Warmth in January

So today I cleaned the house,
finished tidying the playroom,
cleaned up the last of the Christmas tree needles
all in time for my one off house maid coming tomorrow.

* * *

This is the gate of our adjoining neighbour which sits happily in the shade at this time of day. Hmm, gives me lots of ideas for some further shots. There's a grassy area to the right of Callum's toes which didn't quite work for me so I dug it up, made a foundation and laid some cement (well in PSE).

Tomorrow after school I'm taking the boys to Disney. One of my oldest friends from university, Anne, who now lives in Sydney will be over on holiday. I'm sure I've entirely lost the art of conversation and when we have a night out on Friday, I wonder if it'll feel like days of old again. I last saw her 3 years ago, just after Reuben came out of hospital when life was very hard and traumatic. I'd recently had a miscarriage and upon trying again, amazingly conceived Callum through my 5th in-vitro fertilisation whereupon I was given some very difficult news on a developmental journey we may have been taking with him Callum too. I fell into a very dark place that weekend awaiting the results, and envisaging months in hospital with Callum as I gained my doctorate in Google med over that weekend, trying to find the answers I thought I knew. We were confined to living in a one bed apartment as our spectacular house in Florida post the hurricanes took 3 years to sell and so the living room became Reuben's bedroom and, on occasion was visited by night nurses who would show or not as the mood would take them. On the nights they didn't show, we would take turns staying up with him, then catching glimpses of sleep during the day to make up. But what we would never do was to fall asleep whilst looking after him, despite the monitor catching his every breath and beat. This went on for several months til Reu was admitted and we realised, if the nurses could be down the hall whilst they were in charge of his care, perhaps we might fall asleep with him beside us. Would it be ok?

I wrote reams back then on how I was feeling, exorcising those emotions in my blog, how debilitating life had become. Can I not go back now to that girl and tell her, it will be ok Catherine, I promise. Reuben will grow, will love and be loved, he will be very happy and enjoy relatively good health, extraordinarily hitting the developmental milestones and shining in his own time, and most of all, he will have the greastest thing that could ever have happened to him, a brother, Callum, whom he could poke fun at, attempt to teach sign language to no avail, kiss one minute and wrestle the next and he would do all this with such great humour and grace, holding onto that inner peace that makes him Reuben.

And as for the likely diagnosis for Callum, well, things turned out quite differently for him too.

Tonight, Callum fell asleep in my arms whilst I sang lullabies to him, Silent Night, Somewhere over the rainbow/What a wonderful world and when I stopped, he opened again his sleepy eyes and said "More songs Mama". Now that is music to my ears.