bunch gathered for me. He has me sussed because he knows this is the kind of bunch of flowers I like, gathered, not harvested, naturally grown, not farmed...he is clever and sweet. And Jack warmed my heart today, I asked him if he was happy living in our new house, he said of course he was and said I was a really wonderful mum. I felt like taping him saying it so I can play it back to him when he is a teenager, but sneakiness aside the special thing for me was I knew he really believed it. I am pretty lucky.

xKate