Week 33 - Time

I struggled a bit this week, I must confess....found myself 'thinking' more than 'snapping'.....

Linda's picture first.....of clocks in the reception area of her work, depicting the time in different parts of the world in which they have offices. I quite like the idea - practical. Linda-Maree felt disappointed that the picture doesn't have the 'wow' factor......but I think TIME is difficult to capture, and quite limiting in many ways.

With all the thinking I've been doing the last few weeks, I landed up being quite creative this week....my chosen picture I took last week as part of the HOME theme, but kept it back when Linda decided on TIME for this week.

It's a Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow plant, that I had to order online from the one and only nursery in the UK that I could find sells them. I had decided in April, while we were working in the garden, that I wanted one for our garden. I chose this specific picture because it had just one of each of the flowers, signifying Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow.

And so, onto my thoughts.....I'm busy sorting out some bits for my mum at the moment, who turns 79 this year. She currently resides in a care home a few minutes away from our house, and I regularly see her. Some weeks are better than others. Some days I really struggle with having to accept she is getting older.

So, my Yesterday picture is one of my favourites of the two of us, taken when I was 16, as she was taking me to my first term at boarding school in Port Shepstone.

Our family life was always a bit up and down, and I was dreadfully unhappy as a teenager. I asked to go to boarding school to get away from it all. Within a few weeks of me being there my mom had a bad car accident, which resulted in brain surgery. I had to wait until the end of the school year before I could move back home, which I did at the end of Std. 9. My life changed forever with my mom's accident. Within our family, it had always been the girls versus the boys, so I was devastated I had 'lost' her.

So, here we are, 22 years later........my Today picture, of my mum, as she is now.

I played around with the picture a bit, trying to make it a black and white, but not completely so.

My mom is now completely wheelchair bound, and riddled with arthritis. Due to her brain injury (and age) she isn't eligible for joint replacement surgery, so pain relief is about as good as it will get for her.

Onto my Tomorrow........it could only be Maxine, my beautiful daughter, who turns 10 this year.

I worry for her future as she gets older and becomes more aware of how different she is to other children (she has Floating Harbour Syndrome, and consequently far behind educationally). At this point we have no idea of whether she will be able to live independantly as an adult. On one hand, I am immensely proud of how far she's come, but on the other, afraid of how far she still has to go.

All I pray for is that she will be happy, no matter how things turn out.

Linking back to yesterday's questions and answers, hubby arrived home safely late last night with a bag full of treats (only Trev knows how to spend so well!). He completely surprised me with a watch, which is just beautiful.

I love how, after all this TIME together (20 years), he still knows just how to impress me!

That's it from me.....until next week.