Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets. ~Arthur Miller

Ok... so lets see how this goes, I have taken up the gauntlet thrown down by Olga and will try to write something everyday in this month of March..... like most of my diaries and calenders I think that it will last - well maybe a week.


So todays quote is the result of a conversation I had with mum after dinner tonight, it's one we have had on and off for over 25 years... why did my parents move to Australia and was it the wrong decision.


I remember the first time that this came up in conversation.  I was in the back seat of the car on the way home from my sister and brother in laws' place in Padbury, a place that was then on the farthest NW outskirts of Perth, it was over an hours drive from their place to ours so often there were a lot of philosophical discussions about this that and the other.  I used to tune out most of the time - but on this occasion as we were approaching Wanneroo rd I remember dad saying to mum " did I do the wrong thing making us coming here?"  I think I was about 14 years of age, this question from dad came as a bit of a surprise, as we never really discussed this - well I hadn't been aware of this being discussed before.  I think that mum was like dad - maybe missing Iceland and feeling that life might have been different for us if we had never gone to Perth.  One of my brothers was in the army living on the east coast, the other had worked in a factory from the time we arrived and was married, studying and working hard, my sister and her husband were probably struggling to make ends meet... me I was a painful youngest child in the early stages of teenage angst and probably always gave them a hard time with my set ideas about finishing high school and going back to Iceland....  


I remember feeling that this was wrong - they should not be having regrets about the move... life was good, my siblings were all happily married - doing their best to make a life for themselves, yeh sure I was a pain and had no idea what I wanted to do with my life (apart from finishing high school and going to Iceland)... so my basic reaction was to say - Well... had we never left Iceland you know that I would be a single teenage mum. Yep, I was convinced that had we stayed in S'krók I would have had a child before the age of 16, why? no idea, it was just the way that I viewed Icelanders of my age and how I would have fitted in.  I am so grateful for the fact that my parents were as courageous as they were, moving to the other side of the world, not speaking english and basically going out into the unknown.  Mum said that she didn't think it was courage - more stupidity - I don't buy into that.


Tonights conversation ended up revolving around the fact that had they not moved to Australia the beautiful people that are my nieces and nephews may never have existed.. which to me would have been a major tragedy...  Life is what life is - one should never have regrets or if you have to have regrets (which, again, I don't believe anyone should) then hope that they are the right regrets....  Maybe I regret not being a teenage mum - but I reckon I make a better aunt than mother.