Return

Is this the season, I wonder, when all expats feel the saddest? This is moment when you are halfway, the furthest away from "home". It's been six months since I was in South Africa and it will be at least another six before I can be there again. Guy feels it too, and we seem to be spending a lot of time on nostalgic discussions of home-things, home-places, home-people. He mentioned something funny about New Zealand and had to stop for a moment, because it all turned around - some memory had struck him - and he choked up with sadness. I woke up yesterday from a vivid dream of a family reunion, at the Vaal Dam of all places, and had to cry on his shoulder. He laughed because I had the imprint of pillows all over my face, but how good it was to have someone to hug me who completely understood me.

This is the moment when the cold weather returns, when we go from living out-of-doors, back to the interior life of heaters and jumpers and floor-socks. The rain comes down out of a stolid, unrelenting grey sky, and I have returned to my books, back to the intellectual life of study once more.