The Big Move

By Kate Gostick

You only ever regret the things you don’t do, and I didn’t want to live a life of regrets. So when my husband, Dominic, was offered a job in America, we decided it would be a fun adventure for a couple of years.

Ialways painted naked, but for a pair of old grey knickers, I saved for painting and a hotel shower cap to prevent getting paint in my hair. It never really mattered because the house backed onto fields that were not used, so nobody was ever there. Even in the rooms in the front of the house, our windows faced the courtyard, some garages beyond, and a walled garden beyond that, so I was safe to lead a nudist life with paint roller in hand. I was painting the one plastered wall in the conservatory, thinking of how I had my dream job and how we had only just finished building the conservatory and a new beautiful inglenook fireplace with a log burner, making the house just perfect. Was I making the right choice to leave this behind? I had almost bought James a school uniform for a school I knew he would not go to. We had been here before when Dominic had had a job offer rescinded at the last minute, so giving up James’s place seemed so risky. It was frightening for me, and I struggled to let go of the safe and familiar life we had built. In the end, a woman I hardly knew who had heard from a friend of a friend that we may be moving told the school, and I had to give up his place before I was ready.

For some reason, other people, however distant from you, still think your choices are their business. In this way, your environment tries to restrain and control you, either pushing you away before you are ready or using guilt to pull you back.

As my paint roller mover up and down the wall, I could only think of what I was losing, be it drinking tea in the conservatory watching the kids play in the garden or having the chance to take a first day of school photo of my children in an oversized school uniform with room to grow. I didn’t know then that all this would be eclipsed by new exciting adventures that would allow us all room to grow. It takes a lot of willpower to break free and let go, but when we had done it once, it became easier for our other moves.

I climbed the ladder and placed the paint tray on the top step, clutching the roller in my right hand. I adjusted the shower cap and started to roll. As I stretched to get the top bits, my boobs squished into the paint on the lower walls and formed a strip framing the upper edge of my nipples. This was why I painted naked. My boobs always became embedded in the paint like handprints on the walk of fame! I have that kind of chest that enters a room five minutes before I do and always seems to be on every man’s eye level, be he 4 foot 8 or 6 foot 8. Despite me being on the next to top wrung of the ladder and my boobs, therefore, being about ten feet off the ground, they still seemed to be at eye level for the window cleaners as they unlatched the gate and came into the back garden. Our eyes met a second after their eyes met with my paint framed boobs and greying example of M&S’s finest. All of them managed to hide the shock of what had just happened as one of them asked me if I wanted them to add cleaning the new conservatory to their existing routine. I replied, “that would be wonderful”, finished the last bit of the wall, pretending that I had no problem with what had just happened, as they started to soap up the glass, partly I feel, to hide my modesty. Maybe, now was the right time to leave the country!

We decided that we needed to be confident that this next job was for real, so we decided Dominic would go out first for a few months, and I would follow on later with boys once we knew our situation was secure.

Those few months were chaotic, to say the least, as I continued to work whilst preparing for an international move on my own with two children under five. Dominic had emigrated (escaped) ahead of our departure. During those eight months, I flooded the garage, ran out of petrol in the middle of nowhere and split James’s head open when I pulled the boot/trunk down on his head. The difference in words between American and British English was to cause

James seemed to want to tell everyone how he had had to go to hospital to have his head stitched after mummy hit him on the head with the boot. This was interpreted by American’s as footwear, not the trunk of the car. It didn’t get any better when James shouted out in the supermarket that I must not forget that daddy needed more rubbers! I explained very loudly that, “In America, we call those erasers,” hoping people would realise my four year old had not been asked to remind me to buy condoms by his father.

