What Memory Makes you Smile?

An old photo (Dec 2023) that flashed up earlier on my iPad, as they do. Two rather younger Gdds, then 8 and 3, very happily showing two bun tins of mince pies ready for the oven - they’d put in the mincemeat and the pastry stars on top.

Hockey was probably the only thing I missed. 😂

A memory that came up on Facebook the other day was pictures of my husband taken on a day I got him for his birthday 15 years ago. It was to spend the day with birds of prey, handling them and flying them. He looked so happy.

An odd but very poignant memory that makes me smile is being in a M & S Cafe, mum, me, DD and GS. The ladies at the next table said how jolly our four generations looked, and how lucky we were to be out and about together.

(Mum went into our local hospice the next week, for her last 11 days 😿)

We brought our rescue dog home from BlueCross and left him in the house for an hour while we went out shopping. On our return , he was visible through the glass kitchen door, and at the sight of us his new "owners" his tail wagged furiously from side to side.He was clearly very pleased to see us , in his new home, away from the stress of the kennels who , of course , had done a wonderful job in caring for him , but they can't prevent some animals from getting stressed it comes with the territory.
I've never forgotten that first show of joy. Repeated many times and in many ways for years afterwards.
If I'd had a tail , mine would have been wagging as well !

Two best memories having my daughter placed in my arms after a long delivery and the day I opened the letter which said I was now an S.R.N.

Holidays I had as a child with my mother's family. They were so kind and generous. It is lovely now to sit and ponder and remember all the happy times with them 60 years ago. It was always summer.

My sister died in a road accident and we were all gathered at her house, my parents, my other sister and me with DH and teenage children. We had bought some sandwiches for lunch from a nearby sandwich shop and were sitting in the living room eating them when we heard an almighty crash from the kitchen. We rushed through. My sister had had to bring her two cats with her and they had jumped on the work top and put their heads in the empty sandwich bags to eat the contents left at the bottom. The bags got stuck on their heads, in trying to get them off they had fallen off the worktop and were blundering around the kitchen with paper bags on their heads.

We all started laughing, and somehow that broke the black inertia that enveloped us and gave us the strength to start doing all the things that needed doing.

Strangely when ever I think about those daft cats staggering around with bags on their heads, or any thing reminds me of them. I still smile.

I have two special memories, seeing my daughter age 3 smile at me three days after major heart surgery!
My other rather self centred memory like Samsaral was opening a letter saying I was a RSCN!

Cooking shrimps my boys had caught over a driftwood fire on the beach at Dunure Ayrshire. Summer days but freezing water and them fishing in rock pools. We had many happy days there over the years

Awwwww Fartooold - was it your little girl who had the major heart surgery ? I hope she is doing well now and thriving

I had two ginger cats and they used to sit on the pillars on either side of gate in my front garden. One was longhaired and looked a bit like a lion and the other was shorthaired, very stripey and looked slightly like a tiger. They were both very sweet and friendly and liked attention from passers by.

My youngest child 6/7 at the time telling me he had had the best day of his life.

His father and brother were mountain climbing in Switzerland, he was too young so stayed with me in Interlaken.
Our hotel didn't have a pool and he was in a filthy mood.

We found the best public pool ever with a flume, cafe, everything,
We had the whole place to ourselves until after lunch he just went up and down that slide for hours.

When we met up with his Father and brother, they tried to tell him how beautiful it was on the mountain, how they had done a dog sled ride etc.

He said “I don’t care because I have had the best day of my life”

Some years later my husband did the hike with him.

My DD at the age of five for some reason convinced herself that her knees didn't bend in the middle like other people's did when she walked. As a result, she had to check about every 6 feet by standing on the spot and bending them up and down several times (a bit like Monty Python's Ministry of Silly Walks.) I was quite concerned and mentioned it to her Head Teacher at Infants' School. She told me that the best way to deal with it was not to react, just ignore it and she would grow out of it.

Come DD's first Class Assembly, we were all gathered in the School Hall, including all the staff and the Head Teacher. Her class filed in after all the other children were there sitting on the floor, eager to see the assembly. DDs class filed in last and, sure enough, DD stopped every few feet to bend her knees up and down. I looked over at the Head Teacher and she was desperately trying to cover up the fact that she was crying with laughter at DD's shenanigans!

I looked over and gave her an "I told you so!" look. We went on to become good friends over the years both in and out of school.

That memory still makes me smile