Our family shifts shape a lot. With Matti with us Thursday to Sunday and Ruskin coming during all the UK school holidays, there are two, three or four children at home. During Matti's holidays Anton usually sleeps curled beside him for a week or two and then he is gone. Some weeks we are a busy household of four and then on Sunday afternoon we are down to the two littlest. What has surprised me most is that this situation feels more fluid and functional than I thought it would, but of course there are moments when I notice every flaw in the linoleum, every peel in the paint. Back in my university days a very wise woman told me the saying 'the soul travels at the speed of a trotting camel'. Ruskin and I have sat on a camel together as it sank and rose, ambling forward across a small part of the vast Sahara and I can still feel the speed a camel travels in my bones! So it is no surprise that the fast pace of goodbyes and airport drop offs that create the rhythm of life here can leave me feeling as if I am the stationary point in a time lapse photograph.

The good thing is that, apart from needing my camel to be moving a little quicker than it would like, and most often catching up with me some time after events, the kids are doing fine. I always find it something of a shock when Ruskin arrives happy and relaxed and so comfortable in his own skin. I remember spending my teenage years feeling like my body was a strange, wobbly, thing that had attached itself to the real me, so witnessing his confident navigation of these years leaves me quite bewildered and very relieved. I love doing the laundry when Ruskin is home, partly because it is a pleasure to do the practicalities of parenting him during the short time he is here, but mostly because it is nice to stand alone on the balcony smoothing out the evidence of his speedy growth. And though it only really feels as if my camel and I move as one when all four of our children are under one roof there is pleasure in all the forms our family takes.

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