Happiness is the sounds of home

The Whittle family at the time

Luky;
What seems like only the other morning I was busy in one of the bedrooms. Garbled sounds came from all over the house. A child was practising on the piano. My husband was teaching Latin to another: "Can't you use your head? No Ma, O Romans is NOT O'Romanes. You keep out of this - you know about as much Latin as he does!"
The baby lay gurgling in her cot. A child was playing with her doll, and two little boys were squabbling about a Dinky toy. As I listened, my heart filled with joy. "This," I thought, "is happiness."
Since my boarding school son was back with me, I often felt this way. To me, there is something enchanting about having all my chicks under my wings, even if they do turn into fighters at times.
However, this happy state of affairs was doomed to end soon. My eldest child was soon to complete her matric and leave the family circle. I knew that if all went according to expectation, No. 2 would be ready to depart two years later.

I knew then that from the moment my first child left home, I would never again know such deep joy and contentment as I experienced that morning. Every mother has to surrender her children after bringing them up. It is nature's way, so I don't ask for it to be different. I just give thanks for having been allowed to keep them as long as I did.

In addition I tried to make the remainder of my eldest child's stay with us as pleasant as possible. My husband agreed, and so we came to the joint decision to make the most of family get-togethers such as weekend, public holidays and birthdays. However, as my hairdresser and discreet confidante remarked:
"Things do always seem to go topsy-turvy for you people, don't they?" A case in point was the holiday we didn't go on.

Another was the birthday issue. "We've been organising this whole thing badly", my husband explained. 
"On a birthday my mother always produced a lace cloth, her best crockery and an enormous iced fruitcake. Why can't we do the same?"
"Why not," I agreed, "provided you buy the cake from a good confectioner. I'm no good at doing icing, and the ingredients for a fruitcake are so expensive that we may as well pay the experts and have them do the whole job." 

Thus it happened that my husband called at the bakery on the occasion of the next birthday in the family, which happened to be his own.
 "We can't ice the cake for you at this late stage", the woman behind the counter told him,
"But I can sell you a fruitcake to ice yourselves."
Hiding his disappointment, my husband asked if she could let him have some candles, which he thought were sold in boxes. Happy to be able to do something, the woman produced birthday candles. 
"What colour would you like your candles?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"Would you like blue or pink?"
"I'm not fussy", my husband said magnanimously. "Give me any colour you have."
"I'm afraid you don't understand, sir", the woman replied patiently. "Is the party for a boy or a girl?"

Comprehension dawned, and my husband nervously fingered his wallet. "Well, I suppose you might say it's for a boy", he ventured, hopeful of hiding the boy's identity. 
"I see. In that case you'll be wanting blue candles. Now tell me, how old would this boy be?"
Confession was never like this, my husband thought desperately, but since she kept looking inquiringly at him, he stammered, "F-forty-four."
She looked across at his venerable bald patch and he could see her putting two and two together.
"I see," she commented pleasantly, and to her undying credit she kept as straight a face as the salesman did the day my mother asked him for pants with long sleeves. But my husband did not get over his embarrassment.

"I'll never set foot in that shop again", he vowed.
"As for your daughter, from now on she'll just have to put up with our inadequacies and take us as we are. It's not too soon for her to find out you just can't teach an old dog new tricks."