London, Sunday 8 September 2013

We have been home for not quite two weeks now. The reason I haven’t written my Post Script before is that Ordinary Life is like a huge animal that swallows you up like a whale swallowed Jonah and the time away seems like a dream. Or to put it differently: when we were in Sweden it was hard to believe that London continued to exist. Once we got home – the Baltic Sea and those magical islands seemed like a dream.

Brendan is the one who grieves. He burst into tears a few times and said he missed boat life very badly. I asked him what he misses exactly and he said: “Everything! The way we are all on the same level – I never feel lonely and I never get scared. The way we arrive at a new destination every day, yet ‘stay at home’, my cabin travels with me… I miss being on the ‘Sunrise Team’ with Dad and casting off as the sun rises and there is just him and me on deck and we talk about life. I like not going to school and learning from the things we see, researching them on the i-pad and reading books about them…. “

Brendan is what I call a ‘natural born cruiser baby’, he just loves the moving cocoon that is a yacht. Quinn and Elliott far less so: they miss their friends, they even miss school (though they are loath to admit it!) Boat life is ‘too small a world’ for them at this age.

For me the point where a completely different way of life moved into view was, for some reason, on Faro as we walked by the ‘raukar’. Trying to work out if the mushrooms by the roadside were edible and keeping an eye out for berries made me see how I could live in a remote rural location, much closer to nature, without many of the trappings and ‘clutter’ of city life, and become this wild woman, this eccentric lady living in the forest, talking to trees and boiling up her plant spirit concoctions along with the ‘cantareller’…

We discussed this and arrived a vision of a home in Sweden in maybe 10 years time. With the boys happily settled at college and Ulric transforming his relationship to work, this might be possible.

For me these islands continue to exert a strong pull. I miss those seals and their songs. I miss the smells and the sunsets. I miss the starry sky. I miss the sense of magic and freedom. I miss being with Ulric and the boys day and night and always. I miss the freedom of saying: it is beautiful here, let’s stay put for a day…

But on the boat I miss my studio, my cello, my work. I am blessed to have a foot in both worlds.

What three weeks in Scandinavia has done for me is taking life at home with a healing ‘pinch of salt’. It has given me a sense of perspective. I am less inclined to get worked up about things. I have a stronger sense of following the wind and listing to my own intuition. I am making changes to my life.. Allowing myself to be less busy, more in the moment., less available to clients, more available for the children.

This morning Ulric and I had tea (he had coffee of course) in the House of Mermaids (also known as The Tea House) and watched the Autumn rains arrive in our garden. We asked ourselves the question: if we view our marriage as a garden, what needs watering, what needs planting and growing? It is a good question to ask… It is a ‘medicine for the marriage’ kind of question.

Next time I see the boat, I will arrive straight from Santa Fe, having just graduated on the Shamanic Teacher Training programme. We will also visit Anders next time. Our Autumn Voyage is bound to have a very different flavour indeed.

In Sandhamn we returned to our boat after a meal and I noticed two crows sitting on the spreaders of the mast. There sat one on either side of the mast facing in different directions, very high up where birds like to sit. I thought: now I know I am in Scandinavia when Huginn and Muninn (Odin’s ravens) arrive! The boat will be looked after – even when we are away…

Imelda Almqvist