two years on

Two years ago, to the day, we turned up in a foreign country, in a city that we had never visited before, with a dream sketchy in its details but certain in its aim. A small daughter accompanied us, oblivious to the change that was happening in her young life. 

(The only time I shed a tear was when I closed the light blue door to our beautiful Edinburgh top-floor flat. It had massive bay windows with views of the Castle and Arthur's Seat, sitting snugly in cosy Bruntsfield. Ahhh, Bruntsfield! All Miss Jean Brodie, Alexander McCall Smith, J K Rowling, hipster, organic, second-hand clothes, French bistro, coffee-brewing, cosmopolitan, winding Bruntsfield. Bruntsfield, where students drink beer on the roofs, and travelers sleep under the Links' trees. Rich old ladies buy haute couture ruby red shoes and American visitors try to absorb Scotland through their pores. The Chocolate Tree. Le Mouton Noir. George Watson's pupils in their maroon kilts and blazers criss-cross with George Heriots' dark blues and greens. Spices from Khartoum and incense from the Indian takeaway. The Italian where my wife craved king prawns in sambuca sauce throughout pregnancy, and the Lemon Grass where we ate on a summer evening on the grass.

The wan Scottish sun sent smatterings of light through the skylight into the echoey starewell of our tenement that day, a place where we had carried our newborn up five flights of worn stone stairs only seven brief months before. In my hand I was carrying our baby in her car seat down to my parent's car taking us to the airport. So much was being risked, and there was sadness lined with excitement as we said goodbye to the incredible place where we had been gifted with this new little bundle of life. Comfort and familiarity and support were being thrown to the wind, and I did not know how our small family would sail the rough waters to come.)

From the moment we were met at the airport by a friend of a friend, we knew we were on to a good thing. She took us to our accommodation - the home of friends of hers (friends of a friend of a friend, one might say) - who blindly and trustingly gave us their house for a month whilst they were out of the country. Who knew that friends of friends, and friends of friends of friends, could become, simply, friends?

We learned that the welcoming, open hand of kindness could give a sense of home and settledness quicker than a trip to Tesco or a walk down Princes Street ever could. People even seemed happy at work, as if they were not expecting to have a breakdown imminently, or work a 100 hour week on a regular basis. How bizarre!

Wonderful people abound everywhere. We left wonderful people, and found wonderful people. We have wonderful friends in our life for short periods of time and for long periods of time. And of course, family hangs present and stable as a background to our very existence and posterity. 

And soon we will move on again. We follow the road that is unfolding before us, a little wiser, a little stronger, and always more blessed. 

Our little family has weathered it well, with some ups and downs. We feel privileged that a dream has come - and continues expanding - to fruition. Sometimes the stepping-out is the biggest and most unknowing of actions. But your foot keeps landing on solid ground. The next foot comes up, and lands again, taking you forward in ways you would never have thought.

Thank you for the friendship and fun along the way, from across the seas and around the corner.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence;

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -

I took the ones less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

- Robert Frost