General News
2 August, 2024
Struggling to manage trophy overload: Grosser family's unique dilemma
How does Yolande handle Kym's overflowing trophy collection?
Wimmera
A Mum's World
My husband has boxes and boxes of trophies - literally - it's hard to know what to do with them.
Early in our marriage I put lots of awards on display - young love.
Three decades later, there is a smattering of the attractive trophies on the fireplace in the living room and... oh, it looks like I packed away the collection of cute ones off the piano when the dust from the fireplace got too much for me.
Kym has always raced motorbikes, very successfully.
In the last decade, I started to get pretty miffy when he would go away for a whole weekend to a race meet, leaving me home with three children, again, then walk back in the door late Sunday night with a trophy for each of his adoring daughters. Grrr.
Where was my trophy for surviving another weekend home alone?
Up until last weekend, I've only ever been presented with one trophy.
Long, long ago in the golden age of 1980 when I was in Grade Five, Lisa Dalenburg and I won our category in the billy cart race.
We tore around the quadrangle at school as fast as lightning.
Well, it felt like it anyway.
That trophy was well worth winning.
Handmade by a classroom teacher, it was a paper mache and pipe cleaner 3D depiction of a billy cart and driver, mounted on painted black chipboard.
The billy cart was painted gold with the driver gripping that golden pipe cleaner steering wheel. Glorious.
I kept that trophy for at least a couple of decades until the dust did it in - paper mache is hard to polish.
My three girls have been presented with some pretty special medallions, awards and plaques over the years, including citizenship awards, which were absolutely thrilling, and precious prizes for piano, singing and dancing.
For me personally though, there has been a big fat nothing on the trophy front since Grade 5.
Until last weekend. We won a trophy at the Wimmera Music Eisteddfod.
Yes, my singing group won our section! Woohoo! I'm telling everyone we are trophy winners.
I'm not telling quite as many people that there were only three competitors in the section, but heck, a win is a win right?
Going for gold and we got it!