You know, I get terribly maudlin when I drink champagne. Not that I’m going to stop drinking the stuff, obviously. That would be ridiculous. No, I just recognize that if I drink champagne and I match that to exactly the wrong time of the month, I’m in for a rough ride.
Even though I live in one of the most amazing places in the world, and am blessed with all that a woman can ask for by way of good friends and exciting and interesting things to do here, I do miss those I left behind in my travels. Good friends, people who love and understand me, and an easy acceptance that comes from years of spending all kinds of time together. It makes me sad.
Skype and WhatsApp are a Godsend, of course, but doesn’t make up for the distance. What I wouldn’t give, often, for a teleporter. I mean, if they conceived of it in the sixties for Star Trek, why the hell isn’t it a reality yet? Someone needs to sort this out.
Because it is a sad fact of today’s reality that we have all become economic migrants, moving to there where the jobs and prospects are good, and the ties that bound us to our homelands in our parent’s and their parent’s generation, are more tenuous every day. I envy people with long roots. They have a deep understanding of their own culture, are embedded within it, and have an innate understanding of the nuance of language, people, food, culture and history. This is completely unobtainable to those who are passing through for a few years. They dip their accents to bend towards the circumstance and the receiver, and communicate with so much more than words.
Anyway, back to friends left behind. Those with the long roots, those of the easy understanding and the total assurance that they are in the right place at the right time. So given just the right amount of champagne, there’s me sending soppy messages at unreasonable times of the day, to a list of the bestest bestest girlfriends a woman could want. Like, ever, “sista from anotha motha”. I love you.
Eh, don’t let me near Facebook, there’s levels to the embarrassment I can cause myself. Then I’m off mourning the dead all over again and messaging family members reminiscing about Christmases that were probably disasters but now seem like they have halos around them. Because tomorrow morning once the Alka-Seltzer has kicked in, there’s the reckoning. The alarmed responses in Messenger and the missed WhatsApp calls as the summoned come to in their various time zones.
Ouch, but they know me, of course, so it’s not all that bad. Then I get to spend the next few hours on WhatsApp calls checking in and setting out the patterns of our various lives. So we are all in the know about the who and the what for the next few months.
So, having spent the morning doing just that, I’m feeling satisfied and loved. All is well in the world. I can pick up my flip flops and get on with my day. I’m hoping the headache will shift, too. Hair of the dog?
Current Rock of Residence:
Bermuda
Island Girl Since:
2013
Originally Hails From:
Cape Town, South Africa
Wendy originally hails from Cape Town, about three lifetimes ago. She spent her formative years in Stellenbosch, and studied Philosophy and Political Science at the time when the young democracy was hatching, which was fascinating and makes for interesting dinner party conversation, but helps not a jot on the road to a healthy bank balance. So she upped and left and spent the next lifetime in London, where she acquired some general computer skills and tried to understand the English.
Then, of course, there was a Man, which put paid to all further plans. And a couple of surprises where she realized that her reproductive organs weren’t just pretend. And then after a long other lifetime, the Man came home one day and announced that there was an opportunity to move to a tiny island in the Atlantic, just miles and miles from anywhere else, and what did she think of that?
So she pretended that this was a difficult decision and offered some hummms and aahhhhs while calculating how quickly she could get this to happen, and then graciously accepted the Man’s supposition that it would be “for a few years.” That’s how the whole thing came off and they ended up on the beautiful island of Bermuda, since 2013, with no plans to leave.
Wendy works in Finance, and raises kids and cats and keeps a Man in the way he seems to think is acceptable. She likes blue, which is handy when you live in Bermuda, which is second only to Cape Town in The Most Stunning Places To Live. She is lucky.
