Gabi - a Mothers Day Champion

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.                                                                                                                                                                               

  

A Daughter's Tribute

My friend Heidi is a champion - generous, funny and a great animator in our local community. We are lucky around here because over the years our friends, formed through the connection of our kids' local primary school, have created a few music groups. Whilst my 'day job' (that happens mostly at night) is facilitating life time memories for parents and their kids, I do also belong to a band made up of four dads who play covers at our local shops once a month. We practice in my shed from time to time. This structure is the eponymous (I love the word 'eponymous') inspiration for our band name. SHeD! In fact one of our guitarist's kids thinks my name is actually 'SHeD'! It will be a sad day when he starts calling me Bill.

Heidi is part of a group of six local mums and dads called 'Sirens' who rehearse at our friends, Nick and Clare's place - they have a studio out the back and so you can see that the pattern of eponymous band names finished on a sequence of one as Heidi's band do not practice in a siren (I promise you that I will limit the bad 'dad' jokes to only one every few blogposts!)

Sirens and SHeD and other local parents' bands get together in the shed once a year for a big party... it is an annual tradition now. We have had many memorable 'Cold August Nights', 'Rocktobers' and 'Warm November Rain' parties over the last decade.

We had a different day last Saturday - Sirens and SHeD held a 'Parents Concert' at Heidi and Tony's place... the point of difference was that the parents there were my parents, Heidi's parents and the mums, dads and aunties of a number of the band members. Heidi's thinking was that it is rare that our own parents get to hear the music we make together. At the end of the day SHeD member, Tim's dad remarked that "it was just like going to your kid's school concert except that all the kids are in their fifties!" (NB - this blogger is still way early into his forties!)

So this extraordinary gathering played and listened... SHeD played first, and not being 'age-ist' still required (as is their custom) all song requests to be sent by text message, rather than called out verbally (far more efficient). My dad hogged the request line sending in texts at a pace that would exhaust the thumbs of even the most tech-savvy Gen Y-er. We shared food in between band performances. I tried to race one of Steve's (from Sirens) kids in eating as many of the beautiful chicken drumsticks made by his γιαγιά (pronounced ya-ya', Greek for Grandmother).

"How many did you have Bill?"

"Four" I said to Steve's son, feeling pretty confident I had won.

"I stopped after six" he declared with a conquering tone.

Sirens played next. I took a seat at the back just behind my mum and dad. I love listening to the girls sing and they had some new material. Dad leaned over to mum and I heard him share an insight...

"This is not just community but its world community".

In Sirens, Clare and Nick are Macedonian, Heidi was born in England, Lisa is Irish and was born in Wales, Sandra was born here in Australia and is fourth or fifth generation and Steve is Greek. Here was the world playing for us underneath what we call the 'West Preston skies!' I got a bit of a shiver... something special was happening. The mums and dads were clearly moved.

Heidi's 'parents' concert' idea had a simultaneous inspiration that I felt honoured to witness. For many years, she has had a poem written by her mum, Bonny, in her possession. I asked Heidi and Bonny's permission if this could be the topic of today's post. Here's some background that Heidi e-mailed to me earlier this week.

'Hi Bill, ... Sadly for your blog, my mum wrote that poem while she was bored at work and that’s about all she says about it although she definitely remembers writing it and it’s more than thirty years since she wrote it. I was about sixteen when I was ferreting through mum’s dresser looking for a pair of earrings. I found the earrings but I also found the poem stuffed (literally) into a drawer. I took it and thirty years down the track I asked some of our very talented friends to put it to music for me.'

The culminating moment was Heidi singing her mum's words in a song she had recorded with Stephen from SHeD and Nick from Sirens who wrote some music to go with them.

For Bonny - it was a total surprise. Heidi sang her words and then presented her mum with a CD recording of the song. Here are the lyrics...

I’d like to weave my dearest dreams
My fondest recollections
In silks of finest gossamer
And fairy floss confections
And as the gentle breezes blow
The silks float in the air
The fairy floss melts sweetly
And all my life is there

The snow white shapes of drifting clouds
The hot sand on my toes
The multi coloured butterflies
The fragrance of a rose
The careless days of golden youth
When time ran on forever
A world of dreams like Peter Pan
In lands of Never Never

To understand the sadness
To hear my music play
To live and breathe the many things
I find so hard to say
…so hard to say


Mingled tears and laughter
Of early adolescence
When moods were black and hopeless
Or bright and effervescent
Too old to run to mother
Too young to know the ways
The struggling in-between years
So bittersweet the days

And all these things would be there
In my tapestry of dreams
Wafting in the sunlight
And drifting in moonbeams
And just to make it perfect
My daughter would be there
To sense and feel the living
That’s trembling in the air

To understand the sadness
To hear my music play
To live and breathe the many things
I find so hard to say
…so hard to say

Bonny Cox

Heidi provided a stunning moment of tribute to her mum. It was palpable to those of us lucky enough to be there, that we had experienced something beautiful... a true act of love from a daughter to her mum.

My mum sent me a text the next day... 'Thx again 4 a lovely occasion yesterday. It was very special.'

In the work I do, the focus is often on the influence a parent or mentor can have on a young person... if you are a daughter or son reading this - never doubt the power you have to make your mum or dad feel like their efforts in raising you are appreciated. Heidi - I'm proud to count you as a friend. You made the world different last Saturday, in a very good way. And Bonny, thanks for your poetry.

And to you thanks for taking the 'Time and Space' to read this!

Bill Jennings - http://www.time-space.com.au