A princessy day

On bank holiday monday, we visited the Pirates and Princesses party at Telford Wonderland, which was pretty much the greatest thing that has ever happened to Rory.

4 years!

 

Today we have been married for four years! Almost a third of our relationship and 1/7th of my entire life. And the longer we are married, the more I realise how much of a gamble marriage is.

Everyday two people choose one person over every other, even when they know that the strength of a relationship is no certain thing. We stake our futures on a hope that when we're old and we've lived enough life that we'll still want to be together, still content with a choice we made when we were different people. 

Marriage is not a guarantee of a happily ever after, it's the start of a story, not the grand finale. So I can't say if our marriage will make it when so many others don't, but I do know that no matter how much we've struggled and no matter how many obstacles life has thrown at us, that our relationship has always been a sanctuary, the easiest, most sturdy thing about my life, and if I had nothing but that, I know from experience of having nothing but that, that it would be enough to make me genuinely happy.

My husband has always been the one person I want to share my thoughts and time and triumphs with. He's the first person I want to see and speak to when something momentous or entirely uninteresting happens. He's the person against whom I measure every other person, he's the best one I know. And while I can't know if we'll always make each other happy as we always have, I know that I hope that we will, and if I had to go back and choose again, I'd always choose him.

I'm not a gambling person, but I do like our odds.

Kinver Edge Rock Caves

The next trip on our list of family adventures was to Kinver Edge, where there are these centuries old houses made from tunneling into caves. Rory particularly enjoyed drawing pictures into the sand floors while I decyphered the layers and layers of graffiti.

Of Mothers and Daughters - 06/03/2016

My mother always used to say I was nothing like her, which I wasn't. While she was funny I was serious, she was passive while I was aggressive, I matched her lightness with my dark and while she was could simply let go of the experiences that wounded her I clung to injustices of my past like talismans. But being my mother, she had a unique ability to transform my less attractive traits into strengths, her belief in them making them true and now that she's gone and there's nobody to transform my rage into passion or my fear into strength. I don't have her mistakes to learn from or her eyes to see myself through and life has become something of an unknown path without a map, and it's tough navigate.

Socks with sandals with an evening dress in the middle of the day. I was a pretty stylish kid, I know.

But for every new year that I am a motherless daughter, I see how much stronger I have become without having her legs to hide behind when life gets tough, and I'm made aware of all of the ways I hope I can be just like my Mom. I hope I can be as warm and I hope I can be as good a friend. I hope I can obscure the things I'm afraid of so that my daughter won't inherit them from me and I hope that she can come to me with all her great burdens in life and rave at me until they are gone. I hope that when she hates me, and when she resolves that she'd rather be anything in the world than anything like me that I won't take it personally and know that growing up always involves growing away. And I hope that when I do eventually leave her here without me, that she will have made enough of her own life independent of me, that it won't be the end of her world, even if it's close.
 

Bridgnorth Castle Gardens - 04/03/2016

 

Bridgnorth Castle Gardens