If I knew then...

This is a photo of a pile of stuff ready to be packed up and taken to the new flat where my youngest son and his girlfriend are going to live. On top of the pile is a dhurrie, one of two given to me as wedding present over forty years ago. They had asked if they could take them to the new flat, and I had got them ready to go. Thinking back to that June day in 1974, I realised that I was even younger than they are now. The marriage didn't last, but I have never regretted it. I had a home and stability after the unsettled years of boarding school , with parents on the other side of the world. I got through university with a degree and bought my first house in those early married days. I have watched the process of the flat search in Bakewell, not known for its cheap and cheerful property prices and with a general reluctance on the part of landlords and estate agents to let to young people. Finally they have found one, a great attic space in an old Georgian building. My sensible inner voice thinks that they would be better off continuing to live with me. If they paid me a proper rent and bills, my own financial anxieties would be lifted too. But it's important that they have their own place, learn their own lessons and enjoy their independence. Walking down the steep hill between my house and the town centre I watched a young child running faster and faster, as his mother called 'Be careful! You might fall!' It brought home to me how we give our children negative messages out of fear and hard experience. If I had been warned off my early marriage, I wouldn't have taken that risk. There are many other points in my life where an apparently foolish risk taking took me somewhere I didn't expect to be. Even last year's leap in the dark to become an archive trainee wasn't a sensible move. After all, I had a permanent full time job at the time. I haven't got one now. So taking a chance or two in life is an essential part of growing up and enjoying the process. If I had known then, what I know now, then I would never have had the chance to learn what I now know!