TAMIKA, MY FOREVER BUBBY

I talk a lot about Jarvis here, but not as much about Tamika. I think it is because I do not know where to begin. How do I go back 20 years to tell the story of Tamika my first born? How do I begin to explain how much she means to me, and just how much she has shaped me as the person I am now?

Things were so very different with Tamika. Early, and impatient, she came out screaming at the world in an extremely quick, intensely painful labour, but then she latched onto the breast, sighed and fell into a deep contented sleep. That girl loved to sleep, and at almost 20 years of age she still does.

Being a single Mum, life was different; us two girls stumbled and learnt together. With Tamika at my side we travelled the world, 16 countries by the time she was 16, and experienced life. Together we grew up, me as a woman, and her as a child. Now Tamika is an adult, a woman/child. She is starting her own business and early next year going on her first overseas holiday without me.

We fought, we butted heads as she got older, she made me cry on many occasion with her harsh words. Yet at the end of the day she would still come into my bed and cuddle with me. You don't want your child to support you, but she did, and still does. She is the person I want to turn to whenever I want to discuss something, whether it be the small things or the big things. She encouraged the relationship with Justin, then held my hand through the fertility treatments, the miscarriage, and then through the birth of her brother.

It does not matter how old she gets, or how strong she is in her support of me, for me Tamika will always be my Bubby. I will always love her to the "Blue Moon and back on a blue balloon.