It’s all about letting go.
I sometimes felt like my Mum clung to me and couldn’t let go.
I determined to let my children go. Before Josef and I even met, he sent me a gift-card in credit card format with the words: If you love something, set if free. If it is yours it will return to you, if not, it never was.
I must admit I did not appreciate the message at the time I received it. Like many things about my husband. We are still growing together. We went through a lot of growing together. Now we have both seen our children grow and let them go. I love the song that the Wise Guys sing: You watch them grow and you let them go.
We were at the live concert in Vienna together with our kids where this recording was made.
I am getting all nostalgic. Our youngest son has already left us and gone Down Under. He said that his friends asked him, what does your mother say? Leaving at 19 to another continent. His response? She did the same. True. At 19, I left Australia and came to Europe. I spent a year, first visiting my grandparents in Munich, then working in Switzerland, then travelling the continent on an Interrail pass, watching the midnight sun, in Narvik, Norway, then travelling all the way down through Europe to Greece at the end of the 30 days ticket validity, to have to spend the night in Athens, due to the unco-ordinated rail plan with Turkey and the connecting train which I inadvertently missed, because it left an hour earlier than my plan.
The three weeks in Turkey together with former colleagues from the nursing home in Switzerland, where we together experienced the beginnings of the Turkish-Greek conflict over Cyprus. Hearing about the cancelled cruise to Marmara due to fighting. Then experiencing the army jeeps on the beach with their blue tinted headlights to avoid detection from the dark night sky.
Here, I just have to say that I got on fine with my mother the further away I was. In those days we had no internet, no WhatsApp, not even a mobile phone! Luckily she had no idea of the “danger” I was in, so had no need to worry about me. Maybe similar to me, not knowing now, what my kids are up to. Simply because they do not want me to splash their lives all over FaceBook on their behalf. Respect. Let go. Live and let live.