Under Pressure

And so the first gentle (?) forces of pressure are being felt as I announce to my parents about my plans for 2012.  There is that look of absolute dismay on my parent's faces when I share my idea of selling my house so as to pay out my debts (mostly money I owe them!) and to fund my overseas odyssey.  My father's argument is that as I get older and I eventually retire I don't want to be living under a bridge!  My mother is a little more understanding as she too knows the frustration of unfulfilled wanderlust.  Mum is hanging out for their next grey nomad adventure in March after putting their travel plans on hold for family reasons ... yes of which I am partly to blame but not wholly responsible for ... I do have a couple of brothers and sister-in-laws and several nieces and nephews too!  I pointed out to my father that if something should happen to me in the near future preventing me from traveling to Italy I will always regret it and that even if I do end up living under a bridge in my older years I will at least have had the experience of living my dream and those memories to comfort me?  While I understand my parent's concern for my future health and well-being I have also seen the other side of life, the man I had hoped I might spend the rest of my life with dying at the age of 38 from melanoma.  And knowing that there were so many things in life that he still had hoped to experience and accomplish has been my eye-opener that none of us know when our time here on earth is up.

My mother has long been advocating for me to give up on this self-employed business and go back to a "real" job.  While I can see Mum's point, i.e I don't have all those extra benefits such as superannuation, paid annual leave, paid sick leave, paid public holidays, and having to organise and pay my own tax, whenever I think about working in an office again I cringe!  The only administration areas I'd love to work in these days would be at an educational facility i.e. university or college or some place like an art gallery or a museum or an office which involved publishing and / or editing. I can so see myself working in a magazine publishing office ... I can see it, an editor probably wouldn't see it but I have a clear picture in my mind!  So off to Uni I go in the vague hope of eventually gaining a job that will inspire me and challenge me and allow me to be creative in some small way with my parents thinking I'm possibly going mad to be getting myself into a HECS debt for a degree that I may never use before I retire! And even madder for considering selling my house!

What would Elizabeth Gilbert do under these circumstance?  Dump and run!  Maybe I should look to Shirley Valentine for inspiration instead?  No, not a good idea as Shirley is a fictional character and not a real live person after all!  

So I look to two rather distant (but I'll claim them anyway) familial connections who I've always admired greatly  June Dally-Watkins and Lisa Clifford.   Lisa is a talented author who is married to an Italian and continues to reside in Florence having written fabulous books such as The Promise (currently being made into a movie) and Death In the Mountains.  June ... I really feel I ought to refer to June as Ms Dally-Watkins, she being the Australian ambassador of etiquette after all.  Ms Dally-Watkins, I believe, is the instigator of my Italian obsession in a roundabout way.  You see one of my favourite movies from a bygone era is Roman Holiday starring the tall, dark and very handsome Gregory Peck and the beautiful Audrey Hepburn.   And this is where this tenuous Italian link was indelibly etched onto my romantic soul, you see Miss Dally-Watkins dated Gregory Peck at about the time he was filming Roman Holiday in Rome.  Well Italy has to be in the blood, no?  Some years later I discovered Lisa's book, The Promise, which is about her traveling to, working in and falling in love in Italy.   Further proof positive to my heart that Italy is my destino (even if only for a few short manic weeks if that's all I can manage) is that another relative of mine on the same side of the family tree has just recently married an Italian girl.   

I've gotten completely off-track, where was I?  Oh yes, I admire Ms Dally-Watkins because I know where she came from.  I may not have been a Watsons Creek girl born and bred so to speak however I spent much of my childhood there.  Being related to the majority of the village and my parents owning a weekender there fondly referred to as The Shack by us but Beulah being the historically correct property name, most of my Christmas's and Easter's and every other weekend was spent getting into all sorts of mischief like setting of a local property owner's rabbit traps (I was busted and never did it again!), crawbobbing and making mud slides down the creek's embankment.  My favourite time at Watsons Creek was the New Year's Eve dance which one of my aunties organised every year at the local village hall.  Anyhow Ms Dally-Watkins' beginnings were definitely not auspicious nor was there any silver spoon so to achieve what she has achieved in her life time definitely makes her the Australian icon that she is today.  I may not share her ambition (nor her looks, figure nor her good graces) but I greatly admire her success.  

I can remember back in 1986 when I first lived in Sydney wondering whether I should just rock up to Ms Dally-Watkins' Sydney grooming and deportment school and say "Hi, I'm a long-lost relative any chance of some discounted lessons?" but regrettably I was too distracted by what seemed far more important to me in those days for reasons I cannot fathom, my love-life.  Ok if I'm being honest my love-life is still terribly important to me, its my Achilles heel but look where that's got me?  I sure could have used some of those grooming and deportment lessons, yes you can take the girl from Watsons Creek but you can't always take Watsons Creek from the girl! I'm afraid the family talent and good looks that both June and Lisa have in spades failed to travel down the Skewes / Howarth side of the family tree!    

I know this yearning for more in life is all part of being in one's 40s and finding one's self on the verge of becoming an empty-nester (with Slug Boy that verge will probably turn into a 4 years or more!).  Call it a mid-life crisis, call it crazy, call it selfish and irresponsible but what's life without a little adventure, without dreams, hopes and aspirations?