Over the Chinese New Year, we moved house.
We moved from the house we rented for the past 6 months to another house. As we went back to clean up the house before handing the keys back to the estate agent, there was a strange feeling looking at the empty house.
Strange because over the past 6 months we have called this place home - a small enclave where we found familiarity, warmth, joy and cosiness in an otherwise new and foreign place. And as we scrubbed and cleaned the marks on the wall and floor and carpet, I realised we were not only removing the marks we left in the house, but also the tears and joy we shared as a family in the first 6 months as new migrants in this land.
We are leaving a place where there were more than memories for us as a family. There was the bare kitchen bench top when we had our first dinner as a family in this land - a dinner of only Maggie noodles and eggs. There was the door which the kids walked out in the cold August morning to their first day of school here. There was the oven where I baked my first loaf of fully hand-kneaded bread. There was the stove where my teenage daughter, moved by the busy-ness of our lives and work, cooked her first dinner all by herself for the family.
And strange because after all the cleaning the house looked like the first day we moved in. There was no sign of us ever staying here.
There was no reminder of that laughter when we came back from the walk in the beautiful park nearby; or the worries that hang low on our eyebrows over our work and finances; or the tear that filled our eyes when we shared how we missed our family. There was no trace of the fragrance of a freshly baked loaf of bread on a glorious Saturday morning, or the warmth over a home cook dinner in the cold dark August night.
The house looked exactly like how it was when we first step in in that freezing August evening. And as I walked out of the house for the last time, I felt that as a family we have lost something behind that close door - something that I know was there, yet which left no trace within the bare four walls of that house.
We have been here for only 6 months and we have settled in too well. To all of us, it felt like we have been here for years. It felt like we have been here too long to remember the struggle a new migrant family would face in this land - all the feeling of being lost in a strange and foreign new land, the unpleasant experience of getting one's life together to start anew, the worries of livelihood, the humbling experience of starting anew in one's career.
Perhaps we have scrubbed off more than marks and stains in that house. Perhaps we have also scrubbed off that which marked us apart as new migrants - and with that, the worries and tears of new migrants in this land. And as we struggled to integrate ourselves as part of the masses, we have inadvertently got rid that which is a greater source of joy - the strength we found in each other as we face challenges and unfamiliarity together as a family.
