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It’s a funny thing when you’re waiting. You begin to think you will never hear the news you are waiting for. That makes it feel like things will never change. But things do change. Things can change completely in a moment. We learned all about that last year when the Blue Line changed our whole life in a moment. Our lives seem so permanent and unchanging and then change comes and you realise it was always transient. You just hadn’t noticed that for a while. We were going to go skiing. Instead I stayed home trying not to vomit.

Here we are in our house, we’ve been here a while and still we wait for news from the planners. It will come but until it does it feels like we will be here forever. This is what life is made of. Moments that feel like they will last forever and then you notice they have passed and the next moment has arrived. Right up until there isn’t a next moment.

I can only think that this moment is worth savouring even though the next moment looks from here like it will be more exciting. Or perhaps it will never come. I hope it will come. Still no news.

The ground undulates gently downwards towards the valley. No sharp angles or harsh corners. Wild grass grows in clumps along a narrow grass path cut just wide enough for us to walk in single file. The path is wending, the meadow flowers beginning to push their heads out from between stalks but not ready to open yet. The wind is keen, blowing across the land, still with a cold sting but with the suggestion of warmth and growth, new life carried in the air.

Behind me the house sits looking sideways, the wood still looking freshly cut. It has not yet forgotten the trees from which it came. It retains the soft circles and the wood looks scarred, not weathered yet. It will weather over the years to come, just as we will. We will settle together on this patch of earth.

Inside, the first thing I find is that it is cosy. The warm wood comes in from the outside too so that the sense of where we are lingers alongside the furnishings of our indoor life. The fire in the centre of the house welcomes me towards it, the spiral staircase draws my eyes upwards reinforcing the sense of the outdoors being close at hand, the ceiling high letting in some of the sky.

Climbing the stairs I look down and see the space in which a family eats, talks, plays, thinks, cooks, creates, Lives. Upstairs is smaller, the bedrooms small pieces of privacy and seclusion nestled into the eaves. A balcony stretches along the length of the house so that from each bedroom there is access to another piece of outside.

From here we can see the land, the road at the far end, the cars queuing and lorries chugging. Just far enough away that we do not need to feel part of that press. The coppice is beginning to grow but will take a couple more years to become established. There is a lot to do; it will take years to grow this vision. We will be gone before some of these trees will reach maturity. We will leave it better than it was before we came.

The broom with which I sweep our floor is over a hundred years old. It’s swept lots of Dwyer crumbs, has lots of stories to tell. The head is held on by an old nail. Getting pretty wobbly now but still it does the job.

It’s a funny thing moving house. We have been doing a lot of clearing out. Before we lived here we moved five times so Ben has moved those boxes too many times. This time we are slimming down, not least because we’ll live with my parents for a few weeks before going into something temporary on our site while the house is built. Lots of our things will have to be stored or disposed of.

The thing I have found is that already I have become detached from all this stuff. It’s just some things. I can imagine what seems so familiar now, seen and sat on every day will seem distant and foreign when it comes out of storage and returns to us after months of living without it. I can see us looking at these faceless objects and thinking, “why do we have that?”.

It was strange when we sold this house because our buyer was also keen to have quite a bit of our stuff. Whilst I found that kind of odd, having the debris of our life examined and some of it wanted by someone we don’t know, I also felt completely ambivalent. It’s our stuff but if they want it that’s fine. It’s a lovely feeling to unburden and not have stuff. At least to some extent.

It’s not quite the same with the old broom. There are a few things that hold more story, mean something more, things that aren’t just stuff. Not the kind of things a house buyer would notice and want for themselves but that will stand in a corner for years and absorb a bit of life with us.

I think this is also something we need to remember. We rented for nine years after we were married, lots of lovely homes that were not ours. When we bought our current house there were a lot of compromises associated with it. The previous owners had bought it to do up and sell on. All neutral, tasteful colours but not a home. We’ve made it our home but it is not a difficult house to leave. What we hope to build will very much be our home I hope. But it will still be just a house. One day we will walk out of the front door and leave it all behind. It still shouldn’t matter all that much.

When I use the wobbly old broom I can think of the other hands that have swept floors as part of their service to their families. That have gone before us and have been involved in making us who we are. Perhaps there is more true house building in this than in laying timber to construct a dwelling.

I hope that old broom still stands in the corner and sweeps a few more Dwyer floors. And I hope I get to do some of the sweeping.

