Friday 16 May 2025

Well we have one!

My eldest child, receives her final examination results in March of this year and the whole household is bursting with pride as our girl makes it through five grueling of years of medical school to qualify as a resident doctor. As well as pride, when I think back to the start of this chapter of life in the NorthWest I realise that I also feel something else … incredulity.

Now this is exactly the moment when any mum could be forgiven for digging out the toddler snaps and look back at the significant milestones but my memory takes me in a slightly different direction, hurtling back to our arrival back in the NorthWest in 2010.

Yes, fifteen years ago, we were trying to cram the contents of our family home in the SouthWest into a small two and a half bed Northern rental property. The ‘half-bedroom’ belonged to my eldest and, although she was ecstatic to have a room of her very own for the first time, it was such a tiny space that the door couldn’t fully open without hitting the bed! Downstairs was a permanently cluttered mess of my work, kids’ homework, lego, music and a piano, overspill plates and cups from the galley kitchen and semi-dried washing. As for the garage, well that was packed to the rafters with the furniture, boxes of toys and the white goods that simply could not fit into our new living quarters.

The quiet road we lived on was nice enough and our neighbours were fantastic but the nearby main road was more salubrious and, as on our daily drive home from school, we passed the dingy local Sex Shop, I remember thinking on more than one occasion,

“What have you done and what is this place you have brought your children to…”

But we dug in and the trio were amazing. It is a common adage that ‘children are very resilient‘ and even in those early days, almost as if in denial of our changed fortunes, they just carried on as if nothing at all had changed… even though their entire lives had.

We moved eventually, when I bought what is now very much our home, to a different part of town with a lot more space but even before that each of them simply gave their best efforts to everything, working hard at school and throwing themselves into all their hobbies and clubs. It must just be who they are! I really couldn’t have asked for more and am probably blessed!

And being herself; kind, caring, determined and driven has taken my Eldest child from a the bedroom-not-big-enough-for a bed, in a slightly shady part of town, to a position as a Resident Doctor. I guess the tiny bedroom really didn’t matter so very much after all. If you are prepared to work hard to make the most of the talents you have, not much can stop you achieving whatever you set your mind to.

So time to put the memories away, because we have a graduation to prepare for and I think it is time for all eyes to look to the future now…