Existential angst

Blaise is in the process of leaving home, she has been leaving for over a year now...spending more and more of the week living with her boyfriend in Grey Lynn, a place more salubrious to the needs of an evolving writer/neuroscientist than the leafy suburbs we call home.

In the past few weeks the plans have become more concrete, the conversations more intense "you will be ok won't you Mum?" "I'll visit a lot, and I'll come to sunday lunch/dinner"

I think I will...I know I will get more work done without my little girl to chat with in the afternoons, and I know that I have done a great job with her, she studies, works and goes out with her friends, she bakes and dresses with passion, she knows how to cut a tomato into a waterlily and is in love with her vintage kitchenaid.

My but it is quiet here though...while she is here I can hear the rest of the girls with their tv and music and chatter, but when I am here alone it's just a big, quiet house.

So, this is a new chapter, I know my work as a Mum will never be finished but I'm not the Mum of stories and bandaids, hair brushing, clean your teeth and get your jamas on, leave your sister alone, let's get the water play toys out, making playdough...any more.

Now I'm the Mum of stove buyers, wedding planners, job seekers, overseas adventurers, even the StepMum of a Mum.

Its time for some changes, it's time for me to look at who I am, when being "a Mum" has been my main identity for the past 24 years, and it's time for me and Flash. I have a lot of thinking to do, there is a lovely large downstairs room which will be available soon...french doors could easily be installed leading straight out to the back sundeck...I could paint it duck egg blue and fill it with my white furniture, my shelves of books and stores of yarn...I could have a little group of beginner knitters visit me for lessons in my large sunny room looking out onto the deck bloomimg with gardenias....

I could follow in the footsteps of my friends and visit Rhinebeck next year, sitting on the porch of a white frame hotel knitting with dear friends...Flash and I could drive the east coast of the USA and into Canada...there are a lot of plans to be made, a lot of work to do, a lot of dreams to dream, a lot of designs filling my head and a little more time to work on them.