Colin is working and Johanna is doing homework, so I find myself with some free head space.
Two things have changed this time away – Johanna will no longer let me take photos of her (boo hoo) and she has not wanted to write any blogs. Colin and I have embraced it as something of a discipline and Johanna, this time, has not felt like writing, which is OK but..... I have been thinking about our blog site and how the absence of her ‘voice’ makes a difference. The three of us usually write fairly consistently, with our other children occasionally adding a post or two. We each have a different style and write about different things. Our intention is to record our journey, to tell a story, to put words and pictures to our experiences and to have something tangible to look back on. It is memory recorded.
Our writing reflects our personalities and roles to some degree. Colin likes to think and reflect, it is a means of processing his thinking and experiencing. I tend to focus on the what and where. We want to have a record of our journey and when no-one else wants to blog, or wants to record the what and where, it falls to me. Johanna does both these things from her own perspective and I have missed her contribution. There is something missing from the story this time, it does not feel complete. There are three years of recorded observation, perspective, story and feeling, capturing the world of a ten year old through to an adolescent.
I am hoping this is just a hiccup, not the end of something that is so precious. Johanna loves to write, would one day like to be a writer….so there is hope that her voice is not lost, just absent for a bit.
