House of Dreams

The time has come. We have made the decision to book and confirm our flights to return home to Sydney, Australia. All paid and completed. We will be home for Spring. Home for Spring. It has a lovely sound to it, doesn't it? Two summers in a row will await us from now till then. 

COVID has been an unexpected curve ball. We've lived through 15 months of a pandemic impacted continent. We've lived an experience we hope will never cross our paths again given the death and sickness it has brought to almost every country. Though our lives continued, our freedom of movement and travel was much curtailed. My engagement with colleagues and clients, developed through an endless prism of lockdown and video calls. I will always remember this time, forever etched in our minds and our hearts. 

The sense of preparation for returning home is now in front of us. Our departure is mid September. We don't have much to pack, but have commenced the six month blood test count down for Milo's departure as well. Just as our two and a bit years have flown, so too the next few months before we arrive back home. Mixed emotions, overwhelmed with the joyful thoughts of seeing Thomas, but also, an unexpected sense of wrenching will be in store for us in leaving the beautiful, enchanting, historical city of Amsterdam. Our much loved home away from home. 

Today is Mother's Day. Universally. Both in Australia and the rest of the globe. Including here in Amsterdam. 

And as I enter these words on my keyboard, there is a disconcerting but welcome silence from the tapping. Instead, high fidelity sound floods my senses. My new Rose Gold (these are important details of course) Bose QC35 II wireless headset is a technologically advanced piece of engineering, bringing me magical, crystal sounds of classical music. A cello is playing, and I can hear the breathing of the musician. The air shifting as the conductor moves his baton, holding off the rest of the orchestra while the solo takes flight. It really is that magical. A present for Mother's Day. I couldn't have wished for a better purchase. And while the joy of the sound fills me with joy, the absence of Thomas cannot be filled. My second Mother's Day without him. 

He sent a bouquet of flowers filling our lounge with colour and the smell of lillies and wild flowers. And a sweet card that brought tears. Words from a 20 year thoughtfully pulled together with love. I am blessed that my sweet Tommy remembers and sent love, without prompting. Every mother's hope on this day from a young man who is yet still a child in my eyes and my heart. 

In quiet moments the air is still. The world holds its breath and I fall. Paths I've known from long ago, set out before me. Familiarity a warm coat against the winter chill of forgotten moments. 

And then, as is now. It is a fresh moment of recall. I still can see your face. Long gone from my touch. Leaving no trace of skin or smell. Leaving only trace impressions on the heart. They sit so lightly. 

How the world spins. Endless motion fulfills the prophesy of circular movement, forever on a path worn thin with age. But ageless as well. I hear and feel the piano key beneath me. Fills me with lost worlds and memories of musical joy. Soaring higher than I can remember. A cadence of melodic joy, holding me afloat. 

In lives lived inside my head. I am a concert pianist and the orchestra and I are joined as one. The conductor, our magician, keeping our heartbeats in synch. Perfection is slow beats and languid Adagios. But so brittle. 

Have you ever wanted to write without a theme? Without a begnining or an end? My life is a blank canvas. The reality of lock down depleting me of the desire to explore new ground. Hemmed in with walls that don't yield. Where doors have lost their meaning. It doesn't matter if the sky is blue or grey, or wet or cold. We can't touch it with all our lives. We are contained. We are caught in a moment that never ends. 

Weclome to 2021. I logged on and kicked off the new working year today. I think we say Happy New Year, in the hope that the new part of our greeting will fill us with a sense of renewal and optimism. And it can be - given the vaccination programs are building up in northern Europe.  The reality check though is that our vaccinations for the group we fall in - healthy, non-essential worker, young-ish, etc - means we are a long way from being innoculated.  It may be as soon as end of this year....  which means,  as my UK colleagues noted, we will be working from home for at least another eight to ten months. Aghhhhhhhhhh.  

By February, I will have sat in front of my PC screen for 12 months working from home.  Another six months feels easy in the sense that we've survived the first year, but somewhere along the line something has to give. 

How do I say this, and not be perceived to recklessly annul our European adventure plans we had so carefully sewn? Tim and I spoke of this, and we think we have another six months in us, to live through a COVID, self-isolated northern European year. We found much comfort in the warmth of our shared moment of truth.  But after these next six months, we are going home. We have put a line in the sand, and let Thomas know we will be home for Christmas 2021. The decision has been a gentle journey of self-realisation that we need to live our lives the best we can, and doing so in a country that requires us to stay at home for extended periods of time, from one year to the next, is not something we want to pursue beyond two and a half years.  Tim has not been able to find work in this COVID world, and while that hasn't impacted at all, I recognise he too needs to find that sense of purpose to sustain his sense of integrating into this European way of life. 

Putting it in writing on my blog, makes it very real. 2021 will be our final year in Europe, and the extraordinary city of Amsterdam, that has been home to us. We have loved our life in Europe, as contained as it has been, but it's time to plan our return home to Australia. Now for the conversation with my work to see how we navigate the next six months... and the juggernaught of finding flights home in a world of travel caps and quarantine, but that's a whole other story :) 

Here at least I have the freedom to express political opinion.  I made the error of noting the upcoming celebration of hope with the Biden win, only to have a very ignorant, uneducated trump supporter berating me.  berating me on my own Facebook feed. That was a lesson in decorum and mincing my words.  I loathed the fact that she - let's call her Karen - said something along the lines of 'with all due respect (and we all know when someone starts a sentence with that expression they're hiding behind further inept currency of language). She noted that 'with all due respect' the count won't be over till the Supreme Court ruling.  

Ha. When the 50 court cases were thrown out, and the second Supreme Court ruling dismissed the idiotic election fraud claims, Karen who originally berated me on my Facebook didn't have the fortitude or courage to say that she accepted the final ruling. I did the only thing I could, which was to unfriend her. Awkward though, as her sister in law is one of my best friends and married to an American Airlines pilot (Karen's brother no less). But that's politics for you, dividing us all in our sub sections of left and right. I am impatient and loathing of the fact that I want to make more comments on FB but can't be asked to defend them or use up my energy in telling off those who harbour right wing fantasies of election fraud. I am so over these idiots. 

I wish, truly I do, that I could decommission the countless millions of gratuitous, self serving, lacking brain and logic, elements of the human race that reside as Trump supporters. What of the divisive rhetoric Trump yells at his base can ever be seen as presidential? He challenge countless norms, it hurts my brain and my sense of existence. How will history remember this fucked up individual? I hope history won't be kind, and that the hypocritical GOP senators fueling this behaviour are held accountable. What hope can we entertain though with a system of government, and internal divisions crippling the governance process at the highest level of government.  I want to have the freedom, on this page, to note how broken, how backwards, self-serving the system is in the US. Falling of their pedestal, they've wrapped themselves in a version of reality that other nations observing the calamity that is the Divided States of America, can only perceive them for the fools they are.  Constitutional norms be damned. There is no longer any morale or philosophical leveller in that fractured country.