Today is a big one....

It's funny how often I post in my head on this blog and yet nothing ever makes it to the screen, the words just swim away, lost forever in the ocean of my mind.

I wonder if anyone reads this anymore? It doesn't really matter, when it all comes down to it, my blog is for me, a little diary of my random thoughts and nowadays an occasional log on the momentous occasions in my life.

Today is a big one....

Today my baby boy graduates from high school! My beautiful, sensitive, intelligent, kind hearted super son is finishing high school and leaving home.

He could barely talk when we sent him to school for year one, we thought he might have some form of dislexia or deafness. He couldn't keep up with the other kids and he barely said a word. We sent him to a speech therapist and we worried about him constantly. When we tore him out of school halfway through grade 2 and dragged him around the world to live in Scotland, due to the different starting times for the school year, he had to go straight into year 3 over there. His teacher turned out to be a saint and set about making sure our struggling son made it through every day and it is thanks to her that his speech improved, his brain woke up and he became interested and engaged in the world around him. She is also responsible for the hint of a scottish accent that even after 10 years back in Australia still has people constantly asking him where he is from.

In just over a month he will be back in Scotland and I should make the effort to find out if that teacher is still working because it'd be nice if he could visit his old school again. Not only is my "little boy" finishing school and getting ready to move to the city for university in February but he is also flying alone to Europe for 5 weeks! I am gobsmacked really. He has friends in Munich who he is staying with for the bulk of the time, but is also flying to Edinburgh to see some old friends there and Ireland as well to see some relatives, all at 17! I am proud of his bravery but given that he has barely been away from home before for more than a week at a time I am rather overwhelmed by the enormity of this trip. For christsakes he was homesick during his week in the snow in September! How will he survive without me?.... Clearly it's me who's going to be the one not surviving!

Last night after the awards ceremony at his school where he got dux of geography(hope that means he won't get lost overseas) we went to the Noodle bar for some eats. One of the school brothers approached us there and made a point of telling us how much he liked and respected our son. I wonder if he knew that he was gay? I have really appreciated the kind and understanding environment that his catholic school has given him, the support they have shown as he has remained determined to be himself. One thing about my boy, NOTHING sways him from staying true to himself. I adore him for that.

So this is a big day. Will I cry at some point? Thinking of my gorgeous little boy as I trussed him up for his first day of school in January 1996. Will I get a little teary tonight as he dons his bow tie and pointy shoes and hits the dance floor at the grad ball? My baby, all grown up...

Next year he wants to study architecture at University in Brisbane. I am not sure if he will get in, it's a really popular course so the standards have to be very high. If he misses out he will probably do a BA - Geography. The thing is I think he is more suited to the geography course, I think he is too young to make such a big decision anyway but he is determined so i will let him be and let him find his own way. That's the best thing I can do for him, I think.

Meanwhile Wonder Daughter called me last night on top of the world. She just had one of her 1st year designs paraded in the Grad year fashion parade and after the show was over was approached by a Melbourne retailer wanting to stock her "range" She doesn't have one yet but she will. She has always had such fantastic responses to her work. She has chopped and changed in so many areas of her life so much over the last 3 years but the one thing that has remained contant for her is her passion for designing. It's times like these I think she will actually make a name for herself.

I shouldn't be sitting here writing anymore. Today the new kitchen is going in, or starting to go in at least. The house has been in shambles for weeks as we paint and hammer and scrub. It's due to go on the market next weekend....We are selling our home....I think?

Will we go ahead and sell? Will Super Son get into the course he wants at Uni? Will he be all right overseas for 5 weeks without me? Will I cope without him? Will Wonder Daughter and her lovely Mick Jagger lookalike boyfriend stay as happy as they have been? Will S's parents finally stop torturing him and will he start smiling again? Will I stop stuffing around renovating everything I can get my hands on and get a real job?

These and other questions in 2009...roll on new year...

Home on the land....my mother would be proud.

This trip has been exactly what I needed. Out here I am so completely at home, all the bits of me seem to fall into place and I feel truly happy. There are of course so many memories, happy and sad. I can feel my father in the un-renovated rooms, down by the shed where he fiddled with machinery or by the empty creek where we used to sit together and fish. My grandmother is in the air, in the crisp sheets that we carried in from the line together or in the garden where she traced the teddy bear rhyme around my palm. Four generations of my family have now called this home, have let their feet become caked with mud while catching huge lobster sized yabbies from the dams or let the harsh dry scrub scratch their arms as they trekked up the the aboriginal cave in the hills. I had been told the hand paintings were gone, but it wasn't true. They are still there and I felt like singing with joy when I found them. It was enormous fun to show them to my Japanese guest, sharing something often makes it better I think. Super Son has enjoyed it too, I can tell, as slowly the tension of keeping his 'cool' face on eased and he has relaxed. He ran over the rainbow coloured rocks, the sheets of dry gum bark cracking crisply under his converse. He's going to need a new pair after this trip. I feel like I haven't seen him so animated in months.

I also found an aboriginal axe on the first morning here. I have been looking for one all of my life, I had just shown Ink the grooves in the sandstone down by the water hole and tried to explain to him that these grooves were made as the stone axes they used were sharpened, as we walked back towards the house over the ridge where I played so much as a child and felt such peace as a teenager an axe just lay on the ground in my path. Perhaps a cow had kicked it out of the soil, anyway it almost feels as if I was meant to find it, as if the land finally accepts me as it's offspring. Ha, that sounds stupid but thats just how it is.

Today is our last full day out here. I hope to catch some more yabbies, maybe climb the highest mountain so we can see one hundred miles around us (almost), perhaps we will go and collect nuts from the huge Queensland nut tree in the 'park', right now I am taking the binoculars and checking the water tanks for my brother. He is happily on the coast with his family so perhaps for the first time in over twenty years, this place really does feel like my home. I feel lucky.

On the phone my daughter tells me that she is moving to Sydney very soon. She is going down in a few weeks to try and find a job, I feel a little sad but resigned that maybe this is something she feels she has to do. Maybe I will come to Sydney for a visit soon? I can't think of any greater contrast than this place and Sydney.