Where did that year go?

It's been a long, cold winter since the last time I wrote. This whole year, actually, has been a long, cold winter.  But with the arrival of this September, little glimpses of sunshine have broken through the chill.  So maybe spring will spring soon.  And maybe this long, cold winter will come to an end.

It's a week short of twelve months since I last wrote anything about the house at Porter Street.  And funnily enough, just yesterday I found myself digging and planting without gloves, which is what my last blog entry was about.  How curious that the universe led me tonight to click on my blog, when it has been so distant from my radar for the last 51 weeks.  

I think I didn't write because I lost sight of inspiration as we settled into preparations for our first full summer in the House at Porter Street.  It was our first full summer with our oddly merged family and its sometimes straining dynamic trying to make sense of itself.

It feels like I can't really say what happened to the summer which took us from 2011 to 2012.  But if I try, I can.  There was swimming in the pool.  

There were blue tongue lizards in the garden.  

There was a wicked storm on Christmas Day that kept our beloved visitors trapped here with a thunderous light show over the valley and torrential, driving rain that was almost more exciting than Father Christmas, his avalanche of presents and all the food we'd consumed throughout the day.  

There was our sunflower.

There was preparation for Milo starting school in February, and then the adjustment to the new paradigm as my baby and I went from constant companions to mummy missing her school boy (with giant schoolbag) having a whole life away from me for six and half hours a day, five days a week.

It all felt like a revolution. Life was happening, and we were all swept up in the fullness of it.

And then the world as we knew it ended.  6.42am on 9 March, 2012.  Because that's when Evie rang to tell me that my brother had just died.  My dearest, darlingest, one and only brother.

And so, right in the midst of a blazing hot summer, when everything seemed to be happening with nothing going on, there began the longest, coldest winter.