Every so often Hanno and I leave our chores behind and go out for the day. We like to take the back roads, we stay away from crowds and shopping centres and we usually end up at a quiet spot where we look around, have lunch and a cuppa and then travel back home again. Yesterday we went to Tin Can Bay and we took Jamie with us. :- )
Looking after small children on an outing doesn't change much. There is generally a basket containing a water bottle, juice, sultanas, fruit, a hat, a little bag of favourite small toys and a set of spare clothes, just in case. The other things that don't change are the little songs, the questions and the tiny fragments of life that might seem so ordinary they aren't all that special. But looking at it all from a grandma's eye, it's all extraordinary, charming and the stuff that melts even the coldest heart.
I know Jamie won't remember that trip for more than a few days but I'll remember it until I take my last breath. I'll store the memory away with all the others I have of Shane and Kerry, of Alex, of Sarndra and Sunny, of Jens and Cathy, of Tricia, my nephews and their babies, and my mum and dad. All those memories are the precious articles I take out to examine in the wee small hours of the morning or when I'm sitting in the garden and it looks like I'm gazing at a kookaburra or a far off tree. Those are the times when I'll see Jamie on his bike again, and I'll hear him singing and calling me grandma, surely the sweetest sound I know, and it will remind me of how well I have lived and what I've been part of.
