Elegy for Oz

A year ago today I had my cheek pressed against the airplane window. The man next to me--a sixty-something retired pastor from Colorado--was telling me stories about his eldest daughter who had just joined Americorps. 

 Outside it was dark. I'd been in the air not even ten hours and already I'd left behind a continent, a hemisphere, and a constellation only visible from below the equator. 

"You'll be back," my seatmate assured me. My cheeks were glistening and I felt like all the light had drained out of me. I wanted to ask him how he could be so sure. He was, after all, a stranger. He didn't know that I'm an introvert who watches romantic comedies like nobody's business; that it took me until senior year of high school to like my hair; that I still didn't really know what it meant to be completely comfortable with myself. He didn't know anything about me. How could he know that this plane ride was just a long pause--a temporary deferment of my life?

My parrot tree

I remember my last days so vividly: the late-night swelter that holed itself in my room even with my balcony door tied open to the railing with a plastic garbage bag; crossing the largest roundabout in Australia on my way home for lunch between classes; listening to Joe Purdy's "Miss Me" on my photography walks around my adopted neighborhood.

Those ten months were the most beautiful and substantive of my life. I still ease myself into sleep each night with the vague but sincere belief that when I open my eyes I will be right back in my tiny shoebox apartment on Flemington Road, listening to the ding of the trams out my window and the car alarm that went off every hour like the faithful chimes of a grandfather clock. I would give anything for some force of hemispherical attraction to take me back where I could wake up with sunlight streaming in through my balcony door, fix my usual bowl of yogurt and muesli for breakfast, collect my book and journal and camera and sunscreen, and catch the train to Brighton Beach.

When I went to sleep on February 9, 2010, the day before my departure, I wasn't nervous. I wasn't scared or anxious or restless. Morning came and I was still none of those things. I piled my suitcases into the wayback of my mom's van and buckled my seatbelt. From the passenger seat my dad made a goofy face at me through his flip-down mirror. I rolled my eyes. An hour later I was sitting at my gate in what I know now could only have been an ethereal calm. I wrote in my journal, but not about my insecurities and doubts about the coming year in a country that couldn't be farther from my family and friends. No, I wrote about the fact that I would make my grand entrance into the southern hemisphere on a plane plastered with giant images of Disney figures.

It wasn't until I'd heaved my bags onto my bed moments after seeing my apartment for the first time that I felt a hollowness in the pit of my stomach. I unzipped a suitcase and lying on top of my clothes was a small yellow envelope with "Livvy Lovey" written in my mom's curled script. It was a birthday card--I was turning 21 in six days--and before I could pick it up the tears started. It was as if I'd never cried before in my life, the novelty of it strangely confusing. I sat down on the mattress, my feet dangling above the hideous red carpet, and sobbed. I sobbed until I was fairly certain I had created the eighth sea, and then I went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face. I thought to myself, "I'm on my own now. I want to make this year perfect, but I can't do that if I'm crying. Is this the kind of person I want to be?" I shook my head, as if responding to someone else's question, but I kept on crying. I cried so much that for the next ten months I had nothing left to cry. I also didn't have the need.

My life in Melbourne was perfect. Perfect. There really is no other way to describe it. I could pull a Will Ferrell (as James Lipton on SNL) and invent an adjective, but I think the perfection of those ten months transcends the power of language--any language--at all.

Every time I pick up my guitar--a tan and mahogany Monterey--I remember sitting on the floor of the attic room of the Music Swop Shop on Elgin Street with my friend Ray, strumming a few strings on one guitar before handing it to Ray and grabbing another instrument from the wall. That was down the street from Brunetti's, the amazing pastry shop, and around the corner from Cinema Nova where I saw The Boys are Back with Sara and Julia a few days before they went home.

I look back at pictures of myself from Australia and I see a smile that I haven't seen since. I was so happy there. That's not to say I'm not happy here. I love being able to pick up the phone, hear a familiar voice on the other end, and then see the face attached to that familiar voice in a matter of minutes. But up until Melbourne I thought myself weak in every way, and on the plane home, sitting next to my new retired pastor friend, I didn't feel weak anymore. I was going home a year older, having snorkeled in the Great Barrier Reef. I swam with a whaleshark and danced on the steps of the Sydney Opera House and pet a wallaby and learned how to surf. I wish I had the clarity of mind when I was leaving that I have now--the clarity that would have let me turn to the man next to me, clear my throat, and say, "Yes. I will be back." Because I will. And in so many ways I never even left.