The Backpacking Housewife. Janice Horton
It was all such a wonderful relief.
I turned to my mum and hugged her warmly and wiped a tear from my eye.
She hugged me too, laughing at my unexpected show of affection. Then she suggested that while she went into the supermarket, I should go off and buy myself some new winter clothes.
I agreed it was a good idea and we said we’d meet up with each other again in the square.
I know this mall very well. I know its lanes and avenues like Ethan must know the waters of the Caribbean. I must have walked through here many hundreds, if not thousands of times, as a housewife. I used to come here several times a week to do all my shopping.
Yet today, it doesn’t feel at all familiar to me in the same way it once did.
I really don’t understand it because all the shops that were here before are all still here.
Yet, it’s like I’m having a déjà vu experience and attributing it to another lifetime.
It feels surreal to me. I’m noticing things that I’ve never noticed before. I see how incredibly pale and pallid and stressed people look as they rush around and pass me, pushing loaded shopping trolleys, prams and pushchairs, dragging screaming toddlers, all while chatting incessantly into their mobile phones or to each other. There are so many droning voices being punctuated by piercing high pitched shrieks and background music and other sounds that it has all become a buzzing white noise to my ears. It’s bouncing off the steel and glass and cold white tiles that clad the walls and floor of the shopping mall.
It feels quite suffocating and all consuming.
After spending so much time in the third world, where people have so little by comparison, everything here suddenly seems so abundant and glossy and extravagant. Shop windows are full of unpractical stuff that no one really needs but will buy because its Christmas. People proudly carry a clutch of bags showing off that they’ve been and bought the big brands.
Clothing. Shoes. Cosmetics. It’s all so excessive.
But I’ve never noticed it before. Not that I used to be any different. I used to do it too.
I once felt it was important to have the designer handbag, the new coat, the right shoes for every occasion, and a new dress because I couldn’t possibly be seen out in the same one twice.
Not to maintain modesty or to keep warm but to impress and keep up appearances.
A child, of maybe ten years of age, ran into me without an apology. He’d almost knocked me off my feet but without a care he yelled and swore at me as if it had been my fault we’d collided. I noticed how well dressed he was in an expensive premier league football shirt and training shoes. The same branded trainers that I know my son Lucas loves to wear.
For some reason, I was reminded of something that happened to me not too long ago when I’d been shopping for fresh fruit on a street on one of the lesser known of the Caribbean islands.
The shops on the street were just wooden tables, some made from old doors, piled high with a selection of locally grown fruits or they were simply a battered looking wheelbarrow that was filled with ripe bananas fresh from a nearby tree. A young boy, again around ten years old, had spotted me doing my shopping that day and was soon running alongside me to beg to be allowed to carry my shopping bag. I guess that with my western looks and my blonde hair, I’d been an easy target for his attentions.
‘Let me help you, lady. Let me carry your heavy bags today?’ he pleaded so politely.
I’d been immediately charmed by his smile and his entrepreneurial spirit and so I let him carry my bag containing a few mangos, a couple of pineapples, a hand of bananas, knowing that I’d be soon asked for a dollar in return. The day was scorching. Blisteringly hot. And, as we walked along side by side, with the sun beating down on our heads and heating up the hot hard dry sand base that formed the street, I could feel the heat burning through the rubber soles of my flip-flops. Yet, I noticed this boy wore no shoes. I asked him ‘where are your shoes?’
And he simply smiled at me and shrugged and then shook his head.
And that too had made me stop and reflect on how in the western world we have so much.
A thought that I suppose simply wouldn’t have ever crossed my mind before I’d travelled.
Of course, we confuse the price of material things with the price of happiness, don’t we?
It’s only by stepping out of the material mindset that we can appreciate that confusion.
But I do need some new clothes today. I need some practical clothes to keep me warm.
So I head across the mall to a shop where I know I’m likely to be able to pick up what I need for a reasonable price. It’s a charity shop where I used to work several mornings a week as a volunteer. Where, for many years, I’d worked with the same group of women who I called my closest friends. One of them, Sally, had been my very best friend in the world.
I used to confide in her. We’d had a laugh together. And a cry, sometimes, too.
But I didn’t want to see Sally today. Not yet. Not now.
Not dressed in my mum’s clothes and looking red-eyed and exhausted.
I know that’s incredibly vain of me, but I’ll freely admit to being a proud woman.
In Buddhism, pride and vanity are considered poisons, as they are part of a selfish ego.
No doubt, here in this small suburban town, where everyone knows everyone and everyone else’s business, I will bump into Sally soon enough. But, by then, I hoped I’d be more up for the challenge. More prepared. Because, if I was being honest, the thought of seeing Sally again filled me with anxiety and dread and a great dollop of despair.
What would we say to each other after what had happened and after all this time?
It’s not as if the past year has changed what I saw or diminished what she was doing with my husband in our marital bed on the day I came home unexpectedly early. If anything, it has amplified it. It’s like that horrific moment has being preserved – frozen in time – until it can be properly addressed and Sally and I face both the consequences and each other in real time.
Yet seeing Sally used to fill me with joy. She was my best friend.
More than that, she was like the sister that I’d never had and always wished for.
I suppose that’s what made this whole thing worse. Even more heartbreaking.
Why couldn’t Charles have had an affair with his secretary instead?
Why did it have to be the woman whom I’d allowed to become my soul sister?
I suppose it was for all the same reasons that I’d once loved her too. Sally was an attractive and sophisticated woman. She was great company and she was always upbeat and fun. She never seemed to run out of interesting things to say or exciting things for us to do together.
When Sally decided to lose weight and get fit, we joined the gym together. When she needed new clothes and makeup, we went shopping together. When she decided to learn French, we signed up for evening classes. We confided in each other completely and talked for hours over a cup of coffee or a glass of wine in each other’s kitchens. We confessed our most intimate secrets. I now cringed at the thought of telling her that Charles and I rarely had sex.
When I reached the charity shop, I see another co-worker and friend at the counter and so I go inside. I walk along the sale rail and pick out a couple of sweaters, a pair of jeans and a warm coat, a thick wool scarf and then head over to the till. When Taryn sees me, her eyes light up and she gasps in surprise. ‘Lorraine! You’re back! And, oh my gosh, you look fantastic!’
‘Yeah, I just got back today. I need a few things to wear. How are you?’
‘I’m fine. Just the same as ever. You know how it is. Nothing ever changes here.’
I