Several of our friends have noticed that the plot of land isn’t quite what we’ve always envisioned. At the moment it is bare and exposed, a largely empty field sandwiched between two major roads. There will be traffic noise. We are also not planning to build a round house which is what Ben had wanted to do. Ideally in woodland although that is almost impossible to get permission for unless you work in the woods and even then you have to prove you need to be there all the time. We are intending to get a company to build the house for us which again is not what Ben would have chosen.

There are always constraints, challenges, reasons for making a different choice. For us this is a giant and exciting adventure but it isn’t the whole of everything. First, our lives will continue. Trying to serve God, to raise and cherish our children. To remain fed, clothed and reasonably clean. To spend time with family and friends. What we don’t want is for this to take over. One key reason to move is to be nearer our church in Walsall. Secondly we’d like to be in the countryside. These two factors are directly opposed to each other. What we’ve found is a piece of land close enough to Walsall that we can get there and to our friends’ houses quickly enough and be close enough that we can invite them to us. The cost of that is the noise of the nearby roads.

Whilst I am inclined to crave idyllic isolation that wouldn’t be good for me or our family so the compromise is an important and worthwhile one. We could also wait for something more suitable to come up. That’s a dilemma because it is always possible that something better is round the corner. On the other hand something better would cost more and we could wait for a while and find this moment has passed.

Some people say the ages of 7-11 are the Golden Years. I’m beginning to understand why. Red is 9. He enjoys hour upon hour of quiet time with a book or pad and pencil. He is curious and interested, engaged and fascinated by what he finds around him. It’s a really good age for a family adventure. Myrtle is getting to that kind of place too and would be perfectly suited to tearing down a hillside chasing the wind. She is planning which flowers to plant and wondering for how much of the year she can avoid wearing shoes. It feels like this is a great moment for us. A moment in which being together is the key thing. If it all goes wrong it will be tough for me and Ben but I have a feeling the kids would rather enjoy it. Sometimes they have a firmer grasp on perspective. It’s a good time for embarking on a wild scheme together. This time is fleeting and this seems like the right way to make the most of it. Together.

Having our children’s father at home for six months following the birth of our third child has been a transformative experience for the whole family.

When I had our first two children Ben was working 12+ hours in London. So I was working all day and most of the night looking after a baby and a three year old. I’ve only just recovered (mostly). I loved our children. Their babyhoods were all the oxymorons. Delighted horror. Terrifying loveliness. Wakeful oblivion. Companied loneliness.

This time I’ve been able to enjoy our baby and our older children in a way that was not possible without my husband at home, and it has been possible for our older children to enjoy it too, without the same feelings of jealousy and conflict. I’m sure the age gap helps with that (the older two are 9 and 6) but mostly it’s because they haven’t had to give up the care of a parent because there’s always a parent who can be available.

Something that has been interesting from my perspective has been the comments other mothers have made to me about having Ben at home all the time. One or two get it, realise how much it helps the family balance, the extent to which it protects my health and mental wellbeing . Most wonder what Ben will be doing, despite having been trying to do all the things motherhood involves on their own once their husbands are back at work (typically after a couple of weeks) and knowing how heavy that burden is. A few suppose it will be rather annoying, as though he will be getting under my feet while I continue to do everything. I’ve never managed to do everything and I’m not convinced they have either.

But here is the biggest problem that I perceive with this way of thinking: the implication is that I could and maybe should be doing everything as far as our home is concerned. But it isn’t my home. It’s our home and we are in this together. The implication is that this isn’t Ben’s home as much as it is mine, that he is some kind of interloper and I’m the one at the centre of this family. That’s not the best way for any family to function. It’s resulted in some (not very) amusing comedy about dads not knowing how to care for children which is nonsense. But it’s also resulted in a society where men are pushed out while we decry the sad lack of male role models and where mothers feel constantly guilty for not managing an unmanageable burden.

Certainly in our family my husband doesn’t want me to bear that burden and I don’t want him to be pushed to the side of our family. Here we walk together. Except when he carries me over the deepest puddles.

16.02.18
There is a back story. Five years ago we moved from Kent to a village near Solihull. There were lots of good reasons for our move and we committed ourselves to this new place. We are very grateful for the good things here, especially an extraordinary amount of help during my pregnancy. In many ways it doesn’t suit us but we thought it would be a good place for our children. It has been.

Jonny Duddle describes a place that always makes me think of this village in his book The Pirates Nextdoor: “The cars were washed, the lawns were mowed, the hedges trimmed and neat”. We are not neat, and we don’t ever wash the car. They don’t like our wood pile here. We don’t fit. We had thought we would stick with it until the children finish school, then move nearer to our church in Walsall, and into the countryside (these aims are in direct opposition but we feel like we’ve found the right compromise).

