Big day this Sunday. Gilly, my sister is coming over from the UK.
This will be the first time we've been visited by someone other than
my two oldest kids since we moved to Oz 7 years ago! (and it's half
that time since either of them were
over too). It's amazing how fast time flies! Such a lot has
happened, but not that much of what has happened was what I was
expecting to happen when we left. I mean, I thought for sure that
we'd have been in a house on our land...that didn't seem like a long
shot. I had no idea that I'd be an artist or more accurately (I
suppose) an art teacher. I reckon part of how that feels to me is
due to the business of getting older though... and in the process,
the things you were expecting to happen get forgotten and the things
you weren't expecting to happen feel like you were expecting
them. Post rationalisation they call it...aye.
I feel like all this stuff has gone on without really sharing it
with my UK family...not that I probably would have seen all THAT much
more of them if we'd been in the UK instead of here I guess, but we
tend to imagine that things could have been different eh?
So, she's getting on a plane around now...and will be feeling good
about the prospect of sitting down in a forced 'relax' kind of
situation no doubt. And in a couple of days when she un-creases
herself at this side...she'll be feeling like she's had enough of
that 'relaxing' I'm sure. What a pleasure it'll be to see her, to
hug her...and to share something of what we have, something of what
life means to us here, in an non-academic way.
Yesterday she was with Josh and Molly in London, and apparently they were at
the National Portrait Gallery for a while...which made me miss them
all more since it's one of my favourite places in the world
and especially since the Sargent exhibition is currently on there...!
They would have loved it I'm sure, but how I would have liked to
share that too.
