Now that my time for attending the Christian writing conference is only a few days away,  my mother and older sister are full of advice. "Make sure you have a hanky in your pocket or up your sleeve," and "Eat plenty and don't hang back," and "See that you speak slowly and clearly and look people in the eye," and, "Don't be nervous because many other people might be just as scared as you." (In fact I didn't tell them I'm scared. They just seem to assume that I will be. If I reply that I'm actually quite confident in my material, they don't seem to hear). Anyway, the advice that I'm getting from them is practically the same, word for word, as the advice I used to get from them when I was in Primary School. Then they finish off with, "You'll be great if you just remember my advice, Missy." When I was very little, instead of calling me by my name, everybody in my family used to call me "Missy" all the time and my mother & sister still do it, even though I'm only a few years short of 40. A few weeks ago when Blake was sick with croup, they both told me over the phone, "You have to steam up his bedroom!" and seemed quite surprised when I told them that we'd already thought of this most basic step. "We didn't know you knew!"

I used to get very irritated at being treated as the helpless baby sister. I'd try my hardest to prove that I'd earned the right to be treated as a grown-up, but felt that people still treated me like a 6-year-old when I was 12, like a 12 year-old when I was eighteen, and like a teenager when I had my first baby, aged 25. Now I think they still regard me as a young, inexperienced mother of little children. Not so long ago, my brother & his wife gave my 12yo son the simplest of dot-to-dot books. I explained to him later, "They assume that you must be only little because they haven't stopped thinking of me as the baby sister."

My point of acceptance came about five years ago, when I was sitting at my parents' house, telling them that I wasn't sure whether or not I'd like a third baby. Dad said, "I can remember when we were discussing the same thing, just before we decided to have you. Mum and I crept up to look at Julie & David while they were sleeping, and I distinctly remember saying, 'They're so cute and they're growing so fast, it'll soon be too late. We have to have another one."

As soon as he said that, a penny clicked in my head and I knew the reason why they persisted in treating me like the baby well into my thirties. It was because that was what they had me for! My parents wanted one final baby. My role in the family had been set in their heads before I was born. No wonder nothing I did would make them stop. I wished I'd understood and accepted this fact years earlier and saved myself loads of frustration and extreme efforts to make myself appear "grown up". It's such a simple fact but I overlooked it for so long, I might type it out in bold print just to make it stand out. There is no point in trying to change what your family think of you.  Whatever you do, family are very fixed in their minds just where you fit in. You might as well just accept this and quietly get on with your own life.  I guess this holds true whether you're the "responsible" eldest child, the "rebellious" middle one or the "baby". Having said this, of course, I'm going to make the attempt not to do this with my children. I think homeschooling helps. When we go out as a family, everyone just piles into the car and participates in whatever we're doing.

Please spare a thought and a prayer for me when I fly up to sunny Queensland on Thursday morning. I'm not sure I'll log on again before then so I'll catch up when I get back.