November 2022 – April 2023

When we asked my mummy in summer 2022 to come to Sri Lanka with my brother in November 2022, within seconds she said yes.

Planning was done well in advance and this time, she wanted to stay at least 2 months over the cold and dark winter months in Czech, in sunny warm and tropical Sri Lanka.  I got her a visa for 6 months just in case she wanted to stay even longer and because it was the same fee anyway.

In the end, she did spend 6 months with us and we loved having her around.  Initiall she shared Emilka’s room, but then shred with Misa. She spent Christmas and New year holiday with us, she looked after the kids when we were in Australia in February, we took her on all the weekend trips we did, she tagged along to a majority of my meetings with the Internation Expats Association or to visit my friends, had special treats in nice establishments, Uber eats home deliveries when we had something to celebrate or after a long day, and all the massages and pampering that she enjoyed.  It was so lovely to share all this with her.

The time came when she was supposed to leave, on her own this time as no one we knew was traveling to Prague the same day and no one on Facebook came forward when I enquired about her joining up.  She was worried, understandably-so as her knowledge of English is very limited and she has never made a long haul journey – and one with a transit stop for that matter – on her own before.  However, Steve surprised us all and nearly gave her a heart attack by upgrading her ticket to business class so she could travel in style.

She did indeed, clenching a flute of Champagne in most of her pictures, enjoying all the food on the menu and sleeping completely flat for the first time on a flight rather than hunched upright between other passengers. She found a Czech speaking stewardess on each flight, so making it easy for her both onboard and when asking what to do when changing aeroplanes in Dubai.  My nephew Kuba was waiting for her with the car in Prague airport so he took her home in comfort and with her full 40Kg baggage allowance in the boot as she knew she was not going to be using public transport. 

Home safely, she recovered overnight from 23.5 hours of travel door-to-door and then unpacked her luggage to find that everything had arrived undamaged – even glass on a framed picture given to her by the children’s mathematics tutor.

Our apartment feels strange without her here but it will not be long before we will see her in Czech in summer; aircraft tickets are already bought for the girls, and the boys will be going on by motorcycle as  last year. We love planning as there is always something to look forward to. 

Rennie