Light & warmth, always

I'm sitting at my kitchen table, with the door wide open, and the birds singing at me. Glimpses of blue sky and fluffy clouds, an occasional pheasant. Not bad for March in England. Beautiful flowers in front of me, from my sweet man, who appears with them from the train.

The dogs are slowly getting used to the lazy foot traffic that goes by the garden gate; women with pushchairs, a man and his dog, an occasional Amazon deliver, horses trotting by. They burr and grumble but aren't sure if they should leap into action.

I love this little house. I love waking up in the morning to the birds and the light, the sound of wood pigeons and imminent arrival of spring.

And I love that my mother's rather eccentric lamp fits in so well (note the chamber pot for visitors, because the loo is so far away).

There are thousands of pictures of my children strewn around the house. As I unpacked my boxes, I was rather amused to discover that I'd brought more pictures of the children than anything else. It's one of those hard things; think about it too much and you will be sad. But the youngest arrives for Easter and hopefully her brother isn't too far behind. Every day, things get better, the days become longer, the sky lighter in the evening, more birds wake up, a smaller degree of cortisol panic throttles its way around my body, fewer voices tell me that I'm mad to make such a great leap.

And more and more you realize, you love those that you love and those that don't love you should be left alone. There will always be haters, and that's okay. And more and more you realize that people rise to the occasion, especially those that you think you are protecting. They can handle. They want to help. People are coming out of the woodwork to help me, to make things happen, to make life easier. It's really quite amazing. Especially my mamma, who, when I dropped in on her yesterday and when we'd had our fill of RightMove real estate porn (as we do, every time) said to me "don't forget that book you should be writing..."

My friend Kay brought me bread, wine, a candle, salt. And the card said:

Bread: this house will never know hunger. Salt: Life will always have flavour. Wine: joy & prosperity. A candle: Light & warmth always.

It's wonderful, isn't it?