Today is an indulgence: of family, of celebration

It was at the outbreak of the Great Depression that lasted through most of the 1930s, where in a small suburban Hospital, in a unfussed yet gritty suburb of Melbourne that a life that has now expanded across the lip of two Centuries, drew her first breath.

Across those early years, she has survived the privation of economic restriction, when her father was often out of work, on 'susso' and then away seeking labour in order to provide. Of her mother, not certain of next week's rent and who would deprive herself stoically so that her children would be fed. Where a raucous education took place and the blossom years of being a teenager begun. Of a bleak, grey existence, yet brightened with the colours of sustaining love.

It was a time when came a defining War that measured her generation with the threat of bloody ruin. Where everything from butter to tea, dripping on bread, from shoes to hats, petrol and sugar were rationed and the boys away. Where anxiety and sleepless nights robbed innocence.

Then times of a long peace and prosperity, full employment and a Nation intent of civic duty. Of courtship and marriage and her own children. Of years spent watching those children through their tribulations and exaltations, grow and have children of their own. It was of emotional tumult and of love that ebbed and flowed along with the buffetings of melancholic passings. And, now, a gentle drift into quiet old age. Of a son, grateful for his birth and his nurturing.

This is for my mother, who claims 80 years of age, today.

The African Violets (perhaps Primulas) - her favourite plant - a symbol of her beauty and of endurance.