A Year to Remember

2007 began in the way that every year of my grown up life has begun. Pretty quietly. A small alcaholic beverage in hand. Something fireworkish on the telly box. A heart filled with hope for the coming year. Fairly standard really and rather comforting in it's normalness.

This year I am sitting on the futon, with fireworks exploding in a blaze of colour and light on a slightly larger television, with a bottle of lucozade (to keep me awake), a bar of chocolate (much the same idea) and a creature of such astounding beauty and gloriousness in my arms that the lump in my throat this year has nothing to do with all the things I haven't done yet, nor any regret for the year past, but simply awe at this tiny child I have made, nourished and watched for the last 12 weeks.

Eva Rose is 12 weeks old today and quite simply the best thing I have ever done in my life.

Her arrival, or at least the nine months preceding her arrival were frought with illness and worry over Himself, job losses, lack of money, as well as my constant morning sickness which landed me in hospital. But they are so faded now they are like the ashes left when you burn a sheet of paper - they have floated away and disintergrated softly into nothing. They are not important any more. It feels strange that I have consigned almost a whole year away, but it feels right too. All this looking back is only useful to a point. We think of the things we have done. we wonder how we could have done them better, and then we let them go. That's how it's meant to work I think. And for once in my life, that is exactly what I have done. 2007 was a wonderful year. Because for all the heartache and worry, for all the feeling like I would never be well again, for the tears of excitment and anticipation and pure unadulterated stress, I have this beautiful girl who looks up at me with such adoration as I have never known. A beautiful girl with a whole lifetime of New Years to look forward to, and a hundred thousand days or more to grow and learn and become herself. And that is the gift that last year gave me. And I will treasure her as much as I treasure the sudden understanding that life is surely about the future and what is to come as it is about the today and the yesterday. So my darling girl, I will live for the todays, wait for the tomorrows, and smile as I let the yesterdays go.

Thank you for reading, may you all have a beautiful 2008. Kate x