The summer seems to have disappeared- there’s nothing like wishing you’d brought gloves while out test-driving a mobility scooter because your fingers have gone numb! I’ve not worked out the test-drive route from our new unit yet, although I’ve discovered a distinct lack of lowered kerbs! I knew- but I’d forgotten- because this is the same route I used to walk when we moved to Wales, over 15 years ago. It feels unchanged, somehow, when I go through behind the industrial estates, even though it was another life when I remember walking down there with my (now grown-up) children, although back then these units weren’t built yet, and we had no idea how life could change so suddenly. Fifteen years ago, carrying the buggy up the railway bridge while holding my toddler’s hand tightly, to wave at the trains as they went under us, or walking past the river round the other way, off the path, behind the factory and out near the roundabouts- the children complained, when we went that way, it was twice as long- but they loved the bit near the water, under the trees. In those days, we walked everywhere, and we had more trust. A wet August, a bit like this year has been, after a short spell of hot weather- the year we got our first cat, too- a cat who despite being fifteen years old now and looking, as old cats do, rather scruffy, just tried to convince me he’d sooner be outside in the rain this afternoon, then of course insisted I open the door, and is now drying his paws on my desk (he’s not allowed on my desk, and he knows it… but my tortoiseshell cat has stolen the prized spot of the linen basket). Fifteen years on, we’re here, but we’re not the same people we were, or were going to become, if our lives hadn’t changed. My oldest two both have their own families now- small, happy, wonderful new members of our family. My middle boy is off travelling abroad. The toddler who loved the trains- he’s working in our workshop this summer, after enjoying training on the FourX powerchairs! And my youngest, (who didn’t even exist fifteen years ago…) wants to help me with advertising, he’s got big ideas about videos…
The path we ended up on might not have been where we’d imagined, fifteen years ago, but it’s not bad either. We keep going.
