Study Abroad

 

{This is a response to What Pegman Saw, a Google-Maps-inspired prompt.  Today, the location is Alice Springs, Northern Territory, Australia.  Not knowing much about this part of Australia, I have delved back into my own memories, to a trip my father took to Queensland, in order to study for his PhD.  It was when we three kids were young, though not so young, as the kids in this story.  This endeavor required him to stay many months away from home, with my mother left behind, with us.  I tried to imagine, what it would be like, to finally come home, after being torn from one’s family for such a long time, by the fickle demands of academia. 

The Dreamtime Book (1976) by Ainslie and Charles P Mountford  is a book that my father actually brought back from his trip along with boomerangs.  I understand its content may be dated, now, in 2019, but not, if we assume this story takes place at about that time.  Although I’m not sure whether the Western Fort Lauderdale suburb of Sunrise, Florida existed, at that time.

The photo is my own.  I imagine Australia to be dry, and so I used a succulent, although I did read that parts of the North are tropical.  Please pardon the generalization!  No idea, whether this plant actually grows in Australia.  Most of the links I found on Australian plants that live in Florida had to do with invasive species. Oh well. Enjoy, and thank you for the prompt and for reading!} 

 

Colin grabbed his sticker-splattered suitcase from the rotating carousel.  Queensland University. Alice Springs. The Great Barrier Reef.  He smiled, to finally stretch his legs again, after that cramped, twenty-hour-long flight.

Automatic doors opened.  A blast of instant sweat soaked him.

Six months.  With zero humidity.

“Sunrise,” he murmured, staring out the taxi window. Sleep-deprived.  Disbelieving.

Colin pushed the button doorbell, of his concrete, University-property bungalow.  An untrimmed bougainvillea pricked him.

The door cracked open, to bright-eyed twins.  Scrambling through, they made thrones of his feet, squeezing his hairy calves.

His Felicia leaned, cross-armed, in the doorway.  Brown waves, in disarray.

Dimple deepening, teeth flashing, she sprinted towards him.

The sheer weight of her welcome bowled him over.

“Presents! Presents!”

Latches sprang open.  Boomerangs, T-shirts, The Dreamtime Book.  Lawn-litter.

Exactly as he had choreographed it, a thousand times, Colin grabbed his wife and swept her back, in a deep, electric kiss.