Wednesday 5 September 2007

Losing Loved ones

I recently commented that these days I seem to socialse electronically.
Once you have children and give up your previous job and previous life, things you had in common with friends often disappear and your social aquaintances become your children's friends' parent's (did I get that right?).
One of my most favourite pair of friends are my daughters best friends' parents. If my daughter hadn't made friends with their son we would never have met them. The dad is Godfather to my youngest daughter and I feel so very fortunate to know them.
I also find that now I'm older, I value friendship so much more than I ever did, because of course as an adult, it's a stronger emotional thing to really adore your friends. I don't think I realised that when I was younger, but that's certainly the case for me.
A very good friend of ours moved to Scotland a few years ago. She rang me to warn me that she'd bought a house in Scotland and would be moving as soon as they had sold down here. I cried and cried (much to my surprise I have to say). I was going to miss her and who was going to speak in French to my children? It felt awful. Now we are used to it, they visit twice a year and phone often, we still all adore them, but they aren't here.
This week my daughters' Headmistress has announced she's leaving, Ok so I'm not wildly in love with her, don't get me wrong, but I hate the change, I was comfortable in knowing her ethos on my daughters' education. Now I have to start a whole new relationship with someone else. I suppose I feel too tired to start again with someone new, I just don't want my comfortable relationships with friends and associates to change.
I haven't been blogging that long, but I feel I've discovered a whole new world of women like myself, feeling like they have a teenage mind in an older body. Still with a wicked sense of humour, but without an outlet for it (I'm just so embaressing). And I have to say I read the same blogs, sometimes daily, to see what funny things have happened to them. I cry laughing, I sit here, and as I look up from my work I gaze at a garden bursting with colour, I can see no other house from my window, just flowers, fields and mountains, yet even in this remote part of the world I feel a connection with people I don't even know. Laughter certainly is the best medicine.
The sad thing this week has been the posting by Drunk Mummy saying she's giving up blogging. I'm honestly gutted. She was the first co-blogger who made me realise I'm not the only one. I wish her every success.