Every leaf on every tree

The sale on our old house completed last week. We were relieved and happy for all the obvious reasons, but it was tinged with real sadness too. I went back to the old village for the first time since the sale, drove past my house, looked at the leaves turning on my trees in my front garden, passed my playing fields, my old oak trees and went to my village hall. Except none of them are mine any more, but I notice them all so much more for that.

I loved that place. It's strange how somewhere becomes a part of you or you a part of it. That so much is taken for granted. Now we're like the new kids on the first day of term, discovering who is who and what is where. And as I drive from our old village back to the new house, I turn into our road and feel a sense of familiarity, that I'm beginning to know this place and, yes, it feels like home.

I don't believe in much, but I do believe in fate. We were just meant to have our last house and just meant to have this one. Nothing made sense about how it all came to be, you wouldn't have placed a bet on any of it, but it happened and there's a lovely new family in our old house and we are here and everything is right.