Moving on

My big brother Peter had ginger hair, just like me.  He had a drum kit.  He played in a jazz band and he went to art school.  He gave me a straw hat for my fourth birthday.  This is the family photo taken on that occasion.

Peter was the oldest and I was the youngest.  He carried me home from the nursing home where I was born.  Dad was working so Peter went to collect Mum and we came home together in a taxi. Mum always talked about the journey home - it was a picture she kept in her mind's eye until the end.  Peter remembered it too and so from their shared memory I imagined it and from this a special bond grew.

I felt connected by this imagined memory to the art student brother who moved out into a new and unknown world.  He left our mundane life behind. That is what happens when birds fly from the nest.  This is the order of things. The door was open for me to follow but I did not accept the place at art school that was offered. I chose my own path but in the end it led to the same place.

Peter became a performer, a designer, a teacher, a wanderer and a man of many homes.  I was a stage manager, an organiser, a teacher, I am a perpetual traveller with my heart in many homes. Like my big brother I don't know where I want to be.  But I am still in this world and once more he has moved on.