Today I nearly lost my teacups. And my marbles. It was the last day of two weeks worth of stocktaking at work*. I had no energy left and missed several trams. I ended up getting to work 20 minutes late. During the day, I found out that one of my coworkers had to flee Bosnia when she was five, with her mother and two week old brother. Not many people I know can, or would want to, claim that their luckiest moment in life was when the sniper didn’t shoot them.
After work I had plans to go to a yarn night — meeting with Australian Country Spinners (Patons, Cleckheaton, etc.) advertising agency to clue them in on the whole knitting thing. I left work at 5. The information man at the tram stop stuffed me around and I ended up not getting off the tram where I was supposed to in order to catch a connecting tram. I wasted half an hour. Then when I finally did get to Carlisle St in St Kilda, I realised it was the wrong end and I’d have to walk for about a kilometre to get where I was going. I was half an hour late that time.
Then, I intended to head back into the city for a coworkers going away drinks. I got off the train at Flinders St Station, walked up the steps, and realised that I didn’t have one of my bags. I went back down to the train, jumped back on for a minute, realised the train was not taking passengers and couldn’t find my bag. And just as I went to get off, the doors shut. And wouldn’t open again. I was stuck, alone on a train that was retiring for the evening.
The train started to move. I hoped it would stop at Southern Cross Station, but it didn’t. I panicked. And realised my phone was in the missing bag. I panicked some more. I contemplated pulling the big red emergency door release button, but the thought of dying while trying to cross the surrounding train tracks was a little too terrifying, and around that point in time I realised there was an emergency intercom. It didn’t seem to work at first, but I finally got in contact with the driver and did a fairly convincing job at sounding calm. Thankfully he was going to the North Melbourne train depot, and not the one at Werribee… He helped me off the train when we pulled up, and let me search all the carriages for my bag. I found it on the last pass through. I thought it had only had my current knitting and my phone in it, but when I searched inside, I found the bag of knitted teacups that I’d taken along to the knitting night. I hadn’t realised quite how much they mean to me until that moment. I almost cried with relief… although the tears could have been for other reasons. Did I mention that I’d been busting to go to the toilet for about half an hour? The ten minute walk with the driver back to the train station platforms from the depot was tough.
I finally made it to the city. My friends had waited for me and I had a couple of beers while being reminded exactly how funny and awesome they really are. I cried laughing at one point.
I finally walked through my back door while listening to Lithuania by Dan Bern. I found a package on my chair.
My Pay It Forward gift** from Lesley at Bird Ahoy.
As I was taking the photos for this blog post, another song started. One I downloaded for my now extinct podcast way back when. Sunlight, from thesquarerootofeleven. “Somehow, somewhere, sometimes sunlight seems to come my way” seemed like the perfect title. I cried again.
All the shit that happened to me today? Not even worth worrying about. I’m loved. I have wonderful friends, a beautiful partner, a family who would do anything for me. I get incredible packages in the post from people I’ve never met. I’ve never had to flee from war. I’m not the junkie whose blood had dripped over the floor and sharps disposal in the odd public toilet I had to use on Collins St. I’m alive.
And I have my teacups.
*Although I now have to go in for a few hours tomorrow to finish up some stuff.
**The Pay it Forward thing works like this: I was one of the first three commenters on Lesley’s Pay it Forward blog post, so she sent me a handmade gift on the proviso that I would do the same thing with my blog. I’m not going to make it the first three commenters though — I’m gonna take advantage of this to do some comment fishing. The names of anybody who comments on this blog post until the 20th of February (Melbourne time) will be put into a hat, and I’ll draw out three names at random for my Pay it Forward gifts — remember that you’ll have to follow through on the paying forward too. So get commenting!