Last year we were lucky enough to visit my husbands parents who currently live in a beautiful villa on the Spanish coast for two weeks of sunshine filled bliss. When you're used to grey skies and wet summers the joy of feeling hot sun on bare skin is enough to make you want to burn your passport and never go home.
Days filled with long naps, fresh ripe fruit, cold beers and sandy toes passed by all too quickly. We dissolved into the relaxing refrain of 'manana, manana' and often did little more than roll from our sunbeds into the pool when the heat got to much.
Happy days. Happy, lazy days.
By the second week I felt so relaxed I didn't recognise the hassled, overprotective mother that I used to be, oh so long ago.
Then one evening as I sat with my glass of Rioja in the kitchen I watched the three year old run through the room and out the back door.
'Now where's he off to' I thought to myself in a haze of contentment, pausing a moment before pre-holiday Mum took over and decided that I better go and see.
As I stepped out the back door I saw him climb down a step into the pool, the pool he couldn't swim in, the pool he couldn't stand in. He was fully clothed with a mischievous smile on his face. I shouted and ran as he jumped into the water.
I threw myself in after him, the water barely reaching my chest as I saw him sink to the bottom. Pulling him up he gasped as I screamed at him 'What are you doing? What are you doing?' - unable to understand what had been going through his head.
I climbed in shock out of the water, my dress sticking to my body and I held him close. 'Don't you ever, ever do that again' I choked as he cried into my arms.
We dried off and I took him straight to bed. Lying beside him and crying in the dark for what might have been.
The next morning the sun shone through the shutters and he turned his beautiful face towards me.
'I sorry Mummy. I never do that again'.
This post is Kate's entry into the Printerpix Photo competition on Tots100
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