November has been and gone and all I have to show is this rubbish picture. I’ve stayed committed to my challenge and haven’t bought any clothes, but if I’m honest, one of the reasons for doing it – buying less and wearing what I already own – hasn’t really happened. What I wear has been at the bottom of my priority list lately.
We finally moved house, which felt humungous and exhausting, but also like a huge weight had been lifted off our shoulders. We were no longer in limbo. We were moving forward and putting down roots. We’d put in an offer on our dream home a while ago, but there had been long delays and no certainty we’d be in before Christmas. Then suddenly there was a flurry of activity and we were packing, moving, and trying to find places for our new lives to fit.
We’d lived in that house for two years. We moved there when I was pregnant with the twins, as we needed space, quickly. It was always meant to be short-term, with my partner’s long-awaited divorce court case hanging grimly over our heads. I loved that house. Although temporary, it turned out to be exactly what we both needed. My friends called it the Home Alone house because it reminded them of the house in the film, which is ironic as I was rarely home alone. It sat at the top of a massive hill in Guildford and had a garden with big green conifers that swayed lazily in the wind, and thick walls that stood strong and swallowed the noise outside. There was a local nature reserve nearby which I walked through most days. You could see everything from the hill: the town centre ahead, acres of fields dotted with horses behind, and, if you squinted, the London skyline to the right – a tiny twinkle of my former life working for a bank.
It’s easily one of my favourite places I’ve lived, mainly due to the way it made me feel. It was my safe haven. I arrived there heavily pregnant, barely able to waddle up the hill. I was sick all the time, with regular hospital trips for drips and monitoring, which ramped up when my waters broke at 30 weeks. For two months, life was split between hospital and this new home. I unpacked and repacked my overnight bag constantly. It was a stressful time, but I felt safe, monitored by nurses and cocooned at home.
The girls arrived six weeks early on the day of my partner’s court case. One door slammed closed and another swung open, in the most dramatic way. I stayed in NICU for two weeks with my little babies until they were strong enough to come home. The house became our bubble. I was fiercely protective of my tiny bird-like babes. They wore miniature clothes, had long, thin legs with baggy skin and big sparkly eyes their faces hadn’t yet grown into. We had cots on wheels that I moved from room to room. Squeak squeak went the wheels. They were the most perfect little things I’d ever seen. I wasn’t working, but I didn’t have to think about that – I was on maternity leave and would go back eventually. For now, our days were spent inside those walls: sleeping, feeding, crying, watching This Is Us while I pumped my boobs. I would stand over their cots, thanking the universe with everything I had. They were safe, and everything was going to be OK.
This was my house for a reason. It had engulfed and protected us for two years. It absorbed the tears and reverberated the laughter. This mighty house on the hill had held us. But it was only transient, and now we say goodbye to one home and hello to another: our new chapter, our new beginning – the house by the river.
freckle. 