Sunshine of my Life

sunshine, on my shoulders - makes me happy
sunshine, in my eyes - can make me cry
sunshine, on the water - looks so lovely
sunshine, almost always - makes me high

Sunshine has always held a place in my heart and since 1975 even more so when I named my lovely daughter 'Sunshine'.

I often laugh to myself when reminiscing, the name conjures up visions of a blonde haired angelic little girl and yet my Sunshine is dark haired, feisty and often more akin to a thunderstorm in personality when you get her on a bad day :) 

Maybe I should have called her Stormy which brings to mind another memory. Apparently my mother whose name is Norma used to be known in her hey day as Stormy Normy and as for myself, well I have been known to have a fiery little temper on occasion although these days it's a facet of my personality not often expressed. Mind you all three of us are what you'd call height challenged but what we lack in height we sure do make up for in personality and I'll leave that statement at that!

Must be one of the family traits we hear about from time to time.... there's a few more of 'em too but I'm not going into them now, I mean I'm writing a blog not an epic novel lol

But back to the days of 'Sunshine' I remember when we were living a colourful life way out west in Boulia, it was 1975 and I was young and full of wild dreams, Sunnie was a babe of just 3 months when we first arrived in that land that time forgot, a place locked in some time warp and a rocky and memorable chapter of our lives was about to unfold.

We befriend-ed a ringer, well the boys did, met him in the pub no doubt, anyway his name was Philly and he was one of many colourful characters that called this land of the Min Min Lights 'home'...for some reason he did like us which was fairly opposite to the general redneck known to inhabit the region in them thar days but that is also another story.  Anyway Philly used to sing  "You are my Sunshine" to baby Sunnie and play along on his harmonica....he's also the person who gifted us his pet camel that was to become affectionately known as "Wilbert".

Sunshine is a wondrous thing to be blessed with, mostly people would think of the weather, fine sunny days, warm balmy days, hot summer days, happy days, lazy days and so on but for me the word has a much deeper meaning, it's my daughter, it's my life, it's those songs from the past that bring a tear to my eyes still today. And I'll continue to smile inwardly and wonder 'what was I thinking' when I chose the name Sunshine for my daughter who incidentally dislikes the name considerably and I have absolutely no idea why:)

I mean really, it's a beautiful name! Think of all those happy little hippy kids that found themselves with the same name way back when and there were plenty of 'em.  I wonder what they are known as today as my Sunshine has chosen to become Sunnie! Can't say I've ever come across another adult Sunshine so I can only assume they've chosen to change their names too. Or maybe I just don't hang around in the right areas, maybe down Northern NSW way there just might be a few adult Sunshine's but come to think of it, it just doesn't seem to sound quite right now all these years up the track!! 

Oh well as I've reminded my Sunshine many times over, think yourself lucky cause the other name that was high on my list at the time was Amber Patchouli....yes it's true! Rather a nice ring to it too don't you think :) At least my Sunnie only got one name, mostly because I couldn't think of anything to go with it....could have been Sunshine Moonstone or Sunshine Rainbow or Sunshine Moonbeam....yeah alright enough already.