The Circle of Life

I've just got back home to sunny Salcombe from having been to visit my lovely family down in in sunny Southsea and a very nice visit it was as well!

Canoe Lake Southsea

But also a bit strange really as I had a sudden realisation about the circle of life and my part in it. I went with my son, his wife and our little grandson James - now six months old. We went to a place in Southsea called Canoe Lake. It really is a small lake not very deep and not really attractive either as the beautiful swans that used to be there along with fish, crabs and wooden paddling boats  when I was a little girl have been replaced by ghastly plastic huge paddling boat swans and a lot of mud and silage! Anyway, I digress............ I sat waiting for them to arrive clutching the most disgusting cup of coffee I've ever had the misfortune to drink from a little lakeside cafe, and I had the most sudden and clear picture of the circle of life and my part in it!

Some 38 years ago I had pushed my little baby son around that very area - I was a young (very young mum!! 17 years old actually) Mum with a tiny baby, a new life as a wife and no idea of the traumas, tragedy's and general stuff that life would throw at me over the years! 20 years after that, older, wiser and sometimes sadder I would be pushing my ailing but darling Mum round there on occasions when I could get her out of her rest home and into a rickety heavy old wheel chair. I cherished those times with her mostly, yet just occasionally it all seemed a bit too much of an effort and often a chore - but she loved getting out and about and we would sit and have an ice cream and watch the world go by for a little bit. Yet, that morning last week, there I was waiting for MY family, to push my grandson round as any proud Grandmother does............ when the realisation of my own mortality and my future place in this grand circle of life swung right round and smacked me hard across the face!!     All I could think was would this memory be a happy one for my family or it would come to be regarded as a duty, a thing that has to be done??  We certainly had a great day together and I thoroughly enjoyed the feeling of this rare family time together, and I hope that as the years go by and Grandmother Lizzy and Grandpa Tim play their part in James life that there will be lots of happy memories made for a good many years to come!  

Salcombe Estuary on an early September morning

So I'm home again now and although it's still a glorious late summer down here, there is a definite Autumnal nip in the air. Here is a photo I took the other morning quite early when the sea mist was at its worst and before it cleared to be a glorious day. On that note, I'll try to blog again this week before we go to London for our national awards event by the Publicans Morning Advertiser.