daniels, grace valerie

if there was a big trust fund written on your name, what would you do? would you spend all the money on a pretty villa, designer clothes and host parties for other elitists? maybe some would. spend it on expensive champagne and caviar. but not grace daniels. when she was four years old she walked into the store with her pregnant mother and she saw a big weird ball. it was on a platform and it was blue. but those patches of blue were tainted with brown, green and beige. all over the muddy patches were letters. she didn’t know yet how to read but she kept musing about the weird ball. so she did the natural thing – pulled her mother’s sleeve and asked her what it was. a globe. it wasn’t just a ball, it was a map of the world. it was the prettiest thing she ever owned and you could lit it up during the night.

as years went by she insisted on her mother applying her for different language courses. she was determined to learn them all. all the languages of the world. because if you want to go places, you have to know a thing or two. you can just walk into turkey and expect everyone will understand you. italian. french. russian. spanish. german. dutch. she made sure she covered all the basis. she never stopped learning and she never stopped reading about all this wonderful places. the shelves on her walls were packed with tour guide books and she had dozens of notebooks with endless lists of places and things she wanted to see. italy will be her first stop, preferably rome. she will sit on the edge of a piazza and eat a tiramisu. from there she’ll go across whole europe. then to asia. to africa. south america. no one will be able to stop her. she will on the top of the world and the world will be her oyster.

she used to think her family was a poster-example of a picture perfect. her parents were loving and caring. despite the normal siblings’ bickering they all got along. it all started to shift somewhere in the adolescence. at the time she already had a steady boyfriend and she had been spending most of the days at his house. so each evening when she returned, she only had to deal with the aftermath. mother upset, father gone. eventually she got herself involved too. she was the one who picked up dad from the bars. owners called her cell to tell her he passed out on his bar stool. if he came back in the middle of the night, she got up and ran down the stairs to make sure he won’t choke on his own vomit. often he remarked how her dark blonde hair looked just like their mothers. and how one day she’ll be breaking someone’s heart, just like her mother did.

their family was starting to fall apart and no one could do a goddamn thing. she refused to acknowledge all the lovers mother brought home, she was too busy getting daddy out of the bars. at the time her boyfriend was her anchor. she didn’t love him per se, but she was young. it was supposed to be only a high school fling. it should’ve ended before she went to college. there was a particularly bad day at home when she was nineteen. she has had it. they sat on the first bus and drove to vegas. woke up with a ring on her finger. panicked.

he was an amazing guy. for someone else. he didn’t see this rushed marriage as something troublesome at all, he liked it. and for some reason she stayed with him for a while. a year and a half even. every single month she found herself staring at the globe again. every time she sat through lectures at the university did she get the inexplicable wanderlust. to simply get up, pack everything and take the first plane to anywhere. it was exactly what she did. got up on the plane and left him behind. well, after a few months of Italy she did send him divorce papers. she ripped the last thread that bonded her to the hometown.

she crossed a city after a city off of her list. she finished college in berlin and then her postgrad in linguistics on sorbonne. occasionally a sad thought flickered through – she had left people town with her departure. however there was no way she could deny her happiness. nobody was stopping her and nobody was there to control her. if she felt like boarding a plane for lisbon, she did it. eventually she started working as a tour guide, which even broadened her horizons. she enjoyed spending time with people, especially if they were as interested in history and foreign culture as she was.

once she was standing next to the ancient acropolis, right on top of the athens, gazing around at the widely-spread city. when she was in kindergarten she was friends with this little boy. and at one time they were talking about the future. how life will be when they grow up. she has said to him: ‘I will live in europe and there will be a handsome man who will love me, like daddy does mommy. he will travel with me and we will be happy together. I will see the world.’ but there in athens she felt alone despite never feeling more alive. her dreams after all, never came true.

there was javier in spain. and nico in italy. paul was dutch and gio was japanese. there were many man in her life, she cared about all of them. she loved none. no matter how vivid her childhood dreams were – of settling down with a handsome man and travel around the world with him – they were never obtained. but she has always been a big flirt and never had many trouble of getting someone’s interest. or keeping it for that matter. three of her boyfriends proposed, to one she even said yes. all this time she was sure that love will come gradually. sooner or later she will fell in love with the guy.

but maybe love really was a matter of the first sight. you see someone and you fall for them. inexplicably and unconditionally. there is no logic behind it and it only takes you a fraction of a second. eyes meeting across the room, hands brushing by. grace is still absolutely sure it will happen one day. however the most frightening thought of them all sometimes still dances through her mind. what if it already happened and she missed it? didn’t recognize it? what if it’s by far too late?

two weeks ago she left new zealand and came back. she already had returned on occasion for holidays now and then. this time she planned to make it final. no more running around. no more hiding among the maps. no more art galleries, monuments, market stands and foreign chattering. a part of her wanted to lay foundations down here. there was a time in the past when she already had them. but then she had to go and burn them into ashes. her restless spirit will have to be exorcized. wanderlust slayed. her feet won’t walk the arabian sand anymore and in 2008 she saw india for the last time. it was time to settle, even if she was only playing make-believe.