Today is our daughter's birthday. As always, the events of that day - and the 48 hrs before her birth - are on my mind. And not just today but that's to be expected.
During the day, we have a little competition of who remembers the most outrageous, funny, sad, and so on, thing about her and our parenting show. It is a cold and grey day, we are both retired, so we are at home, busy in our separate spaces with the doors open as we call out memories to each other in a way that would make our teenage daughter cringe and our grown up daughter and now herself a mother probably teary eyed. How silly are parents etc., but she is far too busy. As were we at her age.
Three memories.
When she was ten years old, she changed schools and we trained her to come home by herself. This involved her walking half a kilometer from the school to the nearest bus stop, on the way crossing a busy road via a pedestrian light crossing, waiting at the stop where three different bus routes merged and getting off the correct bus after 15 minutes, crossing another road via a zebra crossing, walking through a pedestrian railway underpass and along a quietish street home for maybe one kilometer. All of this during the day, in a busy town, with many other school kids. For about a week, I was waiting behind a tree close to the bus stop near her school, watching how she carefully crossed the road, take her seat behind the bus driver while I sat at the back, unnoticed, and with a serious determined face and stride getting off at the correct stop walking home when, suprise, surprise, I would happen to come along.
Years later when she set off into the wild night life, we once or thrice, sat in the car parked illegally behind some advertising billboard by the central bus station and watched her in the crowd of happy teenagers waiting for the nightbus after midnight, driving home once she was safely on the bus and seemingly asleep by the time we could hear her key in the front door.
Fast forward a couple more years, with me sitting at my desk at work, reading her email. She wrote that she had just travelled through the night on a bus in Laos, sitting next to a monk, which meant she had to leave her feet firmly on the floor and sitting up straight but how this inconvenience offered a sense of security as apart from the monk, most passengers were armed soldiers. She was writing this email at sunrise on the banks of the Mekong waiting for the morning ferry to Thailand where a group of taxi drivers had invited her for coffee. She was, she wrote that day, extremely happy.
She has been surrounded by invisible guardian angels, helped by common sense and a sharp mind. Always certain that humanity is our family. Long may it last.
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