Summer Holidays

In continuance of my previous post, I have to admit that I can't seem to shake the blues. I am not having relationship problems at all. That is one department that has been very strong for almost 3 years now. Can baby blues be setting in so long after birth? My baby is almost 7 months old. It is difficult to deal with so many mixed emotions. I watched an old movie yesterday on Hallmark, The Wishing Tree. It made me realize again the innocence of a child. How easy it is for us to jump to conclusions and judge others. I sometimes wish I could be a child again. To be able to just lie in the sand, staring at the clouds and dreaming about being a grown up. How easy it just all seemed way back then?

I have always told my children to stay children as long as possible and not to be in a hurry to become grown ups. You should see the puzzled looks on the faces. As if they are thinking WTF?? Isn't the whole aim in life to become a grown up? Well, if what I am going through now is a grown up thing, I am going to petition the government to cancel "Grownups!!" and allow us to stay children forever.

When I was starting High School, we lived about 2 kilometers from the sea. During school holidays, we used to pack a picnic basket and walk to the beach. We included myself, my sister, my brother and the two girls from next door. The beach was a quiet spot. We would spend the whole day there eating peanut butter sandwiches and drinking mix-a-drink. Sometimes we were lucky that other people also joined us and every now and then there would be a nice guy and all of us would try to win his attentions. This lead to several holiday romances. Our parents were only too happy that we were able to keep ourselves busy and always knew where to find us if they needed to. I must admit that we were very good back then. But then again, that was a safe time. We could walk the 2 kilometers to the beach through a bush path without being scared of stalkers or attackers or rapists. We could spend the whole day at the beach just lying around and didn't need our computers, playstations or mini ipods. We would take my Gran's little radio and batteries and have music for the whole day. We didn't worry about brand names, cd's were unknown back then. A set of rollerskates(rollerblades were still being invented then) and a skateboard was enough to keep 5 of us busy for hours. Later we would "borrow" my dad's car(fittingly a beatle) and drive down to the beach. Peanut butter sandwiches and mix-a-drink were replaced by braaivleis and Esprit. But then the neighbor's moved away and summer holidays changed.

My parents developed an urge for camping. We used to spend Easter Holidays at Gamtoos. It is a camping spot between Port Elizabeth and Jeffreys Bay. If you could afford it back then, you would go to Jeffreys Bay. It was always the same people who went there. Obviously more holiday romances. I haven't been there since I was 16. This was a tough time. Saying no when your hormones have started kicking in, was very difficult. I was so scared of my mother that I would never even think of "doing it" with a boy. Hey, there was no harm in snogging!! We would sneak off to Jeffreys Bay again in a car stolen from an unsuspecting parent and hang with the "cool kids" and rush back before dark to avoid being grounded by our parents. We would do the family thing and have supper together, but as soon as supper was finished, we were allowed to find our friends again. I remember dancing in tents, laughing a lot and snogging a lot, walks in the moonlight on the beach or just a bunch of us lying outside the little shop staring at the stars. Of course still lots of snogging sounds all around!! Then I met my first serious boyfriend and I would never be the same again.