A little respite came, or so I thought, when we went out to America to visit Dominic. My mum came to stay with me and the boys so she could take us to the airport, and as we tucked the boys into bed, she whispered to James that he would see his daddy in the morning. Unfortunately, James did not deal well with excitement. He had spent his third birthday in hospital with an asthma attack overcome by the delirium of his Fireman birthday party. The same thing happened again that night. I woke up to hear him coughing and gasping for breath, so I bundled him in the car and took him off to casualty. After a fairly long wait, we got to see the doctor, who said that he was fine and that we should go back home. A nurse, who seemed to have clairvoyant skills, told me if it happened again when I got home to call an ambulance rather than driving him myself. Not sure her ability to see into the future had revealed that I would have no choice but to find alternative transport as my car slammed into a badger crossing the road on the way home, and the front of the car fell off.

As the sounds of uncontrolled coughing filled the air once again, I did as she said and called the ambulance. The ambulance man gave James something to help his breathing, but it made him as high as a kite, and he had to be restrained when he jumped around the back of the ambulance shouting, “Put the nee naws on! Put the nee naws on!” They kept him in overnight, and the airline agreed to delay our flight for a day, but I could not help but wonder if my life was typical of every new mum or if I brought these predicaments on myself.

I had pushed myself way beyond my comfort zone, and I was taking a massive risk on the unknown in the hope of reaping the rewards and being able to spend more time with my children. I accept that I was lucky to have this opportunity, but we had grabbed the opportunities afforded to us that others would have turned down, deeming them too risky. As my father would say, “If it’s not broken, don’t fix it!”

People back home would later tell me regularly how lucky I was, how they could not afford for their kids to ski every week, play golf after school, or go to Maine for a week as a family on vacation. In their eyes, I was lucky, and they were unlucky, as if these things just came to me like presents from Santa on a Christmas morning. However, the reality was quite different. I had challenged the conventions, reached for my dreams, grabbed opportunities with both hands, fought for acceptance to fit in, and did it alone, far from family and the traditional support network. The lady who had forced me to give up a school place before I was ready had not appreciated the fear that needed to be overcome to take such a giant leap into the unknown. My life was not handed to me on a plate. Instead, we searched for opportunities, took that leap into the unknown, and managed to overcome our fears to reap the benefits. Moving to another country is never easy and, in my experience, is the result of hard work and never just luck.

It was hard for my children too. They had just about managed to survive “mummy care” when most of our belongings had disappeared off in a big container which we had no idea when we would see again. After reports from Dominic that my kids would be safe and not shot in the street (I‘ve seen Cagney and Lacey, so it was a worry), we decided to follow him.

We got out of the car at Manchester airport with all our remaining belonging that we couldn’t manage without, you know, the kind of thing, Hulk hands, a complete set of the Bob the Builder toys and a box of English tea. At this point, I realised that maybe we should have sent more in the container, but the boys were now four and two, and it was time they pulled their weight around here, literally in this case. So I loaded up the back of Edward’s pushchair with so many bags that it would tip backwards if not held firmly enough and set off to the gate.

“James! Will you please hurry up” I yelled.

“I’m trying”, came the reply. James had fallen backwards from the weight of a huge backpack and was now rolling around like an upside-down turtle. On his way to the plane, the pilot noticed that James was being exploited and used as a packhorse, so he asked him to go into the cockpit to help him with the pre-flight checks. I think he really just wanted to save the poor kid from the mother from hell. As I put my bag in the overhead locker, a little voice came over the tannoy and said,

“This is your pilot, James. I love you, mummy!” and I knew at that point all would be well.

Eventually, we arrived in the land of the free and waited for three months for our remaining belongings to arrive. What a happy time that was. I realised how much stress belongings cause. We had garden furniture to eat off, a mattress for us and camp beds for the boys to sleep on, and a giant, inflatable car ball pit just because we had nothing else to put in our living room!

Five years later, and with the addition of our all-American son, Henry, I no longer longed for British sausage and bacon, and when people told me to have a nice day, it didn’t grate on me. In fact, as an ex-pat comedian once said, it is better to be told to “have a nice day” by someone who doesn’t mean it than to “f**k off” by someone who does!