Holiday, Mothers Day and Bianca Dye
It was Sunday 8th of May 2016, we are a few days into a 40 day road trip of the southern USA with friends. We had dropped them with family in northern Florida and we are taking the opportunity to dash down to Key West.
As we woke in our motel on the side of the i10, we adhered to our ritual, having a little time checking out whats been going on in our social media worlds, we accept the fact that social media is a big part of life these days, we embrace rather than ignore it.
The night before, I had read an article by Bianca Dye, an Australian Radio personality, who is going through the IVF process and she summed up perfectly the pain that Mothers Day brings to those like us. (Follow the link below)
When Mother’s Day cracks your heart open in pain.
Ordinarily I read interesting articles to my wife as we lay perusing the virtual world. But not this day, this day is different.
Bianca’s article touched me, in a strange way, it wasn’t that I didn’t know everything she wrote. Everything she had shared I had either experienced or witnessed, but it gave me a sense of not being alone. It showed me that the gift of sharing could be a salve for others wounds and this was the genesis for my blog.
We are 14 hours behind home and our feeds are filled with all the love of Mothers day. I knew what was going to happen, I could time it, sense it. I know it’s a cliché, but with the years we have been together, you can almost sense what the other is thinking.
I knew the pain my wife would feel, I knew the tears would roll, I knew she would grieve, again. Knowing all this, as the grieving began, all I could say was “Whats up?”.
Yes girls, you may view this as a stupid statement of a man who is oblivious to his wives feelings, but let me expand on this.
As far back as I can remember, I was always fending for myself, my formative years were spent in a small English village and the countryside was my playground, be it roaming the fields in summer, building tree houses or cycling for miles. But through it all ,I along with my friends, were the masters of our own domains. We would solve problems, like how to build a platform in a tree, or how to stop the sand falling in on us whilst excavating our underground bunker. Still amazes me that we are all still alive, luck played a huge part I’m sure.
My dad was a shift worker and my mum never drove, so transport was up to me, if I needed to get somewhere I would ride or walk.
Skip forward a few years, we have emigrated to Australia, I have found a group of friends that loved to camp up in the mountains behind the city. We were 16, with no adult supervision, we walked for miles camping over multiple nights. Cooking our own food, making our own bedding, constructing our own shelters, it was all up to us.
If you had an issue with someone it was usually dealt with in a boyish fashion, one of us the victor and the other having a lesson in how to deal with defeat.
Girls, are you getting the picture, we are doers, we grow to be fixers, we see a problem we need to sort it out. We develop a plan, we see the goal and we work towards it.
Back to Mothers day, I have no plan, I feel useless because I know what is coming and I can’t do anything about it. With all the skills I’ve amassed in my 49 yrs on this earth, I can not fix this. And so awkward makes you do stupid things, like say “What’s Up”.
And so I walk over to her, kiss her on the forehead, to let her know she is not alone.
