Dear Mum,
The Moomins entered our lives after you bought me a second hand copy "The Finn Family Moomin" from the Church book stall in Belgium. It was tatty and slightly soiled with yellowed pages, but the little creatures on the front piqued my curiosity. They were different and odd looking and the black and white illustrations of moominland looked both familiar as well as alien. Feeling out of place and odd was sometimes how I felt having just moved to the city and a country where people spoke a different language. At times I felt lost, overwhelmed and longed to be home in Dorset, our house facing out onto the sea, flower meadows behind, all my friends and family left far behind. Something about this book felt like going home and the characters were as familiar and lovable.  At night before lights out you would perch on my bed and read out loud. You were the one who breathed life into the family Moomin. You painted colours on the trees and flowers, the winding river by the house, the orchard and the sea. You gave voices to all and a landscape of sound to a silent page of words. You gave Moominmamma your voice and when it was Dad's turn to read he became Moominpapa. I quickly collected all the books and when we had read them all we would start again. To this day, over 45 years later they are my most treasured possession and I still go to them for comfort, to find my home and now to find you.

Today is your 86th birthday and I had expected to wake up and open my curtains to a sunny, bright day. Instead, the sky was heavy with rain and the usual soft orangy glow of late summer early Autumn was overshadowed with a grey hue. Not a day to visit the hill where we laid you, with its stunning views of the Warwickshire countryside, but bitterly cold winds on an overcast and wet day. I felt deflated and terribly sad. It was as if I had just missed you, as if you had been here but just left, just somewhere out of reach...

We've been building a fitted bookcase in our new living room. It spans one whole wall and little by little I've been emptying boxes of books and putting them in. Pile after pile of unboxed books, some for the charity shop, some straight on the shelves. And then there they were, nestled amongst A.A. Milne's "When we were young" and Whinnie the Pooh. More tatty, more dirty, more ripped and soiled than I remembered them, but all complete and all in order except for one. "Moominpapa at Sea" was missing. Strange that it should be this one and strange that I would notice after all these years. It's one of the more melancholic stories, with each character who sets sail with Moominpapa to live on the desolate island having left behind the safety of Moomin valley, experiencing moments of regret, sorrow and great loneliness. It's about loss, and how you can't appreciate how precious things are until they are no longer there.

Funny how that book is missing and yet it is the one that I have been thinking about the most over the past 3 years and the one from which the illustration that I have quickly coloured is attached to this story.

Moominmamma, like all the characters, feels lonely and misses her life in Moomin Valley. She particularly misses her rose garden, her apple orchard, the bridge, the river, in fact, she misses all of Moomin Valley. Left on her own in the old lighthouse and unable to grow anything other than sea pinks on the rocky outcrop, she finds some old paint in the locker outside and starts to paint her garden on the wall. She paints the roses, the garden chairs and tables, the apple orchard and fig trees, she paints everything. When she steps back to view her handiwork, she suddenly feels like she could step into the painting and be back home. So just as everyone returns from a fishing trip, she does just that and hides behind an apple tree. It's a bit of a joke at first as she peeps from between the branches and listens and watches them calling out and searching for her. She doesn't dare step out of the picture unless she frightens them and even worse can't go back, so she decides to wait until they have all gone out again before coming out. She sits down behind the tree and leans back against the trunk and without realising is suddenly sound asleep, back in her garden, back in her home, back in Moomin Valley.

I need to find the book because I can't be sure but I think that Moomintroll, who has been hunting high and low for his mother comes into the kitchen and has a feeling, as if she is just there, just by him, just out of reach. You see Mum this is what I have been feeling for the longest time. To me you have never left, you're here, you're just by me, but just out of reach and if I could only just find in which picture you're taking a nap...

I will find it one day, just as I'll find the missing book, but until that day comes I can still find you in the other books. You see I know that you'll be over the other side of the bridge, the bridge that Snufkin sits on each spring and plays his flute. You'll be sat on the doorstep to the Moomin House, a smile on your face, waiting for me, waiting to go on another adventure, but this time together.

I love you, Mum.

Happy Happy Earth Birthday!