I am leaving today. I wake up in the morning in my lovely
familiar bed with a short simple list of lovely familiar chores to do during
the day. It is to be such a calm and relaxed day that I start off by biking
down to the river and sitting there as the mist slowly and seductively rises
and reveals the hills on the other side. Why am I leaving, I wonder, this place
I love so much, as some ducks swim by and the swirls of mist positively dance
with joy as a ray of sunshine hits them and an elderly woman I don’t know but
who knows my mother comes to sit on the bench with me and tells me she is
considering moving to live in Markham nearer her children because she is
getting too old to do the drive to visit them, but, she laments, where would
she go for her morning walks then, how could she possible find a place as
beautiful as this, why would she want to leave?
Flip. I am driving with my husband. I had so anticipated two
hours in a car with him, had so many things to talk to him about. We were
married for ten years, have been separated for three, and might be considering
reconciliation upon my return. I had known that someone else would be with us
too but had not realized how completely that would deter me from having the
conversations I had hoped to have. We are silent in the car as it speeds down
the highway.
Flip. I spend a whole day with my oldest son. We walk a
gazillion miles round the city getting a new hat some extra lip block a wheel for
his bicycle and laughing laughing all the way. He is so like my father, his
grandfather, in both what he laughs at and the way he laughs – something else
catches his fancy and his chin dips down and he is convulsed with silent
chortles and I am so happy to be here with him.
Flip. We go out for brunch with a couple of his friends. I
have nothing to say to them. How will I survive, I wonder, months with a
stranger, who is taking me along so there is someone to talk to him, when I
cannot think of anything to say to my son’s friends during a single meal.
Flip. I catch the bus, in the rain, and head across to the
far side of the city. It is the shortest section of my trip in both miles and
time but marks the midpoint between known and unknown.
Flip. HS and two of his kids drive the two hours to the next
city to drop us off at the airport. One of them is gregarious, outgoing, and
extroverted, like his father... the other as silent as me.
Flip. We wait to check in, check in, wait to pass security,
pass security, wait to fly, fly, wait to collect our luggage, wait to pass
customs, wait to start the whole process over for the next flight….
Flip. We both like window seats so instead of sitting beside
one another HS is in the seat in front of me. He likes, he says, to be able to
sleep, not be bothered by anyone, I like to gaze out the window with awe at the
free amazing real-time non-virtual google earth show passing below. He is
chatting amiably and animatedly to the woman beside him. I have not said a word
to the person beside me but am marvelling at how every arable inch of land in
northern Spain has crops growing on it and at how many people must be involved
directly and indirectly with farming it.
Flip. The rock of Gibraltar, literally shrouded in mist and
mystery, comes visible in the distance from the plane window and as we fly
closer I am almost physically sick with the thought that my camera is packed
inaccessibly somewhere deep in my luggage.
Flip. We land, walk across the border into Spain, find our hotel,
shower, and stop to take a breath in that order. Our hotel is, conveniently,
right beside the marina. “Look,” he says, “there she is!” I can’t, of course,
tell which boat he is pointing to but take a picture anyway. Behind the boats,
across the strait, the hills of darkest Africa rise up.
Tomorrow we have a long list of scary and unfamiliar chores to do, we will paint on anti-fouling, do something to some through hulls, put the boat in the water, test her systems. Tomorrow night we will sleep on her. I might get up and go for a walk the morning after that, there may be mist rising from in front of the hills, ducks might swim by (and perhaps dolphins too!) but a woman who knows my mother is unlikely to come and sit beside me and I will not have time with one of my kids to look forward to. I look at the snap shot I took earlier from the hotel balcony. We have been out for a walk in the interim and now I too can identify which of the masts belongs to The Boat. She has red sail covers and it seems as if a shard of light is shining just on her. I take it as a good omen. Bring it on world, here I come!
