Moving Day
I watched the house growing smaller and smaller as my family drove away from it into the distance. I was not sorry we were leaving the house as it held painful memories, but I cried anyway. I kept looking out of the window to check if the house was still there but then we turned on the road and it was gone. I had never left the house until this day and it felt strange not knowing where we were going or when we were going to get there, I just felt empty. I looked out of the window for sheer entertainment but felt nothing of excitement or freedom. My father was a strongly built man both physically and mentally. He saw my emptiness and said in his very deep and heavy welsh accent “ it’s ok, we’re not going far.” For some reason I thought that might not be true.
My suspicion was correct. Although my father kept saying “not long now” or “just a bit further” I knew he was worried but he didn’t want me to see him like that, or any one else who knew my father.
This went on for two days stopping for fuel, food and for some shuteye. At the end of the second day after we had stopped for a bit of food my father came out of the store wearing a hollow smile on his face. He said to me very understandingly “ I know we have been driving for a long time, and I know I haven’t said where we are going or why but I do know this is for the best and you will be very happy when we get there.” He gave me a slap on the back and he got in the car. I followed him in to the car more confused than I had been since we had left.
As we started driving again I noticed that there was a truck following behind us. I don’t know why I hadn’t noticed it before now, maybe I was just tired but I asked my father what it was doing following behind us and my father gave a little chuckle and answered “ oh don’t worry about that it’s just the moving trucks with our things” my father gave one last chuckle before turning the key in the ignition. Even though my father had explained it to me the truck made me uneasy like it had another reason for following me, or more likely my father.
When my father pulled the car off the dual carriage way and into a little country lane, I was puzzled why my father pulled over in the lane. I wondered if he had run low on fuel or maybe he had got lost. My father must have seen my face because he said very heartily “ don’t worry I’m not lost and we’re not low on supplies either. You just sit tight” and with that he tapped me on the knee and he was smiling like in the old days when mother was alive. I started to think that he was right and the move was for the best and I started to smile with my father, which I had not done since mother died.
That all changed as we entered a field and I saw a tallish crooked building with a tilting side sitting in the middle of the field with a very untamed vegetable patch and a long strip of pavement coming out of the house steps and going to the gate at the other end of the field (which was also crooked). I looked at father and he was beaming brightly with happiness. I did not want to make him unhappy so I put on a bright face, knowing he had risked everything so we could have this life instead of… well (if you read earlier on in this diary) you will know. Just thinking of that made me cheer up a bit and looking up at my father and meeting his twinkling eyes I knew he had made a good choice about this and who knows maybe it might be nice to live here, it can’t be that bad.
Father parked the car on the crooked path and when we had briefly looked at the house and observed the unnatural mess of what was supposed to be a vegetable patch, a big truck came up the field with a little difficulty but by making very big tyre marks it trudged it’s way up like a sloth climbing a tree.
For the rest of the day it was unpacking, filling up the crooked house with our belongings and making it home. We were moving all across the house up, down and side to side, it was all so confusing, but father looked like he knew what he was doing so I took his lead and scuttled along with boxes, cutlery, clothes, and anything I could get my hands on that could fit in to something.
In all we recognised there were five bedrooms, what used to be three bathrooms (only one of them was in living condition), one living room, one kitchen and my favourite, an old play room with some old toys in there still just for me. I know it sounds selfish but it was a dream come true for me. When father saw my face when we entered the room he looked so happy that I was smiling so heartily at the room.
After the moving in we had lunch on the floor of the living room and ate some of the food we had left and my father asked me “ What do you think of the house?” and I replied, “I absolutely love it”.
