How has it been a month?
The summer holidays are over. The nights are drawing in, the mornings are chilly and fresh, and the monkeys are back at school.
And today is a very big day.
Because today, my beautiful Rollo is in Vogue.
I've been looking at these photographs for weeks, knowing that one day I'd finally be able to share them. And now that I can, I'm finding them surprisingly difficult to put into words.
Because he's wearing my Racer PJs.
And tucked onto that tiny pocket is a little yellow car that was once my Grandad's.
The Yellow Peril.
A racing car he built with his friends in the 1970s. Something he poured his time, imagination, determination and love into.
But to me, it was always more than a racing car.
It was Grandad.
The Yellow Peril
Grandad was the person I turned to for advice.
He was someone who quietly believed in me. Someone I shared my love of horses with. Someone whose stories and conversations I would give anything to have one more time.
The Yellow Peril was something he made with his own hands, alongside his friends, back in the 1970s.
I don't think he could ever have imagined that, all these years later, it would find its way onto a tiny pocket on a pair of children's pyjamas; and eventually into the pages of Vogue.
When I put that little yellow car onto the PJs, I wanted a tiny piece of his story to keep travelling.
I just never imagined quite how far it would travel.
Passing something on
And now here is Rollo.
My gorgeous, wild, tear-away boy.
My biggest-hearted little explorer.
Wearing something that carries a piece of his Great-Grandad with him.
There is something about the photograph that I can't quite explain.
It makes me want to cry.
It makes me want to laugh.
It makes me want to scoop him up and hold onto this exact moment forever.
Because I see Rollo.
But I also see the little boy he is becoming. The childhood I'm so lucky to witness. And the generations of love that somehow sit quietly inside that tiny yellow car.
Perhaps that's what we leave behind.
Not just the big things.
But the stories.
The little traditions.
The things we make with our hands.
The things we pass down without even knowing how far they'll go.
Sometimes the smallest things carry the biggest stories.
I wish Grandad could see it
I wish Grandad could see this.
I wish I could show him.
I think he would probably have been quietly embarrassed by all the fuss.
And then, when nobody was looking, secretly rather pleased.
I'd like to think he'd have looked at Rollo in those PJs, spotted that little yellow car tucked onto his pocket and understood exactly why it mattered.
Because it isn't really about the car.
It's about what it represents.
A person.
A childhood.
A love of making things.
A love of horses.
A family.
And a story that has somehow continued long after the person who began it was gone.
Rollo, in Vogue
So today feels like more than seeing my boy in the pages of Vogue.
It feels like a little piece of Grandad has made it there too.
And I think that's why my heart feels so very full.
Rollo, in Vogue.
My boy.
His yellow car.
And a little bit of Grandad, still racing along beside us. 💛
And perhaps that is the loveliest thing about the things we carry with us, we never really know where their stories might end up.
Sometimes, they just keep travelling.