It has been
a big week for Gabi.
On Tuesday
night Gabi was a participant at the Mother and Son session at her son’s school,
Saint Ignatius College in Drysdale, a 20 minute drive through Geelong.
Two nights
later she fronted up and was a team member at the subsequent Mother and
Daughter night. At her Mother-Daughter session in 2012, Gabi had ticked a box
on the evaluation form to say she would be interested being a team member at a
future event.
Participants
can also tick a box to say that they would like to become a member of the Time & Space Community. They receive
stories about mums, dads, young people who often are going about, what the
subjects consistently consider to be, their ordinary life. And then you and I,
encountering their story, might contend that they are quietly being extraordinary. Another way I describe
the people of these everyday stories are as ‘champions who have been spotted’. Gabi
is one such champion.
If you have
been to a Time & Space session
you will have seen and heard from that brave group up the front... the people
on the community panel. We usually have two parents and two young people sharing
their insights about the questions the participants will answer in their small
group session that follows. Gabi was a panellist on Thursday night.
In answer
to the question... what is a special
quality you see in your child? She said this about her daughter...
My daughter’s special
quality would without doubt be her inner strength. Her courage and ability to
overcome adversity, adapt and navigate her way through an experience of great
loss in Year 8 was just remarkable and inspiring.
At the end
of the evening, Gabi came up to me with a specific question. I got a chance
too, to say thanks for the insights she shared and for how she impacted on the
audience of mums, mentors and teenage girls.
Her
daughter has completed the two Time and
Space programs in sequence – The Father-Daughter in Year 7 and then the
Mother-Daughter in Year 8. As a family – they have now done three of the four
sessions available in the transition years of high school. As you know, Gabi
and her boy did the Mother-Son this week.
In our
conversation, I shared a clear memory from the Father-Daughter night three
years ago. Gabi seemed surprised but her husband stood out to me.
He
explained how determined he had been not to miss the father-daughter night. He
was seated, had a quiet satisfaction that he had made it. He had kind eyes. Gabi
remembered and reflected...
“Oh yeah,
we made a big effort to make it to that night. He made the journey down here
from Melbourne.”
Often dads
make big efforts to get to Time &
Space events from work far away. It is humbling to witness the priority
they put on being with their son or daughter.
This was
different again. Gabi’s husband mustered the energy to be transported from the
Royal Melbourne Hospital to be at the night with his daughter. He had a terminal illness and passed away
just a few months later.
You see
Gabi’s question was opening up how we might tackle the Father-Son night for her
boy next year. There is always provision for a mentor to be there if mum or dad
is not around (and, as in this case, sometimes it is a sad reason). It is that
care and foresight that makes Gabi a pretty obvious and ‘spot-able’ champion
mum.
In saying
on the panel that her daughter has inner
strength – we kind of know how her girl has inherited that. Having affirmed
her daughter’s quality Gabi went on to offer a message to the girls there on
the night...
It also highlighted to
me that our girls are strong. Without knowing the young ladies here this
evening, I do know that you all have inner strength, because of the wonderful
role models you have sitting beside you. I hope you always remember that.
It was
evident to those of us there that we were in the presence of, to use Gabi’s
words, a wonderful role-model. The
principal of the school remarked to me afterwards that whilst Gabi didn’t
specify the detail of her loss, a good number of the mums there would have been
in the know.
That’s why
I reckon Gabi’s story is a great example to share on Mother’s Day (here in
Australia today). Gabi has courage. There’s selflessness in the way she first sees
and acknowledges her daughter’s quality that emerged from that loss – a loss that
was obviously Gabi’s as well. And then let’s regard the kindness in her forward
planning to start thinking about a session for her son that will be happening
in September 2015.
Let Gabi
and her story represent the way mums give, the way so many mums sacrifice as a
default action and the way mums are ‘extraordinary in the ordinary’.
This story is
a gift for Gabi and her kids written on Mother’s Day 2014.
If you are
reading this now it will be because Gabi (and the kids) said it was okay.
