... and not feeling nervous - but really, really excited!!!!!!
It's Saturday teatime and tomorrow morning at 4 I have to leave for the airport - I'm all packed - just thinking through what I might have forgotten - and tomorrow I go to Ethiopia - wow, wow ,wow!!!!!!! For a week and then to Kenya for a week - lots more wows!!!!
I have been over to my Mum's today with my sister Fiona and for the second week reading some of my Father's letters to my Mum. They met in Germany in 1945 at the end of the second world war - and after very few weeks (3-6 my Mum moves the figure) became engaged - and then my Dad was posted to Abyssinia (Ethiopia) for a year.
So last week I started to look at my Dad's letters - to see if I could see where he had been posted etc. I discovered that he had spent quite a lot of the time in Nairobi - but beyond that very little abut the places he was stationed - or what he saw etc.
But what I did read was extraordinary; the outpourings of love from a young man to a young woman - separated by half a world. They wrote daily (with occasional misses - explained with love and details of 'no light' or 'a party at the Mess') and it was just beautifully from the heart.... real love letters...... letters of love from a young (remarkably innocent and naive) young man to the love of his life. Bufffffffff
I read some out to my Mum...... we cried last week - so this week I selected more.... she hasn't been able to face these letter before - but I think she will now start to read them again on her own. The love of 66 years - in the words of a young man. So amazingly beautiful. I nearly wrote poignant - but I don't think it is poignant - I think it is JUST BEAUTIFUL - that my Mum can read the words of love, written from the heart - from the love of her life. The fact that he wrote them 68 years ago is irrelevant, the fact that he is dead is irrelevant. He loved her then and he loved for all the rest of the 66 years they were together - she misses him so much - but to have been loved like that is truly special.....
My Mum says often - I'm so lucky - and today witnessing this - she is.... I have become strangely short of words - bit overwhelmed by it really.
Then tomorrow I go to Ethiopia!
Lots more stuff in my heart... but the restlessness of the night before travel has come over me - and I need a really early night.......
WOW!!!!! - the only word to describe how I feel tonight, blessed, deeply appreciative and so EXCITED!!!
