Five years ago today we stumbled off the Fiji Air flight where we had sipped guava juice for what seemed like a lifetime.
I've told the story so many times. It is one of life's moments that freezes, like a snapshot, and does not fade over time. It is part of our family narrative, and I will keep retelling how the light was like vibrating neon, greener than green, in a southern spring thunderstorm as we left my parent's country home.
How we sat, wet and dishevelled in the air conditioned airport, with our beautiful lifelong friends. They might not have understood our need to fly away, but they wished us well all the same.
We had two children then. Small Sun, two almost three, and Sprout, still lacking hair in any significant numbers, and sucking three fingers together with her palm away from her face.
My mother came along to help us, and I am sure my dad cried as we left.
The layover in Fiji was bizarre, we stumbled into this new life.
You know how I cried in the car from the airport, luggage lost, terrified on the "wrong" side of the road, dismayed at the lack of apparent colour in the foliage, and the drabness of the suburbs.
You may know that I thought we had made the biggest mistake of our lives. At our hotel I was unable to keep myself from falling asleep, crying on the bed, believing myself to be pitiful, but unable to hold back the dissapointment, leaving my husband and mother to care for my children.
The luggage was lost, so we made a bed out of cushions for Sprout in the corner. She was small enough to sleep on two pillows.
While I slept, my mother took stock, got us sorted, and found food, so that I woke up to a world less frightening than the strange one I had fallen asleep to. My mother, she is amazing.
Around 4 am the birds started calling, and in my jet lagged stupor, I truly wondered if there were monkeys in Drummoyne?
Day by day our circle widened, and has until this day, five years later when I sit, snug with a rug on my lap, and the rain misting outside, an Australian citizen who has never felt more at home than I do now.
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