Walking down Memory Lane

Yesterday morning I was on my way to town driving along the R101, and I could not help my mind wandering back to almost 9 years ago when we moved here from KZN...

I remembered our first trip to the Kolonnade, the shopping centre we frequent most, as if it was yesterday...having spent our first day here unpacking boxes and moving furniture around, when Johan arrived home from work we all piled in the car and took our first trip away from our new home.  Having arrived the night before, driving along the back roads, we were now going to see where we were.  Armed with a pen and my notebook, I wrote down the directions as we drove.  Not having a nose for direction, I made sure I didn't miss a thing...go down the driveway - turn left...at the T - turn left...at the T - turn right...at the T - turn left.....and so it continued, noting land markings and eventually robots as we drove closer to town and moved away from the farmlands.  It wasn't long before I didn't need my book anymore to drive there, and now I could probably drive it with my eyes closed, but that first trip was for me so scary...it was a new world and a fairly big one at that.

Our move from KZN took place over a few months, with Johan driving back with a bakkie load of boxes and smaller pieces of furniture every second weekend after he came home to visit.  It culminated over the last weekend of February with us hiring a huge truck...Saturday, early, Bryan and Mariana arrived to help with the loading of furniture and all the rest that had not so far been taken.  Bryan has a license to drive big trucks so it was his job to make the move.  We knew it would be an all weekend move, but what we didn't realize was that the truck we had hired would drive so slowly.  The Saturday, I stayed behind to clean up and gather the last things together, while everyone else drove up to off load at the other end and it's a good thing I did because the people who were renting the main section of the house arrived to start moving in themselves.  We were a bit taken aback by this as we had not expected them to move in until the end of the month which was still a few days away.  Anyway, Saturday turned into an extremely long day as it was after midnight when Bryan arrived back with the truck...poor man was exhausted and he still had another days run to make...  Sunday was the same, only this time it was departure time for me.  It was a hugely emotional time as I said 'goodbye' to Matthew...he was staying in the smaller section of the house which we had made with his own access etc.  I couldn't believe the time had come for us to be separated by so many miles.  I opted to follow Johan in the Astra, whilst he drove the bakkie together with NiQi and the dogs.  For kilometers I cried...and I cried...and I cried some more....leaving behind the liFe I knew, the home where Mark had breathed his last breath and Matthew...it was heart wrenching.  I remember that most of our trip was made with rain bucketing down around us, the window wipers were moving at their fastest and still visibility was poor.  I was an emotional wreck that was grateful I was alone in the car so no one could see me sobbing my heart out.  The bakkie had things tied onto the roof racks and the wind was blowing the edges of the blanket around, whipping it up in the air and back down again.  At one point, with poor visibility and streaming rain, I saw something blow up and back and I thought it was William...I thought he had maybe gone too close to the window that Johan had left slightly open for the dogs to have fresh air and been blown out by the wind.  In a panic and with fresh tears pouring down my cheeks I phoned Johan's cell phone and told him he had to pull over because William had blown away and he was now probably lying dead on the side of the road.  With the rain still bucketing and the wind blowing gales we pulled over and he got out to look in the back of the bakkie...there were Neo, Trinity AND William, all lying sleeping, dozy from the sedatives we had given them for travelling.  What a relief, and it appeared it was a piece of card under the things loaded on the roof rack that had ripped off and blown away...it wasn't William as I had imagined.  The rest of the trip progressed slowly and finally we made it, late at night to our new home, where we tumbled out of our vehicles, let the dogs sniff their new surroundings and we all started to settle in...never did we imagine that 9 years later we would still be here, we thought maybe 5 years and we would head back to KZN, but there you are, you never know what will happen in life that keeps you where you are...or makes you move on...