What have I created with my previous post?
I mean, writing about learning in motion doesn't mean that I want to be on the move again...
And yet, that's what's going to happen, and sooner than I possibly could have expected.
While I was in Newcastle hospital today, visiting Ken's dad who's still hanging on bravely, Ken got a telephone call from the agent of our landlord, the Diocese of Carlisle, giving us two months notice to vacate our house.
They want to sell it and they want it on the market empty.
According to the contract we signed over four years ago they have the right to do this.
So I suppose we have not much choice but to start - as from tomorrow - to look for an other place to live. Because of the short term we decided to tell the children straight away. Well, we don't usually keep things from them, but in this case I would've liked to be able to present it to them, and especially to Owen, at a moment where I could at least give a slight idea of what the future was going to look like. But now I haven't got the faintest...
All three of them - we phoned AL at campus - were in tears. Owen lost all control over the volume of his voice and was stampeding through the house like an enraged bull.
AL seemed to take the news rather well, but panicked and phoned back a few minutes later when it had dawned upon her that she would leave for her six week work experience in Holland in the last week of June and she wouldn't be coming back to this house...
Myrna had a good cry and was very upset about Owen's reaction, but then cuddled up to me and started making a list of all the things we would be looking for in a new house...
Ken seems to be totally paralysed, closed down. After taking the call he hasn't been able to do anything, he just sat and waited for me to come home. He had started repairing the damaged wall in the kitchen and had planned to do some repairs to the gutter in the yard, but has decided he'll not lift a finger towards improvement of the house anymore.
When Owen lost it, Ken lost it too and started yelling back at Owen. Of course I intervened and suggested he'd instead put his arms around his son... and a few minutes later he did... But it's so confusing for Owen...
They're so much alike in so many ways. Ken's never been diagnosed, but I'm sure Owen's Asperger Syndrome didn't come from the milkman. Anyway, my dreams of us as a family, pulling together and supporting each other through difficult times, tend to fall to pieces at moments like that. And I realise with such intensity that it's going to be mainly me who has to be strong and keep it all together. I can't help the feeling that I'm the only adult in the house at moments of crisis and this definitely qualifies as such.
At the same time I know we'll get through this. I am going to face it as yet another challenge, a process of learning. One way or another it'll make us stronger again, I'm sure.
But to be honest, I really, really would be just as happy without lessons like this. I wouldn't mind the odd dull moment.
Anyway, anybody out there knows a house for rent, for a family with three children who all need their own space very much, with two cats and two dogs? Preferably not in a built up area? And actually, both Myrna and Owen would really like to stay close to their newfound friends and their much loved activities, here in Cumbria... and AL loves her little job here...
I am reinstating the mantra that my sister wrote for me in beautiful handwriting and that I had next to my PC in Holland, the year before we left:
I am open to Miracles.
And the other one, too: I deserve Abundance.
Friday, April 27, 2007
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5 comments:
Are you sure you didn't have a premonition about this. How spooky, you were just having a major clear out and then this happens. Does the Diocese have any other properties that they could consider you for? It might be worth asking. Maybe this was just a stop gap all along and where your meant to be is just around the corner.
Oh I so know the feeling of having to be the strong one. Our house move is testing us all and it has been so fraught. I hope you find somewhere really quickly.
D'ya know, Lisa, I've found out that things never 'just happen'. Sometimes it just takes a while before a pathway becomes clear. Looking back I think there were many many signs that it was time to move on.
We've had four wonderful years of living 'in the back of beyond', four years of peace and quiet and reasonable recluse. Four years that we badly needed to recover from burn-out and living in the public eye in Holland. The childen have used the time to properly de-school, to grow and to develop. It's time to move on now.
The very morning before we got served with the notice I was driving towards Newcastle and I was observing that it felt as if I was entering into a different world. In our bit of the world the 'green explosion' is just starting, there are no blossoming trees yet. And I said to Ken: "If we ever move, I want it to be to a place where Spring is announced with a blossoming tree."
We were meant to be here, alright. But it wasn't going to be forever.
Ruth, I couldn't possibly do what you do! Not physically, not mentally! I hope that you and I bot find a wonderful new place to live in and that in a years time we can look back and say to each other: "Remember how it was then? It's much better now, isn't it?"
'I am open to miracles'
oh yes! please!
Sometimes it is staying in touch with (and being grateful for) the little miracles that makes a huge difference to our lives.
But here's to whopper miracles too.))
prayers for a perfect place to happen your way , I just can't imagine how it feels Mieke
hugs xxx
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