Memories are made of this

It's alarming how my years merge into one. When I was nineteen I clearly recall thinking that forty meant you were past it; life done and dusted!
One minute I'm responsible for me then came my little family of three. I breast fed and even had a surplu which ended up at Kettering maternity unit for premature babies.

I beleived giving a dummy to child number one and two and three. I'd stubbornly stuck to my guns no matter how loud came the cries whilst my nerves grew weaker. I would not give in. How crazy was that!

How could it be that one tiny baby be so cute with minature hands and feet with sweet smelling skin appear now before me. A dad himself and over six feet tall. If I tried to hug him he would run for the hills.

Our kids wouldn't be badly behaved. However they played up at supermarket check-outs, the bank or the train yet not ever at school it seems. Surely the teacher wassn't speaking about the same child who had threatened to clim out of the bedroom window or ring child-line or wound the flex of a kettle around his sister's neck; I was in the garden hanging out the clothes!

My son, standing before me, didn't want to stop on at school to take his 'A' levels but be a roadie instead. He also suggested staying in bed until lunch-time but we soon sorted that out didn't we! I remember him striding out his school with a fistful of GCSE's; we always wondered how he did that when sitting on the top deck school bus for revision.

I thought my daughter's wouldn't get sozzled bu didt guess what...they did! We thought they would never leave home...sadly they did!