Sunrise in Toronto

A Cuban-American, a Spaniard and a Mexican are gathered around the bar of an airport hotel in Madrid when a disgruntled Canadian walks in...

Actually, there's no punch line here, just a character-filled, story-laden evening of posturing, disagreement and laughter that left me satisfied that my untethered year had been brought to a successful close. 

I couldn't have orchestrated it better. I was so annoyed at my choices, my actions, the airport, the person taking forever at the counter as I waited to get my flight rebooked for the next day after missing my connection back to London from Spain. And then I walked into the hotel, pulled up one of the tall stools flanking the bar, and it all made sense: this was another opportunity for adventure and engagement.

Of course, as all Cuban-Americans are dyed-in-the-wool Republicans because socialism is a dirty word in that community, it meant that the discussion amongst the four mismatched strangers in the light, airy bar was confrontational yet engaging. Laughter and teasing make disagreements more palatable. As the clock passed midnight and an awareness of my 4:30 am alarm grew, I chose to linger for just a few more minutes to carry on a most interesting conversation with the 29-year old Mexican immigrant, based in California, who looked on with both trepidation and incredulity as the bolshy Miami-born Cuban-American (a humble middle-class man, in his words, with three boats, two farms and stories that inevitably trumped everyone else's) shared his views on, well, everything.

A motley collection

I can't help but wonder how I would have felt in a similar situation sixteen months earlier. There is no doubt that this untethered time has changed me, but like a memory that you take out, re-examine and file away again, it is difficult to remember how I was before.

September 2022

Here are some data from my travels:

468 days
15.5 months
10 countries
11 airlines
26 hotels
6 Airbnbs
10 homes of friends
5 sleepovers with family
2 word-of-mouth rentals through friends
1 residential workshop in Baja
Swims in the Atlantic, the Pacific, the Caribbean Sea, the lakes of Canada and one cold river in England
Miles walked? Impossible to know
Wines enjoyed? Ditto

And the number that amazes me the most? 53 different beds. That averages a new one every 8.8 days. And I've noticed that I'm much less fussed now about my pillow, the light, the size of the mattress and even the temperature. Although never the occupant(s). I am very particular in that regard.

September 2023

Unexpected realisations:

⬥    Switzerland isn't boring. In fact, I would move to the area around Geneva in a flash. It has an intelligent and worldly expat community as well as a sprinkling of great friends of mine. And the Swiss I met were interesting, often with a multicultural background or a partner from another country. The area is at the crossroads of a Europe that no longer, however, includes the UK. Who thought Brexit was a good idea?

⬥    I was surprised that Costa Rica wasn't an immediate shoo-in for where I might live. I desperately wanted it to work as it really was my happy place. But that was more than 20 years ago. I've changed and Costa Rica has changed although my friends there are as youthful, vibrant and stimulating as always!

⬥    I started with three suitcases yet traveled Europe for the past three months (with its three seasons) with only one. We need so much less than we think we do. I suspect that when I open my storage locker in London I will be overwhelmed but hopefully not appalled.

⬥    I learned that while I am more Canadian than British, I'm neither. Or perhaps I'm both. I'm like the Third Culture Kids they talk about (the TCKs), like my children, with parents of one or two nationalities, born in a different country and raised or living in a third.

⬥    I liked having a housemate, even one so different from me, or maybe especially one so different. Regular sharing and learning and laughing makes life fantastic. So my living arrangements in London may change.

Most importantly, I learned to be myself without the need for external validation, and to search within my heart for answers to those existential questions. I'm ever-evolving, as we all are, so let's keep it lively.

And now ...

... I am gathering my wits for the upcoming trip with my mother to Australia. I hope that at 90 years of age, I'll still be traveling as she is. However, I don't consider this expedition part of my untethered year but rather a relaxing holiday with my mum and my brother. Exploration will continue, of course, but this blog is finished, the last chapter written, and the next one is waiting for the new year, its opening pages still blank.

I have had the most extraordinary time, and hope you have enjoyed all the reading over the course of these many months. Life, with all its ups and downs, its emotions and messiness, is truly awe-inspiring, and fun.

