Dear Alex, we're on the move again...

getting ready to run for daddy....

We’re on the move again…

May 3^rd 2012

Dear Alex,

Full of encouragement for your slow but vital progress, I am uplifted by this. You struggle on becoming more oriented, more desperate, determined to communicate, sounds (although we do not hear them everyday, they’re inconsistent) push through, and are sometimes words. I ask you for a ‘hi’ when I come in today, and your face concentrates itself, the muscles twitch, you frown, and eventually with pursed lips a ‘hi’ emerges, I fall on you with kisses and cuddles and child-like delight…I am so proud of you…

Back at our house we have some news…We have till the 1^st June to move out as the owners who have very generously leant me their vacant home up until now want it back to start construction work on the first June. So I learned this just before your meeting…your meeting has given us till the 17^th July where you are, so you are safe till then. After this suitable re-education home will need to found for you to continue your vital rehabilitation and re-education…

There are, as yet, no houses out there, and I prepare to be moved into emergency accommodation which could be anywhere…the kids would have to move schools again.

I sit, pen in hand, gratitude journal open, and list, naming the things I have, daily discipline of giving thanks for all I see or find or have, the fact I have a roof over my head and food for the kids, a school for them to go to, that I live in a country where we will be rehoused, not on the streets. We will have running water, beds for the kids, a roof. How many thousands of people do not even have that as an option?

Pen writes, shaking hand appreciating and thanking the Most High for all I am privileged to have. Trying to reach beyond the overwhelming, panic moments. Controlling, calming my thoughts and the situation, and what it really is in the big scheme of things…

Easy, however, is not the word. Esmie tries hard for attention as I am glued to the phone making essential calls trying to find a home which does not exist, neither for the budget or just in the area where I can keep them in the same school. They NEED this security, have they not, are they not already going through enough?

Heart pounding, head spinning, I cannot turn it, I have the sensation I will fall, as I drive to you today, post-Esmie getting scissors (despite the fact I was making the calls sat down, painting pictures for you with her) and chopping so much hair off that its unsalvageable. She looks shocking, never have I seen any worse hair-catastrophe…Esmie, I hear your cries, your grizzles, your waking at night crying for ‘daddy to come back’. I hear your big eyes filled with tears, lost without you. Mummy trying to be normal, painting, cooking, turning the washing machine, folding clothes, school runs, homework in. I hear it all.

I hear Lola too, heaving with sobs at bedtime remembering when you were Ok, when you cuddled her, called her ‘your Bo-Bo’ and gave her kisses and cuddles. She wants these now. Her heart weeps a thousand tears craving this….needing this, knowing she cannot have it yet.

I let her cry, I console her, we do sweetie kebab sticks, each one of them blindfolded, pushing sweets onto a kebab stick (guided!) and discussing after what they had achieved despite the fact they couldn’t see. How they ‘saw’ by feeling, listening. I explain this is how you see now, it doesn’t make us any different, makes our feelings towards each other change, it just makes it more of a challenge, as we have to learn new ways of doing things.

I run a bath, bubble filled, and thank God for hot running water, I decide to have a night off from the computer, gathering information, house hunting frantically. I decided to switch off, I step into the bath, no hot water…I smile, a big, big smile. This is so ridiculous I have to laugh…may be bordering on hysteria, but a laugh and a smile none-the-less.

Digging deep is a disciplined practice, it does put a smile on your face, over the pain, the ‘can I really do this?’, it makes you take time, slows you down, the racing of the heart, the mind, life, the welfare of the kids, my welfare brought into the moment, soundly giving thanks for all I do have.

I have to trust. Let go. Hope. And I never knew I would be able to do this. That I am doing it. That the kids are excited about the move because I put it to them as an adventure; a privilege to be moving to another house. They’re not afraid; they are not worried or apprehensive because I can help them in this. I can guide them and teach them that home is being together, whether that be in a tent, a wigwam, a house somewhere we’ve never heard of before…because home is where the family love is, it’s not the place, it’s the stability in us.

The next move will be temporary, till a house we can all be together in, where you can visit, eventually live at under the same roof as us. Two more moves, then we’ll hopefully be there. Hopefully!

I knuckle down and do the seemingly impossible things and try, try, through it to remember thanks, there’s thousands out there far worse off than us, and just that you are here still to have this goal, that we have the wonderful, wonderful kids we do have, ultimately, this is where it’s at…

I hope to find a house soon, I pack in the meantime around kids excited to be moving.

One day baby, we’ll be all at home together, and my God we’ll be happy, happier than we could ever, ever have imagined we’d be, because we’ll know how we got there…

I love you ‘keep it together’…!

Me xxxxxxxxxxxx