Second post today. The OCD must be kicking in.
Should I put one of those smiley things in here just so you know I’m joking? Wouldn’t want you to think I meant anything with that OCD comment or anything. So, just imagine there’s a smiley in there if you think it’s necessary. Tell you what, print the blog and put one in for yourself. Use whatever colour you think necessary. And put two in if that would make it better. Or three of four. You just decide how many it needs and do it for me. Can you do that for me? Thanks, I really appreciate that. You really look after me, you do. More than anybody else. Really. Nobody looks after me like you do.
OK. And while the codependents are busy, let’s get back to saying Happy Birthday to my Mum.
Today is her birthday. It’s also the anniversary of the day they dropped the Bomb on Hiroshima. Those two events are not connected. I don’t think. For a start, my Mum was born many years before they even thought of the bomb. And can you imagine some guys out in the desert putting a phone call through to Australia to get somebody’s birth date so they could plan the end of the Pacific war? Nor can I.
My Mum, however, is a bit of a war fan. Not war so much as Australia’s military history. She was a volunteer for many years (about twenty years) at Canberra’s War Memorial. She’s something of an expert in Australia’s role in the war in the Pacific and has led countless groups through the memorial as she tells them very real human stories behind the displays.
For her birthday I gave her a couple of old books on Australian military history. Second hand books. Out of print. Short runs. Books that nobody much remembers, exept the men who wrote them. Memoirs written by old soldiers as they try to come to grips with what they have seen and done in some far off theatre of battle.
My Mum appreciated them. And so did one of her guests at the party. He had a bit of a connection with the events recounted in one of the books and borrowed it immediately.
Sometimes you can hit on a winner.
My Mum’s nearly ninety, and she probably wouldn’t want me to get too much more specific than that. She looks heaps younger, you see, and doesn’t want to spoil the first impression. She’s also got about the same energy as a Mack Truck, so it’s difficult to see where all the years have gone.
She looks so much younger than her age that when she had some X-Rays of her knees done recently they kept asking her date of birth. Mum does not take fools easily and after the third time of asking she got a bit stroppy with the clinic staff.
“Do you think I’ve lost my marbles or something and can’t remember my age?” she demanded.
They apologised very quickly and said, “It’s just that these x-rays look like they belong to somebody at least twenty years younger, and we thought there might have been a mistake.”
Well, there was a mistake. And the mistake was all on their side. OK, not all of it. My Mum has to take a bit of the blame. If you are going to have the kness of a sixty year old when you’re nearly ninety, it’s partly your own fault when people make a mistake.
So, Happy Birthday Mum.
And aren’t I glad that she’s too old to get computer literate and start reading blogs? To right I am.
Scribbly Gum 
Leave a comment