Loved Ones

I have recently returned home after visiting loved ones in 'sunny Queensland'.  This pic was taken in Brisbane.  Four of my five sisters, Jane, Chris, Barb and Anna, were present, and our brother Frank.  Marion was not able to make the trip this time.

As I move on in the ranks of senior members in the family, 'loved ones' have become more special, more precious.  I don't want to pretend that the love we share is without failings.  It's not.  I would say rather that it's the awareness of each other's unique personality, remembering our past, and not having to explain why, that enables a strong bond between loved ones.

I am not going to wander too far down memory lane, but today's second pic (taken in 1959) has the 'seven little Australians', as we were sometimes referred to, playing in the Pine River, near our home at Bald Hills.

In my visit it wasn't just the loved ones who made the time memorable.  We drove from Brisbane, West to Roma.  Places brought memories of crowded car trips - all of us like sardines in a can, no seatbelts, one sitting forward, the next back, and the ones most likely to get car sick having the window seats.  I think I learnt how to zone out, into my own quiet world,  watching what I could see of the distant horizon, the big sky, the constantly changing landscape. 

As I ponder the bond that has been maintained with my loved ones over the decades, I wonder how the next generation, and the next, will do.   I wonder if new generations of parents will value attachment - that physiological phenomenon that forms strong bonds between a newborn baby and the mother in the first instance, then the father, other family members, and the child's community.  Mothers today are expected to return to work quickly after childbirth.  In accepting this plan, they have to override their natural, hormonally guided instincts to nurture their young. It is worth remembering that the Judeo-Christian Scripture tells us that when God the creator saw everything that he had made, "indeed, it was very good".  My experience in midwifery, and in mothering, has convinced me that it IS very good.