Well it has been an odd and busy day. There are a number of things I need to catch up with after the past few days, but today I had appointments. Including the ophthalmologist, who seemed to take way too much delight in turning my eyelids inside out. Not pleasant… and not productive.. except of yet another referral to yet another specialist…

Over coffee this morning I was taken by an urge to write… yes, I know, I do a lot of it. But this was specific. I’ve tried before and failed, ending up merely collating information, letters, pictures…writing short articles… I even managed half a chapter once… But the time was not right. I wasn’t ready. I was waiting for something. Or hiding from something I didn’t want to revisit.

Well, the waiting no longer has any excuse. Every book needs an ending… preferably, in my eyes, a happy one… and yesterday’s new beginning makes the perfect happy ending as it opens a whole world of stories yet to be written. So this morning I started writing and before I had to leave for my first appointment I had a couple of thousand words tapped out.

Not easy ones. Neither to read not to write.

And it took a while. It is difficult to see the keys with tears streaming… and I couldn’t stop them as I wrote of that first phone call from the hospital to say they had my son, or that first drive to Southampton, or the first sight of his pale, immobile face surrounded by monitors.

I sent the pages to a friend… we swap stuff in the writing… he replied, “Bugger – made me cry. Finish it and find a proper publisher. This story needs telling. Maybe it will help some other parent.” I intend to. So does Nick. He’ll be writing part of the book himself. Maybe, just maybe, it will help someone, somewhere.

Because it isn’t a horror story, but one of hope, optimism and sheer bloody-minded determination. It is a love story too. Not a romance, though it has the beautiful happy ending… but a real story of Love and what it can do, what it can achieve and the difference it can make. We were gifted with so much of it from so many people the world over.

I saw that difference in action today. Between appointments I went to Nick and Faith’s to deliver their wedding photos as requested. Faith made my day.. and took me beautifully by surprise.. by calling me Mom. I found the pair of them looking happy, and far more relaxed, on the brink of leaving for a short, impromptu honeymoon… just as unconventional as about everything else they do.

With Nick on the road-legal mobility scooter that looks more like a buggy, the wheelchair and luggage strapped to the back and Faith on a pushbike they were setting off on an overnight adventure to a secret location not a million miles away in space but very much more elegant. What the maître d’hôtel will make of them is anyone’s guess… not that they care. I was sort of glad I was going in the opposite direction…there’s only so much a house-hobbit’s nerves can take in one week… Though they may well murder me for publishing the pic… but what the hell…  🙂