Day two and The Ginger Prince in question is having his afternoon nap (Well, shouting in his travel cot).
We flew out of Edinburgh
No fool wants to sit near a toddler on a long haul flight and I could see people watch us embark, sweaty and late, and twist their head phones and eyeshades in their hands whilst they silently prayed. I am now that person people dread on public transport. Our seats were right at the front, loads of leg room and a territorial man in khaki who may have been Dutch but never spoke and resolutely ignored The Ginger Prince as he said his new word ‘’Hiya’’ over and over and over again.
TGP’s bed was a sky basket, something like a car seat that attached to a flip out tray in front of us. This meant our TV screens couldn’t pull out but I didn’t like to complain as I felt it might sound selfish and bad parentish. So a tired and protesting TGP was strapped into the above and stared around, all big eyes and twitching anemone hands, as the plane started to plug itself in to various movies and prepare for night mode.
AA and I had a sneaky mini bottle of white wine each after take off and tried to seem locked into conversation so that TGP would fall asleep. It sounds harsh to freeze your own son out but the key thing when dealing with a sleepy TGP is to avoid eye contact at all costs as it leads to the immediate stretching out of arms and pleas for release. I was not about to release him from his sky basket.
That wine tasted good. For the month leading up to that glass of wine, throughout the shipping of all our stuff, the fanatical cleaning of the flat, the ensuring all our bills are up to date, the visa paperwork to get us here, I thought of that glass of wine on the flight and decided that was when I would finally relax and the whole debacle would be out of my hands. It did feel appropriately treat like. Especially when, after a few false starts, I saw those long ginger lashes draw closed. And we had a second little bottle of wine to celebrate the peacefully sleeping TGP. Because, as parents of a toddler will know, our flight being fine or being hell on earth all rested on those little peepers staying shut.
The last month or so has taken its toll on all of us in different ways. AA has been complaining of tightness in his chest and has been possessed with an urgent, exorcist style, manic energy that made him compile lists, and subcategories of those lists. For months in our home you could have found bits of paper with titles like ‘’car’’ or ‘’flat’’ or ‘’money’’ and a bunch of rabid writing underneath. For months he has had things written on his hands. I have been exhausted and TGP he has not known what is going on, but has been completely sure that whatever it is was something he wasn’t consulted about. When we had all our stuff shipped he came home from nursery looked around the room and started giggling and running toward the curtain, his favourite hiding place, as though I had hidden all his toys and furniture and clothes in there. No such luck, my friend, they have begun their eight week journey to South Africa
Deciding which of your possessions should be shipped to another country is a sobering experience. Especially for a known hoarder. Even more especially for two hoarders. AA and I hoard very different bits of things in very different ways. I have a longstanding collections of Precious Things that stretched the length of the mantelpiece and then formed two pools of stuff at the side of the hearth. The Precious Things include a glass duck someone brought me back from Whitby, countless shells I have kept to remind me of countless forgotten beach walks and even a miniature stapler. It is the latter that AA uses against me. Miniature stapler and the whole job lot are in a freight carrier making a slow sea journey towards us. When starting a new life you never know when you may need to clip together tiny, tiny pieces of paper, or look at shells for that matter.
By the end we were desperate to get rid of anything. Two friends came round the night before we left to bring us pizza and say goodbye and one left in my winter coat (which I must admit suits her better) and a George Foreman grill under her arm whilst the other was given two box sets and a camera. It was like a tombola.
AA’s is in denial about being a hoarder, but will happily wash and save a plastic fork. His hoarding is not out of sentimentality but an aversion to waste. Any kind of waste. Even of things that are broken and have no use in life. This can be summed up by relating two facts. Fact one; AA once tried, very recently, to sell VHS videos at a car boot sale, not new ones, no, no, these were films he had taped off the telly in the 80s and early 90s, complete with adverts and a bit of the news. Fact two; there is a completely broken Ikea sofa currently on its way to South Africa
We have also said so many different permutations of goodbye it is impossible to count. There have been goodbye lunches, goodbye dinners, goodbye coffees, goodbye play dates. People saying goodbye to The Ginger Prince who looks blankly back and says either ‘Hiya’ or ‘Bye’ depending on his mood.
In my limited experience I would say that going away is not nearly as hard as preparing to go away. Preparing to go away is like standing still with a fixed grin whilst waiting for someone to take your photo. For months.
Credit where credit is due TGP, a person normally famed for his mischief, was amazing on the flight and we all managed to get a few hours of jerky, neck aching, sleep.
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