I’ve given up trying to predict my future. The incessant planner could never have imagined the life I’m living now. I didn’t think I’d recover after the girls left home and yet here I am happily putting one foot in front of the other. I never thought I’d have another career, after retiring, and end up loving it more than anything I’ve done before. I didn’t come close on the whole grandmother thing.
My mother’s mother was in her early forties when I was born. I’m fifty-four. My paradigm for grandmother, a wrinkly skinned, tightly permed hair in an unrecognizable color, loose-fitting polyester clothes wearing, slow-moving, cookie baking person who seemed to know my mother better than me, has completely shifted. She would have been a vital, active woman full of life and her own dreams who became a grandmother.
Of all the relationships in my life, the love I felt from my grandmother was boundless. I lost her thirty years ago, yet as I sit here thinking about her my throat tightens. There was a completeness to how she loved me that was an absolute in my life. It was never explained or questioned. Since her death, no matter how I tried to hold on to that feeling little by little it slipped from my memory until now.
I can’t control how I love this baby. My whole body reacts to the sound of his cooing as he drifts to sleep. I can’t wait for him to wake up. Every smile, movement and sound fills me with a joy unlike – no – much like the joy I felt with my own grandmother.
Now it’s my turn to nurture a love unlike any other in his life. A special connection that will diminish the physical distance between us as he grows up so far away, but more importantly a bond that will transcend my lifetime and his.
While Meggie and Coen are here, I’m going to play around with some salad ideas. This one was recommended to me by Liz when she visited last. It’s a Donna Hay creation from her cook book ‘The New Classics’. A simple zucchini salad perfect for this time of year.
I added fresh peach. The sweetness from the fruit balanced perfectly with the tart lemon vinaigrette.
- 2 small zucchini, sliced thinly with a vegetable peeler
- 1 fresh peach, cut into 12 slices
- 1/2 cup fresh basil leaves
- handful tender lettuce leaves
- 8 fresh small bocconcini
- 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
- 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
- 1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard
- 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
- freshly ground pepper, to taste
- Place lemon juice, oil, mustard, salt and freshly ground pepper in salad bowl and whisk
- Add everything else and toss well.
- Serve immediately.
Thanks for reading.
