Random Sunday Morning thoughts

I am sipping my way through a cup of coffee I could swim in.  It is thick and fragrant and black and tastes as good as cooffee smells.  The cup is so big and so full my hand shakesif I try and pick it up in one hand.  It is larger than a soup bowl.  And yes, I am being self indulgent.  And I know it.

Geni and Leonnie are sleeping still and we are all being collected ( thank you Bernard) for soccer fairly early.  it will be a big soccer day with a game at 11.40 and a makeup game at 3pm.    Once I have drunk in the coffee I will race around doing the many little things that keep them fed and watered ( snacks, meals on the run, lots and lots of water etc).

We three girls went and saw the Proposal yesterday and I enjoyed i more than I expected to.  Geni only spent one hour on the internet and they had one or two sibling squablles in the course of the day.  I found myself lecturing about self absorption and consideration for everyone around them – but felt they both listened, did two loads of washing as well.

Geni retired to her room after both did hair and styled and tried things on and I wandered into Leonnie’s room to find her sitting in the dark facing away from the door.  I asked her if she was praying or meditating and she got up and followed me out of the darkness and talked about NOT being depressed and NOT thinking of ways to die and all sorts of alarm bells went off in me.  I was so grateful I wandered in there delivering folded washing at that exact time.  I explained to her that it is normal to wonder why we are here and to feel all these string emotions at this age.  I explained I too felt things like that when I was a teen and most girls do.  It is partly growing into a woman and the play of those hormones, but it is also part of finding our place in the scheme of things.  I didnt overdo the talk.

I believe I showed her that someone SAW her and noticed.    I suspect in her dad’s house those people there are self absorbed and do not tune in to these delicate small very important tests of a child/woman.    I will not fail this last daughter of mine.

The door remained open but I did not ask it of her and she then wandered in and out.  She and I sorted a dvd series she wanted to watch and began to see the first two episodes companionably.

At the right time I thanked her for being so good with my birthday and for going out of her way to do everything she could to make it special for me.    I told her that I am proud of her and SEE her.  And appreciate her thoughtfulness and that I will never take it for granted.

I am grateful I saw this.  I am grateful she opened up and spilled the toxic thoughts capturing them in words.  What a relief this did not get buried and grow bigger.   Teenage years are such a difficult minefield to navigate!!!!  I am sometimes so tired of being asked if “My hair looks good like this?  or like this?”  when the two styles are largely identical.  “Do I look fat?”  from two whisps of slender girlings.  “Have you seen this hugs pimple?”  I go looking for a magnifying glass to find a tiny noduled buried under hair at a hairline but to them it is like Mount Vesuvius.

As you all know my mother a year ago in July was admitted to hospital with stomach cancer and they removed 2/3rds of her stomach and then a plethora of other complications set in.  Mum is now independent again and getting on wih life ( albeit much fined down).  Earlier in her life, Mum had trouble with an ulcer and the bacteria that causes ulcers ( H. pylori) is what is known to cause stomach cancer and most people who have ulcers end up with stomach cancer.  A cancer prevention research study has found eating 70g broclli sprouts a day can reduce the rick of these stomach bugs ( and therefore cancer).  They tested this by feeding 25 people brocoli sprouts and 25 alfalfa and those who ate the brocoli sprouts at the end of two months had reduced the bacteria they carried by 40% while those eating alfalfa stayed the same.