Currently in the Blog my daughter Brady the “baby girl with no name” is only three months old but today (10/6/16) she turns 21.

Brady is an amazing person, she is smart, she is funny, she is sassy.  She has a work ethic like no other 21 year old I know, she is the first to say she has the first dollar she ever earnt sewn to the inside of her knickers.

I see the artistic similarities to J every single day. She has kept journals and diaries full of poems and her masterpiece sketches through her life. Brady’s life has not always been easy, for she has me as a mother. I have always done the right thing not the easy thing and our lives have not always been easy I can tell you. I am so conscious that Brady more than anyone has had to live with the consequences of all the hard roads I have deliberately stopped at, indicated and turned down and every step of the way she is there beside me (yap, yap yapping – dear god sometimes she just never shuts up but I know this is her way of distracting me from my greatest enemy – my own thoughts and memories).

Brady and I have struggled financially, Jesus we ate a lot of soup, but her education was important and I made that my priority.  Today Brady is in second year at Melbourne University (I will say it every chance I get. My daughter goes to MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY) studying a double major in Sociology and Media & Communication (she wants to be a journalist). She works two jobs, during the day between lectures at a clinic for autistic children and in the evening delivering pizzas in her tiny little 13 year old car she calls Felipe dreaming of owning a 5 year old White VW Golf she can’t quiet decide on a name for.

Brady writes beautifully, with insight and humor and I love reading her stories (NOT her Uni essays on 16th Century Mexican Politics – Please?!) but today I am going to share with you some of her first masterpiece poems, I carry them with me on scrappy bits of paper, they are precious and always make me chuckle. I think she was about 7 when she wrote these, she nearly always wrote about animals (horse mad) and  they always came with a “Comments Please” box.

Happy Birthday to my dear sweet fabulous warrior child – as long as I am standing on this battlefield I know exactly where you’ll be – right beside me (yapping away), and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Oh I love you so.

Your Mum.

(S)

‘B’ the author at work age 7