April Showers.

April is strange in this house.

Our home is decorated with two lots of balloons, treated to two birthday cakes, it watches as two children excitedly tear open gifts. And yet both of our fathers died in April, so every balloon and cake and gift is tinged with a little bit of sadness because they never met these hilarious little monsters who are growing up and up and up before our very eyes.

Now that we are students, April has also become known as panic month. The month of GO GO GO before our May exams and deadlines and then, somewhere around mid May, it all just stops.

It is a Saturday morning and I'm laying in bed, because Saturday is my lay-in day. My head is full of a thousand things. Some trivial and mundane, some gnawing at me. I am snuggled in my duvet but there's a gorgeous April breeze creeping in through my open window. I am warm, cocooned in doughnuts, but the air is fresh and cooling. Today, the April breeze is my friend. My saviour. The children's birthdays in a month of grief. The light at the end of the exam tunnel. Whispering "it will all work out in the end" to every worry, every niggle, every concern.

April is a funny old month.

But this year, I think we can handle it.

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