8. Moving out, up, and right along.

Sarah read about the idea of trading my travelling bead up and up and up.  Here's what she wrote:

And so to the which bead is a girl to wear situation!
I like the idea of swapping along the way...beads are trade currency, yes. I also believe that they capture a little of the essence of the persons who have worn it , cherished it, believed in it as a talisman, to pass on a bead you have worn passes on a little of your energy to the recipient.  
 
The Tuareg make beautiful silver pendants, known as the oasis crosses. Each Oasis in the Sahara has it's own design. When a Tuareg nomadic group takes water from an Oasis the Kel Innaden (the silversmith of the group) makes a cross, rumours say it is a star map to mark the place of the life giving water. The cross is then given or traded to the next person met along with the words 'No one can know the path on which life will take them , be safe and well in the one which you choose.'  When we get to Morocco I would love to trade what ever you are wearing at the time with one of these crosses !

So.  David left for Perth today, after we dismantled the remainder of our years together. I'm now staying with friends, with the detritus of my life scattered all over the floor as I continue to chuck out more clothes I know I won't need for the first leg of the Journey - Perth in boiling mid summer to visit my children.

We had breakfast on Collaroy Beach, while a soft mist played around the waves and the Nipper squads were getting their LifeSaving workout. Over my muesli and yoghurt kid-portion, I suggested going onto the sand to choose the first shell/bead for the journey as it was D's idea to trade the beads.  His response: That Wasn't In Our Plan for Today.

In the same sort of voice as "There is no point in having Dreams .... " 

I felt as if I'd been kicked in the stomach, (again) as I did want him to have some part of this journey, even as a totem around my neck.  Sad, how things change, considering this is the same person who once framed me a feather quill, and arranged our loungeroom to look like a harem tent when I'd been working late, and unwrapped me like a cocoon from 5metres of silk sari to belly dance music.... 

I'm trying to "be friends".  But he has no interest in this journey, wouldn't read the itinerary or look at Sarah's site.  So as I'd planned, anyway, this is indeed my journey now, partly geographically shared with Luda, so, Luda, put on your beach shoes, we're goin' shell spottin'! 

As I delivered David to the Vestal Virgins departure lounge in Sydney for his return to Perth, I was reminded of a story my mother told me years ago about when my father was deported from South Africa to the UK.  She'd been miserable with him for a long time, and was so overjoyed when he finally boarded the plane, she took off in high spirits and excessive speed from the airport, singing at the top of her voice.  Not even the wail of a police siren and the menacing image of a throbbing motorbike could dampen her spirits, so she continued to break land speed records in her open-topped 1967 Volkswagen.

The motorcycle cop, lights flashing, overtook her, and as he did, so the story goes, his white hat flew off his head through the VW roof and landed in my mother's lap.  She jauntily perched it on her own blonde head, and as the capless officer approached, again, so the story goes, she said, doffing the cap, "Anything I can help you with, officer?" 

I looked at the departing back that I had clung onto for so many years, and was filled with a wave of revulsion and self-loathing, promising myself that I would never set eyes on him again, promising myself that from this moment on his name would be forbidden on my tongue, promising myself that never again would I have to face the origami, the David Bowie t-shirts, the baseball caps, the Simpsons, the empty alcohol bottles, the night time rejections and the day day insults.   I refused to love that sort of person, ever, not even for a micro-second.  

Where had I been for seven rough years? What was I thinking for all those hours?  What had I lost? What had I gained?  Who was I, now?

I sat back in my car and breathed. Deep.  I retuned my car radio away from JJJ to ABC classic.  I sang off-key made up Italian to the operatic carryings-on. I ate a half slab of Cadbury's crunchie.   I went back to the empty , clean, apartment to do my own farewells, and shouted to the empty corners: Goodbye! You Soulless Place!  Goodbye!  You money muncher!  Goodbye!  To so many nights of tears and fright and rage and abandonment!   

D- hereafter known as "the slug"  had forgotten to untie the Red Moroccan lamp that hung outside and as I stood a metre below it trying to work out how to get it down without a chair or a knife, I thought, oh bugger, let the new owners have it - I'll be there in person, they can have the spirit ...  and walked away from that Life without another thought.

Except that I'm closer and closer to me, again, every day.  There's a spring in my step and a gleam in my eye and I feel a bit mad and a lot happy, and very excited and inspired and insane.

As the shop's closing date approaches, there is more and more laughter and madness and certifiable acts of retail generosity. 

The tiger that's been chewing on my wings is closer to being conquered.