One, two, three, one, two, three…
My dance with the unknown.
My mom sent me a photo this week. It was a Facebook reminder that showed her where she was this time last year and the year before. The picture she sent me was of her scruffy twenty-two year old son, with long, unkempt hair, wearing a wide grin. I stand in front of a wall at the International Arrivals gate at Cape Town Airport. A large sign above me reads Welcome to the Mother City. Apropos, as I had just returned home from the longest departure of my life. I had seen that wall before, of course. Once, after a ten day visit with my aunt in England. Once after a month accompanying my uncle on a family trip, helping him babysit his two children. This time I had returned after five months of travel. Predominantly, I worked in the States, but I also had a chance to tour that enormous country for a short spell. I visited a handful of friends in other places, too. After stepping foot in New York and waving at the Statue of Liberty, after feeling the spray of the Niagara falls on my skin, after hills upon green hills of countries that weren’t my own, I finally felt the weight behind that great big sign at the airport. Welcome to the Mother City. Welcome home. That photograph was taken on October 13th 2022.
Facebook was supposed to send my mom a picture of what she was doing on the same date the next year, but on October 13th 2023, I had already said goodbye to my parents again, and embarked on another adventure. In 2022, shortly after my feet hit the ground in the Mother City, I began looking ahead.
After I finished high school, I lifted my eyes up and looked ahead. Suddenly, I had reached the end of the plan. What was I to become? What would I study? These questions proved more difficult to answer than expected, and I elected to take a year to weed out the good options from the bad ones. This was my first dance with the in-between: looking ahead without knowing where to turn. I studied, and graduated without a concrete idea of where I would go next. The industry I felt I was being led into disagreed with me, and I needed more time to weigh up my other options. Again, I found myself on the dance floor. Another year passed as I squinted ahead of me, trying to distinguish good decisions from bad ones, guessing at how the choices I make might shape my future. It was in that year after university that I left and returned to the Mother City. Upon my return, I found myself dancing with the same partner. I peered ahead, but I was clueless as to which decisions to make, and where they might lead me. Often, I was particularly tied up with which choices were the right ones.
I spent my year in the Mother City dancing. Discerning. Trying my best to listen, hoping and praying, trying to figure out some future I wanted, and figure out a way to get there. I visited my girlfriend in Germany for two-and-a-half months. I decided to try and move. I spoke to my parents about it. I spoke to my family and friends about it. I started looking for options. I found one. I signed documents and make appointments. Almost exactly one year after returning from my longest adventure yet, I left on an even bigger one. On the 11th of October 2023, I boarded a one way flight to Germany. I landed on the 12th. Last week Saturday marks one year in Germany for me. One year of learning the language. One year of leaving long-distance dating behind. One year of new family gatherings. One year of being a foreigner. One whole year spent outside of the Mother City. And soon, at the end of this month, it will be one year of au pairing. Which, for those of you keeping score, also marks the end of my tenure as an au pair. Again, my eyes look ahead of me. As I must leave this position behind me, as I must, again, leave the comfort of the known and venture forth into uncharted waters, I begin my dance with the partner who first took me by the hand some seven years ago. We move in curious circles, beautiful and unpredictable.
I wonder, too, what strange new milestone this anniversary will highlight next year. Will I, again, be dancing in the space between? Unsure of my future, my job, my house, my city? Or will my dress shoes sit in the dark in a cupboard somewhere, waiting.
Just as all children must grow up and leave their mothers, so, too, I leave the Mother City. And just as the child, I will always come back to my mother. If you enjoyed this journal, please subscribe.
Lovely x