My heart is full

One of the strangest things about parenting is the sudden understanding you have about how skills, talents and interests are passed down the generations. Having children made me remember my own childhood more, and made me want to recreate things for my own children, that my parents did for me. Things like:

• making jam
• summer trips to the PYO farm
• a love of walking
• lazy pub lunches
• a delight in trying new foods
• the pleasures of singing or playing an instrument with others
• keeping chickens as pets

Some I have succeeded in and others are at more of a work-in-progress stage.

When I see my children doing things I enjoyed at their age it fills my heart: reading books I loved (Milly Molly Mandy, Swallows & Amazons, The Tiger Who Came to Tea and so many others), climbing trees, feeding the chickens, making strange 'machines' from old cereal boxes, milk bottle tops and way too much glue. So satisfying.

Yesterday O had a small operation and this morning she opened a parcel that my mother had sent her as a get well present. Inside was a little sewing kit. O could not have been more delighted, and exclaimed those words that filled my heart: "Look! Now I can sew things just like you!"

.