Day 6 Week 1

Life is strange. Things happen and though I have a great sense of destiny, the reasons are not always apparent until much further down the line.

C was 21 on Wednesday. When I cast my mind back to the delivery room, and a large slimey frog was placed on my stomach accompanied by a surge in love only a mother having given birth can feel, not in anyway did I envisage spending the day as it passed. The clock became a tallisman for remembering previous events on other birthdays. Going out to the ambulance at midnithg with him 3 weeks late, in a Liverpudlian gale, having just basted the Christmas cake with rum. 9.15 he was born, sharing his day with my parents' 38th wedding anniversary. Noon he had his second birthday party with me lumbering around with R well on the way. Entertainers, trips to adventure parks, cakes and powercuts all flashed through the tape in my head. The excitement when he turned 18 and became an adult with what should be a life of love fulfillment ahead. The recordings in the file named 'C's birthday' both comforted but exacerbated the coldness of now.

The summer had been a time of heady fun. Watching the young ones reminded me of Blackadder and the Tiddleywinkers of 1913 - it was all gung-ho and black jokes about being on each other's shoulders. It scared me how easily history can repeat itself, have we learnt nothing from the previous horrors of war? School children now have to study the First World War poets with all the momentous graphic description of pain, waste and futility. Yet we repeat as if it never happened.

The task of the summer was trying to arrange a mutual date where everyone could attend C's premature 21st celebrations. As my children's lives more closely resemble the Chelsea-set than that of produce of a single-parent in a council house, which is what they are, not only was it impossible to find a date when all 3 were around, but one where all 3 were actually in the UK. H agreed that the best weekend would be the one directly before C deployed, even though H would be three thousand miles away in the North Atlatic. This is because H is completing his training on HMS Illustrios and would be away at sea for 3 months before hopefully passing out at Dartmouth in December.

So a charabang was arranged for a night on the razzle in the West End the weekend of 26th September - one perk of living 20 miles as the crow flies from Trafalgar Square is the easy access to all London has to offer. R and I visited H on Illustrious the Sunday before he sailed and wandered around the magnificent but rather rusty old lady and made our farewells. R had left for uni the weekend before and it suddenly seemed real that all the birds were leaving the nest together.

The something wonderful happened and thanks to Royal Naval engineering H did not head with a fair wind to Iceland, but returned back to home port with a broken engine. So on the Friday before Cs day, received a text from H saying 'Get in the gin Ma x', and quite by chance all 3 brothers and sister were able to see each other. Seizing the moment I rang round family and friends and out of the blue the most wonderful gathering assembled to wish him luck.

As I look at pictures now it seems inconceivable that the person in the centre of it all is now in a country far, far away, fighting a war that everyday politicans question the validity and effectiveness of. Do they know how that makes the families feel? A 'change of direction' devalues every life of the Afghans and soldiers lost and reinforces the sense of uselessness.

St Therese was calming and I asked for her help and protection.

Speak soon x