I hadn't realised how complicated it would be to stay in another country for more than a holiday. Visa applications meant proving a decade-long marriage without having many photos of just the two of us, gathering bits of mail with our names on them, and hunting down paperwork we'd never thought to save. Even paying tuition turned into a small crisis when the bank froze our transfer for "suspicious activity." Before the medical checks, our youngest's cough developed into pneumonia, and we ended up visiting the medical centre four times.
Once the visa finally came through, it set off a whole chain of very real, very practical questions. What were we supposed to do with everything the five of us had accumulated? Should we clear everything out and start fresh, or ship it all? Cubic storage or a full container? A container was expensive, but so was replacing everything.
In the end, we chose the container. Large appliances went to my in-laws; everything else—furniture, books, daily necessities—would be shipped. We packed only what we'd need for the month before our belongings arrived. Duvets, children's clothes, toothbrushes, underwear, socks—small, ordinary things that kept piling up as we prepared.
As the dates took shape, my husband and I would leave first with our eldest in mid-January; my parents would bring the other two in early February. There were decisions to make, papers to sign, and endless things to sort. And still, daily life carried on as usual.
On moving day, even the movers were taken aback by how much we had. They stacked everything into the five-ton truck like a game of Tetris, filling it so completely that not a single extra box could fit. By the time they were nearly finished, light snow had begun to fall.
