New Things

Here I am in Albury, NSW.  After 16 years living in Canada, Australia  feels like a strange foreign country to me.    There are many reasons for this- I have few friends here, the physical environment is dramatically different, and we don't have a real home yet. On the positive side I have stopped spontaneously bursting into tears.    The sadness of leaving behind my Canadian friends decreases every day.  When our boxes arrive sometime in the next few weeks and we can have some of our familiar things around us we might start to feel more at home.   While Albury is not exactly my idea of utopia I have finally decided that I am not going to be angry about being here anymore.  We will most likely spend a couple of years here so I have to find a way to be happy about it.  My plan is to find something good about Albury every week. I will keep you posted.

While I would like to think that Harper has been unaffected by our move because of his age I know this is not true.  While he has stopped asking when we can go back to Canada to the only home he has ever known , and he hasn't asked to play with his best buddy, Duncan, in a long time I know he hasn't forgotten.  He will occasionally remember something about Spruce Road and we will have a conversation about it.  It always amazes me that after five months away he can still recall the small details of our life there.  His most interesting response to our move has been the creation of his imaginary home at From Street.   I think is began as a reaction to our current living situation.  We took a temporary lease on small unit with no back yard.  As you can imagine, only ever knowing the freedom of his half acre back yard, being cooped up in a tiny house with no outside space would be difficult to deal with.  So Harper invent From Street where everything is as it should be according to him.  From street has a large back yard with a sand box and slide like the one he had in Canada, it has a trampoline, a swing set, and a pool. All the toys from Canada are at From Street.  The sun always shines at From street and treats are abundant, especially ice cream.   I have been invited to visit but not to live.  When I asked if he ever got lovely there he told me he had ten brothers. Osh, Kosh, Josh, Mosh and Tosh.  (The others don't have names) He also has ten babies, a dog, a cat and a rabbit.   His computer is never slow.  It never rains but it does snow.  He gets to stay up late.  There are no flies or mosquitos. Life is always fun. It seems that whatever isn't right  in our real world is fixed at From street.  His most recent addition is a new mother.  It seems I have been replaced.  I'm still not sure what to make of that but when I suggested that  he really only needed one mum he cried.  I guess she's here to stay.

More soon.