The Gift of Children

I was thinking this morning about how blessed I am to have the children I do. Sure they often act up and act out, but they are all amazing individuals. I am most privileged to have been chosen to be their father. I hope and pray I can fulfil my part of the bargain and be the best possible father to each of them. To be there when they need me, and even when they don’t. To have the right advice for them in times of trouble. To share loads of laughs, adventures, sporting triumphs, and defeats. To hold their hands when they need comforting. To guide them wisely when they go astray. And most of all to love and appreciate them for who they are!

It struck me that all children should have parents who feel this way about them. That those children were equally blessed to have parents willing to sacrifice and serve, in order for them to grow up into better adults.

Even though I am the parent, my children definitely make me strive to be a better me. And that has to be good news for everyone!

It made me smile to think of other parents loving their children just as passionately as I love mine.

How wonderful if this was a blessing bestowed on every child, but sadly it just isn’t so!

In for the long run

I am constantly amazed that I married an incredible woman. One of the things that makes her so incredible is how she is a perfect match to what I need in a life partner. I have no idea, why at the tender age of 23, I felt compelled to make the leap of faith, to ask her to live out the rest of our lives side by side.

I look around and see so many failed marriages. Some just in their infancy at the time of their implosion! I often wonder what made our choice so different from the carnage we have witnessed.

When I look at our relationship which is almost 14 married years young, I wonder what it was that we saw in each other way back then. Potential, possibilities, hope, I have no idea. With the benefit of hindsight, I know the reasons I love my wife now, are not things I could ever have known with any certainty then. In fact these reasons were not things I was looking for in a partner when we pledged our lives to each other.

There was no way I could have predicted the strong bond that ties us together, the shared experiences we relive with joy, the companionship especially when television is impossible to watch, the friendship that makes life wonderful, and the deep love that makes me a significantly better person.

I would hate to label my wife and I as soul mates, it seems almost demeaning, the ‘meant to be’ philosophy. I would prefer to think the success of our marriage is due to the daily decisions we both make about our lives together. Decisions that bring us closer together by tiny fractions, moment by moment!

In a world where physical attractiveness is one of the key measures of success, I wonder what disservice is done to our youth. Where every form of entertainment glories the pleasures of the perfect body, something that has little to nothing to do with a successful marriage. When I look at old, wrinkled, and stooped couples with love in their eyes after many years of marriage, I know marriage is made of something much more than hunger and lust.

Donna and I are still new in this game, having much to still experience, work through and grow. Yet I am still amazed at how good marriage can be. And cannot help wondering how much better it will get in time. Especially if we continue to work at it, day after day!

Talking Heads

I spent a couple of days in Johannesburg last week. Dry and dusty days, filled with the smell of burnt veld. I got to share two very special dinners with friends and family. Blessed food unifying us all!

It is a wonderful privilege to be able to travel across the country and arrive in somebody else’s home as an extra member of the family. To join in their prayers, laughs, stories, fears, and deep bonds of love. Rejuvenating, inspiring, and a clear message that my family is in many ways like any other! For the rest my family is just a little wacky...

Then to be able to spend some time with an uncle and aunt was another gift beyond measure. To share a life happening apart and remember a life lived long ago. Memories filled with love and laughter.

Conversations like these make life full, deep, and meaningful. Yet most of us live life at a pace that fails to facilitate these kinds of conversations, instead relegating communication to quick catch ups of the most superficial kind.   

It really is deeply satisfying to take life slowly and probe the depths of each other’s souls once in a while!

Madly in love

Mountains wreathed in mist overlook rolling farmlands clothed in iridescent green. Fields of bright yellow Canola stand tall in their prearranged positions in grandma’s patchwork quilt. Wild flowers grow in abundance along the sides of roads, and big splashes colour vast tracts of land. The normally ugly aloe, now in full orange flower, infuses the landscape with joy. 

The Western Cape is a beautiful place but right now, simply breathtaking.  A marvel to anyone with a moment to look out of the window!

