October 1, 2009

How very far this month will take me. Not in a physical sense but in my very favourite of all time, metaphorically. To understand our present, it is sometimes necessary to take a look at our past, and see how we got to this point in the journey that is life.

For me the oldest memory I have is being lost. It was a very frightening thing, and intense, I cry now when I wake up from that dream with the feeling of a three year old standing in a room which was big, and I remember a brown floor and lots of doors. I have no idea why it was different to all the other times I had walking into that room, but this time I could not find the way out and so I cried. There is nothing else of the memory, but the very alone feeling.

Now I know what happened was we as a family had just moved into our new home. It was a huge California bungalow, double brick; some of the windows were small, and the ceilings were high, the floor in the room where my parents found me was oak floor boards, and this particular room had a fire place (dark), tiny windows (still does, so the room is still dark) and three oak doors with brass knobs (dark with high handles). From the front door to the back door there were two ways through the house and it turned out that I had gone a different way through than I had gone previously and nothing was familiar. It's the only thing I remember from being that small, my parents saved me from being alone.

In some ways that small memory shaped the woman I became. I learned I could rely on my parents to find a little lost person and save me (or my sisters and brothers, or dumped cats), and I learned that when I was a parent I should listen for the lost cry of my children. I'm not sure I always do, and sometimes even with the best intentions I can't save them from themselves, but as a parent I know its my duty and great joy to try and stand between each of them when they have a problem and the world which is trying to drag them down.

All of which leads to the support of kids, their hopes and dreams. Encouraging them especially when any of them has a dream that suddenly appears and shouts to them. Right now the youngest son is following a dream, he is working as an apprentice chef. Following a TAFE course earlier this year he found a niche. He now works for an Italian restaurant at Walsh Bay in Sydney Ventuno's and it's very exciting. He's not only preparing cheese balls for three hours, he is working with a tight crew, and being accepted and taught how such a group work together in a tiny kitchen with precision and respect for each other to produce a real lot of great food for a very picky clientele. Nothing like a learning curve Davo! He's happy, and best of all he is learning teamwork, an extremely precious skill. Yay, and he's being paid. It's been a while, he was laid off in December, just before Christmas.

So onward to October and hopefully daily blogging for the Blogtoberfest. Little bits of my family history that have shaped and refined the woman I have become will now appear, and of course, allegories and amusing anecdotes and downright deprecatingly funny humour about myself and my family. Live in fear offspring, whose story will be next??? (LIZZY and the time she got lost in waltons???)

Labels: blogtoberfest, family, Ventunos

posted by gemma @ 5:46 am