As time creeps closer to my expected departure date from Melbourne, I find myself getting more and more edgy. The razor sharp anticipation cuts into my skin in a metaphor that I half wish were real, just so there is release. This release from stagnation - the chasing of my own devil’s tail has proven to be unbearable, its pointlessness stark and intimidating. It is almost as if I am trying to subdue my internal restlessness by promising it an escape route. Almost as if I am saying to myself “just sit still for a little while more and then you can run like the wind”.
I feel like a kid, being made to hang out for that ice-cream because that ice-cream promises her a salvation that her child-like intellect will perceive as everlasting. In reality, we all know that’s not true, but at the moment I’m pretending that it is because a temporary salvation is well, better than non at all. I simply want to be able to welcome other perspectives and maybe for once, be able to hold on to some. I am tired. It has been a very personally tough year and I am tired. The awful thing though, is that I am mostly tired of myself.
I had lunch with a colleague today. He is well-travelled and comes well-equipped with stories from all corners of the world. I listened to his tales and felt a little glimmer of light creep back into my eyes. My face warmed in the glow of spring’s sunshine. 16 more days. 16 more sleeps till I am on a plane.
Despite all this, despite the blind hope that I will be able to find my breath again. Despite my eagerness to tred on soil that has never held my footprints or to be blanketed by the shade of the sky in another land, there is apprehension - it is there and it sits quietly quivering in the outlines of my vessel. There it sits, hardly visible till I acknowledge it. And when I do, there it is holding its protective shell over my sanity. My apprehension. My one greatest saviour and one greatest enemy of too many yesterdays and too many tomorrows.
What I do know, is that this trip will also be a test - I will be travelling alone with my father whom I have not had more than a few weeks worth of personal contact over the past few years. My father and I whose conversations if they lingered, did so only tentatively and never more than on the surface before they quickly flitted away again to an uncommon detachment. Like a big brown funeral moth. Dull and short-lived. Like a superstition. All the big things left unsaid between us sheltered by its big dark wings, I’m not even sure if they exist. My father, whose awkward and overwhelming fatherly love for me has all but drowned my soul in the years gone by and silenced any affection I have for him into deep unspoken wells in my heart. The depth of my love is boundless but it has never seen the light of day.
This trip will mean many things to me and one of the most important will probably be this - that it may be one of my few chances left to get to know him at all. And also significant, for him to know me in some way. Just a little way. That will be enough for me. Know me just a little. I almost want to say “please”. Then comes the other million dollar questions - will I be able to let him? Will 7 days be enough for a lifetime?
No doubt it will be a test on my patience, my adaptability but most of all on my maturity. Have the years made a difference?
But till then, I am sitting still. In anticipation. With apprehension. Perhaps in hope.