This image is what moving forward and moving on has looked like in recent years.
When I was 12 and a half we moved from the home of my childhood to a bigger town further north, much closer to my new high school. I was so excited for the move, and had many grand plans about how I was going to be the most popular girl in my class, and how high school would be exciting, wonderful and fun. Full of naive enthusiasm, and totally, totally oblivious.
Looking back I think this had something to do with the fact that the farm I lived on wasn’t sold until many years later, so I had that lovely sense of moving forward without too much changing behind me.
As the movers filled their trucks I wandered around the property, saying goodbye to the familiar hills, the dams we swam in many times, the rickety old fences and reticulation piping I could be consistently relied upon to trip over. I thought of the geese we’d had before, and the rock I stood on to feed them, pretending I was a sailor at the bow of a ship. I used to leave a couple of handfuls of grain in the bucket for our one goose with a deformed beak, which meant he had to strategically scoop the seed into his mouth rather than peck. He was imaginatively named Beaky.
I wandered around, saying goodbye to trees and bushes because I was a child, and moreover a child who spent a considerable amount of time in a fantasy land of her own. A big property is fruitful land for many things, not least a child’s imagination.
If I was ever asked the day that my childhood ended I would say without doubt or rancour, that this was the day.
Hello Sam Goodbye Samantha 