Btw – my son Liam took the above picture!
Driving to work this morning I was thinking about a blog entry Noid’s mom wrote, (read it: HERE) about her life as a wife and mother. When I read it the first time I cried… and every subsequent time. She writes beautifully, sincerely and with so much love for her husband and children, it touched the very fiber of what family is about. How wonderful it must be to have experienced such absolute dedication, belief, and commitment! I am truly envious…. in a big way.
Noid’s Mom has something I will never have… style, grace and “a white picket fence.”
A “white picket fence” happens when a girl meets a boy; they fall in love, get married, have 2.4 children, and live in the suburbs. They love each other very much, they have sex three times or week (that is what the books say people!!) their house is a home, they are a close, warm, loving unit who adore their children… and although they have their up’s and down’s, they work on their differences and continue to give to their relationship… hence, they live happily ever after i.e. no divorce for them! Yay! Fairytale.
Btw, if the original girl and boy end up disliking each other with her hoping he would spend more time playing golf, and him wishing she would spend the afternoon with her mother, friends or anywhere really… as long as she is far away from him……. but stay together for the kids/money/fear/fill in reason here…. but smile lovingly for their annual family picture, beautifully illustrated on a Christmas card, they do not get awarded the “white picket fence” badge. Sorry.
Although you are not your past and you get to reinvent yourself anytime you choose, in terms of the world at large, you only get one chance at the traditional “white picket fence” badge. Sorry, en so. Mess it up… and you become a failure “divorcee” (a word I dislike almost as much as the Afrikaans word for nipple!), a single parent, or a blended family (at least that sounds colourful!) and if you very intelligent and oulik, you get to think of a fabulous, fanTy name like “The Waltons”! (Your many, many, many children, mine many, many, many children and our bed.)
Because your life was not as you imagined, you are not disqualified for the “white picket fence” badge. Do not give up. No! But, if you phone now… You can and you must try again! …. BUT – because you are now singularly blended and colourful, as a consolation prize you get to invent your own fence! Yay! No more virginal white for you.
I want my white picket singularly blended fence to be yellow with purple flowers (… and the green roof of our house in the distance – postcard perfect huh?). I want it to represent love, life and laughter abundantly… just like the “white picket fence” of old.
I think my securities far outweigh my insecurities. I am not nearly as afraid of myself and my imagination as I used to be.
– Billy Connolly
Nocturnal Wenchy 
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