21 today

My first born turns 21 on the 30th June and it is amazing the beautiful young women she has become.
We were only watching the film clips of her younger years. So much has happened in our lives both good,bad and ugly. God has been by our side.
I have been so slack with this blog and reading other blogs but I have paid work to attend to.
Staying at home and happily writing and reading books whenever I wish has come to a stand still.
I will still fiercely protect time for me though and in fact turned down a job that involved catching a train at 7.15 in the morning and travelling one hour into the city to teach English.
Instead I am tutoring children with literacy needs and have picked up 2 ESL students at my husband's school. I return to my job at the lavender farm in August of which I enjoy.
There are so many interesting people that come through and so many story ideas.
I have applied for one more year away from my teaching job and hope my direction will become clearer for 2009.
I have been reading Patti Miller's book called 'The memoir book'
Her other titles are fantastic as well.So far my writing just seems to be odd fragments(scraps of paper ,notebooks) all over the place so I am hoping I can get some direction happening.
It is fitting to be reading a book about writing memoir as I reflect on my life and especially the growing up of my daughter.
Patti talks about what is it like for you to be here in this world?
On p38 she states'In memoir what you feel about your life will be revealed,rather than what you think about it,will be revealed in the voice'
Everyone we observe has a life different from us that makes for good stories. When I was in the city last Friday I was really drawn to observing people and their actions,clothes ,voices and wondered about their lives.There was one man in his 60's on the bus carrying a bunch of yellow flowers wrapped in newspaper.He was dressed in a suit.Where was he going? What was his life?He has to be a character in a story!!
Observe ,record,imagine.I am lost in the wonder of it all.I wrote this small piece to somehow start to write about my life through patchwork pieces.

I sighed as I sewed the last stitch into the green homespun.The quilt was puffy and defined with many stitches.My fingers felt abused and jittered now with the stillness of it all.
Feather stitich danced across the colours joining the segments of my life,many shapes connecting merging,crying ,sighing and clearly laughing.Over many months I had spent many hours choosing,cutting and stitching but not only that,my mind wandered back as I touched the fragments of my life.........................