time is but a blizzard of moments, steal them and run!

Time is magical.

It is magic.

It constantly moves; shape-shifting and dancing, moulding new moments from sandy memories, stealing the silence of sleep and blurring the image into something familiar and different in the blink of a fluttering eye. The stars are lit and unlit and dew falls and scatters, chasing new and existing dreams as the dawn glows. We grow, time washing over us, the colours changing, cloudy silence etching features that bend and stretch into the glitter of captured breath.

My children arrived on Rathlin today, kicking their shoes off in the house in Mullindress and pushing their adult frames into the skyline, their steps natural and free, their spirits at home in the island that has sheltered them year on year since their most formative years. Over the years we have changed, yet the bonds have strengthened. Roots stretch deeper and family flow, chasing the new day like a winding stream.

I watched my son and daughter come off the ferry this morning, smiling as I glanced at time, frozen for a moment, welcoming them home. They will be 26 and 28 this year and yet they throw their heads back and laugh in the same way they did 25 years ago, they entertain time and embrace it, savouring the past but standing up to the future.

When I look in their eyes; one child piercing blue and another grey/green, both reflecting the sea and the sky, I see in them both kindness and a determination not just to be alive but to live. As a parent you can't ask for more and for that reason I am eternally blessed. It's that determination that is going to ensure that the child who is sick will push through the boundaries and walk in the same fields, under the same moonlight, where we have bowed to the melodies of time.

It doesn't belong to us but we'll continue to capture it's blizzard of moments, stealing petals of laughter, heads thrown back and throats open, silence resting in the twilight.