We're going to climb a mountain
bit soon for a 2025 plot-twist, and yet
👋🏼👋🏼👋🏼 Hi! I’m so happy to see you. I’m Laura Jane Williams, a UK-based romance author. How to Build a Life launched in August 2024, and now has thousands of readers in over 70 countries (!). You can expect personal stories about life’s mess and mayhem, and the search for a way of living that feels right. I’m almost 40, a solo parent by choice, and for 2025 am committed to stealing back time from my to-do list. I’m just sick of being busy with stuff that doesn’t really matter, you know?
I’m currently writing my 15th book, whilst also popping up here twice a week too. I love both things! Don’t make me choose!
My kid and I have decided to climb a mountain.
On New Year’s Day he took me to the forest he often goes to with my brother Jack, who goes there to walk his dog when he visits. I do not go with them to walk the dog when Jack visits, because this is when I get half an hour to myself. You understand.
My kid said to just follow him, he knew the way, he’d show me where Jack takes him, and me, a person simply thrilled my kid is up for walk when he spent forty-five minutes that morning emphatically stating that he would not be walking anywhere, said, ‘Okay!’
My brother’s dog is a small wired-haired Dachshund, and I thought of this halfway up a tremendously muddy incline, a small brook trickling down beneath our feet, the child of another family already stomping his foot to say he wanted to go back to the car because this was TOO LONG AND BORING and making me feel that delicious sense of pride that floods the system when it isn’t your child doing the stomping (normally short-lived). Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, I was about to get suspicious. The hill + the mud + the smallness of Jack’s dog did not = us going their usual way, I was certain of it.
‘Are you sure this is the way Jack brings you?’ I asked, and my son replied, ‘Yes! Come on!’ and the thing about my kid is that he doesn’t lie, because I don’t get mad. That’s the deal we have going on. Tell me anything, it’s cool, I won’t shout, I’m not a regular mom I’m a cool mom. However. This hill. This very big hill.
‘Jack brings you up this exact hill?’ I pressed.
‘Not this exact hill, I don’t think. I’m not sure. But this is definitely the way,’ he pressed, and we’ve all been there, haven’t we, lied by omission, been deliberately vague to cover our tracks. He even did the hand wave, as if batting away my concerns toward some other kid, some other chump who could handle the aggro. This kid was busy having an adventure, thanks.