Happy Birthday, Nana

My whole family is in Taupo/or on their way for my Nana's surprise 70th birthday.  Well, the fact that she's having a birthday and is turning 70 isn't a surprise, she's known about this for the last 70 years.  The surprise part is that we're all here.

The story went that her 4 kids were buying her and my poppa a weekend away in Taupo for her birthday, just the two of them.  My parents and brother were coming up too (because after 3 weeks at school, he definitely needs a break), but were staying somewhere different.  

In reality, my family rented 4 houses on the same street, and the WHOLE family is coming.  So there's the immediate family (well, what we consider immediate!), nana, poppa, mum, dad, my brother, my aunty and uncle and their three kids, my aunty and uncle and their kid and two dogs, my uncle and aunty and their 2 kids.  At this stage, that's all that my nana knows about.  What she doesn't know is that the whole rest of the extended family is coming.  Like, over 100 people.  

Actually, her niece and her husband and their 6 kids just showed up.  That means that there are now 4 dogs and a cat here.  And still 9 families to arrive before lunch.

I said the whole time that it was a pretty mean thing to do, nana will be SO upset to be left out of the loop.  

Here's Charlie looking out of the window in my room:

And two of the dogs:

Oddly enough, there's a skylight in the toilet.  It sort of creeps me out.

Here's the view from the main room/deck:

 

And some of the people arriving:

And the obligatory picture of us getting our geek on:

Now, we're having a 'comparing our children' moment, and I'm definitely the winner, so I've got to go and collect my prize!

Love

I was reading 'The Ethical Slut', and one bit jumped out at me.  It said 'Many people believe, explicitly or implicitly, that our capacities for romantic love, intimacy, and connection is finite, that there is never enough to go around, and that if you give some to one person, you must be taking away some from another.'  According to the authors, this leads to people becoming 'very possessive about people, things, and ideas that matter to them. They see the whole world in a limited light, so that anything they get comes from a small pool of not-enough and thus must be taken from someone else...'


I know in my household growing up, this mindset was something my parents wanted me to avoid having.  Both of my parents worked, and they were very devoted parents to myself and my brother.  Family was, and is, extremely important to me.  Holidays, weekends and evenings were spent with people, and I was taught that anything you have, including love, is useless if you fail to share it.

Both of my parents have always been involved in a lot of volunteer work where the focus is on imparting their skills on others.  As a result of this, I have become involved in similar things to what my parents do, and volunteer for things in my own right.  I tend to spend about 15 hours a week volunteering my time; I say this not to boast, but instead to illustrate how important this is to me.  I don't begrudge any time I spend volunteering (well, I try very hard not to, but there are sometimes people who test my patience!).  I have always been taught that volunteering is a way to make myself better, and to give back - the love that I share with people isn't something that's going to run out because I do it too much.

My first boyfriend's parents did not have a good relationship.  They used to fight all the time, and one day while I was sitting with the mother, she burst into tears and said 'I only have so much love to go around, and I love my kids to death, my business is my baby, I love my husband, and that means I don't have enough love left for me.  If I don't love me, who will?'  This has stuck in my mind for nearly 10 years.  At the time, I just felt uncomfortable and sad, and I remember that being the moment where I first started seriously thinking that kids might not be such a good idea for me.  Sure, it took a long time after that to really feel confident in the fact that if I don't have kids, I'm less of a woman, but it was at that moment that the idea seemed realistic.

I always understood, maybe inherently or from the way I was brought up - maybe both - that until you love yourself, you can't love someone else.  Love, in my mind, is sort of like a plant.  If you nurture it and feed it and water it and look after it, it will grow and multiply for you.  If you neglect it, it will get smaller and smaller, and eventually, you'll end up like the crazy cat lady on The Simpsons.

I don't think there's ever a question of not having enough love.  You can always love more. There is no 100% of love, with 10% allocated here, and 20% here.  Love it something you can aways give more of, and you can always find more to give.  Love isn't something you should ration.

In saying that, love isn't something you can give if you're not prepared to get hurt.  Sometimes, from the greatest risks, come the greatest rewards.  Yes, you do risk rejection and heartache and pain, but it is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.

T S Eliot said 'Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.'  Live like this. Live with no regrets.  Love totally and without reservation, always.