Monday Memories. Family members.

G'Day,
Monday memories prompt site asks us to share a memory each week. This weeks suggestion was to write about a family member.
I choose more than one. I choose my Aunties and Uncles.
I have been lucky in my life to have quite a few family members whom I identify with. My Uncles and Aunties being amongst them.
My Dad's only sister My Aunty Marion whom I loved and whom I think I am a bit like. An earth mother. I hope so anyway. I have written about her on several occasions here in my Blog.
She lived on a 5 acre block on the river bank in a small town in the Hunter valley of New South Wales. My father's birthplace, Merriwa. A life style like that would be my choice if I ever could afford a bit of land and house of my own again. But really, the material things that remind us of passed loved ones are not the things we remember best about them. It is their personal attributes and influence that we try to follow by choice in our own lives.
I loved that she was the kind of person who could not turn away a person in need. That is something I have failed to accomplish, for fear of consequence.
I loved that she was a real worker. That is something that I think I have succeeded at, no matter how unpleasant the work attempted. Ethics and hard work.
She loved her plants and animals and rocks and walks and maybe I inherited those loves of mine from her.
I loved that she stayed in the one house for ever. Something I would love to be able to do, ah well my life is not finished yet is it. I guess that you could call that a yearning for stability. I am between two worlds on that one though. Wanting to explore my country as well as have that home base stability. I don't think she ever traveled much from her own local area during her life.
She influenced me with her jam and pickle making, I love to do that and I hate to see the things I have grown go to waste and want to preserve them. This past season I made fig jam, sweet mustard pickles, bread and butter pickles from cucumber and saved herb and flower seeds to replant next spring when it warms up again. All from the produce in my garden.
Other Aunts and Uncles.
Uncle Bill for his quiet strength and family values.
Uncle Wal for his adventure, quirkiness and love.
Aunty Joan for her acceptance of me and her sociability.
Uncle Roger for his stoicism.
Uncle Charlie for his sense of humor and cuteness, my Dad's twin.
Aunty Marg for her amiability.
Love them all, and others whom I didn't get to spend as much time with due to distance or other reasons. Uncles and Aunties are a definitive influence in our lives. I hope one day I might be thought of as that by some of my family.
And the world turns.
Bye. Love Linda.