What follows is a short story from Rosemary’s past. After talking with her, I have taken our discussion and turned it into a series of small stories highlighting the incredible life that she has led. Direct quotes from our discussion are highlighted in quotation marks. All else is a retelling written by yours truly.
Rosemary had flown to the US twice before she uprooted her life and moved there for good. Both times were in the six months leading up to the family’s departure from the UK. She had flown over once to look at houses and once to look at schools for her children (or at least the two children that hadn’t yet grown up).
As Rosemary tells it, Bill had narrowed down the house hunt to three houses and had ranked them one, two, and three. Rosemary arrived and very quickly after seeing the houses reversed their ranks. House number three, her favourite and the house they would eventually live in, was big. Too big for a family of now four. But what about when friends and relatives come to stay, she asked Bill. They still had a big family and they needed a place for everyone.
But before she could move in she needed to pack up her life and fly over to the US. We’ve already discussed the packing up of life, the unbelievable efficiency of the tiny little moving company. The flight comes next.
“I remember the end of the journey arriving there in Newark. When we got to Newark I think three international flights arrived about the same time. The whole place was absolutely milling with people. And of course we had to find our way. We’d never been to Newark. No one was meeting us. So you know we just had to find out what to do and where to go.
“There were so many people there, as the time was going by we realised we might miss our flight to Colorado. And we did. “There was no way we could have done anything unless someone had actually come and removed all the people. So we arrived at the desk eventually way after arriving and we said the flight left and they told us it had. And we said we’re stuck so they gave us a voucher and put us up in a hotel and put us on the flight the next morning.”
It wasn’t the greatest of starts to life in Colorado. The night was short and early the next morning they returned to the airport and flew the rest of the journey. There were no direct flights to Colorado in those days.
Stay tuned for more stories from the life of Rosemary. Please note: these stories will not necessarily hold any chronological grounding. They are designed as snippets of understanding into the life of Rosemary and while some will hold chronology, others may not.