it has been quite a year. I never for a moment thought this would be a permanent thing. A year ago we were going to have summer by the sea while looking for a new home in the hills.  So much has changed.

When you get to my sort of age, you think you have it all sorted.  Children, born, raised and off into the world, living lives you may have only dreamt about.  Belongings, gathered over decades form a home.  Bills are paid and there is space and time to enjoy this thing called life.

We were luckier than most, we also had a holiday home, somewhere to escape to, close to the coast with a garden to make beautiful.  How lucky were we?  Never, in a thousand thoughts would I have believed that this tin box would be where would we live.  Where we would cram the most precious belongings in, keeping them safe with us, while the rest of our possessions stay waiting for us in a storage unit.

So many things have happened.  We have learned so much. It has been the hardest year of my life.  Harder than nursing poorly parents at the same time I was having babies.  Harder than baby years, no sleep and exhaustion. Harder than single Mum life, days when the responsibility for four small people was all mine.  Harder than all of that put together.  It is no wonder I am feeling tired.

My Mum had a saying, one of those old messages so common in my childhood.  She would say ‘You never know what is in the pot boiling for you’.  A year on, I am thinking it is a good thing I had no clue what was about to happen. I doubt I would have had the strength to face it.

All my life I have considered myself a bit of a rolling stone.  Never quite settling for anything.  Change was always my friend.  New starts, I was good at them.  New houses, new places, it was what I enjoyed.  Twenty years in the hills and I finally felt at home.  I knew that place, I felt I fitted in the town, with grown up children close by and our darling granddaughter popping in daily, I felt at last I had found my forever home.

As I am typing this, unexpected tears are falling, the pain of distance still simmers under the surface of emotions, not yet completely accepting of our new life. Yet a new life is what we are going to have.

There have been times this last year when I feared I would be facing the future on my own.  That my tall, strong husband would not be by my side.  When I think of this, well, everything else is of little significance.  He is recovering and slowly but surely I am seeing him returning to some sort of normal.  It is time gently begin to think about the future, time to consider big decisions.

Putting aside the pain and worry of the past twelve months, we now need a plan.  It feels good to be driving this process for once, we are being proactive and not simply responding to what is coming our way.  We are starting to understand that it is up to us to make choices, about not only where we will live, but how we shall live.

So, a house, maybe a flat, within walking distance of the sand and sea, that is what we want.  To enjoy summer, and as it ends to return to a job I am beginning to love, with a plan for our new forever home.

The day our possessions are delivered from the storage unit, that will be the day.  We shall sit once again on our lovely sofas, and look around us.  We will know that everything can and will change, without notice, but we will know, beyond all doubt that we can cope with this.  That together we can and will face whatever this universe throws our way.

We remain hopeful that the pot has peace and stability boiling for us this time.