An angel at my table

You are the one who insists we go. Only you can prise me from my desk. You book the trip. You do the research. You make the most of our time.

Our every great endeavour begins as a conversation, a simple proposition to share some new adventure.

How many times have we sketched our plans on the back of a serviette, over lunch at a café or seated together in a quiet bar with a bottle of wine between us? Only you keep the map, you keep the sketch, you turn it into action.

You once took a vague idea and coaxed it into 12 weeks’ leave: a trip across America, from sea to shining sea.

Towards the end of that adventure, in the golden light of a dying day, we sat together on a hill in southern California.

The sum of our experience, every memory and moment, seemed to gather in the shadows that stretched before us, inch by inch, as daylight turned to dusk.

I spoke about the past. You focused on the future.

You built a bridge between two worlds with sympathetic words and laid a path for us to share, when we returned to Melbourne.

Soon after that, we were married.

You gravitate to the wider world like a flower to the sun, with a measured ease and energy that I find reassuring.

We have trekked across whole continents as one concentric circle, radiating outwards from the fixed and certain centre of our mutual respect.

And now the years are piling up: a library of memories, stacked high within my mind.

So long as we sit and talk together, the voyage will continue. To be with you is to travel with you: a state of mind; a readiness.

Long before we hit the road, our travelling begins. A figurative departure in which our shared imagination is untethered and takes flight.

This, now, is my favourite journey: the two of us together, seated at a table, sharing food and wine.

At a restaurant, for example, how the best of my creative thoughts tumble from me freely, in the warm, expansive context of your attentive company.

You lean in smiling, when we talk. I find my inspiration.

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour

So wrote the English poet, William Blake, more than 200 years ago. And so it goes when I’m with you, face-to-face and making plans, across the dining table.

A galaxy, a universe, in the small, sweet space between two chairs.

Featured image: Shirley in Seville, 2023
Image insert #1: That hill in California, 2008
Image insert #2: Shirley and Paul in Melbourne, 2019