Young At Heart Photo Album

The cake mix on my face was the giveaway huh?

According to the very lovely Bumbling Along who kindly tagged me in Tara from Sticky Finger’s Young at Heart Photo Album meme, this blog mentions cake around 94 times. That’s an impressive cake-to-post ratio don’t you reckon?

Looking through my old photos to find one for this meme I was struck by this one. Because in a weird sort of way it sums up everything about my childhood, and, inadvertently, everything I learnt about being a mother.

I feel like I was incredibly blessed growing up.

My parents marriage wasn’t a particularly happy one but all I remember is feeling loved and safe. And I remember time, endless time. Time spent together, especially with my mum who postponed her social work career until me and my brother were in school, and then only worked part-time till we started high school.

I remember baking, crafting, making huge dens out of cardboard boxes, trains made out of  chairs that stretched from one end of the house to the other. I remember reading to my parents at bedtime, doing ‘paperwork’ in my dad’s office, the dressing up box in my wardrobe, and the excitement of being given my own ‘patch’ in the vegetable garden you can see out the window there.

We never had much money. We didn’t go on fancy foreign holidays. Our clothes came from friends and church rummage sales (not that you’d ever tell from this photo!). Life was mostly about ‘making do’ on my Dad’s small income, saving up for those things we really wanted and being grateful for what we had.

I am grateful for everything we had.

I am grateful for space to play, and parents that listened, a dad that taught me about ‘funny’ and a bookcases full of old books.

Memories like this and many others are what made me to decide to try and stay at home with Kai as long as I could.

Memoires like this make me try to prioritise time over money, to try not to worry that Kai is growing up in a similar ‘make do’ household.

I know that not everyone can afford to have a parent at home but we can, just. There’s nothing left over and we have to live very frugally but we do make ends meet. Sometimes that’s a tough choice to live with, we have a lot less in material terms than most of our peers, and I have to watch other women leap frog over me in terms of ‘success’ but I believe we made the right choice for Kai.

I wish I could be the mother my own mum was – she made a far better stay-at-home mum than I do, but the memories she’s created for me make me want to try to be better. Mum went on, after her career break, to have a very successful career, just like her mother did before her, and even though I struggle with letting go of my ambition for a while this is gives me the hope that my own time will come, and that the time I’m giving to Kai is worth sacrificing a bit of fame and fortune for in the meantime.

I guess the funny thing is that even though I’m a mother now, I’m still the girl in that photo too. I don’t think I’ve changed that much at all actually.

I’m still kind of small and freckly. I either talk too much or not at all. I still spend most of the day with bits of food around my gob… and I still am filled with dreams of being ‘something’ even though now I am already something very important.

A memory-maker myself.

A mother.

Now. It’s time to pass on the Young at Heart baton to the next victim worthy recipient.

My tagee is sat in the front row there, third from the right, looking very stern and not AT ALL like she’s having a lovely time as she sits (and I quote) “looking like a swot in those horrible shoes”. I can’t imagine anyone less swotty actually. Although she is rather an expert in her professional field, she’s just as likely to be making you giggle with her funny stories and silly videos then be found doing lots of  serious stuff. She also happens to be someone I am honoured to call a friend and one of the nicest people you could ever hope to come across in this blogosphere of ours.

Can you guess who it is? Leave me your ideas and then click on the photo to find your way to her blog where she’ll be posting her own post, and naming her own tagee soon! All she has to do is include the meme name “Young at Heart Photo Album” in her post so Tara can follow it as it winds its way through all the lovely blogs out there…