WEARY FOR HOME

Back from holidays then. In some ways it’s felt like falling off a cliff and landing exactly where we left - at someone else’s house. 

In others, it’s felt as though we’re also better equipped for things ahead - though that’s harder to see straight away.

There is no doubt we’re weary.

We’re now in our tenth week of having no home. We’re edging closer but still there’s no definite exchange date and despite us asking for November 4th, I now think this is getting really unlikely. It’s deflating us.

‘Better equipped for things ahead’ is a good way to look at it. The break gave us clear eyes, and a new determination about what to ask the estate agent tomorrow. I still maintain that the entire process is unnecessarily complicated, and unfair in some ways. It would be wonderful if the folks at the end of our chain could do what we did for our buyers and pack up their house in three and half days - but somehow I don’t see that happening.

It also makes me wonder what might be ahead, if this time is ‘training’ for it, whatever ‘it’ is. Personally, I don’t want to have to go through anything like this ever again.

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We went to see fireworks last night. The last ever steam fair in my childhood park, and the last opportunity to stand under those trees and see the sky burst with light and fire. It reminded me so much of those good old days when we’d stand there with our coats around our pyjamas and our wellies squelching in the dark grass. We lived opposite the park and so it was always a treat to go late at night for the firework display, then come back to my Grandma’s sitting room for hot chocolate.

The final display didn’t disappoint. It was loud and spectacular and enormous. As the last rocket thudded from its cannon, I watched it climb through the clouds of smoke that had gone before. Then like a comet with a golden tail, it burst overhead into a huge fountain of light.

Gold and silver sparks filled the night like daylight, cascading down through the trees in cataracts of diamonds. For a brief moment it was as though the whole park was surrounded with fire. And then, just as quickly, it was gone, and all was smoke and applause.

Permanence is an illusion isn’t it? Everything’s temporary in the grand scheme of things. Year after year, the steam fair kept coming back, and year after year we’d watch those fireworks. We never thought there might be an end, but of course there always was, even when we grew not to care for those things. The fair would always be there. Until yesterday. And now, like the smoke, it’s only there in memories.

We are weary, longing for home, longing for something that’s no longer temporary aren’t we? I mean all of us.

I wonder if that ache, that desire for home, that burn, is the fire of something much more. It would not surprise me.