From the Kitchen Window

 It's been hard to communicate lately, so I keep to myself and scrawl things in my little book. 

Silence

Last night I dreamed about our house in Victoria. As often in my dreams, it was in a state of disrepair, dusty and abandoned, only resembling the real place in basic structure. It was an uneasy dream. My children were there, along with my step-son, but they were insubstantial, as if they'd been drained of their vital force. All their ages seemed wrong. In fact, everything about the house seemed wrong. 

From the hallway appeared my (now grown) son, but as the 8 year old he once was, an angelic, curly-haired boy. In his hands he held a gift tied with red ribbon. 

"On my birthday, I was silent" he said, unnervingly, before I woke.

Today the weather was the perfect sort we hope for all year: warm, but not too warm, dry, but not parched. Bright sun, soft breeze. I enjoyed it, despite the sickly dream haze lingering in the back of my mind. Why think of these things when the vanilla scent of the whitebrush is rising and the air is alive with bees? But sometimes a dream won't let go

It's not that I hadn't noticed the date. I had. The 4th of May. I'd seen it at midnight, even. Yet for some reason, it hadn't registered. 

"On my birthday, I was silent" says my eerie, angelic child. 

Suddenly, I remembered. It was the anniversary of the night we'd left Victoria, arriving here on the edge of a storm. And it's ironic that I'd forgotten, really, considering I'd titled the post about it "The Persistence Of Memory"

This bright day was nothing like the dismal drizzle of 8 years ago, though the feeling of uncertainty is the same. It has not escaped me that this time, the uncertainty belongs to everyone. For 8 years, I've been perched on the edge of this rock watching the world change, and now it finally seems to have caught up with me. 

It has also not escaped me that in the dream, my son was holding a gift. 

Not long ago, a friend who'd experienced a similar life upheaval around the same time said, "I feel like everything since then has been leading to this. Like I was made for this." 

I understood what she meant. This journey has been agonizing at times, yet here I am on the edge of this rock still, riding out these crises - national and international - in relative safety. To be doing so in Victoria doesn't even bear thinking about. For once, this unforgiving landscape holds me like a cradle while I wait to learn what needs to be done. 

In this post, I wrote about keeping the old key to the storage unit I'd rented back then as a sort of talisman. What I didn't mention was that the key is tied with a red ribbon. When I realized what the dream meant, the symbolism of the red ribbon on the gift box was immediately clear. 

Now that mourning the past is over, It's time to reclaim my autonomy.

Journeys

One night, around 10 o'clock, I went into the shop on the corner. Dale the manager was lost in thought. He had the next three days off, he said, and was heading to the beach. He'd thought about driving down that night, as soon as he closed at 11, but he wasn't sure. Maybe he should just wait until tomorrow.

Outside, the wind was from the West and the sky was full of stars. There was hardly a car on the road. Oh, no, I told him, it's a perfect night for driving. As long as you're awake, you should definitely go tonight.

Dale surveyed the view from the open door. He said, you know, you may be right. I think I will go tonight after all.

Later, after I went to bed, I could imagine Dale driving, winding down from the hills into the coastal plains. Red tail lights disappearing into the starry horizon. I fell asleep comforted by the thought of journeys and the way the landscape never truly sleeps, even in the dark.