The Crying Colonel

The word surreal, according to the oracle that is Wikipedia, means bizarre or dreamlike and has, justifiably in my view, been one of the most commonly used adjectives in this blog, certainly over the last three or four months anyway.

Last Friday we had, perhaps, the most surreal experience of them all, as all our worldly possessions arrived on our new doorstep, bright and early on another beautiful Australian/Mexican morn.

As the lorry pulled up outside with the container on the back, I felt a tinge of sadness.

It should have been a jubilant occasion - the wife was doing cartwheels. I can only put my sadness down to the increased sense of permanency about our move that I felt at that moment.

It was supposed to be permanent, I know. But, of late, whenever homesickness strikes, I've eased the pain by telling myself that we could always go back. Now if we go back we've got all our stuff to take back too.

My sadness was short lived, as my old friend surreality returned to it's familiar position as my overriding emotion.

Seeing all these boxes being unloaded and carried into the house in exactly the same state as when we last saw them two months and ten thousand miles ago was, truly, surreal. Each and every box we opened full of near and distant memories. The kids 'old' school dresses from Dewi Sant folded over the dining chair exactly how we'd left them. The kitchen noticeboard with it's calender still on the July 2007 page with pen marks indicating what a frenzied period it was for us. Our big, old furniture, here, in Australia. Surreal.

The boxes piled up. We unpacked as the 'movers' unloaded.

I looked at the boxes as they began to fill the room. I was starkly taken back to the occasion when I had seen them last and thought about home and our dear friend the 'Colonel'.

Aunty Lyndsey, as she is also known, had come to ours to assist in anyway she could. Because that's what she does. Always.

She cleaned and scrubbed our house with a vigour that the place had never experienced before. She stopped frequently, not through fatigue, but to cry. And she cried with as much vigour as she cleaned.

Today, as we unpacked, I shed a secret tear as I thought about the Colonel and how we miss her.

Surreality had moved aside once more for sadness.

I hope neither word appears on this blog again. For a while at least.