Are people blind or just doing it to annoy me?

It is so sweet when homesickness bites to have a visit from loved ones.  It is the greatest antidote to that illness.  This week my Mum and aunt arrived fresh from N Ireland to Malta and I am tickled pink.  I even love overhearing them talking to each other in the bedroom early in the morning as they converse from their single beds.  

They talk non-stop about family things, relatives, past incidents, present events and it all serves to remind you that we are connected in so many important ways.  You gain an appreciation of how hard life was in their days.  How much even young children were expected to work, how little they had and how grateful they were for even the smallest gift.  Each week my grandfather, on the farm, would take down the sweet jar and each of his five children would get one sweet.  That was it just one and then they would wait a week for the next one.  They didn’t resent this, they looked forward to this special occasion.  

My mother would get up on a Saturday and cycle all the way to her hockey match and then after a hard game cycle home.  Immediately, she would start on the weekly baking on the old range, which was notoriously temperamental.  Any burnt offerings were given to her eldest brother, Hugh, to eat.  She produced soda farls, buns, cakes, wheaten bread in abundance and did this year after year from the age of thirteen.  Every morning they would start the day with porridge, which had steamed on the range all night, covered with fresh cream.  Then it was a cooked breakfast with a cup of tea.  This was the daily routine and all five of those children thrived on this fare.  What child would get this today?  Who has the time to bake, prepare a cooked breakfast each morning and walk miles to school.  Yet don’t those days sound strangely idyllic compared to today’s soulless snatched biscuit or cereal shovelled down before racing out the door.  Imagine waking up to the smell of food and sitting at a table full of good food and family sitting elbow to elbow round it.  The chats, the laughter, the shared space, without them is it any wonder that most of us today need paid therapists just to get through the day?  So, these mornings when I have breakfast with my lovely visiting relatives round the kitchen table I am so grateful for the abundance of everything.

PS the only thing that bugs me is the number of people along the sea front who stop and ask if we are sisters, my mother, my aunt and myself.  Are people blind or just doing it to annoy me?

PPS yesterday in MacDonalds (they do the cheapest coffee) an elderly Maltese man approached the three of us and said that his wife had died two years ago and he wanted to show us her picture.  He showed the Maltese ID card with her photo on it and I kid you not she was identical to me.  My mother claimed it looked exactly like me, in fact she thought it was me and misunderstood him and thought he’d taken a photo of me.  How weird life can be and how moving too and he said goodbye to me with such exaggerated courteousness.