Then on the 8th February 2017 the mystery of the missing period was solved and a blue line appeared on the testing stick. This was a very Great Shock. This baby seemed almost immaculately conceived. Almost. It seemed impossible, not least because for so many it is such a long struggle. Here I will be honest but first I will say, I am sorry.

I didn’t want a baby. At all. Not in any way. Throughout my sick and painful pregnancy people told me it would be worth it. I didn’t believe them. The hardest thing was knowing of all the people who desperately wanted this blessing. Who had waited years and been through terrible ordeals and who would make wonderful parents. And we were given a blessing that at that time we didn’t want.

I was wrong. Utterly, completely, absolutely wrong. Birch is beautiful and precious and I had forgotten the amazing feeling that it is to find you love a new person completely and wholly. And he doesn’t mind how much I kiss him. In fact he thinks that’s pretty funny. He brings the big children together and distracts them from arguing with each other. He is marvelous.

His birth changed everything. We live in a three bed semi which has never been something we dreamed of. It is fine and we are grateful. It is not a good fit for our family of five and staying in a place that we do not fit into for an extra six years seemed like a daunting prospect. We could buy a bigger house here but we both quailed at the thought of a bigger mortgage on a house that makes us feel like square pegs in round holes.

So it is to Birch that we owe this adventure. Ben works for Automattic, makers of WordPress and was given six months paternity leave. It is an amazing and extraordinary company. I’ll write a bit about paternity leave next, but this time has given us an opportunity to make plans.

We made the decision to move over Christmas, partly because we saw a house we really liked which was subsequently sold. We were three days too slow selling our house. I am glad of that now. We thought the plot of land we have bought had sold but it came back on the market.

Instead of trimmed and neat we will have mud on our hands and wind in our hair. And no holes to squeeze ourselves into in order to fit.

13.02.18
Staffordshire County Council have a pre-application service which involves submitting your plans and ideas, letting them glimpse the dream. They respond with information about what in your plans would result in a failed planning application. It’s a chance for them to stomp on the dream, or to understand what it is you want to do and help you through the planning application. The latter is what they intend, the former will not be our experience I hope.
Ben submitted our pre-planning application yesterday so they now have 21 days to respond. We were hoping it wouldn’t be 21 days until we heard about the offer we had made on the land.

Around 9.30am Ben dropped his phone in the toilet. He retrieved it without weeing on it but spent the next twenty minutes trying to charge up an old phone to receive any incoming calls. It worked only well enough for him to know he was receiving a call from the estate agent. Fortunately my phone has not spent time in the toilet yet. The answer was yes, offer accepted. I knew from the thundering feet running down the stairs (our phone signal is only reliable upstairs. And this isn’t a self build), and then I really knew from the smile, the kiss and dancing light in his eyes and the words. Yes, this is really happening.

In the calm of the evening in front of the fire Ben and I had an important conversation. He opened with “thank you for letting me do this”. I’m not letting him do this. This is an adventure we are going on together because we both want to and we think it will be good for us and our children. Ben has been the one to drive and nurture the dream and to see the opportunity when it arose. I’m more one to float downstream. I’m not strong enough to swim against the current except in his wake. Being with Ben means I can go to places I couldn’t get to on my own. Many of those places have been beautiful. The place we are heading to is going to be beautiful. I expect that the water will almost all be turbulent on the way but the journey will be together and the destination is going to be our own.

I wonder what would happen if you dropped a phone down a compost toilet.

There had always been the dream of buying land I think. At 16 our young selves may have only seen the romance. Now we are looking at it with mud on our hands. Either this will be the story of a dream come true or a salutary tale of dreams left in tatters and a family starting all over again having lost more than the vision. At this point our feelings are mixed given the extent of the opposition of the potential outcomes.

We saw the land today. It is right where we want to be and it is big. It would be just the place for a little log cabin and some children, wild and free. It was cold and windy too. This is not all going to be idyllic.

Already there are lots of phone calls to have. Excited log cabin companies hoping for some big business. A much more pessimistic conveyor casting doubt on whether we will be able to get a mortgage for the land. We don’t need a huge amount so a personal loan is another option but we had been told a mortgage would be fine. Someone saying otherwise seems like the first example of the doubt and cold water that I’m sure will be coming our way. It seems like books and fairy tales say to hold on to the dream, suffer courageously and then enjoy the rewards of the hardship endured. My head wonders if another possibility is that you keep going at your peril. That would make a more entertaining story except for those writing it.