Slipping away

Now that I most need her, I feel she's not here 100% anymore. My mom.
She was always this strong presence in my life, always - really every single minute - there for me. But over the past year, the cancer really has started to take its toll. She's lost more and more weight, becoming more and more tired.

Last week, she could barely make it to our apartment on the second floor. While my dad and I installed the baby room, she had to lie down and sleep. It's hurting me - and I know it's hurting her too. I know she wants to do so much more for me at this point. But she just can't.
That's why, while washing all the baby clothes last week, I was having a good cry. I was exhausted, and I just wished I could have asked my mom to help me with all this. I wished we could have done it together - one of those special mother-daughter moments to remember forever.
She drags herself along when I go to the shop to try out some pushing chairs, but after 15 minutes she has to admit she's not up to it, and she has to go back to the car. Leaving me and my dad standing in the middle of this huge store, preparing for this very happy event, but really both swallowing down the tears.

Every minute she's feeling a bit better, she's working at this blanket  for tiny N. Every time I have her on the phone, it's "so many more rows to go until it's done" or "I did so many rows today".  She really wants to have this finished. And I really want her to be able to make many more blankets.

Holiday house

A few months ago, my parents bought a little house on the Belgian coast. The last month was spent painting, buying furniture, and redecorating - and now it's all done!
That's why last weekend, we invited a couple of friends and enjoyed this new "home".
Funny thing is that I meet my entire past & family in this little house. I recognise stuff that belonged to my grandparents (like a table cloth we only used once a year, beginning of summer, when there was a fair in our hometown). I see things I used throughout my childhood at my parents' (those brown seventies coffee cups). And I see some things that used to belong to me (my first TV, that pink stereo I saved for an entire summer, my old bed sheets, ...). It's all there - like a small N's Family Life Museum :-) .

Apart from that, the house has a great little garden, where you can enjoy the sun from early morning until late in the evening, and it's only a 20 minutes' walk from the beach.
Our first weekend there had all the ingredients to make it a perfect 2-day-getaway : great weather, friends, delicious food, long beach walks, hour-long brunches in the garden,...
To be repeated pretty soon!