Gravity

She had been remembering… she was feeling very nostalgic and memories were flooding in .. taking her back to a time where her life had literally been turned upside down.

It had hit her incredibly hard back then. England, half a world away from her family. The news had come out of nowhere and was not at all what she was expecting. The announcement of her fathers’ illness making her realise life was fleeting, mortal, the futility of it all .. it was ever approaching – the shadow of death, it could not be outrun. Of course it was sped up for some .. the big ‘c’ … nasty and all encompassing and something that could not be beaten.

This was now many years ago now. The news had floored her and put her on her path to now. Not a future she had planned.. packing up her life in England and returning g to New Zealand to spend as many precious years as she could with her Dad. The gravity of the news even now – final, devastating. He tried to outrun it, lasting longer than most doctors gave him but of course in the end, he was gone, the cancer the winner. To another world , another plane, another existence, perhaps even nothing.

It was approaching 15 years without him now and she still missed him and thought of him every single day. She wondered what he would make of her progress. In true ‘Les’ fashion there’d always be something not quite right … not quite perfect. That was her Dad. Always encouraging but never complimenting. In fact she could never remember a time her father had said anything complimentary to her at all. Perhaps this was his way to push her on to better things and a reflection on him, not her.

She remembered back to a time when she was so proud of herself .. she had been crowned runner up in a local beauty pageant – part of the Miss New Zealand heats – and still her Dad’s comment was “second = first loser”. Not good enough, not a winner … second was a failure. Try harder.

This was why, she realised, she had grown up thinking she was never quite good enough. Always second best, strictly average…nothing special. As a result she understood very clearly that this was why she was always second guessing herself .. her decisions.. her choices and her talent.

Parents! They grounded you .. moulded you … they did indeed make you who you were. They were your gravity. How did one escape that conditioning? How did one carve a path different than that was driven by ghosts of parents past? Each generation armed with only the conditioning and moulding they themselves had been subjected to.

She did indeed however, feel blessed with her life, her parents and her family, far and wide. Perhaps that mould could not be broken but it could be challenged and distorted.

Her gravity was hers.