15 May 2023
A FAMILY OUTING
Driving to work this morning I reflected on the day gone by. It was Mother’s Day, and I was very far away from my mom. I had phoned her the evening before to wish her happy Mother’s Day as I was on a hike starting early morning the next day and I did not want to phone her so early in the morning waking her up from her sleep. As moms are, my mom understood.
I had seen the names on the hike list, and I had smiled as all were single people with no kids. I was looking forward to the hike to be with my friends. As I drove close to the parking lot where we were meeting, I saw an elderly lady waiting to cross the road. This was Barbara who I had not met before and whose name was not on the hike list. She was joining us.
It was a blistering windy day all over the Cape and Scarborough was no different. We were going from Scarborough to Kommetjie. Peter was leading the hike. I could not keep up with him as he ploughed up the steep hill to the top of the Baskloof reserve. I stopped twice going up. I need to get a bit fitter I thought. While on the hike, just after we moved on from our tea stop, Peter said it would be good to take a family pic. I stopped dead in my tracks. Did I hear right? Did Peter just use the word family?
Barbara replied to him that she was not good at selfies. As there were no other people around our group, we moved on taking no pic as a family.
As we walked, I travelled deep in thought. Wow! I never looked at it that way but actually Peter is old enough to be my dad and Barbara old enough to be my mom and the rest of us 4 could probably all be sisters. Interesting, I thought. As we walked on, I heard Barbara speaking to someone saying that her daughter was turning 50 in June. I am turning 50 in Jan.
I kept on thinking about this and eventually realised our youngster in the group, Tammy who is a software developer out of Poland, was young enough to probably be a grandchild in our “family”. So, Peter and Barbara the parents, Heather, Joanie & I the daughters with Tammy being the granddaughter. All the ages in the group were stacking up perfectly for a family outing in the outdoors. Wow! We got to a point where we had to cross a road. After we did so, we stopped, and everyone was looking at their watches for the distance travelled.
My watch was the odd one out measuring a distance a lot higher than what everyone else had. We were all a bit confused as to why this was the case. I smiled and said that I had travelled deep within myself, and my watch kept track of it. We all had a good laugh at that and moved on to finish our hike.
There are so many wonders of our universe we do not even notice at play. The law of nature where from one comes the many and from many comes the one was at play in this story. My mom was the one who provided personalised loving family support to me emotionally and telephonically. The next day, on Mother’s Day when I would have spent the day with my mom if I was in Durban, this energy transformed into the company of the friends I spent Mother’s Day with. My friends represented the many that collectively provided my mom’s loving family support by spending time with me in person on Mother’s Day.
Support can take various forms. Challenges can take various forms. They transform. This means they keep changing form. Look out to see it. There is no gain or loss just transformation from one form to another at play all the time.
Lots of love
Rajes
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