I’m moving to a place where the national dish is melted cheese on toast. How could I not find that perfectly lovely?
The Spouse has been offered a lecturing position at the University of Cardiff and so in August, we’re upping stakes and moving south from Edinburgh. It is a fantastic opportunity – one that we hadn’t even really let ourselves hope for. A great university in an interesting city that has a reputation for being diverse, creative and even family-friendly. And yes, it has a castle. We’ve landed on our feet, even before you consider that legendary Welsh rarebit.
But I’ve never been to Cardiff – never even been to Wales. One of my sisters lived there for a year’s exchange during her undergraduate degree, but all of her stories seemed to involve cute sheep in raincoats and cute boys in the chapel choir. Perhaps enough to recommend it. Perhaps not. I don’t know anyone in Wales.
If I sound ambivalent about the move, perhaps I am. Not hesitant or reluctant, though. I’m thrilled to bits about the position for the Spouse – it really is perfect for him and just the step we were looking for. And I’m excited, too, about the prospect of something new. But I love it here. Leaving will be hard. It’s that kind of ambivalence.
We’ve tried to put down roots here. This feels like home. But now it is time for something new all over again. We knew that change was coming and even necessary. We wondered if it might mean a move home to Canada or if we could change work but stay here in Edinburgh. But even if we could stay here, we would be looking for a new home because we’ve definitely outgrown our home. All three kids share one teeny tiny bedroom and the only space to play is in our living/dining/my office room. The kitchen is tiny and windowless. There is no more space on the bookshelves and no room for more bookshelves. And Bean will be nine in a couple of weeks and it’s probably time for her to have her own room. It’s time for change.
This will be the third time that we’ve moved away from a home where one of our babies was born. We left Bean’s birthplace on her second birthday. I know. Mad timing for a move. Her daddy made it up to her by baking her a bright pink strawberry-flavoured birthday cake in the brand-new house on the day of the move. And that night we filled the house with friends and filled the friends with penne a la vodka and pink cake. It was a good move – and just at the right time, too. Blue was due to be born four month’s later and I wanted to be settled in by then.
The second move was much, much harder. Blue wasn’t even a year old when the Spouse lost his job with the CBC and we left our townhouse and moved in with my folks. That home was the worst one, the one with the most problems – wonky, leaking windows, a badly-constructed kitchen, a frigid living room, dangerous staircases (three of them) and damp. But as my sister helped me mop and scrub every surface one last time, I cried buckets.
This move won’t be like that, but it won’t be easy either. Our work and our friendships here have grown to feel permanent. Our kids don’t really have strong memories of any other home. This is home.
A friend passed this quotation my way recently, summing up this feeling that I’ve been edging towards.
“You get a strange feeling when you’re about to leave a place… like you’ll not only miss the people you love, but you’ll miss the person you are now at this time and this place, because you’ll never be this way ever again.”
Azar Nafisi
Tomorrow, I’ll be heading to Cardiff with the Spouse and Plum to spend a couple of days looking for our new home. Good, necessary, emotional work. The two bigger kids will stay here with friends, but I think that it will be good to have Plum with me. He reminds me that my work as a mother isn’t just keeping him safe and fed and sometimes happy – it’s also about letting him go. Kids, even little ones, need space, and parents learn daily how to let them go in a hundred loving ways. It’s work of faith, isn’t it? And in a different way, that is the work of this moment for us. Letting go of what we’re living here and now. Letting go of who we are now. Letting go in love and finding a way forward into the unknown and the new.
Think of us tomorrow, will you?
I’ll let you know how the househunting goes.
