Seeing Sociologically ...
It's my birthday today - 49 - and my mother and the brother who is speaking to me (Mark) and his wife (Philippa) took me out to dinner. We went to a really nice but simple bistro in Parnell. The owner is the daughter of good friends of my mothers. Brigid, the Maitre d' (Maitresse really) is someone I grew up with, and whose mother is a good friend of my mothers... my other brother's in-laws (the one who isn't talking to me) were there by coincidence as well. After we'd eaten and were sitting there chatting, a tall, blonde woman about my age walked up to Mum, kissed her and said "I've been sitting here waiting for a chance to talk to you !" - the daughter of one her closest friends, and someone I haven't seen in at least 2 decades - a very lovely woman, her paternal grandfather was a big newspaper owner in the 1940s and 50s.
I am utterly convinced that if we had tried to, we could have found a contact of some sort at every other table in the place. It was back in my old hood, it was back in the midst of the people I'd been raised with, and expected to join. By this stage in my life, if all had gone to plan, I should have had a nice house in the Eastern Suburbs, a wife like the women there tonight, and a couple of kids who'd been to the right schools, the same ones I had been to.
My life turned out differently.
I am very glad it did.
I am utterly convinced that if we had tried to, we could have found a contact of some sort at every other table in the place. It was back in my old hood, it was back in the midst of the people I'd been raised with, and expected to join. By this stage in my life, if all had gone to plan, I should have had a nice house in the Eastern Suburbs, a wife like the women there tonight, and a couple of kids who'd been to the right schools, the same ones I had been to.
My life turned out differently.
I am very glad it did.