27

What did I desperately want to do on my birthday? In spite of clicky hips and h.e.a.v.y bump? Walk on the moors. And I did. And it was beautiful.

It's so desolately perfect up there with the whistling winds and the acres of amber bracken and browning heather... Even with the children running around it is a lonely place.

Something in it and something in me were in tune, and I cried a great deal, mostly over feeling just so utterly inadequate and unprepared to be a mother (again; or even of these three perfectly beautiful independent feisty human girls). When did I start becoming morose about birthdays, and still feeling so very young and wondering what, exactly, I have done with these years so far and if it was the Best and Perfect thing...

OK I'm feeling better today, and able to see the silly pregnancy hormones for what they are, and hold my family close and see them as blessings and myself as a blessing to them. :)

I made myself chicken curry for tea (tough luck, non-curry-eating family, you can have rice!) and had baklava instead of birthday cake, and pondered how to spend the book token from my Dad. And the years go on, and I am 27, and soon I will be 27 with four children. It's impossibly hard to imagine, and some days it's hard hard work just now to even get there. But it's pretty beautiful, too.

And who knew? My cat loves curry sauce almost as much as she loves broccoli and melon!