THE POIGNANT JOY OF THE RETURN

I am writing this sitting in the tiny airport just outside the town of Kerkyra on the Greek island of Corfu. Outside the window, planes taxi down a runway that ends abruptly, hurtling towards their seemingly watery end, taking off just before they fall into the sea. This a routine, I remember vividly from my childhood when my family and I used to come to Corfu to visit my aunt Theresa and my ‘uncle;, her partner Christos Vaholopolous (pictured). Christo is now long gone, claimed by cancer, the only record of his life being his art works which still hang on hotel walls around the island and my aunt’s thinly veiled account of their life together ‘Suntouched’.

The world that he knew, and shared with his friend Gerald Durrell has also gone. The Corfu of my childhood exists only in our memories and Theresa’s paintings of vineyards and ancient villages. IN her minds’ eyes the terracotta streets of the old town are still populated by olive laden donkeys, and black weeds widows. My sister and I have returned to Corfu this weekend to reminisce with my aunt. For many years we would rely upon her occasional visits to her homeland, but ow that she is in her eighties and unwilling to fly, we have returned to Corfu to see her.

In fact, this island is one of the few places in my life that I have ever returned to. For most of my life I have been driven by an almost insatiable desire for new horizons. In my working life, I have always been energized by new ideas and fresh challenges, becoming easily bored and frustrated by anything that smacked of repetition. In my personal life I have also travelled extensively, constantly seeking the unfamiliar, the alien and the exotic. As a young woman, driven by a relentless desire for new experiences, I jacked in a successful career and sold or gave away everything I owned and headed for Nepal. Armed with round the world ticket, I originally intended to travel for just six months but didn’t’ return to Britain until two and a half years later when I had finally exhausted all my funds.

Even when I settled down with my beloved husband John and my precious daughter’s Aly ad Emily, I continued to resist the comfort of familiarity. Whenever the children enjoyed a particular beach, campsite, hotel or beach, their cry would always be ‘can we come back here?’ But, perhaps selfishly, my husband I would always insist on venturing over the horizon. The two of us share a gypsy instinct. We me as travelers and continued to plan our journeys round territories yet to be explored.

I have always revelled in the sensation of waking up in a strange country; lying in bed listening to the cadences of an alien tongue rising up from the streets below; the piquant fragrance of unfamiliar foods wafting through the shutters. And there is little to match the sense of anticipation as you step out into the unknown, with a sense of expectation about new sights to see and people to meet. I am, at heart. an explorer.

I respect the fact that for many the concept of returning provides familiarity and comfort. I know that many of my friends prefer to return to the same beloved area for their holidays each year; and love being greeted like old friends as they temporarily insert themselves in the weave of others lives for a while. However, I found the whole concept suffocating.

For years, I interpreted my reluctance to ever visit the same place twice as the sign of an adventurous spirit, but I now realize that behind all the bravado lay a fear of returning only to find that the world of my memory no longer exists, that it has changed beyond belief. My aunt Theresa never tires of telling me how angry and upset Gerald Durrell was when he returned to the island of Corfu as an adult. By this point, tourism had begun to change the shape of his beloved childhood home almost beyond recognition and she recalls how he wept as he drove past the concrete edifices springing up all over the island. (Theresa also repeatedly tells anyone who will listen that when she arrived on the island there were only ten cars and that she brought in the eleventh on a boat from Brindisi, missing the irony that she added to the burgeoning level of traffic on Corfu). But I think for many of us there also lurks an even deeper fear that while we may have changed, the world may not have kept pace.

I remember the sense of dread that that I felt when I returned to Great Britain in 1993, after spending two and a half years travelling through Asia and Australia. I desperately wanted to see my family and friends but knew that I had in some indefinable way been profoundly changed. I had ended upon a spiritual quest that had taken me through the temples of Australia, where I studied and ultimately rejected Buddhism, and into the eerie empty deserts of central Australia where I had reconnected with God. I had also returned to my home country with my soul mate John, who enabled me to see my country though a fresh and foreign pair of eyes. Yet, when I touched down, I found that little had changed in my absence; that life had continued in a predictable groove for those I had left behind and that I was expected to slot back into the rhythm of existence as if I had never left. When I tried to speak of the profound transformation that God had wrought in me during that journey, I was met with bewilderement. I took me nearly a year to readjust to the life I had left behind.

Now don’t get me wrong, I would never make comparisons between myself and the Almighty, the Word made flesh, but whenever I read the account in Mark 6 of Jesus returning to Nazareth to preach in his home town synagogue I do really feel for him. Since leaving home he grappled with his demons in the desert, come into the fullness of his radical ministry and returned home as God incarnate eager to minister to his own community. However, all that those who had known him all his life could see was the carpenter’s son, and reacted with skepticism to the changes they saw in him.

It is often when we return to our childhood homes or haunts, when we juxtapose our past and present selves, that the changes that life have wrought in us become most abundantly clear. The process of return highlights the changes that have been wrought in our life. This can be uncomfortable; as adults, our childhood homes, schools and favourite haunts often seem smaller and less magical than we remembered. But in recent years I have finally learnt that returning can also be a source of joy.

Cancer has taught me many things, including how to appreciate the process of returning to the familiar. My capacity for exploration has not diminished but I now feel a profound gratitude that against all odds, I have been spared and even been given the chance to retrace the steps of my life journey; that I have lived to be able to once again return to the places where I have forged so many memories.

Theresa is right. The Corfu of my childhood no longer exists; it lives on only in the writing and art work of those who loved it such as Gerald Durrell and my aunt and uncle – as well as the wonderful ITV series The Durrells. But the island is also like a mirror which reflects the transformation that God has wrought in myself and my family over the years; the hard won wisdom but also the accumulated love that continues to envelope, and the deepening knowledge of God. So today, as I travel back to my husband and children, I once again God for the poignant joy of being able to return.

Kate Nicholas is the author of the best-selling memoir Sea Changed which is available in Christian bookshops through the UK and available online at eden.co.uk and Amazon.co.uk. July 2nd sees the launch of Sea Changed: Living a Transformed Life, a twelve part companion guide designed to help us reflect on how God uses the circumstances of our live to transform us, and what this transformation looks like in this life and beyond.