So it comes to pass. Again.A lot of water under so many bridges, but I didn't write about it as I was too busy being In Love. Becoming a wife, and then finding my own space in that role.
Bits happened. I wrote: "We're going to Florence by train, where we've been warned of pickpockets, gypsies, beggars, scavengers and wheeler dealers.
There we will meet Sharon and Oren, who were present at our wedding. Who was the first person I told when Reno proposed that moonlit night on a rocky promontory at midnight in Sydney. When the fireworks went off across the water from so many speedboats when I said Yes, Yes, Yes, I will. We will go to Varenna, on Lake Como, Italy, to conclude our marriage on the terrace that I first saw when I was with Dawn, early in this story. The yellow case with the sunflowers has travelled everywhere with us: the dress and the suit will get their airing, once again. Reno's sister, Carmen, has promised to come from Torino. Francine and Pippo, also mentioned early in this story, are coming from Geneva. Dawn will be in Bellagio, and all she needs to do is cross to Varenna and we will have that wedding lunch of my dreams on the terrace of the Hotel du Lac. Then we will drive to Venice, from where we will cruise the Adriatic and Mediterranean with Sharon and Oren, and make more adventures, from Dubrovnik, and Split, to Catania in Sicily where Reno's family come from, to Naples and Rome and, after so much gallivanting, back to Australia.
To buy ourselves a house."
Suffice to say it all happened, and it still has more to run, but I ran out of words, and the space and time to do them, then.
I could say What A Shame I didn't write as it happened. The immediacy disappears in the retelling, and I find I'm an itinerary writer instead of a tale teller. But my life expanded into that of my new husband, and he became the extra pair of ears and eyes. I hear him telling of our adventures and I remember them. Yes I am very sad I didn't write them then, and I can't remember the nuances now. Who else is witness to our heated discussions re maps or gps? Or which way was the cemetery and did it really matter that we found a whirling dervish instead? And all the patience Reno exhibited when I spend days in souks, getting my hands dirty. And his learning of the ways of the road, of the vagaries of travel, of the demons and devils he'd have to fight on the way, as I have done since I was nineteen.
Life is a daring adventure, or nothing at all, I keep reminding myself, remembering Reno quoting Anais Nin, when I asked him why I should marry him. He proves it every day. When I started this year long adventure I was a messy woman with a messy life and a messy head and a messy path ahead. I had no idea what lay in front, and I certainly didn't want to look back, in anger or anything else, at what I'd fled from. The mother, the sickness, the idiot, the money laundering, the loss of self and soul, the giving up of home, and car, and identity, and known days.
That day that I stood in the window of the yellow hotel in Sultanhamet's busy street, and was washed with blossoms from below, the wheel of my life turned north. I still clutched to the reedy voice of an idiot I'd wasted years with, but when that phone line went dead, and the blossoms landed at my feet, I threw my old life away. I was alone, but less lonely than I had ever been. I had the world at my feet, and those feet were happy to dance to any tune. Especially the ones I made up myself.
I had all the adventures with Luda. Days and weeks and months of laughter and misadventures, of learning curves and steep hills and near death experiences, that began with a pledge on a piece of butcher's paper in a little beach side Thai restaurant, years before.
I had all the adventures in Italy and the cruise, with Dawn. With Sylvia and Giorgio, and Francine and Pippo, in Venice. With meeting Reno, with falling in love, with getting married, with becoming a grandmother.
I have come full circle. I'm in our house in Australia with my husband, in a happy, secure, peaceful productive relationship. My bead business has grown and thrived, and I'm still in contact with the delicious people who led me onto this path.
But Luda died unexpectedly, when finishing this story and giving it to her, eventually, eleven years later, was just something I'd finally get around to doing. Every few months I promised her I'd get it down. And then she died. I saw her a few days before, and again I promised I'd get down to finishing the story. And then she was gone, forever. I was gutted. I am heartbroken. She was the one who kicked me in my bum and told me to leave the idiot and take a walk on the wild side. She ordered me to close my shop. She promised to join me wherever I travelled, and she did. She rescued me in Kathmandu. She moored me in Morocco. She instigated me in Istanbul. She abandoned me in Turkey when she went back to Australia, and for a few dazed days I wondered around, adrift. But then the blossoms blew into my room, and landed at my feet. I held my head out the window and shouted with delight. Then I carried on with the adventures. There was always Luda to turn to. Luda to call. Luda to laugh with. Luda to cry to. Luda to lunch with, and wait for, and say hello and goodbye to.
And now she's never coming back.
Her death prompted me to finally finish writing this story.
She did, however, keep that little green frog, the Travelling Bead, which began this whole madcap thing.
After all, adventures can't stay alive unless someone is there to tell the tales.
