Today I am actually already Down Under, at Mum’s. We are both extremely appreciative, grateful. I know my kids laugh at my Mum and often at me. I don’t really appreciate that!
But I can truly understand the sentiment. She says she is always grateful and so am I. Yet of course I am always seeing ways to improve things. I don’t call that being critical. Yet I do often perceive my mother’s comments as criticism. Is that a paradox?
I almost feel like I am hiding here in the back room to write my reflections, write my blog. What for? For myself? For posterity? For my colleagues?
Well I know that some of my family, friends and colleagues actually read my blog. But am I really writing for them? Or for me? Or for my great-grandchildren? Surely not for my own Mother!? I just showed her the blog I posted this morning. I talked about the photos and showed her the FaceBook entries and responses. I told her that my holiday in Australia is simply having time to do just this: blog, vlog, walk in the sun, admire the flora, hang up Mum’s washing, film her talking about her memories. Funny how she suddenly gets tired when I show her my photos, or my blog. She wants me to help her look at all the videos that Dad took of their travels around Australia. I would love to do that. I fear I would waste half a day trying to figure out how to connect the video machine to get to see them. She said she hasn’t seen them in ages and nobody is interested in them. I know the feeling. My blog is a little bit of my own self-therapy. I’m posting my memoirs myself, before my kids complain that they are not interested in hearing all my stories. Already just grateful for those two shots I posted on Facebook with Mum and the one with me and her great grandson.
Of course we are not always so happy and harmonious. Do you know the trick to being grateful? Don’t say but. Enjoy what you have and what you HAD! No buts!
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[…] of flying from the northern hemisphere into the southern hemisphere at this time of year. In Being Grateful you can see a photo of my Mum and I grinning into the camera. I arrived at midnight Friday night. […]