It’s strange, isn’t it, that sometimes the worst of times bring forth the best of times?
I was ruminating on
this yesterday with the Youngest of the Darling Daughters. No, we weren’t together at the time - I was at home, trying to order a Chinese meal for Mr B who has declared war and is boycotting my homemade dinners, while my daughter was in a car heading
down to Portsmouth to watch Brydon, Mack and Mitchell. Whoever they may be. Okay, I do know who they are, I’m just pretending ignorance because I’m quite jealous, actually.
My daughters often take advantage of such opportunities to contact me. The Middle of the Darling Daughters, for example, likes to ring me when she is walking from work to the station to catch her train home. She likes to power walk
so our conversation is punctuated by a certain amount of huffing and puffing but she is operating from a child-free zone so there are no interruptions from the Rascally Trio expecting some motherly attention. There is a certain moment when she warns me that
she is about to cross a bridge and we will almost certainly be cut off in the middle of our chat but I’ve grown accustomed to this and just make sure I’ve said everything I really want to say early on in our conversation.
I’m not sure how my on-line chat with the Youngest of the Darling Daughters drifted back into that really rather horrible time, ten months ago, when I subjected my Problem Shoulder to the surgeon’s
knife. On my release from hospital I spent a few days with my youngest daughter while Mr B was looked after by a live-in Carer. I think I almost certainly got the best of that deal - though it was no picnic for the Youngest of the Darling Daughters. Interestingly
my main memories are of the best, not the worst of that time...
There were those early mornings when my daughter had headed off to work, leaving me in the tender
loving care of my granddaughter, Hazel Bagel. Who made my breakfast, kept me supplied with mugs of coffee - and cuddled up with me (carefully avoiding the Recovering Shoulder) on the sofa to watch Disney films on the TV. Such precious times they were! It was
almost worth going through the trials of shoulder surgery.
A few days later and I was back home - with family members organising a rota to look after me. Once
again, it’s the best of times I remember. How my Little Sister started the routine of bringing me my early morning cuppa in bed - before jumping into bed beside me for a chat. It was like being littl’uns all over again. Other family members, not
to be outdone, chose to follow the same practice and it became the done thing to post a photograph on our family messenger board of the latest “In Bed With Mum” picture.
I’m pretty sure I inherited my rose-tinted spectacles from my dear Dad who always managed only ever to remember what was good about life, rather than what went wrong. Even out in the desert during the Second World War,
far away from the wife and little sons he adored, he loved to look up at the moon, knowing that the same moon which beamed down on him, lit up the sky for his loved ones at home.
I am not, therefore, about to apologise for my own rosy-tinted specs - after all, why dwell on the worst of times - when there’s so much to celebrate about the best of times?
But then, I’ve always been - unashamedly - a Proper Pollyanna...