Relativity

I have been thinking about perspective… What it is.. why it matters.  Why it makes almost everything 'relatively' speaking.

Took a trip up to Ipoh to visit with a friend, get on that black hole of a ‘Web Portal’ as I said I would.  It takes just a couple of hours to get there, but it’s a world away. 

A world of shopping malls and ‘real’ restaurants: clean, good service, dishwashers.  A world of homes that look ‘normal’ with furniture and hot water in the kitchen: lives that seem regular: talk of men and work and kids, and spaghetti with meat sauce and parmesan cheese.

Somehow this trip made me think of how important ‘home’ is to me.  What I have always been searching for, ever since mom and dad sold the cabin at the lake, is that same sense of belonging: being alone with nature, absolutely free, and yet safe and part of something bigger. 

Michael never made our place home.  Besides not being present and providing us with the security of a family, he never did finish the place.  It is exactly how I left it, well except for the new roof, over seven years ago now.  The doors I took off when I had the new floor installed, still haven’t been replaced. Certainly not a place or a life I want to go back to.

When I said good-bye to Vas I told him to call me when he had a house: one with a yard, on the water. 

“You have that already” he said. 

He’s right.  Mom and dad’s place is right on the water, and he has that place in Cairns… Why would I want something I already have? 

Crazy.. Menopause. 

But it is what I want.  My own place that looks and feels like the home I belong to.  My own place, where I invite my grand kids to play in the water. 

And that is what we were talking about over the spaghetti and a few beers in Ipoh.  I told my new friend how lovely her apartment was, and she agreed, but then said, ‘but it isn’t really home.  Home would be Australia.”

Ok… but she is an English woman.. from Surrey.   I told her I knew what she meant.  And the young Japanese visitor also nodded.

 “I want a home too, but I don’t want to go back to Japan.” 

Where then?

“Just someplace safe.”

Some place safe.  What does that mean?

She went on to tell us about what it was like to be in Japan when that big earthquake hit.. the day the earth shook. 

She explained how she was used to earthquakes, it wasn’t an unusual event and people were slow to respond.  They packed up a few belongings after the tsunami warning, believing they had an hour.. but they had just 12 minutes.

The waver was 38.9 meters high and it travelled up to ten kilometres inland.

 Over fifteen thousand people died.  

She explained that an earthquake registering 7 knocked you off your feet.  The one that hit Japan on March 11^th of this year had a magnitude of 9..  and while I was safely tucked away in KL at the hotel, beginning my adventure here in Malaysia,.. she could not stand up for more than 45 minutes. 

“It wouldn’t stop.  I couldn’t get up.  I couldn’t get to my baby. Glass was breaking, shelves were falling.. and it wouldn’t stop.  It was terrifying, it went on and on and on..

And then there were the aftershocks.  

“I don’t want to go back.  Home, as I knew it , is gone.  I can’t go back.” 

“It isn’t just the earthquake, or the tsunami, it’s the radiation now.  And there aren’t any jobs in Japan anymore.  The whole Island has moved.. nothing is the same now”. 

I imagine there are a lot of Japanese ‘refugees’ scattered about the world.. trying to forget what happened, scared that it will happen again.  Looking for a new place to start. 

I told her how I’d never felt an earthquake. 

“You should consider yourself truly blessed” she replied sincerely… thoughtfully. 

And that’s how I feel today. Thankful that my family is safe.  

Thankful that everyone is safely at home.  

Glad that the earth isn't moving.. it really is all relative isn't it?!