They say that every journey begins with a single step but surely every journey starts as a single thought which turns into an idea which then turns into plans until finally ””the plan takes shape and gathers momentum until the cases are packed, tickets bought and hotels or apartments reserved.
Step by step, come with me on that journey (well at least till the airport looms) then it’s wish me luck as you wave me goodbye.
I’ve always wanted to go to Australia because of the “Flying Doctor” series broadcast on British radio in the sixties. With the English language spoken in a different accent, the magical place names so different from those at home and the idea of a doctor arriving by plane to treat your ills, it sounded out of this world, rather than on the other side of this world. I never thought it being even the remotest dream in my head that I would ever go there.
Back in 2012
In 2012 I was put in contact with a blind lady in Australia who has Asperger’s. I felt the crushing disappointment that we would not meet regularly if at all because of the practicalities of travel, geographical distance and our overwhelming, ever present anxieties. That’s without thinking of the logistics of it. We just wrote regularly until K came, with auntie and friend in 2019 and I knew then this was my soul mate. Not in the way lovers mean it but my “brainalike” my cerebral sister as I called her and we have used the term ever since. K came with family so I never thought we’d meet again because I have no family support and support workers, home helps and carers don’t do the sort of thing that involves making dreams come true. They are there perhaps to help with correspondence and certainly to help with shopping and then someone may help also with cleaning and even companionship can be paid for but Australian travel? Naah! Dream on, June. I stopped doing it consciously but felt very forlorn when K went home. We did some “if only-ing” and as much reminiscing as I could stand but that’s painful, too especially when you come home without the prospect even of travelling to or with relatives and Christmases beckon like cruel reminders of a distant past that gets ever further away.
Support Workers
My then support worker was often taken poorly and has sadly since died. However during the interim while he took holidays and had to shelter during Covid19, Lisa appeared. She became my new support worker and I started to tell her about K, people’s suspicions that I have Asperger’s and my long-forgotten dalliance with the “Flying Doctor” and the silly dream of going to Australia.
Then she said:
“I’ll take you as long as you can pay the expenses if you really want to go”.
I never doubted her sincerity because even when she once said she would ring the next Friday to check my hoover had been unblocked by Chris, she kept her promise and in my experience, if you do the small stuff without forgetting, you’ll come good when you promise something but then the thoughts crowded in:
“You’re a busy woman”.
“You’ve got three children and a husband”.
“Age UK won’t require your services any longer”,
“I’ll get struck off their books for getting a support worker to break their terms of employment or something similar”.
“What if the plane comes down out of the sky”?
“I’ve got hidden as well as the obvious disability of blindness”
and on it all went but she repeated it more than once so I thought:
“Well! I’d just love to see K again and I’ll be seventy and that’s a biggy and it won’t come round again. I may not be fit enough to travel in the near or long-term future which is shortening anyway. Opportunity only knocks once and that’s a stroke of luck and sometimes doesn’t knock at all so, June, feel the fear and do it anyway. Say ‘yes’ and hope it all comes true”.
Double checking that she meant it!
I posed all the questions about leaving the kids, separating from hubby for two weeks and what will happen to the other clients Lisa sees and whether Janet and Jenny at Age UK would blow a gasket each and suddenly we started throwing the ball and running with it and, just as a mum and hopefully an excited partner watches their baby grow and feels it moving, so we (mainly Lisa of course without any of it wouldn’t be possible) are almost at the point where the dream is about to come true but instead of a baby, wet at both ends and helpless, the holiday of a lifetime and the chance to be in the company of someone of whose existence I was ignorant for nearly all her life and much of mine. I was going to get to talk to and be with my soul mate again and although it’s going to be hard work for Lisa, she will see what is an almost unique and precious friendship, one of the few either of us have managed to sustain long-term, in action, up close and personal.
(follow the next instalment.
Finding my old passport and getting a new one and of course, telling K this was going to happen and when).