An email from my brother telling me that Mum was beginning to lose her battle with Parkinson’s Disease meant taking the first flight home.
I left Jamie in the middle of overseeing the repairs to SY Esper, and began the 30-hour long haul—ferry, taxi, flight, flight, tube, train, train, ending with my cheap broken suitcase being dragged up the cobbled streets of Rye to Mum’s front door.
As the journey inched along, I drifted in and out of sleep through a haze of books, films and faces while a thought materialised out of the fog into a simple mantra: I wasn’t going home, I was already home.
When you set off to travel long term, you assume that one day you will return and settle down. Even prodigals come home – to their family, maybe to the house they lived in, to the friends they grew up with, to the familiarity of old streets, pubs, parks, fields, buses, shops, caravan sites, motorways, colours, smells and sounds they remember so well, to the old town and the country that educated and housed them.
After a few years, the ties slacken. Your family is still important to you: that doesn’t change. And some friends are in touch, but not the ones you thought you’d keep close to you. The people with you right now understand you better, share your experiences, know the minutiae of your days.