It all pales in significance though, compared to the love I feel for the woman who sits beside me. Donna and I have managed to sneak off to Knysna for a romantic weekend for two. All made possible by my mother who in a moment of madness agreed to look after our three children.

Just two days sans the normal responsibilities of life and plans of any sort have refreshed and revitalised us in many special ways. This is time we so needed and yet could not find. It is also time we have to search for as often as possible in the future, because the benefits are tremendous.

Hopefully we will return home better parents than we left. More importantly, we will return home with bonds of love that have been retied and knotted a little tighter. Bonds which will see us through the good and bad times in a society where marriage seems doomed to failure.

As the flowers of the Cape reach toward the sun and together form a dizzying display, so too I hope my marriage together with all of the other g.ood marriages out there inspire those who are struggling

The sea, the beautiful sea

The bay has heaved and shuddered as the swell from storms thousands of kilometres away has released its pent up energy on our sandy beaches.


Joy hides deep inside the straddling of a block of fibreglass covered foam in a violent sea. Surrounded by endless ocean, looked down upon by mountain vistas, comforted by endless beaches. Pure freedom! Whales and otters, seals and dolphins, even sting rays make interesting companions. My crew, whether at my side or seeking waves down the point, are one with me in pursuit of that momentary high. A bond forged in adversity and filled with companionship.

I am humbled by the surf. Each wave has a lesson for me; a lesson of patience, or courage, or a deeper belief in God. The lessons are tough, and wrong answers are punished. I am so small and yet I am here, laughing, thrilled, and hungry for more.

Sometimes, very rarely; I swoop, glide, and fly.

And in that instant, Mother Nature takes hold of my heart in her bountiful hands, and loves me!

A Blessed Christmas

It is Christmas eve tonight. I wanted to wish anyone stopping by a happy and blessed Christmas, and may your life be filled with love!

Now get out of here and pass on some of that love...

In Addition

I have to add something to my last post.

If you have not read it, read it!

I was thinking through my approach to this grown man crying about his life and my lack of compassion due to my knowing better. In other words, I judged this man as being unworthy of my time, money, and attention. As a good Christian boy, I know that the right approach to this circumstance was one filled with love and compassion. Yet I found it incredibly difficult to follow the same example that was set so long ago.

When rereading this post, I had the realisation that both of us need help from above, perhaps I more than him, even though it seems to be the other way around!!

Oh Mom

Mothers are actually incredible beings. Listing all of the reasons for this bold statement would probably bore you to tears, unless of course if you are a mother!

Instead I will settle with my main reason for this amazing claim, which is the person of my wife. But I could also include my mother, and my wife's mother, and just about all mothers.

It is not unusual for dads like me to be very wary of babies. I did not play with dollies or spend hours dreaming of the day I would have myself a live one. My experience with babies started the day the doctor delivered my first born, and then plonked him into my open inexperienced and well suntanned arms. The race was on for me to develop my well hidden baby talents before baby moved on to toddlerhood. Needless to say, I was very glad when he exited his baby days and took his first steps at nine months. The error of my thinking was soon revealed as my walking boy catastrophe could go where he wished but had no communication skills whatsoever!

I was a little more prepared for baby boy number 2, in that I had built bigger arm muscles through learning to surf. Matt got old and wise rather quickly and knows pretty much everything at the ripe old age of five. Now I enjoy debating the benefits of nuclear fission with him on the odd occasion!

Matt had arrived just three years behind Luke and so I could reap the benefits of my vast remembered baby experience, whilst watching my wife handle him from a good distance.

Work afforded me the wonderful luxury of being able to escape into the relative bliss of my car, zoom into peak traffic, and doze my way into the office. There the day would pass in a haze of sleep deprived email responses and sporadic outbursts at meetings. Understandably my stress levels would rise significantly at the end of the day as I feared my return to the mother ship. Walking in the door, an urchin would automatically attach itself to my leg, and I would find myself juggling a laptop, and a screaming baby that had been aggressively thrust into my arms. A fine welcome home indeed! In time I got better at leaving the laptop at work, dodging the crawling limpet, and screaming louder than all of them. It didn’t help matters but boy I felt good!