Thank you for reading, for your comments, for the countless emails I received giving me your thoughts, your reactions and even some choices you made in response to something I'd written. My heart is full.

      "In the journal, I do not just express myself more openly than I could to any person, I create myself."
                                                                                  - Susan Sontag
 

December 2023

And so my untethered year draws to a close. Not with a bang but a whimper. The gentle unwinding amidst olive groves and extreme hikes on the mountains. Quietude. Another touch of loneliness.

A surprising anxiety sets in, and I look at it with some surprise. Where is the kick-ass confidence I felt in Switzerland? There's a feeling that I landed in Mallorca and the wheels fell off. 

When I have days jammed with meditation, exercise classes and a hike, followed by an arrangement to head into Palma and then dinner with friends, I find myself craving solitude to read and write and wander in nature. When I have a yawning day in front of me with nothing on the schedule, I want to be with others, to attend classes, eat out and get on with things. I feel an urge to rush out and do.

The realisation, of course, is that I need both productive engagement with others and time alone. Writing feeds me but too much time to do so removes the impetus. A certain amount of pressure is required to produce the gems.

And the anxiety? I see it as the final rumblings of a fixed mindset becomeing a growth one. Returning to school doesn't faze me, and I just have to remind myself that being older than the other students and immersing myself in the vulnerability of psychotherapy is just a continuation of the exploration I have been doing all this year. I can turn these nibbles of anxiety into threads of curiosity.

Four of us set off for a hike the other day, just after noon. Four women in their 60s, three unexpectedly divorced within the last four years, the eldest widowed about ten years ago. One I had met at fitness classes in the village, the others were new to me. Two were English, the other Danish. They have all lived in Mallorca for at least twenty years, and share a camaraderie that comes from being early in the vanguard of change in this island, that then was still recovering from the repressions of the Franco era. It wasn't the popular holiday destination it is now.

The two divorcées live in the homes they shared with their former husbands, but one talks about dragging his motor dinghy (a boat he promised to remove from what is officially her house) to a lay-by on a highway in the hopes that someone will just take it. There is a bitterness there that contrasts with the Danish woman who returned to a convivial relationship with her ex once the divorce papers were signed a month ago, although there is no talk of a rapprochement. 

The widow was widowed from one moment to the next as it was a sudden death. I was divorced three weeks after becoming an empty-nester. I couldn't help feeling that I'd been fired. 

All four of us went through abrupt changes, without any inkling of what was about to hit us. They were life-changing events that were out of our control. Yet how complete and full of life we are on our own. As we made our way along the dried-up river bed and then up to higher altitudes, we would stop and exclaim not at the spectacular views, but at how content we were with life. 

Last evening, on a zoom call, a woman who just published a book on reframing retirement, a woman I had never met before, laughed when she explained that in her 60th year she realised that her holidays were getting longer and more elaborate because it was the only way she could be with her husband. That was unaffordable, so she divorced him. Then, after meeting a new man several years later and moving in with him, just last month she returned to her own flat, while still maintaining the relationship, because she saw that she was turning back into a wife.

It's as if wifedom has little appeal once we get a taste of freedom. It's a state we don't wish to return to regardless of whether we go on to other partnerships. I see it more and more as I move away from the couple-centric life I lived when married and begin to meet the solo travellers. It's like a secret that was kept from us, at least from those of us raised in more traditional ways. 

There is opportunity in transitioning into this next phase of life, whether by choice or not, especially if there has been transformative and oftentimes painful inner work through therapy, body work or spirituality, which most women my age have done. Some men do as well, but generally ... I don't see the same in men in their 60s and 70s.

This is not a man-bashing diatribe but a celebration of women who are complete in themselves. I have many truly lovely men in my life, and one day I hope to connect on a deeper, more intimate level with someone. But ... what's the saying? I won't be a nurse, a purse or a mother.

I suspect I will write one more post, from London, from the place I packed up and left to begin my Untethered Year, which stretched into almost sixteen months. So stay tuned. I have only a handful of days left in what has been an extraordinary adventure.