this and that

I've been a bit slack at posting this month but a couple of things have happened.  In bullet points:

• I "passed" my archery course, got a certificate and everything!  It means that I can now shoot at any club in England, but I think I will go to the one run by the people who ran the course.  My next free Saturday, I'm going down to an archery shop to get myself a bow and some arrows :-)
• I got taken to watch England play Australia at Lord's yesterday. Wonderful seats in the covered part (kept dry), picnic lunch complete with champagne, England won.  Who could ask for anything more?!
• I went away for 6 days the week before last, to Norway.  This bullet point deserves a post to itself, and it's going to get one.
• I fell down the stairs a couple of weeks ago, somehow managing to do so on my bottom instead of on my head.  Apart from being a bit shaken, I was completely fine. One of the advantages of having an arse the size and texture of a sofa I guess. Anyway, I mention it because, as I was bouncing bottom-first down the stairs, it flitted through my mind that if I broke a leg during that little mishap, I would have to go and stay with my parents. One of those "you're single and you live alone" moments that come out of the blue and sucker-punch me, just as much as those "you're childless and always will be" do. Meh.

a safe place

I was pregnant three times but there is no evidence of that to the outside world. I saw Starchild’s heartbeat twice. I saw Tilly’s heart beating, saw her legs and arms, was starting to see evidence of her under my clothing and started to feel the fluttering which was her tiny movements.  I saw the Little Stars in a Petri dish and as tiny patches as they were put into their all too short-lived home inside me.  Their existence changed my life and I loved them, and I still do.  I would have done anything, anything for them because they were then and always will be, my babies. But I never met them or saw their faces or held them.  I could never present them as whole to other people.

Perhaps this is why, when I mentioned them in a conversation with a friend last week (part of a conversation which is a topic for another post), she told me that I was “over sentimentalising”. She didn’t expand, but then she didn’t have to.  I knew what she was thinking.

I make no apology for feeling as I do about Starchild, Tilly and the Little Stars.  But perhaps I shouldn’t expect to be able to talk about them outside of this community.