My other home - the UK
I don’t remember much about my first trip to the UK when I was 7. What I do remember is being attacked by a swarm of bees and mum and I having to hide in playground equipment. There are also fleeting memories of standing beside my dad’s father at the piano as he played and feeling a sense of endearing connection to this older man who I had never met. I also got to play with an array of new cousins.
It saddens me still that that trip was the only time that I got to physically spend time with my Granddaddy Woods in person face to face or side by side. From around that time onwards I started to write to him off and on and we became pen pals up until his death in 2002. It was only afterwards that I learnt from other members of my dad’s family just how much he had treasured those letters and our relationship. My grandfather would pull out my latest correspondence at family visits and get togethers and show a side of himself that his own children had rarely ever seen – affection and connection. I would learn many years later how significant this was.
In July of 2008, I finally returned to the UK in person. After a year and a half of teaching I had saved up for a 2-month trip during which I would meet my Welsh and English family members, embark upon a whirlwind Contiki trip through Europe, travel solo in Poland and visit an old friend in Iceland. My trip started in London accompanied by two other Aussie girls who were on my airport transfer and fast became my friends and travel buddies. We went to Phantom of The Opera, shopped at the markets in Notting Hill and posed for pictures together out the front of Buckingham Palace. It was a great couple of days, and I will be ever grateful to Sally and Lisa for the memories we made together. Amid all that excitement I would occasionally get these waves of calm, and familiarity wash over me. I felt so comfortable in London, and it is only now that I realise it was a sense of finally coming home.
So, we went on our Contiki trips. Sal and Lisa on theirs and me on mine. After my trip ended, I stated on in Paris for a few more days on my own and then took myself to Krakow in Poland for another few days before I flew back to England to be picked up my Aunty Janet and Uncle David at the airport. Over the next few weeks, I visited and stayed with all my dad’s siblings and finally as an adult got to know them all person by person. They were no longer just names to me. Now they were complex and at times conflicted identities so very different from my dad and so very different from me. They spoke of my lack of inhibitions and being quick to affection. I was warm and cheeky and loud. And while there were so many differences there was a deep sense of love and connection that underpinned it all, even though their upbringing and present reality would never mean that they could put that in words or actions.
It is not surprising that I moved there with the intention of living there permanently in 2010. I set myself up in the city of Bristol, not too far from my cousin Caz and her family so I could regularly visit and stay with them. Before leaving Australia, I had applied for citizenship and now travelled on a British passport. I now truly felt whole with my British and Australian passports in hand. I worked, drank, partied and even got my first British boyfriend. But I went home again because I felt the pull of parental obligations and dove straight into a deep depression upon my return. All I could think about was getting back there.
But as life does, it went on. I met someone, they become my boyfriend, and I settled back into my Aussie life. Then he asked me to marry him and the prospect of a honeymoon in Europe and the UK was even more exciting than the wedding itself. So, in May of 2014 we touched down again on British tarmac. I finally got to introduce my big love to one of my other big loves. And while we sipped wine in Venice, champers up the top of the Eiffel Tower and saw the other big sights in Europe, returning to England to pick up our hire car and traverse across England and Wales really felt like coming home. Weeks later I cried big tears as we boarded our flight home. How could I love two homes so much at once?
Life as it does, went on again. In late 2019 I booked a flight for the 3 of us to fly to the UK on ANZAC Day 2020. I was so excited to see my family and take Bowie to his ancestral homeland. Then of course COVID happened. Flights were cancelled and life was put on hold. And as life does, it went on and we have not made it over there yet.
My Aunty Janet died late last year. Her daughter Alison messaged me a few days before saying it would be soon. A world away from them in a supermarket aisle I read that message. Later that night I recorded a voice message for Alison to play to Janet. In it I thanked her for introducing me to red wine and for giving me a home where I was loved and cared for. I was the one to tell my dad that his sister was dying and then I was the one only 2 days later to tell him that she was gone.
A few weeks later I watched her funeral online, live streamed at around 1am in the morning Australian time. Seated quietly I saw my dad’s siblings. The Minister read aloud the poem I had written for Aunty Janet the night I learnt of her passing:
The smiling face
with a twinkle in the eyes
that spoke of unspoken mischief
and cheeky desire to be encouraged.
Laughter never strayed far.
I thought I was well grown
an adult fair and fair.
But still the mum in her reached out to me
and gave me a home
in a foreign land.
A voice so reassuring and ever familiar
took me in
and talked with me.
Years passed
but the twinkle in the eyes
still promised mischief
and I still am reassured
by her compassionate tones.
Somehow, I thought
she’d always be there
waiting for me
in my other home.
But instead, tonight her eyes
twinkle in the stars.
and I’m left to my own
mischief here.
In a foreign land
without her tone
but stars
they need her
just as we did.
to guide them home.
By travelling to the UK and getting to go home I was finally able to connect with my heritage and my own story. I never knew just how much a big part of me was missing until I was there. And while, like I wrote in that poem, I miss Aunty Janet and my other home far away I now feel able to be more grounded here a world away because I have stood there. And I know I will stand there again in time because it is my story.