One Birthday...

My Chile Girl was a very chill baby. Adorable ~ much ~ but with very decided ideas of her own, like my family not passing her round like a rag doll to be smothered in kisses & cuddles, or scooped up & bear hugged by some complete stranger. Fussy.  That's my girl.

And because she looks slim & frail & rather ethereal lots of people make the mistake of thinking she is delicate & sweet & accommodating.  Nothing could be further from the truth. My CG is one of my soccer ones.  Until she was about 13 she always played on the boy's teams [because that was all there was] so she grew up tough.  Tough enough to board a plane for Chile via Holland all alone at 21  to be a missionary in a country whose language she did not speak & whose culture she knew nothing about.

She is a strong independent young woman who has just boarded a plane for Ecuador for 10 days intensive training but something of the little girl remains.  She rang me [what else are mothers for?] to discuss who she should fly with because there was a prolonged stopover & not all South American countries are equally safe. What would I know?  I've never been to South America.

And as mothers do, as my daughter dithered between differing risk factors, I pointed out bluntly [as only mothers can] her biggest problem was pride.  She didn't want to be the one arriving late because of the route she took. Hmmmm.  I think I need to work on my tact factor ~ but if you knew CG like I know CG you'd realise CG in a dither can dither for quite some time & it is best to pop the bubble early & bring her back to reality.

But today is her birthday. If she were here there would be presents & pavlova & lots of spoiling.  Instead there are FB posts of  candles stuck in  lamingtons & missed skype calls, complete strangers leaving uninterpretable messages in a foreign language & vast swathes of sea between me & thee.

The away birthdays are starting to add up & the ache of missing hurt more ~ which is very strange because last year she was home on furlough & actually here for her birthday.  Perhaps that's why...

Anyway, Happy Birthday, Gorgeous Girl.  May it be a blessed one.