Bring on baby number three! Just five years on and my baby memory banks seem to be worryingly empty. Perhaps there was never very much in them to begin with. Baby number three finds me working at home, a significant change from that long gone age. Now I am immersed in the new life of a growing baby and am appalled at what I have discovered.

Donna spends just about every waking moment with baby Isabella, as well as a number of non waking moments! Life for her has become an endless stream of dirty nappies, gurgling, crying, eating, puking, and variable timed naps. There is also a fair bit of screaming, and the jury is out on who is louder, mother or daughter!

I look on in horror as Donna calmly deals with the inanely boring routine of rearing a baby, and then mixes it up with the continuous demands of mom’s taxi. I certainly missed all of this whilst beavering away at work. I am beginning to think that it is far easier to bash out business plans, create national strategies, deal with belligerent customers, and fire some staff, than devote your waking day to the needs of a young mushroom completely unable to communicate.

I have come to the conclusion that there can be no substitute for a mother’s love and no doubt mothers pay dearly for that love in terms of their sanity. I do need to come clean and publically announce that I could not do it!

In just a couple of months (or perhaps a year or three), my daughter will proudly don her pink wetsuit and tightly grasp her pink surf board under her arm. Then perhaps I may be on my game then!

For now, I can but bow respectfully to my wife and thank her for her incredible patience with all of the rest of us, for her great sacrifice in terms of her body and her time, and for the endless quantities of love that she pours into this new being. Our daughter!

And to all the other moms out there – you guys rock too!

To my dear little girl

To my dear darling Isabella,


Yesterday morning you exploded into being in the form of a tiny pink baby. So small, wrinkled, and helpless! I was humbled by the notion that God chose your mom and I to be your parents. To love you, care for you, and possibly even sacrifice our lives for you. I so look forward to getting to know you better, to guiding you as you grow, to hugging you when you are sad, and to helping you explore all that you are.

I could not help but think of the life that lies before the feet you don’t even know that you have. A life wide open with possibilities just waiting to be explored. The choices you will make will either lead you to fulfilment, a mundane existence, or a life of destruction. I hope that I have the strength and wisdom to prepare you for those choices. I pray for the humility and courage to share my life with you and show you a better way to live.

Through all of the arguments we will have, through the failure you will see in me, and through those times when life just does not seem fair, know that through it all, I have loved you from the start. I will always try and give you the best of me, but in those times when it isn’t so, I hope you will forgive me, smile on me, and reach out to me again.

There is a long road ahead of us. I hope that it is filled with much excitement, laughter, and joy. It is only fair to warn you that it will also be filled with disappointments, tears, and loss. Yes, there will be bad times but they will be much easier to bear if we face them together as a family.

Your life, like mine, will be full of its own twists and turns. At times life will flow and at others become incredibly complex. Regardless, I will be there for you whenever you need me!

Remember always that you are special because you are you. That in your uniqueness you have something valuable to offer the world, the gift of you! Cherish life, learn something new each day, challenge those around you, brighten the world with your smile, and love fiercely!

All my love, dad.

Party in Pink

Saturday saw us up and shining at about 10h00 in the morning. Most unusual as both boys managed to get themselves breakfast and keep quiet since they awoke. Donna and I needed the extra time as we were both utterly exhausted; Donna because of being 10 days away from giving birth and myself with reasons unknown!

Then the doorbell rang, forcing me to put down my book just pages from its conclusion. At my front door, a lady presented me with a bunch of flowers. The attached note told my wife to enjoy her special morning and sorry that the sender could not make it. I asked my wife what was happening this morning. She said she had no idea. We left it at that!

