Land Beyond The Horizon

Our home is no longer ours.

Hmph. It’s funny that I still call it ‘our home’ and I suppose it will always be our home. It was a very bitter sweet moment when I handed the new owner the keys and relevant documentation. I was quite numb when I pulled the car out of the driveway loaded with the last of our possessions. I left quickly and quietly and didn’t look back over my shoulder out of fear of regret.

It was a wonderful home – our dream home. It had everything we wanted and more but it was in the non-popular part of town. The estate agent admitted that if it were a block or two up the street it would have sold for millions. It didn’t matter to us. We loved our house. I will also admit that I hated it for a while when we couldn’t sell it and all it seemed to do was hold us down and prevent us from our organized flee of the country.

It was necessary. We had to relinquish it because tenants in our country are savages and would have destroyed it leaving us with a useless investment and even worse emotional scarring than this way.

That’s also why I do not wish to ever, EVER return to that street or even drive past to see how our home is doing. I’m too afraid of what I’ll find. I have the original plan to reminisce over. It’s funny how nostalgia makes everything look so rosy and pretty.

Our organized flee. It doesn’t sound like a ‘flee’ at all, but trust me it is. We simply have the time and means to do it without complete abandonment of assets and the accompanying running and screaming.

To continue the metaphor from previously, we are now far beyond seeing land and out in deep, sea-green water. Our dreams are the sextant that we now navigate by and our hopes are the stars we follow.

The terrible delays I so feared in the selling of the house vanished at the 11^th hour! On the very last day at the very last moment the house was registered in the new owner’s name and I was able to retrieve the month I thought I’d lost! Had it been mere hours later, I would have had to put my resignation in at my company a whole month later as they only accept notice for a calendar month. Effectively one can only resign on the first of a month.

I’ve updated my Curriculum Vitae on two employment-seeking sites hoping to line up interviews in Belgium and already an employment agency has had a telephonic discussion with me about my skills and sent me a list asking which companies I would be interested in working for. This makes me hopeful that I’ll be able to get employment very quickly once I’m there and at least line up appointments while I’m still here in South Africa!

There’s much red tape I’m going to have to work through before and after I depart before I can be re-united with my family. This is definitely good motivation to hit the ground running in Belgium.

At the moment we (Mrs Black, Speculoos and I) stay with my parents in a cottage in their back yard. It’s small, cramped and I’m feeling awfully claustrophobic. Our previous home had pressed ceilings 4 meters above us (that’s approximately 12 foot to you who use the imperial system) and this is pretty precise. I carefully measured it. The ceiling in the cottage is only about 2.5 meters high. It feels cramped.

I’m beginning to dread the day I have to say goodbye to my family for an extended time while I’m in Belgium and they remain patiently in South Africa. Songs like “Leaving on a Jet Plane” by Janise Joplin and “Hey, that’s no way to say goodbye” by Leonard Cohen almost have me in tears every time I hear them.

It’s going to be a hard goodbye at the airport. If you want to see a grown man cry, neigh, reduced to sobbing snotty mess, well, you should be there.

The only reason I’m putting us through this is the sextant and the stars.

My family, I love you.

Ciao for now.