...and then she was gone....

just like that.....

It was so stange, it was a moment I had been anticipating & dreading all day. Waving goodbye to Jaffa. And yet to say it out loud, or write it down, it sounds so shallow to be so attached to a car. But in that moment that I saw the tail lights disappearing down the road I realised it was not so much to do with the actual car, but more about what the car represented & the memories it held for us.

and tonight has been a really strange & sad night. I cried when I heard the horn toot, I cried when I saw Jaffa disappearing down the street, i cried when Sammy walked through the door looking like he had just said goodbye to his best friend and then i just cried.

for us Jaffa was a new beginning. It was an idea for an ideal life. It was for hot summers camped by the beach. It was for cold winters snuggled up in the back watching the rain run down the windows. It was for us. But then that us became a family and although we tried to do all that stuff. Life kinda took over. The routine of work, the routine of a baby, the routine of life. And routine is not a bad thing, but it is routine. I certainly don't regret the decisions we have made and the paths we have chosen to follow. But i think part of me will always yearn for a nomadic lifestyle. I really find it hard to settle and stay in one place, it's difficult. I quite enjoy being "just us" in a town where no one else knows us. It's nice to be somewhere where no one else knows your history; your before.

So the sadness in saying goodbye to Jaffa wasn't mouring the loss of a car, but mouring that part of our lives that is over. That care-free, double income, no kids, we can have it all lifestyle; it's gone. headed off down the road on a bitter ballarat night, red tail lights glowing in the fog.....it's over........not that i regret it for a moment.

Farewell Jaffa, may you always be orange.