Donna had invited some people over for a late afternoon braai, and so we spent time cleaning the house and getting ready. I made potato salad, just rescuing the potatoes seconds before they boiled to mash and we put the bread maker to work. The doorbell ringing again signalled that our never early visitors were early; who then proceeded to have an amazing argument about who had left the bag containing the meat at home. The clear winner seemed to be his wife; although he nonchalantly popped open a beer and then his wife took my wife to go back to their place to fetch it.

Then chaos erupted! Operation ‘Donna’s stork party’ was underway! With the unsuspecting mother to be again out of the way, and reinforcements in the form of neighbours and friends, it was time to turn my house into a pink sanctuary of fun for women. Just under 30 minutes later and all signs of braai preparation had been replaced by cupcakes, cheese platters, pink champagne, and enough pink presents to make my eyes water.

Soon 28 women crowded into my lounge and I found myself alone and rather disturbingly in my element! My wife arrived and was visibly surprised. Having gone with her friend to collect the missing ‘bag of meat’, she suspected that she was being taken to her stork party. Only to find the missing ‘bag of meat’ as promised at her friend’s house, which as you can imagine was a little disappointing. After much dilly dallying, including wasting a desperate couple of minutes by returning a DVD she had only just rented, friend and Donna arrived home to all of her friends whipped into a frenzy by yours truly. Or perhaps I was imagining things, too much pink champagne!

Somehow despite a number of people RSVP’ing to my wife about her surprise stork party, we still managed to keep it a surprise. She had a wonderful afternoon and our new daughter has been spoilt pink!

I cannot help but thinking back to when our second son matured into toddlerhood. At that time we gave away every bit of baby paraphernalia that we owned. Now, we have been given absolutely everything we need for this baby and more! Most of it better than the stuff we had for both our children! Makes me believe that there is something to the principle of giving to receive!

My family certainly has been blessed. Not because of stuff, but because of the incredible family and friends that surround, care for, and love us. I am not sure how we will ever thank you all!

Love and Marriage

Today, I have been married for 12 years. I remember spending the morning of that big day in our swimming pool, scrubbing off algae with a hard brush. That is until I was rescued by my well meaning good men and whisked off to breakfast. A breakfast I was far too nervous to eat!

I am still amazed that despite the nerves, I still found myself saying ‘I do’ a couple of hours later. Today I congratulate my dumb luck in making a decision that in retrospect was brilliant, as it sparked forth the longest and greatest adventure of my life.

And yet marriage is not a popular institution. In a time when anything is possible at a price, and iron clad contracts just require pricier lawyers than the ones who put it together to take it apart, and where divorce is a commodity, I take much joy in my own marriage. On Friday we had drinks with our neighbours; two of whom have been married for 48 years. They don’t spend much time with the skateboarding crew but they are feisty and full of fun.

They are also people I look up to in terms of making a marriage work, as a lifelong commitment is no longer the norm! Today it seems that when the going gets tough, the tough get going out of the front door to the lawyers. Needless to say Donna and I made a couple of vows and we mean to keep them!

When I got married, I thought that I was deeply in love, but now I know that I really had no clue. As the years have gone by, I have found that our love for each other has grown and matured. It is different to when we first met and so much better. Our lives have become more and more one life, whereby both of us are halves of some different whole. A whole that is simpler and yet more complicated and thrilling than either of us on our own.

One day when we hold each other’s thin bony hands and squint through our bifocals at each other’s lined faces and reminisce about the incredible adventures of our lives, we will know that it was as good as it was, because we did it together!

I would not have it any other way. I love you honey!

Lost 2

After giving my last post on ‘lost’ some lateral thought, I decided that I was not happy with it all. If you have not read it, read it and then come back to this post.

There is one other thing that I can do for my children. Ensure that they know and feel Gods love for them. With it, at least they can expect heaven when they die, and as a parent, I will know that this is where they will be. Without it, they are gone without a trace, and as a parent, I will be left with a tragic loss!

