Happy first day of winter!
When eldest daughter was little if anyone would ask her when her birthday was she would always answer "the first day of winter". June 1st. Today she is 29. She walked around all day saying she couldn't believe that she was 29. I can't believe she is 29 either! I have a 29 year old child - shit!
The month before her birth I had to spend lying on my left side in hospital battling high blood pressure and suffering daily blood tests. Finally the doctor said tomorrow is the day, we will induce.I told Mr Flamingo to go home and prepare to be called out earlier as I just had a feeling something was going to happen. Have a shower and have clothes ready I said.....
That night I went into labor. I was taken to the delivery room, husband summoned. I was examined by the midwife who disappeared quickly. I could hear her phoning someone. Next thing through a haze of gas I hear her saying something about meconium and a sign that baby was in trouble. Doctor arrived and he said I had to have a caesarean. All I remember after that was hearing the doctor make another phone call and saying "Do you want to make a quid (dollar)" as I was wheeled into theatre. I imagine it was to the anaesthetist, who sent a huge account later!
Later I awoke in recovery to be told we had a daughter. She was perfect. The cord had been twisted around her neck hence the distress but all was well now. When they gave her to me she looked up at me and her face said "Hi Mum, let's party". She had already met her Daddy who had not heeded my instructions and so had only arrived at the hospital in time to be handed an alfoil clad daughter before she was whisked into a humdicrib for a couple of hours to be monitored. He had left to call grandmas and aunties so daughter and I had some quiet girl time and got to know each other.
Like life with daughters there have been highs and lows and worries and celebrations. A live in boyfriend who thought that he had found the person to support the drug habit to which he would like to get accustomed too. A career as a broadcast journalist that changed into a teaching career. Moves out of the parental home, back into the parental home, back out of the parental home and for now back into the parental home.
She laments the lack of a partner but true mother that I am I tell her better to be single than married to a drunken wife beater with 14 children. Strangely, I don't think she finds that a comfort at all! My daughters have been raised to believe in themselves and not to settle for second best just to have someone. I have always told them that another person does not complete you, you have to be complete to share life with another person. Maybe I have made them too discerning! More mother guilt!
I tell her to think of the students' lives she has touched. Champion of the underdog, her class favourite will always be the runt of the class, the misfit. She will take on school management like a person possessed to fight for the cause of one of her children. I tell her that she influences lives for years to come after they have passed through her class and that is something few people can comfort themselves with in the night.
She has brought value to the world and value to our lives. At various times she has worried, bamboozled, amused, terrified, stunned, confused, surprised, comforted and rewarded us. We have always been proud and grateful that she chose to come and live with us. She took on the hard job of being the first, the eldest, so she had to show us how to be parents, pull us up when we were wrong, stun us when we got it right! We learnt a lot along the way and she appears to have forgiven us all our mistakes. And she had a few to forgive.
We love you Lucy Long Legs, you are our fairy at the bottom of the garden, our pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Happy days to you my darling. Long happy days of sunshine and love, because that is what you have been to us.
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Her last words before bed were that it was one of the nicest birthdays she has ever had...family and friends.
I hope she had a wonderful birthday.