Now that school has started back the days seem to fly by before I can grasp each one and look it in the eye. No matter how early I rise a single day never seems to hold enough hours for me. We have just begun a renovation project: it’s our dream house, our house for life, it seems unreal that it will actually be ours. It is another huge commitment that is not writing! Instead of spending precious child-free hours at my laptop  I’m as likely to to be found looking at wooden floors or bathrooms. In the past few weeks this has left me feeling stressed.

And then this happened.

On Sunday afternoon my boy and I went blackberry picking. In a matter of weeks he will be nine. He finds me embarrassing, mostly. He is growing up and pulling away from me. And then, on Sunday all he wanted to do was to walk the LONG way home, pick blackberries in the sunshine and hold my hand. It’s enough to bring a lump to my throat, even now. We spent nearly three hours wandering and picking and eating the best ones. I read Seamus Heaney to him which pretty much fell on deaf ears, but it put me in some kind of heaven.

The afternoon reminded me of the importance of  enjoying the moment, enjoying the day doing nothing, but doing everything.  Most days I am consumed by my focus to write, to etch out a quite time and space for myself in the day when I can chip away at my goal to get my second book finished and hopefully published. Sunday reminded me of my priorities. Yes, getting published is my own personal utopia, but amongst the bigger picture of my family it is very much my own personal dream.  It can never be at the cost of my boys, because like most mothers: it is to them that my life belongs. And what use are words without a life behind them to give them meaning.

Go on – find a blackberry bush and start picking, you’ll thank me for it! x