A Haven of Welcome

  
There is something very special about the house of friends – a haven where you know you are welcome.  Carolyn and David’s house in Gateshead has been that to us ever since we met when sharing the experience of new parenthood thirty years ago.

For twenty-four years however, we have been living in different regions, hundreds of miles apart.

Over that time, the generations have rolled over and the families have developed through different phases in their life cycle.

We have met the changes in our own family by moving from one house to another, whereas David and Carolyn have extended and adapted the same house in an inventive manner. This time when we visited, a room that I remember was a bathroom thirty years ago had become a bathroom once more, whereas the bathroom which long ago replaced it had morphed into the dining room.

I wished for a time lapse film that tracked the expansion of both family and house.

However, when we visited recently, the person who recalled most to us the first days of our friendship was somebody we had never met before - Lydia, one of their young grandchildren, busied herself with toys that once Hannah and Pascoe had played with and over her head we smiled at one another