I am sitting in the plane while writing this. Flight LX 87 with Swiss from Montreal to Zurich. Kids are sleeping, hubby is watching a movie. I am emotionally and physically exhausted, very low on energy and nerves and basically heart broken – maybe even a little dehydrated from all the tears I shed in the past hours.
But let’s rewind back a few days to where the serious packing and final organizing of our „Transfer“ started.
It was a nightmare! Somehow I hadn’t realized what this whole constellation of first going to Zurich to store our belongings and then flying four days later to Brazil really meant. We had to pack three suitcases for our travels, one suitcase for the time in Zurich and the rest of our bags and suitcases with all our things we had to bring home from Montreal. The rest would go in boxes. Hubby got permission to check in 14 pieces of which two were strollers and two were baby cods.
But there are certain things that are not allowed to ship as cargo like everything with batteries or fluids or so, these need to go in bags. I started with a plan and ended in complete chaos. In the end I had no clue anymore what I put where and got so annoyed that I just wanted to finish the packing and just chucked leftover stuff in boxes or suitcases no matter if it belonged to the kids or me, no matter if it was toys, books, cosmetics, clothes… This is going to haunt me once I have to unpack everything again. I shoved underpants in Brio Bahn (toy train) trainstations, filled boots with Legos and wrapped books in T-shirts. It’s a freaking mess! And the worst thing was that it never seemed to end! Do you know Mary Poppins’ bag which seems to be empty but she keeps pulling plants and lamps out of it? That’s how it felt with our apartment. No matter how much we already packed, more things piled up out of nowhere as it seemed. It was a particularly hard job to separate our stuff from things that came with the apartment. I really don’t know how it happened but we ended up with 12 boxes and a total of 200 Kg to ship with cargo.
Two weeks before leaving, we all went to get our vaccinations for traveling. On a particularly cold and windy night we went to the clinique du Voyageur (Travel Clinic) where we each would get three vaccinations. We decided to do the girls first since we did not know how they would react to the needles. I stayed in the room with Liya while Niels waited outside with Kenzie.
The doctor showed Liya a big sheet with stickers and told her that she could choose one sticker for every vaccination once she was done. Then she started. I was a bit nervous. I guess no mother likes to watch her child getting hurt, even for the benefit of not getting seriously ill later. With the first vaccination, Liya did not move a muscle. The doctor seemed confused by the lack of protest but decided to move quickly on to the second vaccination which was met by a quick look and a „hey!“ and with the third one, again no reaction what so ever. The doctor gave me a puzzled look which I answered with a shrug and so Liya got her stickers and was done. This was easy!
After that I got my vaccinations and then it was Kenzies turn, so Liya and I went outside. Short after, we heard a scream. Niels told me later that Kenzie already started screaming when the doctor approached her with the wet cloth to disinfect her skin. Kenzie screamed „Nei Neiiiiiii, Mami, Mamiiiii!!!!“ All eyes in the waiting room on me. She was a bit shaken but otherwise ok and after Niels was done we left again, a good two hours had passed. This was a very long (and expensive) evening. Vaccinations in Canada cost a fortune!!!
When the girls went to bed that night, Liya started crying. Her arm hurt from the vaccination and we got the full blow, hours later. she screamed „Never never never ever am I gonna do this again, mommy!“ Ok, got it!
My arm hurt too, in the course of the following days it actually swell to double its size and at a certain point I could not lift it anymore.
Another big job was selling all the bulk items we purchased and wouldn’t take home with us like Kenzie’s bed or additional chairs. Of course the most important thing went first. Already two weeks before departure someone came to pick up my beloved Nespresso-Machine, leaving me cold turkey in the mornings! But also the girls cried dearly when their highchairs were picked up and even days later Kenzie sometimes looked at me asking „Kenzie stool?“ (we don’t know if she uses the Dutch or Swiss word for chair here).
On Friday we had our friends over for a good-bye party. At this point we were only at the beginning of our packing marathon and people kept saying ah you don’t have so much stuff to bring… Well, it was easy to overlook all the things that looked like they belonged to the apartment while they actually belonged to us. The weekend we spent packing clothes, shoes, bags, the first batch of toys and toiletries. We were cranky, over-arguing things, telling the girls they were not allowed to play with things we packed or put out for packing. They cried when we packed some of their toys, they wanted to help but in our opinion they only worked against us so there was fighting and crying and not enough fresh air, you know…. Basically everything that makes everyone feel bad. Tension built up, also emotional tension. I felt the countdown ticking, I still wanted to do so much, go to so many places again, see everyone al least one more time before leaving. Monday the girls did not want to go to daycare anymore. They knew that something was up. Of course we always told and prepared them for what was about to happen but we never knew how much they actually grasped of it.
