Last week was half term and my husband had booked some time off of work. We have a jobs list for the house as long as I care to admit, so we debated whether this time and money should be spent on that. It’s not that anything major needs doing, it could just do with re painting in most of the rooms and some of our furniture could do with being replaced. The thing is, the house doesn’t excite me and as long as it functions, to me, why replace it? So, with that in mind I started looking for a holiday. We thought about going abroad, but as Greg was only off for 5 days, I thought of places I would like to visit here in the U.K. I have always wanted to visit Brixham in Devon as we enjoy little seaside harbour towns and Harvey loves to go crabbing, so we booked a lovely little apartment that looked out onto the boats at Brixham Marina.
If losing my vision has taught me anything, it is that living for now is so important. I don’t know how long I will keep this vision that I still have for and making the most of the time we all have together is so important to me. I also want Harvey to experience life and by putting all of our money into our house, he won’t be doing that. I want him to want to visit different places and gain new experiences and memories. I can’t even remember the colour of the carpet we had when I was his age, but I remember our holiday to Idaho where we visited Yellowstone national park and rode a horse and carriage up the mountain and had a camp fire tea. I’m so grateful I had holidays like that growing up and was so lucky to see what I did before I found out about Stargardts. Our holidays aren’t extravagant holidays by any stretch, but the more of them I can give Harvey and the quality time it gives us, then we will keep doing them. I am also generally a happier carefree mum when I am away. I don’t know why, but out of routine and things I see every day, I don’t notice my vision loss as much, or it doesn’t consume me as much as it does here. I wonder if when I am at home, I get into a thinking pattern and routine and everyday things sets off my worry like a trigger for my vision loss. When I am away from home, I get lost in the moment more and don’t seem to dwell as much.
The holiday flew by, and we were soon home before we knew it, and the house jobs list is still the same, but we have come home with memories and fun times and I got to see Harvey enjoying himself jumping through the choppy waves, pulling up 13 crabs in his net in one go, grinning from ear to ear on a steam train as we rode along the coast in one, looking lovingly at his ice-cream, helping him find life in rock pools and digging big holes in the sand. That’s what life is all about, the painting and furniture replacing can wait, after all, the dirty little hand prints that need covering are the ones that I will be so heartbroken over when I can no longer see them anymore ♥️.
