My Child's Child

As is common these days, Jai’s extended family is fractured due to divorces and remarriages etc. As a scrapbooker, I am keen for Jai to have as accurate a record as possible of his family tree and have tried to get photos of all his immediate and extended family for his album to show him who is who.

Unfortunately, due to family discord (every family has it) his paternal grandfather and great grandfather don’t have anything to do with each other anymore. I really wanted to get a 4 generation photo of them altogether but that proved impossible. I was led to believe that his great grandfather didn’t want anything to do with him but I figured I would try and contact him myself and just ask if he would mind one photo for Jai’s album.

It was a bit tricky trying to find him as I haven’t had anything to do with my ex-husbands extended family for many years and didn’t really know where to start (well, I did start with my ex husband, but he didn’t have any info that could help). So, thanks to my Google skills and some deduction based on what people’s occupations might be based on their interests that I remembered from all those years ago, I found a nephew who passed on my message. By the end of the day, Jai’s great grandfather had contacted me and agreed to meet for the photos.

Today, Marc, Coby, Jai and I drove to Bendigo to meet with Terry and his new family (at 71, he, and his lovely wife Flora are the proud parents of a 5 week old baby girl – Indiana Nicole). It was a lovely visit and I got the photos I was looking for but also learned couple of things that surprised me.

For a man who, I was led to believe, didn’t want much to do with family, he sure has a lot of family photographs holding pride of place around the house. Even more than that, Terry is not a collector (unlike me who battles to part with anything). He lives with the necessities of life but downstairs, he has a trophy room that displays the many sashes and trophies he has won in his successful cycling career. Surprisingly, hanging from the ceiling are two poster board banners that I made for my kids to wear when they went to watch him and their dad cycle at Calder Park. On one side it had C’mon Pa and the other had Come On Daddy. The kids weren’t even at school when I made these. That makes the boards 20+ years old. I was astonished that he’d kept such a thing and it gave me an insight into the sentiment that he attached to them.

We had a lovely day with Terry and Flora being very hospitable and a visit from Terry’s sister, the family historian, Vivienne and her grandson, Anthony. It was lovely to see them all again.

Terry lives in Bendigo for the Summer and Autumn and moves to his home in QLD for the Winter and Spring, so Jai probably won’t get to see him too often but, I feel hopeful that now that the connection has been made, Jai might get to know his Great Grandpa Terry, Flora and his Great Aunt Indiana (which sounds so funny as she is a year younger than him).