You may be thinking that you won’t be reading this blog again because I have brought up the God factor? The thing is, I would rather be an idiot and believe in God, and be wrong, than clever, not believe, and be wrong! This comment though, tries to reduce faith to a tenet of logic which obviously cannot be done, so please forgive me.

As a Christian, I believe that God gave up his son to die for me. There is no way I would ever be able to sacrifice my children for any reason, no matter how good. I am far too small a man for that. To think that God did exactly that for me; means that his love for me is humanly unfathomable. Truly, I want my children to experience that love.

So the things I can do for my children, regardless if they die young or old, is to give them a home filled with love and a life filled with God!

Lost

Cape Town has been experiencing rather adverse weather over the last two days; with winds of over 100km/hr being recorded, lightning, and even hail. Events practically unheard of down here! The wind blown swell in the sea has been merciless, and a number of fishermen have lost their lives.

Last night I was shocked by the sad news of a Judo friend. A tree was blown over on his farm, not a small tree, an ancient one that three good men would struggle to hug together! Sadly the tree fell onto a wall of a farm worker’s cottage and killed the five year old girl sleeping on the other side.

Heart wrenching!

I cannot help but think about losing one of my own children. I would be devastated. Actually, I have no idea how I would be, as I don’t suppose anyone who has not been through such an experience could begin to understand. It does of course bring home the fact that our children are loaned to us for just the shortest of times. With this in mind, should I be changing anything in the way that I live my life? Telling my children I love them more often, hugging them more often, listening to them, spending more quality time with them? Do I fill my home with love or am I more concerned about messy rooms being cleaned?

My heart cannot but go out to the poor parents who have just lost their child.

Joy

I was wondering about the relativity of joy.

Definitions from a couple of web dictionaries define joy as rejoicing as well as the emotion of great delight or happiness caused by something exceptionally good or satisfying.

If I had absolutely nothing; a free meal or a grotty jacket before winter would probably provide much joy. Both could be classified as exceptionally good or satisfying events. In my current situation, being forced to eat a meal from a soup kitchen or receiving a grotty jacket would be tough to handle. Interestingly enough, giving soup to a hungry person or giving away an old jacket would provide me with some measure of joy.

The question I have for myself is do I only rejoice in the big things like a new car, a baby’s birth, or an unexpected windfall? Have I become so jaded that I am unable to find joy in a smile or a kind word; the simple things of life that spring from loving hearts? Do I appreciate the dawn of each new day, the beauty that surrounds me, and the fact that I have been blessed with life for another day? And do I use each of those days to spread joy or bemoan the fact that I don’t have the things I really want?

Is it possible that whether I have nothing or own the world, the most valuable gift I can give is free and it comes from the heart? And it is in giving love and respect that I receive great joy and peace of mind?

Or is it better to work my butt off so I can go out and buy some cool stuff, knowing that it will soon break and become worthless. Then I can give it away and feel good that somebody else will get joy from it!

Just wondering...

Love & Providence

Beware, this is deep!

I am struggling with a couple of concepts. The first is that when life is spent serving others with love, it is filled with an inner peace and joy that far surpasses that gained by any other means. Seems to be simple enough and surely everyone has experienced this at some or other point in their lives, but how on earth does one centre one’s life on this principle?

I have long been a student of business; thinking big and out of the box. Taking a concept and blowing away the world with it! How wonderful the financial rewards, the adulation, and heaps of respect from one’s peers! Yet if I am to centre my life on serving others, I would no longer be the hero but rather a support player. In fact, if I am to serve with love, the most important aspect of every interaction is the outpouring of my love for the other person. The rest is meaningless...

Another concept is based on Mother Theresa. MT founded and ran the Missionaries of Charity on the firm belief that God would provide. She went so far as to stipulate that none of her sisters would be involved in any form of fund raising. Incredible for an organisation that ran over 300 houses in 5 of the continents with more than 2400 women in the early 80’s, all focussed on loving the poorest of the poor. So how does one go about trusting God to look after one’s well being? How does one even begin to think like this when one must support a family?

