Thursday 20^th September

On Tuesday at lunchtime (at the God Café* with Katy, Eva and Eva’s friend Miley,) I ran into Anna, a former colleague, out in the park with daughter and grandbabies.  She told me she had been for a walk that morning with a friend who had just had her first child, with a bit of medical intervention, at…fifty!  She, and her baby, are doing just fine.  This reminded me of the story an old friend, Peter, told me a few years ago, about his maiden aunt in England.  She had been part of a large, happy family, with her role clearly defined as…elderly maiden aunt.  And then at the age of 52 she suddenly, and inexplicably, produced a baby!  (Inexplicably as in – she very sensibly never explained this pregnancy.)  I asked about the outcome of this sudden change of lifestyle and Peter said his aunt took it all in her stride and had a wonderful relationship with her daughter.  She lived well into her nineties and thoroughly enjoyed being a mother and…in the fullness of time, a grandmother!

Pete and I were talking last weekend about generation gaps.  I have friends who have become grandmothers in their late thirties, and others in their seventies who are still waiting hopefully for the first inkling of a grandchild.  The youngest grandmother I ever knew was just thirty…she had had her daughter at fourteen, and this daughter had produced her own first child just before her sixteenth birthday.

In the Pacific islands women have their babies very young, and…very old!!  Sanity, mother of Moses, in the Louisiades, seemed like a very ancient person to us.  Thin, hunched, lacking any teeth.  However she must have been quite a lot younger than me because her youngest son, Keith, is only twelve… (Oh wait…maybe if I had been like Peter’s aunt, or Anna’s friend, I might be the mother of a twelve year old… In fact I far prefer being the grandmother of my very own lovely twelve year old Hamish…)

* The God Café is what we call the lovely big new spacious café with safely fenced playground along the Rivulet in South Hobart.  Not sure which church it is one of the more evangelical happyclapping denominations.  We love it!  There are spacious toilets and baby change rooms, with thoughtfully provided wipes and spare nappies if necessary.  The café sells mini milkshakes for $2, perfect for small children, and the staff are unfailingly bright, cheerful, HAPPY.  They have craft group, playgroups, mothers groups, youth groups, which are all, I am sure, full of happyclapping and godly things.  But…nobody pushes any of this onto us ungodly ones, and we always feel very welcome and pleased to be in such salubrious surroundings with our little ones safely contained and full of pink milksahke and butterfly biscuit.