Home

She’s home. 

“Just like my estimate, Mummy,” she told me pointedly, as she walked from the car to our front door. 

She’s got a bag full of paracetamol, ibuprofen, some slightly stronger painkillers, and a selection of sachets and tablets with...er...‘moving’ qualities. (Poowatch Update: she’s been discharged without the Significant Event actually happening yet.  We are ready and waiting for the bomb to drop. I’m whistling the Dambusters theme).

I had a Facebook Memory thing come up the other day. You know, where a blast from the past from a certain number of years ago pops up in your timeline and you can re-share it. (I like to call these pics ‘Inexorable March Of Time Photos Showing You How Fast Your Life Is Flashing Past And How Much Closer You Are To Death’, but yes, let’s go with Facebook Memories). 

It was a picture of my daughter in her hospital bed seven years ago, a few days after surgeons had bolted titanium rods to her spine. Lying next to her is her little brother. 

I looked at her today, when she had a little rest on her bed to recover from the car journey. And had an idea, calling her not so-little-any-more brother over to carefully climb onto her bed, to 're-enact' that original post-operation pic. 

Three things struck me: 

1) She's even braver and more determined than she was then
2) He's no longer off the scale on the chubby cheekometer
3) She did it. She endured. And came out smiling. Again.

Welcome home, sweetheart.

Song is Hannah Peel - You Call This Your Home