4 Coffees, 12 Months

4: Eve and the Old Postcards

Eve

January, week 4

        In the dictionary, wanderlust is defined as “a very strong or irresistible impulse to travel”.

        I diagnosed myself with wanderlust on my thirteenth birthday.

        Pre-cancer, my Auntie Lisa travelled a great deal and got involved with a few humanitarian projects in the poorer areas of Africa. During my younger years, I envisioned her as a sort of superhero, flying the flag of justice and freedom and baring gifts of food, water and endless knowledge to starving populations.

        In reality, she helped a charity that built roads and water services in the especially isolated African villages, which is actually a much more practical and achievable cause, but there were definitely no red capes involved.

        Seeing as she was away so much, Auntie Lisa often missed my birthday, and so sent me postcards from whatever dot on the map she was living near. I had poured over these brightly coloured pictures and their corresponding stamps for hours in the previous years, wanting to submerge myself in the ink and brush my hands along bright, tropical flowers and breathe in the salty brine of rivers and oceans, but the package she sent me on my thirteenth birthday was a crucial changing moment.

        My parents and I were sat around our kitchen table, all wrapped securely in fluffy dressing gowns against the chilly wind whistling down the chimney, when I ripped open the battered, brown package, dust puffing into the air and earning me an angry huff from my mother. With mounting excitement, I pulled out a flimsy, hand-drawn postcard and read through it breathlessly. It was from one of the African towns Auntie Lisa was working with, and enclosed in the package was a ropey bracelet made by the young daughter of one of the families there.

        It was matted with sweat and the threads were already fraying, but as Mum tied it around my wrist, my eyes filled with wonder and my heart blazed with a desire to meet these people - in fact, to meet lots of people, and to leave my mark on millions of lives just like Auntie Lisa, drifting in and out of the world until I had seen everything and everyone.

        Wanderlust.

        I suddenly realised that I needed to see every stream, river and ocean in the world. I had to watch the sun rise over the mountains, and the sun set over thousands of wooden huts, and the rain beat down onto the skyscrapers, and the dew flick towards the sky as farmers ploughed their fields. I became abruptly aware that I was a spectator to the world, and I needed to see as much of it as I could in the same way that I needed to breathe.

        In that instant, the world became my life, and I had never since been able to rid myself of the feeling that, unless my feet had blistered whilst walking over hills and through marshlands and under bridges, I would not have lived as I truly should have done.

        Wanderlust.

        However, just as wanderlust had become a constant fibre of my being, so had the worry of my father’s cancer, like the contraction of each heartbeat. He was all I could think about as I trudged through puddles on Friday evening, water splashing over my shoes and trickling down my socks. I tightened the woolly scarf now around my neck, even though it was a little itchy. Mum had brought it home the night before from her visit to Auntie Lisa, along with a note on bright pink paper:

        Dear Evelyn,

        Seeing as my jogging and javelin capabilities are slightly compromised at the minute, I’ve started knitting, and you’re fortunate enough to get the prototype! Don’t worry, you can call me an old granny when you next see me.