Special Moments with Family and Friends

My 3 daughters and I have made it back to Bali after our 6 week annual 'girls tour' to the UK.  We had a terrific time renewing bonds with family and friends. It was a good feeling being able to pick up from where we left off and was well worth the effort of travelling a 14 hour flight to keep in touch.

When I first moved to Asia 11 years ago, I re-assured my Mum that even though she wouldn't see us often, when she did, we would have quality time together. For both lots of Grandparents, three weeks each of putting up with our belongings strewn around the house, no matter how much running around I did to clear up after ourselves (the biggest challenge for me was keeping up with flushing the toilet, particularly as my 6 year old seems to think that because the Green School has non flushable, environment friendly toilets that everywhere should be the same); mass food shopping and eating as though we're about to hit a food shortage; using the washing machine until it wears out the mixed colours cycle to breaking point; sabotaging the TV so that it only plays children's programmes in constant repetition and a mass siege of every computer in the house, can affect the quality side of things but both Mum and Dad and my in-laws continued to show remarkable skills of patience, resilience and tolerance to put us up and put up with us for a long stretch and all in one go. They took us to theme parks, the seaside, crab fishing along the sea front (kept the girls amused for hours), to shopping centres, out for lunch, dinner and picnics, cooked us wonderful food and dropped all their commitments to be there for us. While we created chaos and disruption like a tornado that comes and goes, special moments were created that last a life-time for all of us.

Being referred to as 'gypsies' by our friends' 12 year old son made me think to myself  'he's absolutely right' as we travelled the country looking for a place to stay, our bulging suitcases jam-packed tightly in a hire car, and causing a backlog of vehicles behind us due to our heavy load. We were fortunate to have friends and family welcome us warmly, regardless of us temporarily hijacking their homes. Our friends in London, Sharon and family, even let us extend our stay with them by offering their home for a weekend, while we fed their 3 black cats and they went on their first mini camping break in Southern England. Judging by their reports of being extremely uncomfortable and freezing cold at night, (Sharon's husband had his broken arm stiffly set in plaster cast at the time which is especially not recommended for first timers) and in spite of having a deluxe tent which they could stand in and had a fancy awning, they clearly got the worse deal. While cat and house sitting, we attended an emotional memorial service for a dear Mum and Grandmother of one of our closest ex-patriate friends, Kim. Sharon and her family knew the female vicar who was conducting the service (small world) and the vicar beamed at me as though she had known me for years when she realised who I was in response to her question 'are you local?' and I said that we had flown in from Bali. Although I had never met this lady before, we were instantly connected by having mutual good friends.

At the gathering after the funeral, we were welcomed with open arms by Kim's family and relatives, some of whom had travelled to London from overseas. Kim's Mum emigrated to London from Guyana, the north-east edge of South America in her twenties. As a result, we learned about Guyanese culture and thanks to Kim's relatives finding a Guyanese take-away in London, we experienced tasty Guyanese food, including curry, dumplings, pepperpot (beef stew), roti, cookup rice (similiar to the Caribbean rice rice and peas) and my favourites were the beef patties and pineapple tarts.  Over an extended family weekend, we joined their big family picnic at Dulwich Park in London, playing rounders and enjoying a beautiful British summer's day as the relatives, friends and children bonded together - a fond memory that will always be with us.

Our good friends in Thame, Oxfordshire, rolled out the red carpet for us as they let us take over a wing of their home and welcomed us with my friend Fiona's fabulous English cottage pie followed by a scrumptious apple pie made by their 14 year old daughter.  The next day they fired up the barbecue and we sat out in the cold, as we stoically didn't let the predictable, unpredictable British weather get in our way and we laughed our way through the afternoon while reminiscing and talking about our latest adventures. Further down south in Oxfordshire, near Goring-on-Thames, our long-standing and loyal friends whom we hadn't seen for 3 years, invited us to their impressively renovated home and my dear friend Kate made me feel extra special by treating me to her delicious cheesecake - I never used to be a fan of cheesecake until I tried Kate's cracking cheesecake many years ago when we lived together in London - the only drawback was that I now had to share this best ever cheesecake with all our children who asked for seconds and devoured it like a pack of hungry wolves.

In Wales we were lucky enough to visit my Welsh friend Alison, whom I got to know in Singapore. She now lives in Dubai, but happened to be spending her last night in her renovated house in Cardiff, so we popped into see her. Alison welcomed us with afternoon tea, cakes and sandwiches and even though we hadn't since each other for a few years, we quickly picked up on all our news and gossip. We also met up with my faithful, old school friends and their children and I gate-crashed on an entertaining girls' evening out with their cousins.  We shared fun moments catching up on the news, while our children swam in the river (my girls jumped in fully clothed) and apart from the odd shivering moment, they seemed oblivious to the cold. It was a much wiser decision to sit in my brother and sister-in-law's hot tub that they generously let us use and was quite an experience going from hot to cold as we left the hot tub and made a quick dash to change back into some warm clothes at their house.  My younger brother took time off work to be with us and walk his fun loving Alsataian dog in the woods, as well as picking lots of blackberries, which when we got into the swing of spotting ripe blackberries, became addictive. My 6 year old loved seeking out blackberries and judging by the purple stains on her clothes and face, she relished this fruit that was to be found hanging from briars among the hedgerows.

Make time and effort to be with your family and friends .  It's a wonderful way to deepen bonds and remember special moments. As Cesare Pavese puts it so well:-

"We do not remember days; we remember moments."

It's these moments that make a difference in our life and when we become close so that:-


"The best part of life is when your family becomes your friends, and your friends become your family."
---Danica Whitfield
 
Enjoy your time spent with family and friends.  Life is too short not to.

Janet