Kiddo’s on a plane now heading to Hong Kong. After a few hours in transit she would then continue on her journey towards New York, where she’d spend the next 10 days or so in Princeton University.

It would no doubt be an exciting time for her and the rest of the team who are there for a forum on third world development or something like that.

We wanted to speak to her before she left but she was in some other event and could only speak to her way past our bedtime. We did however, speak to her over the weekend and she was down with a cold and was coughing a bit but otherwise she seemed fine.

I remember the first and only time I visited New York. It was back in the 90’s when the world trade centre was still a landmark feature towering up all the way into the sky. My colleague and I went up to the roof and had pictures taken there as well as at the ground floor, where a metal sculpture of the globe stood.

That was nearly 20 years ago. I remember darting into a Bloomingdale store to get a little dress for kiddo. We eventually discovered the dress was in fact made in Malaysia so I had travelled half way across the world to buy my daughter a dress which was made in Malaysia.

That little (yellow) dress had since been passed on to various people and I now wonder whether it is still in use and by whom.

These days, when she is in Melbourne, she goes shopping for dresses with Tress sometimes. I sometimes play along and come for the ride, offering my half cent’s worth and making either a lame joke or a flat suggestion. I have a severely under-developed fashion sense and what ideas pop into my head are largely of the practical variety. Sad but true.

Kiddo’s her own person. I’m in a large-ish church full of talents. So I rarely feel the need to do anything. Work’s just the usual flurry of activities and talkfests abound as always. We don’t get/haven’t gotten involved in any other types of organisations or activities. Meeting up with people just for meals (with little other shared interests) is becoming harder work. It all adds up to freedom on the one hand, but also restlessness and aimlessness on the other.

I have been reading the scriptures from scratch again. Praying too. I am about to finish Deuteronomy. I am about to go into the more exciting narratives surrounding the entry into the land flowing with milk and honey, and the heroic conquests of Joshua & Co. I’m not sure how this will provide guidance on what I do with the time ahead of me. It may be that is a short window. It may be, as the ABS now says, it is still a long journey ahead (up to 41 years to go!). But while I can countenance doing the same thing for the next x number of years or for as long as I either need to or don’t die of boredom or frustration or stress, it’d be much more interesting if I’m seeing what difference I would be making to the world around me, other than depleting its natural resources, notwithstanding I am a relatively conservative consumer of goods and services. I guess it’s the age old urge and question of what else might I be doing that would make things more interesting, exciting and less of a grind.

But I guess that’s part of waiting on the Lord. Reading His word and spending time with Him is what I hope will take me to “the answer”. Maybe then I’d find peace and joy in whatever it is that I would do.

20 years from now, Kiddo may reminisce about her trip to Princeton. I hope by then both she and I as well as Tress would continue to press to find purpose and continue to wait on the Lord.

But I wonder where that little yellow dress is now…