on going back

I lived in the Adelaide Hills for most of the nineties, so my girls grew up there. Sarah had a pretty harrowing adolescence and always wanted to come back to Melbourne, which is where I am from and where all her relatives (on my side of the family) were. So we came back as soon as Jasmine was happy about the idea.

Those Adelaide days were probably the happiest, most exciting period of my life. We moved there because my (then) husband got a job there and, although we had already decided to separate, we didn’t want to deprive our kids of half of their parentage. And, more selfishly, the burden of child-raising is greatly reduced if 50% of it is being done at someone else’s place.

So there I was entering my thirties, newly single and not wanting to enmesh, stifle, engulf, or (I hope) spifflicate* myself in the quagmire of conjugal . . . um . . . entanglement. Didn’t want to do the happily ever after thing, might be another way of putting it. I was going for the ephemeral-pleasures style of life.

Suffice it to say I had about 9 years of ephemeral pleasures before we moved back to Melbourne. Not that Melbourne can’t be a backdrop for said pleasures and, indeed, I had a few here too, but I was getting tired by then, and my best e.p. buddies were still in Adelaide.

So now Jasmine and I are going back, but 11 years have elapsed. I am soon to enter my fifties, I have been leading a much quieter life, I am just not a sexy young thing anymore. Sexy old thing? Umm . . . perhaps. If you squint a bit. I don’t think my friend C and I will still be gatecrashing B & S balls making up with swagger, as we did, what we lack in youth. I don’t think I’ll be drinking myself under the table every Saturday night with all the hilarity that brings. That is seriously no longer on my list of favourite things to do. The hangover starts before the drinking stops these days.

So Jas and I will rent a house just to see if it’s possible to ‘go back’. Or go forward to a previous haunt. This is a tricky manoeuvre. Current rental agent requires 4 weeks notice. Most houses available for rent are available now. Or in about a week. They probably won’t want to wait and will take the next most qualified applicant. And speaking of qualified, they’re going to want to know that I can afford the rent and I work for myself and will have to set up a new list of clients there, with no guarrantees of how much work I will have. How do people move interstate? I’m not quite sure. And I’m sure I’ve moved from one rental property to another in the past, but I can’t remember what you do about that 4 weeks notice.

Major juggling feat. I should have run away and joined the circus that time. Would have been better equipped now. But I am of the school of thought that doesn’t worry about the imagined – well, that’s the theory anyway. We will just pursue all the options and applications and see what arises. We can’t wait for our whole new adventure.

(* I just found this word in my thesaurus – could you tell I was looking in a thesaurus? – and I quickly put it in before I looked up the meaning just in case it doesn’t apply since, seriously, doesn’t everyone want to use ’spifflicate’ in a sentence just once? OK, here’s what it means: ‘To treat roughly or severely; destroy.’ So maybe it’s a bit strong but I’m still gonna use it, OKAY? Work with me here.)