Weaving

This is one of those holidays where the holiday-life seems so surreal and then, reflecting from that surreal place, my everyday life seems totally surreal too. I am back from a day walking in Australia’s Blue Mountains. I begin this blog in a (heavily discounted) suite on the 3rd floor of an old hotel, built in the 1890s and gracefully refurbished in classic Ye Olde Style dark woods and swooping curves. Looking out the window, I see that the beautiful views have closed in with the rain until I can hardly even see the street below.

It has been a holiday with strands that weave and circle back, that connect into the future and back to the past and hold together different parts of my life. And all of it brings me back to September 2005 when I first came to Australia, on my own and beside myself with joy. I was coming to teach a Subject-Object Interview workshop at the request of two fellas whom I’d met in a café in Washington as they did a tour of the adult developmentalists on the east coast of the US. On their way from Atlanta to Boston they had lunch with me in DC and talked about Keith’s impending dissertation and Paul’s blossoming interests in this field. When they invited me to teach the workshop in Australia, it seemed like a dream; when I went for my first walk in Sydney and came to the Opera House, it seemed like a fantasy.

I wandered around Sydney on my own those two days before I headed to do my various pieces of work. I met Tony Grant, who had been the editor of a book for which I’d recently written a chapter, and his colleague Michael Cavanaugh, together with whom he ran the University of Sydney coaching psychology program. Then it was into the work of the trip with the SOI workshop attended by (among others) Paul and Keith and Michael C. At the end of that trip (at 10 days, the longest I’d ever been away from the kids) I took whirlwind excursion to see a little more of this lovely country with Keith as my tour guide: first to the beach south of Sydney and then to the Blue Mountains to do some walking in the crisp mountain air.

That was the beginning of a series of ongoing friendships and partnerships that have re-centred my life and turned my world upside down. But how was I to know any of that at the time? All I knew is that I was having the time of my life, that I was loving this place and these people and this magical opportunity to be me, only really really far away.

That whole trip, each exquisite thing I did, made me wonder whether I would ever have such an experience again. Would this be the last time I ever saw the Sydney Opera House, would it be the last time I ever saw the Blue Mountains? Would it be the last time I ever saw Paul and Keith and Michael C? Each place or person I said goodbye to I thought was possibly forever.

And here, in the space of just a few days, I’m with all of them—all those people and places of that first trip (except Keith, whom I worked with at my house on the day before I left for Sydney). All of these people have become players in my life with on-going parts rather than the walk-on role I once imagined.

And, in order to emphasise my re-walking of these old footsteps, today I went to the visitor centre in the Blue Mountains to pick out a walk for us to take. I had been on a walk in 2005 with Keith, lovely but mysterious—I was so overwhelmed with the place and the experience that I didn’t take part in planning anything and just followed along the path Keith had picked out. So when I examined the descriptions of the various walks we could take in the Blue Mountains, I was looking for one that sounded familiar. No such luck. Instead of revisiting, I just picked out what looked like the best walk of all, and we set off to the trail head.

As soon as we arrived I knew it was the same walk I had taken nearly four years before. I plunged into the lovely temperate rain forest, this time with Michael and the kids in tow. On that first trip I took heaps of pictures to bring back to Michael (the kids were too small to care much) so that he would get something of the feel of the place. And now, nearly in a blink of time, he was there too—along with our kids who are troopers on these long walks (another piece of the future I’d never have imagined when they were little kids in DC). This time, I took almost no pictures (and you’ll have to wait to see any of them as we’re paying for this internet access by the megabite)—why bother?

The next morning, we woke up and drove to the wildlife park Paul and his family took me to two years ago—where I got to pet my first kangaroo. Like the Blue Mountains walk, it was bringing threads of my life together: my Aussie thread and the rich experiences I have here, and my family, none of whom had ever touched a koala. Dinner with Paul and his family at Michael C’s house, a morning watching Paul teach my kids to surf on a North Sydney beach (yes, that's Paul cheering when Aidan stands on the surfboard for the first time in the other pictures), an afternoon watching my kids feed the kangaroos—all of these are weaving fabric of my life in a more integrated whole.

Somehow as I watch the present and past, my work and family contexts, all blend and connect, I am also wondering about how all of these pieces connect forward through time. I no longer believe that this is the last time I’ll see the Sydney Opera House or that maybe I’ll never see Paul or Tony again. But I wonder what the future holds for me with these people—and the new people I connect with at each workshop I teach. Now that I understand how profoundly unpredictably my life might progress, and I know that I don’t actually know where it’s going next. Will I bring Dad and Jamie here someday? Will Mom and I teach a workshop at the Uni? Will I have clients here? Visit grandchildren here? Which threads get picked up in the ongoing pattern of my life, and which ones get left behind? I’m curious, and I’m also not rushing to find the answers to these questions. Instead, I’d rather watch my kids swim in the sunset, feel the soft fur of a roo under my hand, find myself teaching another intelligent and lovely group of people in a familiar and graceful (if HOT) room. I was here once and I will be here again, and I am trying to hold all of that and also be here now.

PS This trip was planned around the moving of some fantastic cousins to Sydney. I had imagined playing at the beach with their girls, holding their new(ish) baby, talking long into the night. That was the plan which, due to circumstances outside their control, was cancelled at the last minute. Who knows whether we’ll weave them into the fabric of our Southern Hemispheric lives. All I know is that no matter what you think is next, no matter what you plan for, there are surprises all along the journey. U and R, we hope all is happy for you and that this looks, at sometime in the future, like a grand opportunity. We love you.