Last Wednes­day the glo­ri­ous sun­set as I looked west from a friend’s house, cou­pled with the full moon loom­ing won­der­ful­ly large and low over the trees to the east when I returned home, got me think­ing about this time of year, par­tic­u­lar­ly as it relates to the last 10 years of my life.

Have you ever found your­self in a sit­u­a­tion where you felt all your stars were aligned?

I now realise that it hap­pened to our fam­i­ly in July 1999 when M was lift­ed slow­ly and suc­cess­ful­ly from his 50 day induced coma and then for me 10 years lat­er when I recent­ly took the won­der­ful 9‑day intense infant/toddler course I wrote about on July 26th in ‘Brilliant Experience!’.

This anniver­sary of sorts marks our fam­i­ly’s expe­ri­ences 10 years ago when M was still lying in his room in the car­dio­vas­cu­lar unit of our local hospital.

Wim­ble­don had been on TV, enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly watched by my youngest son, then 18, and M’s car­di­ol­o­gist. It gave them both some­thing oth­er than M’s case to talk about; some­thing cheer­ful for a change. As M came out of his coma the Tour de France was on TV — one of M’s ear­ly pas­sions. It became a use­ful tool for us to help jog his memory.

So July 2009 marks an event­ful time in my life, like noth­ing else I’ve ever been through and in ret­ro­spect the stars were aligned then for M and us. Which is why I believe he has done bet­ter than sim­ply sur­vive for 10 years.

On the 3‑hour jour­ney to my course loca­tion last month my favourite CD’s accom­pa­nied me. The Fri­day evening I arrived I met a fan­tas­tic group of 12 women of all ages work­ing in the field of child­care and pas­sion­ate about their work, no mat­ter their paper qualifications.

I am over­whelmed by what I learned in my course but so encour­aged that much of what I’ve been writ­ing about for 10 years was con­tained in it. What a sur­prise; more than I’d hoped for.

Grad­u­al­ly what I learned from my course will show itself in my writing.

On the jour­ney home I was accom­pa­nied by my youngest son’s choice of music, since by then I was using his car: The King’s Singers, Attrac­tion (a bar­ber­shop quar­tet) and final­ly my choice of music: ‘I Wan­na Be Around’, my sons’ most recent bar­ber­shop quar­tet CD.

When I say the stars were aligned here’s how my jour­ney home panned out: I expe­ri­enced so many emo­tions lis­ten­ing to The King’s Singers, appro­pri­ate to my week of expe­ri­ences; then came Attrac­tion singing a gospel tune and just as I heard the lyrics “…when you see the light­ning flash­ing…” the rain came down and the light­ning flashed all round me! Final­ly I was moved by the mel­liflu­ous voic­es of my sons and their two friends as I drove up to our house when the last song on their CD end­ed — 8pm on the nose, just as I’d predicted!

The icing on the cake was to hear from our old­est son, Dan, who had safe­ly land­ed back in the US after a two-month stay in England.

The stars were aligned in July 1999, again in July of this year and this week the sun and the moon worked for me too! 

Onwards and upwards with hope and excitement!