So This Is Home?

A great writer before me wrote about the necessity to go forth into the world and enter upon a new life; with the ability to act for ones’ self and discover unknown talents. The story of Agnes Grey- the heroine of the above mentioned adventures- is somewhat similar to my story; beginning at eighteen, when the desire to see more of the world empowers a journey away from the security of home to the great unknown. My story does not begin in a rickety cart borrowed from the grocers, instead in a near ancient sky blue corolla and lacked the company of the grocers son; however, it brought about a similar effect.
I sat, stuck in traffic between a large four wheel drive and a shiny beetle, knowing full well that this trip was going to change my life. That was of course assuming that I didn’t get lost on the way.
“C’mon Baby” I muttered to the empty car as we putted through traffic. I was a cautious driver to say the least, but most drivers are cautious in the first week of their full licence. “Don’t fail on me now, Baby.”
This leg of the trip was to be the easiest, I’d driven this way plenty as a learner, often with a trained professional beside me, nudging the pedals to avoid a collision, but everything is so much more daunting on your own. At least I had my car. I didn’t know much about cars and although I own one now I can’t say I know any better. We had trudged through second hand dealers and web sites to find a car that suited my measly budget. I had my heart set on a Ford Angela, a nice blue one that may or may not possess the ability to fly, but they apparently they had stopped making them some years back. One that started when required and stopped when asked and didn’t look like it was about to fall apart suited me fine. Through friend of a friend, we were passed onto another friend, who made it his hobby to fix somewhat ruined cars. And so I was introduced to my Baby.
She – as I had decided the first moments I saw her that there was no chance it was a boy car – had successfully gotten me through a panic stricken driving test, which against all odds I passed and had a comfortable enough seat but the stereo could defiantly be better. With a strong dislike for any CD, she spat them out ruined and the volume control depended on the state of the road; but I was content with the radio.
“Ok Baby, this is it,” With only a slight hic-cup with the gears we passed through the last set of lights and onto the smooth freeway, “No turning back now,”
We calmed down on the freeway, cursing along in top gear, radio blaring on such a new road, singing along to songs I knew and avoiding awkward glances from other drives as they over took us. But as we drove, the exit signs became less familiar and it dawned on me that I was now, quite very far away from home.
For eighteen years I lived by the shore of a pristine beach, and never really expressed any interest in moving. It had hit me one night, as I lay awake, starring at the ceiling, that I was completely content with the life that I had. Surrounded by the sanctuary of family and friends, and the familiar pace of the sea-side town, I was so comfortable that I was happy to live like this forever. But it was for that reason that it was absolutely necessary for me to get out of there when the first opportunity rose. Vivid images of thousands of cats swarmed in my head and the next morning I declared my intentions of moving out.
The opportunity came when school finished, and the choices for the next phase of my life were placed before me, in the form of university brochures. My desire to move influence my choice more than the university’s itself, and through that process the remarkably well established campus only twenty minutes from home was scratched from the list. I didn’t want to move to far away either, I had too close a relationship with my parents for it to be stretched over hundreds of kilometres, so anything past Melbourne was also cut.
I was left with eight choices; three of them didn’t offer a course that looked interesting, two of them highly prestigious and therefore highly competitive and one of them a class mate had already been accepted into and the idea of being in the same vicinity made me feel queasy. So I narrowed it down to two options. To which one my mother was an alumni and the other of which my sister was a current student. And not wanting to have my decisions effected by the personal opinion of those around me, I did the only logical thing: flipped a coin.
The shiny head of Queen Elizabeth told me where I was to apply and unable to argue with our monarch I was to follow in the footsteps of my older sister.
