Dear Raine

How are you?  We are all fine. 
Clifford and I  used to write letters like these to my cousins in Rhodesia, and to my grandparents in East London, when we were little.  We HAD to write letters and they always started the same way and ended the same way - like the beginning of this one, and the end of this one. 

I would write about what we had been doing, about school, and sport, and often would just sit gazing into space, with the pen stuck in the corner of my mouth, trying to think of what else I could write about.  Life always seemed so boring and yet, it wasn't. We were LIVING.... so, that must mean life isn't always about DOING something...it's about enjoying everything around us....not just the ACTION of living, but sometimes the action of things around us.

Does that make sense, my blonde angel?  Sometimes we have to just sit, and appreciate what is around us, without always the rushing off to be busy, busy, busy all the time.  Because life flies by and before you have known it, ten, twenty years have gone by, and so many things have happened in that time that we lose sight of the everyday....

So maybe my letters to you will be about remembering - both your childhood and mine, so that I will be answering the questions now that you haven't yet thought of, but that will come to mind when it will be too late for me to answer.

Tons of love,
Mommy
xxx