Summer is here, everyone has grown out of their summer shorts, desperately needing a proper haircut, the size of my sons’ feet seems to know no end; they are tired and pretty tetchy, and asking what is happening for their holidays.  What is happening for THEIR holidays?! What about mine? Is it going to be endlessly chasing dental appointments, asking for the dishwasher to be unloaded/loaded ‘it does not do itself you know?’  Am I going to be dreaming of walks with my beautifully behaved entertaining children who ask me ‘How are you, how really are you?’

The reality is we have a week booked in Suffolk on the coast seeing cousins, grandparents and aunts/uncles.  We will squabble in the car, wonder how much further and we will be constantly keeping everyone fed and watered; and it will be fantastic to be real once more. I can’t wait to have that family time, when we are bored together, eat together, have fun together, make memories which will become family folklore, have our puppy’s first Summer in the heart of our family. We will laze about, go crabbing, dare to go into the cold North Sea, and we will most doubt laugh and cry.  We will tease each other and we will think back over the year.  We will put this most trying year to bed by celebrating my musical boy’s solo in a concert this week, praising my daughter for her prize, helping my eldest move from schoolboy to a young man as he starts his job labouring to pay for a gap year. But we have all been tested and had our confidence pushed about, been lovely and scared at times and we just need time to repair from that.

It’s time to get the family games out – Uno and Gin Rummy are two favourites, its time to laze about and enjoy our family unit and to recognise the small things in life are the great things. At the end of our Summer time together we will do our traditional measuring and marking our heights against the wall and there will be much teasing as I am becoming the smallest person in our family and we will know that we have had quality time reconnecting and loving each other ready to be able to go onto Autumn with confidence and intrigue knowing that we are stronger; we can adapt and we are good at change and have our home team whom are our biggest supporters and our safe space.

I wish you all well with your supporters and your holiday time as you seek a safe space ready to repair from this time and be ready for the times to come.

Finally, if like me, you are riven with guilt at being less than perfect as a parent helping your child along at the moment, I took comfort from this recently – children are like popping corn, they are all in the same pan, heated to the same temperature in the same oil, yet they all pop at different times, but all get there in the end.