I assume it is all possible; living a life of service, an outpouring of love, under God’s providence. But taking that first step...

Committment

I entered the church of my childhood with trepidation. Today was a special day and I was quite unprepared for what was about to happen. A good friend of mine was to be ordained as a priest, the culmination of a long journey. The sacristy of this very church had been where I met Justin for the first time, a mere 26 years ago! My mother had been a sacristan, which meant that she occasionally prepared the church for mass during the week. On those occasions, I invariably got dragged along for an extra hour of church torture. To my utter amazement, on one of those visits, I found Justin, a ten year old boy happily preparing to serve as an altar boy because he wanted to be there!

Fast forward to today and he was about to make a lifelong commitment to God.

I saw one of my old school mates waving madly to me and so my wife and I made our way over and sat with his family. We were early but the church was already packed, and this is no small church. Sitting in that pew, I was assaulted by memories long forgotten. Of countless hours spent on that same altar as an altar boy. Of banding together with two of my close friends, one of whom sat next to me, to join the choir and attempt to make a difference to the singing. Yeah me singing, I had the volume, sometimes, I even had the tune! And then time spent starting and running a youth group in the parish. It had been a long and wonderful association.

The service was incredible, fascinating, beautiful, and full of symbolism. More than 20 priests were in attendance as well as the Arch Bishop. Much of the singing was in Latin, hauntingly beautiful, sung by three choirs, all adding a special flavour to this day. At a point in the service, Justin lay down in the church, prostrate before God. Later the Arch Bishop tied his hands together as a symbol of Justin’s obedience to him. At many times in the service I had to close my eyes and blink back tears. I was not the only one!

A barely noticed two hours later, Justin emerged a priest. Smiling broadly, reflecting a deep inner happiness! And only now will his journey begin!

This event was the emotional pinnacle of my life. It feels funny to write that when I think of the momentous occasions of my own life; including my own marriage and the birth of my children. Yet, I do believe that I have grown as a person over the last 20 months on my own journey. At long last starting to shake the cold calculating persona I had so carefully created. Mixed together with the time I have spent watching my good friend struggle with his call to God. I feel so privileged to have shared a part of his suffering on the road that led here. To see him emerge on the other side, made me feel radiant and alive, bursting with pride.

Challenged to do more!

Justin, my friend, my prayers and thoughts are with you. Live a life filled with love!

The life of ...

I have read three biographies over the last couple of weeks. The usual murder mystery detective novels have started to bore me no end and so I have switched to some reality reading.

The first was the life of Trotsky. If you don’t know him, suffice to say that together with Lenin, he brought about the overthrow of the imperial Russian monarchy and help install communism based on Marxist principles. He was eventually assassinated by one of Stalin’s hit men while living in exile. It was an interesting book but filled with an idealism that I just could not grasp.

Book number two was the life of Jim Morrison, the lead singer of the band, The Doors. This was an eye opener. An angry young man with a little bit of talent and a bent for dark poetry who became a 70’s sex icon. Drunk and high for the last ten years of his life before extinguishing it entirely at the ripe old age of 27 through an overdose. Woman and sex were his pivotal conquests. I finished this book a little depressed from an insight into a world I knew existed but probably have always chosen to ignore. The excess, the depravity, the negativity, the arrogance, are truly mind blowing and clearly lead as far away from happiness and inner peace as one can get!

The third book of this impromptu book review was titled ‘Mao’s last dancer’. It is a beautiful autobiography of the life of Li Cunxin, a Chinese ballet dancer. Those who know me understand that ballet is not one of my sports and one of my greatest fears is attending my soon to be new daughter’s ballet recitals. Nonetheless this book was written with great humility, compassion, and love. It details Cunxin’s start in life as a peasant in a commune in a rural part of China under the rule of Chairman Mao. He was selected at the age of 11 to attend Madame Mao’s Dance Academy simply due to his high pain threshold as the selectors effectively tore his hamstrings in the selection process. It took him years to learn to love dancing but once he discovered a passion for the art, he became one of the best Chinese ballet dancers ever. He ultimately defected to America where he started his own family.

