LEAVING TO FIND YOURSELF
“The fact is, I’m about to turn sixty, and I’m either going to have a face lift or travel the world. One way or another, something’s got to change.”
My friend Glenda made the announcement as we were drinking coffee in her kitchen. I wasn’t taken aback by her declaration of intent, because I knew a few things about Glenda’s past and the places she had called home. She had been a teacher in Afghanistan in the 1960s, a time when women were still wearing miniskirts in Kabul, and later, while she was living and teaching in Alabama, the Ku Klux Klan burned a cross on her front lawn after her drama class students performed Edward Albee’s . In her late twenties, Glenda decamped from her native America to England when she fell in love with the fiddle player in a famous British rock band - and while there she opened a boutique selling handmade knitwear, which gave work to local women knitters who were happy to have the income. Glenda remained in the UK following her divorce, but returned to the USA when she was forty-eight because she wanted her son, Nathan, to experience life in her homeland. Twelve years later Nathan had flown the nest and Glenda, having become disgusted with the corruption she was witnessing while working in the real estate business - the sort of activity that led to the 2008 sub-prime mortgage meltdown in the USA - knew it was time for
