Rock

Logically we're doing great. We are being so blessed by people around us, and our four kids here are happy and healthy. We brought bikes home from the cellar in Morecambe that we have only used twice and the boys have been riding them round the back of the house. Rocky is hooked - he rides first thing in the morning, in the rain and the bits in between, and sneaks down after he's got his pyjamas on at night for one more turn.  


 Ace is excited because he's worked out he only needs ten more points (our pocket money substitute) to get the Lego set he wants, and is offering to do jobs all over the place so he can earn them. He even offered to make a big mess so he could get points for tidying it up.  


 Baby had fun today using rocks to draw pictures, but as they were on the side of my uncle's Landrover, none of the adults thought this was fun, and she spent the rest of the day inside. 


 Turtle heard me singing about a Cornerstone from a new album and asked me what it meant and I explained it was the rock which was placed first in a building. Everything else is then placed  on and around it and finds its place according to the measurements the cornerstone has set. It is the foundation.


 I fudged through the day, put the delivered shopping away, held back the tears while I engaged in conversation with people, made cups of tea without boiling the water first, emailed the library to ask them to cancel Scooby's membership, sobbed for ten minutes afterwards at the thought of never choosing and reading books with him again, was grateful for a husband who can cook so we didn't have to eat burnt food like I made the night before, went to bed at the same time as the kids, and woke up later so that Richard and I could bawl and sob before trying to go back to sleep.


 At 1am I went for a walk outside, down to the brook bridge which is just a few yards from the beautiful place in the country we're staying at right now. It was pitch black and I didn't see another person while I did it. I could only see the road and the trees and bushes around it. Everything was wet, like it had just rained, but I wasn't getting wet. Then I walked directly under the trees and heard the sound of hundreds of drips in the leaves. As I came out from under the trees I expected that it had started raining, but I still wasn't getting wet. 


 Only when I got the brook bridge did I understand. I shone the light from my phone to try and see how deep the water was and in front of the light there were thousands of tiny swirling water particles. Mist. 


 I looked up and realised that the reason it was pitch black is that was not a single light in the sky. There was the outline of the trees and then great big nothing behind. If I was an ancient mariner or a desert wanderer from long ago, there would be absolutely nothing up there to give me a hint of where I was, or where I should go. There were no markers, no guidance, no clue where to go next. Nothing. Just big hazy black damp darkness that stretched on and on.


 But I wasn't a lost traveller - for me there was something more. Not sand or waves beneath my feet. There was solid ground. And the knowledge of the way home. And if I turned and walked on it, in the direction I knew, it would get me home. 


 And it did.