I was awestruck at the love within his family and the bonds between his parents and his six brothers. As peasants, they had absolutely nothing. They ate dried yams for most of the year if they were lucky, but they had a family filled with love and happiness.

Cunxin’s book simply reinforced the simple notion that family must be the cornerstone of a valuable society. And that love and inner peace are far more important than money, political ideals, and the narcissistic pursuit of self satisfaction!

Baby

Babies! A word that evokes an emotion in all of us from absolute horror and disgust to cute and I want one with every fibre of my being.

They are such helpless little creatures, requiring assistance for many years before they can be released into the wild. Yet there is a one key ingredient that a baby thrives on; love! It would seem so simple, yet for anyone who has had their own children; the practical application is far from simple. Babies are hard work! Yet all of us once were mite size and somebody made the necessary sacrifices in order to ensure that we had both the skills and the life to get through to today.

I saw my new baby yesterday. Heshe is only about 65mm in length and in foetus terms about 12 weeks old. I was blown away by the detail on the scan. Actually this is the first time that I have been able to see anything at all, besides blobs, on a scan, so this was a surprise! I was amazed by the amount of movement; heshe rolled, kicked, and moved hisher arms. Waving at me of course!



My wife and I could not help wondering how people can make the decision to terminate the life of a foetus. Terminology and definitions of life aside, that foetus is alive and just waiting to explode into being; happy, healthy or not! To kill himher now, the thought makes me so sad...

It really is funny how love works. This baby is six months from being born and already I am committed to being the best possible parent to himher no matter what!

The Men in my Life

I was struck this morning by the number of deep male friendships that I have within my life. Now as you read this, you may already be thinking ‘weirdo’. This even though our society is very tolerant of homosexual relationships, the very thought of deep heterosexual relationships would send most chaps running a mile.

Yet in my life I have been blessed with a large number of these friends and each of them fills gaps in my life that I honesty never knew I had. Having one deep mate is a blessing but to have a whole heap is just wonderful. These are people who stand by your side no matter what and you know that they will always be there for you. I like that. It gives me a serious bit of confidence that I can do this life thing and I can do it well on my terms!

And best of all I write this and still feel like a man! Now I am going to write something to make all you real men out there cringe....

To you dudes – love you all!

So here I am on another plane ordering the same thing I always order. A Grapetiser and a still water. I sit back and wait patiently for my fantastic aeroplane lunch to arrive. I am apprehensive as an aeroplane breakfast was not too long ago on another almost forgotten plane. As I sit here and contemplate the mysteries of my life I realise that I have much to be thankful for. The majority of people on this continent have never flown on a plane before. Yet here I am grumpy about this company bus! Even more people subsist on just one meal a day. I am sitting here anticipating my second and know without a shadow of a doubt, there will be a third.

With the exciting lunch dishes out of my way, I am free to return my attention to the important aspects of my travel. What on earth to do with myself! My brain is not on the right wavelength to even pretend that I can do some work. I have no inclination to strike up a conversation with anyone. So back to musing, one of my favourite past times!

At least this plane is taking me home. Home is a wonderful place that I love to inhabit. And in my home is my wonderful wife and children. Hopefully, they are all eagerly waiting for my homecoming with open arms and hugs on the ready. I must be extremely blessed as I actually want to spend time with these people. I ache with all of my being to be near them and to enjoy life with them. Sadly, I don’t think that this is the same for most people in the world.

Actually, I have it all. A heap of someones love me dearly and that is a gift of priceless proportions. No matter where I am in the world, I will have this surety that they are out there missing me too. It brings a whole new meaning to making the most of the time that I have with those around me.

Hmmm, I think I will order a second plane lunch and then scare the passenger next to me with some unsolicited chat!