Only connect

Have you read 'Five ways to wellbeing'? The first suggested action for wellbeing is to connect.  Connect with family, friends, colleagues and neighbours. I am lucky with my friends.  I still connect and am in touch with friends from

• school (See friends)
• tae kwon do (See http://ejh2.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/competitions-and-competing.html ) 
• gliding years ago (See gliding weekends, gliding club,  and gliding again),  
• friends abroad (See Norwegian gliding friend)
• studying for my OU qualifications and from work
• teacher training college
• comparatively new friends in this town where I've lived since remarrying
• neighbours
• lost friends that I refound through social media



AB

• friends of my late husband (FoLH), loyal and supportive to me in raising our children. 

FoLH

An old friend, my ex-doctor friend (ExDrF) connected last week, staying here overnight on her way to somewhere else, between places. Like me, my ExDrF has retired from her first career and is enthusiastically making her way in a new one and its work brought her near enough to visit. I hadn't see ExDrF for 15-16 years because I'd moved and she'd moved, yet we'd stayed in touch.  What a pleasure it was to talk with her! We remembered each other's children - she remembers mine so well it's a compliment; exchanged news on what they're doing - one of hers is doing a doctorate as is one of mine; one of hers is about to get married and one of mine has married.  We remembered the nursery school they went to, which friend had influenced which of us to choose that nursery and subsequent schooling decisions. We have mutual friends (like AB) who have similarly changed tack as children departed. I missed these friends when my children reached sixth form and university age because I wanted to share with them the end of that era, the completion of a job: bringing our children up ready to  make their own way in the world.
My friends support and enrich my life. I hope I do theirs. We'll have mutual wellbeing.

Mothering or grandmothering Sunday

Mothering my daughter years ago, I escorted her to tae kwon do, then joined myself.  When I got to be a black belt, my oldest granddaughter thought it so cool that a grandmother could have black belt in a martial art, that she too started learning tae kwon do.  She's learning fast.
She comes round on Thursdays after school and we chat. She's been doing theory of knowledge for her IB and tells me about various place value systems, such as ancient Sumerians used. I remind her that I have a video of her counting in binary when she was her little sister's age (seven) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAQaRwW72jI.
Her littler cousin (six years old) is impressing me by programming her Logo turtle to draw, not just a simple square or circle but a heart. That's as good as or better than my OU students do.
I used to want to boast about my children. Now I can boast about my grandchildren's achievements.

Reflections on blogging

Looking back over this blog, In the first year I posted ten entries, of which five mentioned our daughters.  Of the eight posts of 2005, half were about our children. In 2006, I more than doubled my writing (29 posts) and well over half were about our teenagers. Gradually I started writing about our grandchildren.
In 2006, I started full time study for a research degree. Starting research, was a new venture to distract me from gloom as I anticipated my role as mother reducing when the children left home. Yet during my MRes and PhD years of study, I posted 75, 144, 207 and 89 times, nearly always about the family, children and grandchildren, and then occasionally our older generation as they grew ill and died.
I wonder why I stopped posting. Perhaps I stopped  because I'd finished study, perhaps because I had new contracts to keep me busy, or perhaps the adjuvant therapy for my breast cancer slowed down my thought processes.