Broadway & life
I woke up at about 1 a.m. & couldn’t get back to sleep for the life of me, so I texted back & forth with my friend, another insomniac. I really have to get my sleep patterns in a line before I get charged extra for flying with these bags under my eyes.
Headed to Broadway, about 20 miles up the road from Bourton-on-the-Water, where I had stayed the last couple of nights. Broadway is another quaint little village & it’s that much closer to my next house/pet sitting gig in Worcester. I booked & checked into an Airbnb, which ended up being super dodgy, but you can’t win them all. Honestly, the place smelled like a barn & the one bathroom in the place is :-o…no lock on the door, but the host assures me that it’s just her & her 16 year old daughter going to be there. What could go wrong, I thought…until I caught a glimpse of the daughter. Fuck. I’m lucky if I don’t get sliced in the night…the little surly bitch huffed past me, slamming her bedroom door. C U Next Tuesday!!!
I changed into better walking shoes, hid my main purse in the boot of my auto & set off on foot to figure the town out. Every place I’ve been in so far has made me fall more & more in love with the United Kingdom….the motherland. Times sure must of been tough way back when for my ancestors to leave here without knowing what they were getting into crossing the ocean by ship for the potential for a better opportunity. Only the outliers, the most desperate or adventurous, would leave this country.
My Mom tells a story about one of our relatives marrying a widow woman that had a bunch of kids. The woman’s husband came over with one or two sons & traipsed all the way out to Saskatchewan…no-mans-land…to establish a homestead before sending a letter by snail-mail urging the wife to gather the rest of the kids & join him. When she arrived in the dead of winter, the son took the horse & buggy to ride for a weeks journey to meet the train, collecting them to reunite the family. When they finally reached the new homestead & pulled up to the thatched roof cottage he had managed to slap together, there was no warm greeting from the husband waiting. The poor bugger had froze to death & they found him with his frost bitten feet in the cooker, dead as a doornail. My great-great grandfather married the widow & took in the kids. I guess he saw free labour in the situation & who were they to look a gift horse in the mouth.
I feel a sort of privilege coming from such wild stock. IN ARDUA TENDIT indeed.
I wonder where I’ll end up. Even though my parents & boys play a huge part in that, I know that this is my life & like everyone else, I want to fill it with as much experiences & joy as I can. I feel like going back to Regina is going backwards with my life & I need to move ahead. I need to drastically shake up my snow globe & let my sparkles fall differently. Luckily, my parents & boys only wish the best for me & truly support me in my decisions. I’m waiting to be struck by proverbial lightening & have some sort of epiphany of sorts. I keep thinking that somewhere or someone is going to touch me & my life with magically pivot in this wonderful new direction. But, deep down inside I know that it’s me that has to earn my life by working at it & making choices that put me on the path to a happy existence.
Now, to get to work at it. I’m not afraid of work, if only there was a job description for figuring out life!
