Somehow, it’s the end of the year. It feels bizarre to have started 2024 looking at fireworks out of the window, whilst my nearly four month old baby wasn’t sleeping, and my husband slept elsewhere with Covid. Said baby is now almost sixteen months old. Sixteen months! That feels insane and impossible.
This year, god, this year. I turned thirty five. I went back to work. She turned one. We got fevers, migraines, colds, Covid, norovirus. I started learning to drive. We tried childcare, we tried it again. She learned to eat, to chatter, to wave, to dance. I flew for the first time in 18 months. She slept badly. I stopped keeping a record of what I read. We conquered car seat hatred, and travelled four hundred miles and back again. I cut my hair off. She’s just taken her first steps. I got ill (and tried to get better). She starting laughing at herself, became the biggest ham in the family. I got glasses. We didn’t reply to (so many) messages on time.
Frankly, for the past few days, my emotions have been all over the place. Christmas comes with a lot of feeling - quite often sadness, though I’ve never (quite) succumbed to the melancholic streak which runs through my family. This year, though I’ve only had a scattering of moments to pause and reflect in the midst of chaos, I’ve felt so much: everything. All at once. Which kind of sums up my year: one of the most difficult of my life, despite falling in love with my daughter instantly.
Boxing Day was perhaps my favourite day of the festive period: just me, my toddler and my husband hanging out. We’ve done this all year, of course. But it felt nice, unexpected. She napped on me, as I watched an old film, and it was pure peace. I could suddenly see what joy might be coming; all the life rushing towards us as we start another new year, together, a three. How incredible that she is here. How hard things have been. How I want so much to feel completely myself again. How perhaps this year, I will. How, one day, we may sleep again. How there is this tiny person in existence who I will always love, more than anything else in the world.
I’m making no resolutions. This is no reset. Instead, we’ll take our daughter to the coast tomorrow. Stand in the December wind, watching and waiting for the new year. It’ll be quiet. It’ll be just like any other day.
Here is this poem, which feels like everything to me at this moment in time, happy new year:
Oh my, this poem 😭❤️