Always smile back at little children. To ignore them is to destroy their belief that the world is good.
Grandad has a long and earnest conversation with his grandchild. He says, you are noisy and wiggly and will be sent back if you don't pull herself together....The baby smiles complacently. She has him exactly where she wants him.
A bag of apples, a pot of homemade jam, a scribbled note, a bunch of golden flowers, a coloured pebble, a box of seedlings, an empty scent bottle for the children. . . . Who needs diamonds and van-delivered bouquets?
However time or circumstances may come between mother and her child, their lives are interwoven forever.
The child who ran weeping to you with a cut finger is now brought home, smiling gamely, with a broken collarbone and incredible contusions- 'it wasn't Jezebels fault, Dad.'