Come home again

I had two dreams last night, both were about travelling. Both saw me waking up breathless and sweating, reaching and distressed.

In one, we were going on a holiday, late for a plane. We arrived at the airport with no passports, no luggage and an iPhone that wouldn’t open the email with the tickets in it. That style of dream, the one where everything you do is wrong and there doesn’t seem to be a way to make it right.

The second dream saw us moving to China, of all places. Packing up our whole lives and moving to a foreign country, where we don’t speak the language and we know no-one. Scared and unsure of what to pack, let alone how to manage the logistics of moving a whole life. What services would be there for Poss? Where would she go to school? Would we be able to take Hugo?

I woke up this morning feeling bone-tired and unsettled. Unsure of where I was and for a moment, what we had planned for the day. Feeling there was a sense of urgency, that we had to be somewhere, packing for something.

Maybe it had something to do with the cocktails drunk last night.

But, as my wise husband said, the dreams probably also stemmed from the goodbyes I’ve said in the last week.

One to my sister, as she travelled to her second home, Copenhagen. She has lived there now for three years; moved her whole life overseas, to a foreign country where she didn’t speak the language, where she knew only a few people. We miss her, but she has truly thrived, making friends, learning Danish, finishing a masters degree and building a life.

The second, last night over said cocktails, to Kat as she left the left for the holiday of a lifetime. Away for a whole month, fulfilling a lifetime of dreams as she travels to the US and then on to Europe. I couldn’t be more excited for her, but selfishly, I am going to miss her terribly.

In the dreams, I couldn’t find a way out. I seemed to go around and around in circles, getting more and more distressed.

But with the clarity of daylight and a slowly receding hangover, I know that these two wonderful women will travel forward; both growing and learning from the experience. There will be no dramas and both will travel safely, making memories and experiencing all that their journeys have to offer.

And more importantly, both will come home again.