It was never meant to turn out this way. There were the far off childhood dreams of adventure on the high seas and trunks labelled with exotic place names and smelling of spice and romance, but they were literary dreams more often fed by Boys Own Adventures. There wasn’t a lot of Girls Own Adventure stories back in the sixties that encouraged little girls to pit their will and pitch their skills against high seas and mountain passes. But when you grow up with five brothers, playing with dolls and the solitary girl child from over the backyard fence always seemed… well, boring. Girls could have adventure too, I thought. And so it was that I grew up a bit of a ‘tom boy’ with a father who adored women and never a thought that girls were not equal to boys. Even when I became a young mother, my adventures became a job with white water rafting and trapping fur in the bush, duck shooting in season and tramping the hills of New Zealand’s misty mountains. While my school mates drifted off on the Antipodean Pre Requisite to settling down with a mortgage and two point five children, I skipped getting drunk in fifty different countries across Europe and raised my babies. That kind of adventure did not appeal to me anyway and then there was the growing and learning with my kids. And rafting down wild rivers on the weekends.
Thats the thing about extreme sports, it leads you on to higher leaps of faith, to bigger thrills. Somewhere between washing nappies and packing school lunches I dreamed of the dizzying heights of the lofty Himalaya and promised myself to go there as a reward for being a single parent. I also dreamed that one of the kids would grow up to be a pilot and so get me amazing discounts on the life of travel that I planned for my golden years. They sensibly grew into their own beauty and path in life. But it was during those years that I met a guy at a party called Ozzie. The people at the party were all glitteringly employed and sparking conversation off each other, I had very little to say since I was busy calculating the hours of sleep this party was costing me. Then I noticed this guy in the corner, since no one was talking to him either I went over and struck up a conversation. He offered the information that he had just returned from India and was having some trouble adjusting to “The World” again. I offered the information that I had promised myself to travel to the highest mountain in the world once my family had left home and would walk at least to Base Camp at Everest. He turned a face to me that I will remember for as long as I live, it was alight with a flame from a distant fire. “But you can’t go to Nepal without going to India!” he cried. For the next three or four hours he talked about India with his eyes shining like a lover, his face as bright as a new born prince and with his words tumbling and tripping over each other in his haste to share the love. I listened with rapt amazement. No single one of my OE friends had returned home with tales like this, or with such joy and love shining on their faces. It sounded like the craziest country in the world, crazy and kind and heartbreaking and breathtaking and bursting with a kind of love that we in the West seem to limit to romantic love. He talked about a love of humanity. Needless to say, I was hooked.
I went home, paid the babysitter and said to my kids, “When you are eighteen you have to leave home and go flatting because I am going to India.” They took it pretty well, the ten month old baby dribbled a bit of milk and the three year old blinked a few times before turning over and going back to sleep. I kept reminding them and myself for all the years of their growing, I wanted them to be prepared for this. My own mother would laugh that spine tingling Mother laugh that tells all daughters their dreams with come to nothing but I insisted that If I kept saying it, kept believing in my dream then it would come to pass.
Of course it did and the rest as they say is history. Or should I say HerStory? I went to India and fell in love times one billion with the country, the people, the food and the insanity. It kept me laughing and crying and screaming with laughter and frustration in equal doses and still does. My obsession with India has kept me on the road in various places across the world while I work on having a life that allows me to travel, allows me to plumb the depths of my creativity and keeps me in sporadic contact with my family. It’s the life of a rolling stone, gathering no moss but also with a momentum of it’s own. Sometimes there is a feeling of “stop this stone, I want to get off” or at least change direction. The direction I long for is straight to the heart of my grandchildren who keep growing so fast and at such a rate that it scares me sometimes! And sometimes when I am furtherest away is the times when I want to be close to hand for my family.
But given this little niggle and prod at my heart strings I also know and believe that if you are living and acting according to your dharma then you are always exactly where you need to be in life and that your soul and spirit do not recognise physical boundaries. We all take on a shape with which to experience life and I happen to believe that we get to experience as many shapes and forms and experiences as it takes for the soul to realise that we are all part of the Universal Oneness which is the Dream of the great Creator.
It’s this belief in action which has become my life, a life that is meandering through the scenic route instead of along the super highway. Wandering with a purpose that is between me and The Dreamer, stopping in wonder at the beauty of His Imagination and chuckling at His Divine sense of humour!