Have you heard the expression, there’s a book inside everyone, but unless there is a compelling reason to write one, the book inside of you will never get written? Well, you have to have a compelling reason to do anything in life that will stretch your limits, so I thought I would share this excerpt of my first page.
The day was Monday, 9 April 2012, 40 days into our 49-day holiday. We had taken eleven flights, and there were just two more to go before we ended our tour that had taken us to Singapore, explored Australia, sailed to Tasmania, then on to New Zealand, back to friends in Brisbane, then stopping off in Thailand before home.
Sitting next to the pool at the hotel just a few feet from the golden beach, this was the first time in 419 days since leaving Kiddicare that I had had the mental strength to put pen to paper “without stopping before starting,” as had been the case up until now, because of the pain inside my head screaming, mostly in silence for the loss.
The loss of not being wanted or needed, being forgotten, tossed onto the scrapheap of life to fade away quietly, without fuss or bother but, most of all, the loss of not continuously building a life with the ones who meant more to me than any amount of money or success, and along with all the things that happened in our lives that had gone, never to be known by generations to come.
By this time, after having 419 days to reflect on the last 60 years of my life, I now started writing and; as they say, time is a healer, which is probably true, but I think it’s more like time teaches you to hide those feelings.
So these are my reflections, my thoughts and my memories; there have definitely been some challenges and, as they say, “far too much information.” Some I have deleted from this book but, anyway, this should give the reader a real look into the life of a family business.