Breaking Away
We've been up in Aberdeen for Christmas, and I have just spent the whole of Boxing Day driving back home. Good thing, too - the weather is reported to be about to turn wintry, and I don't particularly want to make that journey in the snow. Although it would have been good practice, I suppose.
A strange thing happened as I was hauling up the hill out of Aberdeen, the car protesting at having to drag several hundredweight of presents; I started to think about my reaction to leaving Aberdeen, the place of my birth. I was, for some reason, a little sad, although I will certainly be back before we go, and I have previous on this 'leaving Aberdeen' thing:
I first left home in 1980, to go to University in Edinburgh. It was a hard thing to do at the time, for various reasons, but it was the best decision I ever made. I looked forward to getting home every so often, but I also thoroughly enjoyed my four years in Edinburgh, and part of me wishes I'd stayed there. After that, I spent another year - this would be 1985 - in Aberdeen, but I was chafing to get away; I'd already left home once, and it was time do make the break more permanent. When I left that time - to go to Inverness, as I noted before - it felt right; the way forward (although my family was not so sure). After that, Aberdeen felt less and les like home as the years went by. Until we left Scotland (for good, it seems) in 1989, I was in Aberdeen regularly and frequently; once we came south, I hardly went back at all.
In the last 15 years, I've been 'home' about once a year, and there have been times when I've gone way longer than 12 months away from the place. So today should not have felt any different, really. But it did. It really did. Aberdeen is no longer the place where I grew up - how could it be - and so many things have changed that I barely recognise it, yet I'll miss it, and not just because it's where my parents live - I'll miss the familiarity of it; knowing that it's just an hour's flight away, if need be.
But I'm a traveller at heart, and what I'm really looking forward to is having a new place to call home, and how that will feel when the time comes, as it surely will one day, to leave there.
A strange thing happened as I was hauling up the hill out of Aberdeen, the car protesting at having to drag several hundredweight of presents; I started to think about my reaction to leaving Aberdeen, the place of my birth. I was, for some reason, a little sad, although I will certainly be back before we go, and I have previous on this 'leaving Aberdeen' thing:
I first left home in 1980, to go to University in Edinburgh. It was a hard thing to do at the time, for various reasons, but it was the best decision I ever made. I looked forward to getting home every so often, but I also thoroughly enjoyed my four years in Edinburgh, and part of me wishes I'd stayed there. After that, I spent another year - this would be 1985 - in Aberdeen, but I was chafing to get away; I'd already left home once, and it was time do make the break more permanent. When I left that time - to go to Inverness, as I noted before - it felt right; the way forward (although my family was not so sure). After that, Aberdeen felt less and les like home as the years went by. Until we left Scotland (for good, it seems) in 1989, I was in Aberdeen regularly and frequently; once we came south, I hardly went back at all.
In the last 15 years, I've been 'home' about once a year, and there have been times when I've gone way longer than 12 months away from the place. So today should not have felt any different, really. But it did. It really did. Aberdeen is no longer the place where I grew up - how could it be - and so many things have changed that I barely recognise it, yet I'll miss it, and not just because it's where my parents live - I'll miss the familiarity of it; knowing that it's just an hour's flight away, if need be.
But I'm a traveller at heart, and what I'm really looking forward to is having a new place to call home, and how that will feel when the time comes, as it surely will one day, to leave there.
posted by Richard at 9:20 pm
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