Moving On

Goodbyes are never easy, and this goodbye was no different. This was a Saturday
in July during the hot summer of 76. I'd lived with my family for seven years in one of two adjoining guards houses on the outskirts of Kilrush, a small town in County Clare. We were moving to the town of Navan in faraway County Meath. I remember sitting in the back seat of our wine coloured Escort car saying goodbye to David, my next door neighbour, who was also aged nine. The leather seats were hot from the sun and were uncomfortably sticky against my bare legs. " You know when the time comes we will be able to marry", David was saying. "Its a bit off but I'll wait if you will". We promised faithfully to write weekly until this should happen and hugged our last goodbye.
Back in the house, I went through the rooms. The sitting room with its gold stencilled walls, and the table at the end where we played draughts, cards and Scrabble and did schoolwork, all under the watchful eye of a rather scary ridged laminate framed picture of Our Lord, an Our Lord whose eyes opened and shut if you bobbed your head while staring at Him. The room looked so bare without our ancient but comfortable three piece suite, given to us by great aunt Nora before she went into a nursing home. Even the fireplace looked bereft without its brass tongs set. On to the kitchen where all the chests were ready for the removal van. Without our stuff it just wasn't home anymore. "No we are leaving the shades" , Dad was telling the removal men as they shuffled out the door with our piano, my mother's pride and joy. I then headed upstairs to get a final feel of the four rooms where I and my family had slept during my formative years. My sister Sabina was sobbing her heart out sitting on the bare floorboards where her bed used to be. My brother Colm passed, and on seeing her threw his eyes up to heaven. "Avoiding the work as usual", he muttered to my sister. From my bedroom I looked out at the back garden with its sweetpeas, marigolds and tomato plants, at the lawn where I had played so happily for most of my life. I touched the walls of my bedroom, telling each a different secret. Lastly I sat on the loo, pondering the yellow bath and sink, wondering if there would be a shower in our new house.
"Time to go", came the shout, a call I was anticipating with a mixture of trepidation and pleasure. Sabina was last down the stairs, her eyes puffed from crying. Mam was already in the car. Dad closed the front door after us and locked it dropping the key into the letterbox. All the neighbours were out to aay goodbye as we kids piled into the back seat. The goodbyes all said, finally we got on the road. The start of our long journey to another life. My mother said quietly "We'll say a few decades"