Up until about three weeks ago, I had every intention of continuing life like this. I was going to book flights to go to the US to attend two family friends’ weddings, meet my future nephew and celebrate my 30th birthday with life-long friends. The original plan included my husband, Paul, coming, but since he couldn’t get his annual leave approved for the time, I bravely (or foolishly) made the decision to travel 15,000km with two kids under 4 – alone.

But then something happened. Life gave me three juicy lemons in the span of two days. Around 6pm on a Sunday night, Paul was about to leave for his night shift when a freak storm came in and blew away some of our roof sheets. (Did I mention we are in the process of re-roofing our house?) Water started pouring onto my bed from the down-lights. Worse – my new closet also started leaking. I haven’t had a closet in three years and had JUST washed and hung up everything that had been in storage the day before. I had to take out all of my clothes. (The good ones that warrant the use of hangers.) Not knowing where to store them, I placed them into my daughter, Daisy’s, cot and said she could sleep with us. Paul clearly couldn’t go to work with our house in a rain forest state so he and our builder friend had to stop the flood in a full on thunderstorm.

The next day we were watching a friend’s kid who had an accident. I will spare you the details, but this accident is usually number two when it comes to the order of things. Not wanting to tell us, she tracked it through my house and straight into Daisy’s cot and onto all of my clothes. (The good clothes, remember?) Careful to not break this child’s spirit – silent tears rolled down my cheeks while I helped her get cleaned up. Since my laundry is temporarily in our shed (across the muddy yard,) I only started one load of washing and then went to bed. (Still sobbing, obviously.)

The next day I wanted to launder all of my clothes, but had to leave at 6am to drive my son, Axel, round trip eight hours to Sydney for a specialist appointment. Halfway through the Blue Mountains he projectile vomited everywhere. I don’t know if it’s because my Mom-game is off, but the only spare change of clothes I had were fluro pink boardies and a t-shirt. It’s autumn. We walked into his doctor’s appointment and he looked like he just came off the set of Weekend at Bernie’s.

As I drove back into Mudgee I felt overwhelmingly tired. Emotionally and physically, I felt out of control and like I needed to nest. I pulled into my driveway and saw my half-roofed house and the bare frames that would be my future laundry room, living room and kids’ bedrooms. It was in that moment that I knew I physically couldn’t embark on international travel with my kids. I needed to stay in Mudgee and build my home. It was time to slow down. I cancelled my trip and poured a glass of wine.

That evening I impulsively started hand sewing a quilt from my kids’ old clothes. It’s now been three weeks and I have not stopped because the simple act of stitching fabric together is as therapeutic as Xanax. When I’m writing I can get side tracked on the Internet. When I’m mothering, I try to do dishes, laundry and cleaning simultaneously. When it comes to sewing, there a few things (besides drink wine) I can do while doing it. Unlike my old life, I’m not staring at a screen or trying to be creative or still have organised thoughts at 9pm. I’m just sewing together pieces of my life that will literally keep my family warm, while Paul tries to put a roof over our heads.

Summer Land is the author of Summerlandish: Do As I Say, Not As I Did. Get a signed copy of her book at summerlandauthor.com