According to Rose, following in her footsteps was what I did best, so I was oddly cautious of telling her that I was going to do it again. With only sixteen months between us, we’d grown up identical. Everything was shared: bedroom, toys, clothes, morals and the unexplainable fear of man sized koala that regularly visited our play group. Every new experience we experienced together, making us grow into two people who were too similar for their own good. But we got past our similarities in the form of a yearlong argument as young adolescents until accepted them as an inevitable factor in our relationship. She’d moved out this time last year, leaving me to be content with bi-weekly phone calls and irregular handwritten letters. It had been a difficult year for us; we had been almost inseparable for nearly two decades and to be rather suddenly separated. Rose had to live ten minutes from campus in a share house. And knowing that this might spark another argument about the need for individuality, I told her about the possibility of me living nearby.
“Rose, I think I’m going to be going to La Trobe,” I had said one night she had returned home. We were watching television.
“What?” she was distracted, just as I had planned.
“La Trobe. Me going.”
“Ok,”
Monosyllable answers were not always comforting, so I tried again, but before I could ask her a third time her attention obtained.
“Where you going to stay?”
“Dunno…”
“We should get a place.”
And so, with no regrets of leaving her current home, we began an odious search. We looked at hundreds of rental properties, each in varying states of decay and neglect. All of which I approved of. But my approval was not entirely necessary and Rose kept looking. I didn’t think there was much wrong with them. Some of them clearly still had the aroma of previous occupants and there might be a shopping trolley or two on the porch, but they were cheap, and we had enough personality between us to inflict upon the glummest of houses.
There was only one that really stood out; a little flat, just round the corner from our university. The fresh coat of paint couldn’t hide the old charm found only in the old fashioned door handles and the big key used to lock the back door. These little details satisfied me. Mum and dad approved of the price and Rose approved of everything else. Thankfully, the landlord approved of us.
So very quickly I went from living in my childhood bedroom, with a lifetime of trinkets stuffed in the corners, to a student, who lacked enough boxes. For a week I slept in a sea of the half packed, my days spent cross-legged on the floor, dividing my room into piles of ‘keep’ and ‘toss’; the ‘keep’ remarkably larger.
With Baby filled with the contents of my bedroom and every coffee mug mum and dad intended to dispose of, I left. We had a prolonged salutation on the driveway with mum and I trying to avoid tears while dad retained his strong compose nature. My younger sister of fourteen, Jane wasn’t there to say goodbye, she was off gallivanting with her array of curious friends; most frustrating because she had promised to return the shoes she’d borrowed before I left. I only stalled once when I tried to back out of the driveway; encouraging a loving smirk from my parents questioning the sanity of the person who had sanctioned my licence.
Beside me, in the passenger was a sheet paper, with printed on it were the directions from the end of the freeway to our house. They were not the most conventional directions: Turn just after the car wash and the street just after the house will the gnomes. And written in my mum’s familiar scrawl: Don’t forget to breathe. But for some unknown reason, the path between my two homes had been forged in my mine and the trip was surprisingly simple; pulling into the new driveway with far less panic than anticipated.
It’s on a busy street, my new home, the first one a block of four, just behind the rubble that had previously been the front fence. It is a shabby little unit with a patch of dirt beside the front step. There was a square of grass where I parked, on an angle to the curb that would have been an instant fail in any sort of parking assessment and made my way to the front door. The absent of Rose’ car told me she was still at work as I juggled with keys and the stiff lock.
The house was dark, the blinds shutting out the afternoon sun and still had a strong smell of new paint. The front door opened into the lounge room; thin cream walls, prickly blue carpet and no furniture. Off the lounge was the kitchen; brand new and very white. From the kitchen window you could see right into the neighbour’s garden and the little old lady hanging out her washing. From the second door off the lounge - a wonky sliding door - was a narrow hallway, connecting the two bedrooms and small bathroom. We were used to sharing a bathroom; this one however was smaller than our one at home and was to double as a laundry which made it even smaller. The bedrooms were relatively the same size although Rose’s room did have a double wardrobe I had been determined that an argument wouldn’t come from it. My bed room had become storage; all the empty boxes from the move piled up around the door and on top of the camp bed that I was to sleep on: a sad, dreary collection of the unwanted.
“So,” I said, now officially talking to myself, “This is home.”