In less than a week we leave Aberdeenshire for our new life in Argyll. I have mixed feelings.
I’ve wanted to live by the seaside for as long as I can remember. I spent most summers in Campbeltown with my parents, visiting my dad’s sister. Mum hated it. She always wanted to go to Blackpool, but dad and I loved getting away from the city and down to the beach and the harbour. Dad taught me to fish off the pier there. I’d go out in the morning, bucket, spade and fishing net and spend hours playing on the beach, exploring rock pools and gathering shells, only returning to the caravan when I was hungry. It was idyllic and I am honestly excited to go back down that way.
I am hoping that the sea, which to this day soothes my soul, will reignite the creativity which has been sadly absent from my life for too long. I am looking forward to long walks along the five miles of unspoilt beaches with the poodles, to joining the active local writers’ group, to learning guitar and trying to paint and to taking more and better photographs.
But…
I love my house here. I love the space, the light, the garden, the way the french doors open up to let me sit and listen to the birds and the stream behind the fence. My daughter was brought up here. On the edge of her bedroom door her dad recorded her height as she grew, a bar code of milestones and memories. “Home is where the people who matter are,” he tells me. “Our memories will come with us.” And he’s 100% right. But what if my memories are so ingrained on the bricks and the plaster and the glass and the concrete that when I leave it all behind, they don’t come with me? Do they need a box? Are my head and my heart big enough to hold them all?
My daughter left today to spend a couple of weeks in Boston with my dear friend Sandy. She will never come back to this house and that made me very, very sad.
Next week it will be my turn to leave here for the last time. I’ll let you know how it goes.
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