10 June 2011

At the same time that I am writing this we’ll be touching down in Honolulu, even though we don’t leave Sydney for another 10 hours.  Time travel at its finest, getting that day back we lost 15 months ago.  We might not do much more with it than nap and drink a seaside mai tai, but I can say with confidence that we are looking forward to both.

I’d like to be posting an insightful blog about our past 15 months living and traveling Down Under and I’m sure the words are in me somewhere to do so, but right now it’s hard to gather them together into a neatly constructed paragraph, one that will make us nod our heads and say, Yes, that’s it exactly, that’s everything we experienced summed up perfectly and wisely.  Instead, there is the bombardment of thought snippets, the ones reminding me that those clothes on the bed still need a suitcase, Gina’s library card was surprisingly hard to cancel, we better run and get an Australia adaptor or my replacement camera will be an expensively unworkable souvenir of our time in Tasmania, and the dog sure looks like she’d like to go for a walk.

There’s not enough time today for deep thought and reflection and expression, those things that movie characters have time to voice over while their departure scene blends into a proper vignette of flashback images of good times and bad, a scene that doesn’t so easily materialize for us real-world folk as we ride the Super Shuttle, queue up at the check-in counter, and purge our handbags and dignity to get through security.

I’ll find the words at some point.  Maybe high over the Pacific Ocean or on a Waikiki mountaintop or maybe they’re just casually and comfortably waiting for me back home in Seattle, stretched out on the sofa, feet propped up on the pillows, a glass of wine in hand, a welcome back smile saying Hello, good to see you, tell me all about it.  Or maybe all that needs to be said is that we might do parts of it differently next time but we’d definitely do it again.