Sailing home

         
The ferry is almost empty on this sunny March day, just the odd worker or tourist out for an early morning trip to the city.  A coughing, spluttering, lined-faced old woman dressed head to toe in black decides she wants to sit next to me.  Me in my virginal white calico smock and her in her inky black – we are heaven and hell, sinner and saint, a liquorice all-sort.
Her walking stick, parked tidily beside her leg is weighed heavily with clunky club shoes that remind me of Cornish pasties.  She nibbles on marmalade toast and adjusts her glasses, huge and black likes flies eyes.  How peculiar this woman who chose to sit right next to me on an empty vessel. 
Maybe this is her favourite seat, I wonder.  I am the tourist here, and she perhaps takes this trip daily.
I like to face forward and she rides backwards watching the shoreline fade away, taken over by the blue grey harbour.
The men on this ferry ride all neatly spaced out as far away form one another as possible like pins on a corkboard.  One in particular wearing a grey pin-striped suit nurses a broken ring finger taped to a small blue board, forcing his hand in a downward pose, waiting to be gently lifted and grazed upon by a suitors lips.

I have truly amazed myself, I am on an adventure, riding the Collaroy early in the morning while my son is safely getting grubby at kindy, my husband at work and my dog asleep on the deck.  My adventure, which may not seem that adventurous to some, is thrilling to me.  An African safari or Pyramid climb is surely further from home but my venturing forth like this is a sign of hope that I am getting better.  I am the “walking well”, moving about the world like a regular person.  And I am not scared!  I love that line in “We’re going on a bear Hunt”.  It’s a beautiful day, I’m not scared!  My son loves that book.  The bear, the bear is my adventure, the city, unknown paths and new places.  I’ve moved beyond the comfort of my bed.  My emotions rise and fall with each thought of the changing day ahead like the bow of the ferry, sliding up and over each foamy peak.  But back to the bed, oh the sleep I have craved, needed, lived on, survived with.  The sleep that inched over me from toe to scalp releasing me from the maze of confusion, depression and anxiety in my mind.  The busy road map of thoughts that pulsed at hyper speed, twisting and darting about trying to escape, trying to find a solution to my problems, my fears, my plans for dinner.  Now that sleep has graced its presence in my bedroom at night I am able to go on a bear hunt, alone over the silvery harbour floor.

Smoke, burning toast, sticky perfume, more smoke, leather, daisies…the city is filled with pockets of nasal fancies and fissures.  My skin prickles from congested air, perfume and air conditioning.  My mouth is dry and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth making a click sound when I try to remove it.  I walk toward the old building with its stained glass windows and tiled floor.  The café has changed, no more old-fashioned booths or benches.  The menu is the same, so I order Darjeeling tea and a garden salad with beets and roasted chicken.  I flick through a thoughtfully left behind news paper and glaze over stories about paid maternity leave and nasty bloggers while the older gentlemen next to me quietly orders a portion of apple crumble with ice-cream and a café latte.  It’s only eleven thirty am and his sweet whispered order seems more appropriate for eleven thirty pm however, who am I to talk wanting a salad lunch this early?  Being hungry and stuck between breakfast and the morning coffee crowd I succumbed to the one place I knew to be as familiar as my own hand. 
Cues of shop girls order cappuccinos and piccolos for their designer keepers who create next month’s thrills in the back of their shops.  Heels click on the tiles and the four floor atrium echoes with swelling chatter and busy feet.

I sense strongly that I appear as a foreigner amongst a tide of suited, stockinged and groomed ants who march purposely from street side coffee trolleys back to the glass and concrete dinosaurs they inhabit from nine to five.  The dinosaurs appear extinct during the day, soulless, flat, heavy and dormant.  It is not until night when the workers have gone home do they come to life with thousands of eyes opening in brightness, lighting up the streets the below.  The best place to view these tall, grey creatures is from afar when the sun is sleeping and standing together they form a collection of starbursts against the black velvet sky.  The architecture of spirit, their true purpose realised once the ants have gone home.

I stride with purpose too now, not to fit in but to stop from being run over.  These busy suited ants are storming the pavement with no slow lane for adventurers like me.  I want to take in the details and as I focus on my breathing I am able to notice the bird, gluey with car fumes picking at dropped bread, the dirty smudges of glass on the crowded shoe shop window, the hot soup burning the lips of the girl who is talking too much.  How ironic!  You see, I have come to enjoy myself and love the irony that exists all around me.  I love the detail that leads to the irony.  But you have to notice the detail otherwise you just wont get it.

Out of every store I visit on my adventure the only one, which stands out, is one of the most common chain stores selling children’s clothing.  The detail that makes this store anything but common is the calm, long quiet queue of mothers lined up to buy their children pretty things.  Every other store is chaotic with pressure, exploding with lunchtime sales, but not in here.  In here, the customers move slowly, browse and queue in complete silence, shifting one by one to the machines that inhale their money.  What a tranquil and bizarre Bermuda triangle in the middle of this vibrating city.  Are these people so tired that they cannot muster a murmur? 

It was no garden or quiet laneway but a children’s clothing store that enabled me to again hear my own heart beat and remind me of all that waited for me at home.  Time to turn back. Time has slipped away, the sun has moved from the centre of the sky and the streets are filling again with force.
Like a child in a fairytale, lost in a forest, I follow my ball of string back down the grotty streets to the ferry terminal, now shaded by the dinosaurs and I sail home.