Blogging & friendship...

When I first jumped into this blogging malarkey, I don't know what I expected of it, or for that matter, why I was doing it... I'd been reading blogs for a while and I guess I just wanted to join in... wanted to create, write... document my life... stop and smell the coffee (or tea, in my case)... Life is there, happening every day on your doorstep and all too often, we close the door on it. Letting it slip by without even a mention... but the simple act of recording life's daily events makes us slow down, linger on an image viewed through once-tired eyes... it was all there before, but there was never a reason to capture it, a reason to preserve these precious times...

When I was very little, I found a four-leaved clover on the lawn (we didn't maintain the grass too well). I plucked it from the ground and placed it in our huge leather-bound family dictionary and it is still there to this day. You can open that book today and that memory of lying on the grass on a hot summer's day is right there somewhere in the middle of a musty old page... probably around the letter M's... and that is how I feel about this blog... one day I read these entries and be taken back these happy days...

Anyhoo, this blog has now become so much more than a record of my life... it has brought me something very dear... friendship... Friendship from people I will probably never meet, other than in 'Blogland'... but, nevertheless, I feel the warmth of their friendship, as though it were the sun streaming through my windows. It can be in the form of an e-mail to check how I am or some encouraging words posted in a comment... but, today, friendship came in a parcel...

The lovely Melissa, who writes Miss Sew and So, sent a parcel for me and my girls for Christmas via snail mail... it landed on my doorstep today... So, beautifully-wrapped, I welled up at the sheer thoughtfulness of it... even if it had been an half-eaten Mars bar in there, it wouldn't have mattered (for the record, it wasn't... it was a box of loveliness)...

I cannot express enough gratitude... this random act of kindness tells me that friendship can cross an ocean... can be gained via an exchange of words in an e-mail or merely a comment at the end of a post...

When I first corresponded with the sweet Melissa, I mentioned that she was like a modern day pen-friend, and the beauty of this blog is that I feel I can now say I have so many pen-friends... fortunate for you guys, though, you don't have to endure my awful written French!
Take care all, and, if you get a chance, pop over to Melissa, and just tell her how wonderful she is...

Lx