Bi-City Living

My best friends know how very little I like to live with, and how very light I often travel.

Today/yesterday, I take traveling light to a whole new level.  I have a 15:25 Heathrow Express, 17:10 KLM (Amsterdam-bound), 21:00 KLM (Denpasar, via Singapore) to catch.

And guess what... after I cleaned up the flat, hung laundry in the sun?   I realized, I didn't need to pack any bags at all!  Gosh.  All I needed were simple toiletries for the flight, something to read, a little bit of cash, and my passport for this journey!

15:10, August 6, Paddington Station

It's a little disorientating to be without The Faithful Wolf, Bruno Chan.  My mind keeps straying to him... I also keep thinking, he should be here with me.  After 5 weeks of lugging, hauling, carrying, foraging, I can't believe all I have to be responsible for in the next few hours, is myself, and a light carry-on.  My hands are free.  I wish I was holding Bruno's lead and carrying the Pod.

15-16 hours later, it is August 7, 15:40hrs in Singapore.  I hurry off the plane, change pounds into Singapore dollars, hop into a cab, and my daughter is home to smother me with hugs, kisses, and LURVE.  Angel the Beloved is also home.  

16:00, August 7, Martin Road

He's looking very well, put on a bit of necessary weight.  Oh Angel!

My husband gets home from work slightly before 18:00 hrs.  He feeds us dinner, heads back to work.  He tells me I am too thin.  I tell him, I have been doing manual labor in London.

I think he is very wise.  A long time ago, he asked me to give up New York City for, him.  I did that because the choice of marriage and a returning to Singapore scared me more than my dancer life in New York City.  I like to think, that sometimes the best way to overcome fear is by dealing with it head on, even if fear paralyzes you, or blows up in your face.

I think the unspoken promise that laid between the lines of his proposal was that someday, somehow, we would not grow old in Singapore, and we would relocate.  Well, it's been almost 18 years.  The last time, we relocated, I went back to graduate school in the US, and we ended up with the wondrous task of finding each other again, and rebuilding a marriage.

I know we are the same people that we were in 1995, holding hands, racing across Central Park in the blistering cold.  But we are not the same couple that wedded in the fall of that year.  I really like who we are now.  It's taken a lot of work.  It still takes effort.  I don't think we have every answer and possibly never will.  But truly an expression of his wisdom has been his sense of  timing.  He never lets go, and then he says- go, you have to go. 

I think he sends me across still waters knowing that with his push, I would paddle far, paddle hard.  Then I simply turn back.

My Wise Man  XXOO