#Microblog Mondays: Leave-takings and homecomings

The new keys have been collected, the boxes arrived and the unpacking and settling in begins again.

I've hinted that changes were afoot, and now here they are upon us.

And so, farewell to England.

More than a decade after I first set out for these shores as an eager young graduate student, through all my sojourns elsewhere, I always returned to you; you were the closest thing I had to a home outside the country where I grew up.

Although (hardy Canadian that I am), I often bemoaned your rather hysterical response to 'extreme' weather conditions, and your unique, occasionally callous brand of the welfare state, we had a good run, you and I.

You instilled in me an unshakable appreciation for an orderly qeue, and a lifelong confusion over the use of words like qeue vs line, lift vs elevator, pushchair vs stroller. You made me love chocolate. Your quirky neighbourhoods and streets taught me valuable life lessons, took me on many adventures, and consoled and distracted me through ill-advised romantic entanglements.

On your soils, I gained a PhD, a soulmate and life partner, and the most beautiful daughter imaginable; you answered prayers I didn't even know my heart was saying, beginning all those years ago. Here too I experienced the most profound of losses, the most harrowing days of my adult life. In all these, a part of you will rest in my being forever. I cannot look on your gentle countryside without imagining S lingering there in your beauty. This brings me great comfort.

I guess it's fair to say, I grew up under your watchful eye.

And now, here we are, four minus one, to begin anew.

In H's home town, a city famed for schnitzel, strudel and Strauss.

And the adventure continues. The growing continues.

Written as part of Mel's Microblog Mondays. Check it out here to participate.