I had lunch with a friend and neighbour at our favorite Japanese-Korean corner place, JinJin. We had a fantastic Ramen Soup – I will dream of it for quite some time still, and some last moment exchange of ideas.
Tuesday was the day I dreaded most. My last day that I could run through my usual morning routine. My last yoga class. I couldn’t really enjoy it. My mind went wild no matter how hard I tried. At yoga I met up with another friend we had agreed to go for lunch after and so we went one last time to Le Butterblume, one of my favorits in Mile-End. Lunch was to die for, the company too. It was bizzare to say our goodbyes on the corner of Bernard and St. Laurent and then just walk away, knowing I might not see her again. I was fighting the lump in my throat that popped up very frequently in the past days.
At home Niels was already busy closing boxes and loading them into the car, just hoping that we didn’t forget anything that still needed to go in. Then we drove to the Airport and left the boxes with Swiss Cargo. Niels had agreed with his employer that we could ship those to Zurich. Turns out we had 200 Kg. And since we came without boxes, this was what we accumulated within a year. Niels says we are stuff magnets. I read books about minimizing but somehow stuff seems to pile up every year, something doesn‘t go well here. But that‘s another topic…
Since this went faster than expected, we went back and headed for coffee at the cafe where I usually grab my first coffee after dropping off the kids off daycare, Myriad Mile-End, and after went to get the kids from daycare.
Then we drove straight to our French friends, where we spent the evening eating sushi, playing, laughing as if nothing ever is going to change. The sidewalks in front of their house were pure ice. They live a bit further into the Plateau where the streetside-cleaning doesn‘t seem to be so thorough. I was afraid one of us might break something the evening before leaving.
Our last morning in Montreal was somehow weird. Niels got up with a bad headache and spent the first half of the morning on the couch. I started cleaning up the rest of our stuff and trying to keep the girls from unpacking and draging our things back where they used to be for the last months. My German friend, who was on vacation for the past week and therefore missed our goodbye party, dropped in and brought coffee on the way back from bringing her kids to daycare. We sat and talked and drank coffee and it was nice but also unreal in a way. Our upstairs neighbour came to say goodbye as well. After everyone left, we realized that we needed to hurry a little. my friend already pointed out that the appartment didn’t look like we would leave it in a few hours with all our stuff still laying and standing around. On highspeed we cleaned everything out, packed the last things and got rid of whatever was left that we couldn‘t bring. Just as we finished and closed the last garbage bag, the real estate manager knocked on the door for the handover. When we went through the house I felt the knot im my through tightening and tears rose up. We had to leave pretty quickly after handing back the keys in order to be on time at the airport. The moment we drove away from our apartment and turned out of our street for the last time, tears started to run down my cheeks. I couldn‘t stop them. I was heartbroken and the constant stream of tears only ceased once we approached the airport.
While offloading our enormous luggage from the car we received a last kiss from Montreal in the form of a windchill temperature of -25 degrees celcius. Since we already packed our Canadian winter clothes away deep down into bags and boxes, it soon felt like the fingers might just fall off any moment. With our 14 pieces of luggage we went to check-in only to find out that the flight was overbooked. We were travelling on a low priority, so we had to go back and wait for another 45 minutes until they would know if they could give us the seats. I already pictured us with all these suitcases going back to the city and in a hotel, all those tears shed for nothing. I was very tense. I wanted to stay alright, but not like that. Eventually we got our seats and checked everything in. The stroller and baby cots had to be dropped at bulk and the row at security was long with slow progress. Once we made it through, they already made the final call for immediate boarding. Panting and sweating we arrived at the gate, a short while later the doors of the plane closed and we rolled onto the runway for take-off. Again, I was overcome by emotions and couldn’t help but cry silently into my scarf.
It has never before felt so bad to go back to Switzerland. I was not ready to return. I was not ready to leave my life in Montreal behind. It was my new life. It took me quite some effort and time to build it up, to establish a new life and to feel at home there. And now everything is falling apart again. Montreal had been good for me and for us. Life was easy there, less serious and with much less obligations. I know it will be good again after a while, especially once we travel, but for now, my heart is empty and broken and there neither seems to be a forward nor back for me at this point. There is only sadness and emptiness and the roaring plane engines around me…
