Another Rite of Passage

My parents have sold their house and moved out.  Not the home we all lived in as children – there were far too many of those.  As army brats we moved around a lot.  My parents bought, renovated and sold some stunning homes but we were only in them for a few years, and of course we had our fair share of army ‘quarters’ or basic brick boxes.  And then we had two long term homes.  Shore House where we spent our pre teen and teenage years, in beautiful Bosham.  This was the last house we all lived in as a family before maturity (or lack of it!) scattered us to the four winds, careers, countries and relationships.

18 years ago my parents bought Home Farm House.  I wasn’t there for the purchase or the move – but that’s pretty normal!  Many’s the time we’ve come home for school holidays, half term or an exeat weekend to a new home!  I well remember taking two school friends to Five Trees and spending much of the weekend throwing buckets of hot soapy water on a floor and chipping the plaster off to reveal the 16th Century flagstones beneath.

When I went to Boarding School for the first time the beautiful Hill House, where we were all so happy, was packed up and sold.  I lost my leased horse, paddock, room to roam on Frensham Common where I learned to ride and ice skate.  I lost my freedom, my childhood, my home in one fell swoop.

It was a few years before my parents bought Five Trees and I had some sense of belonging to a place again.  There were only 9 months or so of exeat weekends at my cousins’ house but it was long enough for me to feel like a displaced person and for that to last lifelong.

It would be twenty years before I owned my childhood longed for horse.  And 30 before I finally had the land and freedom I had craved ever since that early loss.  But even with my own home and farm, animals and horses, losing the parental home has me feeling bereft.

In everyone’s lives there are essential rites of passage – adolescence, deaths, marriage, births, menopause, the sale of the family home, parental deaths.  As my parents let go of that beautiful house, pack up their belongings, disseminate their possessions to charity shops and newly rented accommodation while they try and find their perfect new home, we are all feeling the momentousness of the move.

Home Farm House was a home – it was a lovely warm, welcoming house, with beautiful garden and outlook – the product my parents’ hard work.  I have wept for its loss while hoping it brings great joy and happiness to its new owners.  I was devastated not to be able to get back to the UK for a last hurrah with the whole family in situ together for the final time.

But now that the boxes are packed and everything my parents own is gone and I can see from afar that it is just a house.  It is all that they have and all that they are that make it a home.  A home embodies the energy of the people who inhabit it – it exhibits their souls.  So though my parents have critical eyes and voice their judgements freely, from the love in their home, the sheen on the warm mahogany tables, gleaming floors and welcoming kitchen heart of the home, they demonstrate their warm and loving hearts beneath the masks they have adopted and worn so well.

Those hearts and collection of furniture, paintings and household items go with them.  We will always have a home away from home wherever they are, as long as they live.

Those feelings of devastating loss are just a practice run for when they die.  It is impossible to imagine the hole they will leave in our lives.  Not to have them on the planet anymore – knowing us, loving us, judging us, correcting us, critiquing us, sending us parcels, treating us and our children to new clothes, trips, toys etc.

As much as a home is place of safety and rest for the heart, it is the hearts of the inhabitants that makes a house a home.

Tree change Anniversary

A whole year has now passed since I moved lock, stock, and two smoking barrels up here from KV.  What a lot has happened – to me, to the farm, to my life.  Who would have thought that this move that we all deemed the craziest and biggest risk of my daredevil life to date, would make so many dreams come true?

Here I am, one year on, belly distended with child, rings on my fingers, wed at last, in a sweet little cottage that is finally a home (just the finishing touches to go), an office on the way, surrounded by ducks, dog, chooks galore and STILL awaiting the birth of the first Avalon calf.  Truly all my forty odd years of restless searching have finally led me to Ged and this beautiful place that I can wholeheartedly call home . . .
The good news is that a literary agent I have worked with before in the UK is interested in seeing this ‘Mad Cow’ that you all keep saying is a book, written as such.  That actually doesn’t mean very much – it means that if I can knuckle down to writing the first three chapters, she would like to see them to see if they have potential in the publishing world . . . while the baby is sleeping  . . .??
We went out for dinner with friends in Port Macquarie on Friday night and had a dismally disappointing meal with appalling service.  We are slowly working our way through the eating establishments up here and it seems that the bad far outweigh the good.  We treated ourselves to the local Indian a week or so ago as we are both firm fans of the genre and it was awful!  Microwaved mess style food – ugh!!  And  I didn’t know that there was such a thing as a bad Indian restaurant – Port Macquarie really does take poor palatability to new depths!!  Nonetheless we will soldier on with our campaign to try them all so when you come to stay we know where we can safely send you and where not!  The things we do . . . .
The winter thus far has been so mild that all the plants are confused.  I have daffodils in flower, blossom on the trees, lavendar in bud – bizarre.