Grandmothers

Last weekend I visited my paternal grandmother (Mamie) for Mothers' Day. She lives in a quiet retirement village on the Central Coast of New South Wales and I spent the afternoon with her, one of my aunts and her husband, and a cousin; eating and taking in the bush surroundings. After lunch we went for a wander around the streets of the village and I found myself imagining coming to stay with my Mamie and writing. Maybe I would write her story for her; maybe I would write more of my own imaginings.

As I left, I realised that Mamie might not be around for very much longer and that I had, by living in Melbourne, inadvertently missed out on a whole lot of time I might have otherwise spent with her. Some time during the afternoon she had said to me that she would love to read any books I had published in the future, "if I'm still alive". This is, obviously, something very sad to think about, but it is also a wonderful motivation to get on with doing some writing. My Mamie might never read a published book of mine but I'm going to make sure she gets to read some of my work. I am going to hand-write her stories and send them to her the old-fashioned way: encased in an envelope.