Glasgow/Inverness/Strathpeffer

I could not sleep so I got online. It turns out to be a good thing I did. Apparently my cousin Luke only gets online when he's at work. So although it was three a.m. here, it was eight a.m. in Strathpeffer. So I caught him on Skype. Good thing Skype lets you use IM ... I'd have woken up my roommate had I had to speak with Luke.
AT any rate, he says that Gran, Agnes that is, my mom's half sister, is in frail health but would love to meet me. Mum has prepared a scrapbook for Agnes; a scrapbook highlighting mum's dad, Joe Valli, who was a bit of a movie star in Australia back in the day.
I've yet to see Joe in a movie but apparently you can get copies of his movies from the film board in Australia, they will dip into the archives for you if you have a good enough reason. My cousin Wendy in Australia has been requesting them for a while. Too bad I can't take one of those over...
It looks like I will get into Glasgow, and stay at a hostel for a couple of days, Colin not having much room. Then Luke will pick me up and drive via Inverness to Strathpeffer.
He tells me it's the most dangerous road in Scotland! I wonder how it will feel to be driving along with my Scottish cousin in the highlands. I imagine it will be breathtaking and over way too fast.
I'll need, I imagine, an adaptor for my laptop; I'll need Scottish pounds; I'll need a bazillion power bars. This is going to be golden.
On the home front, the reason I can't sleep is that I have received not one but two emails from C.
And I also realized I have to change the name of my blog. She didn't say "What if I pushed the harp over a hill?" That makes no sense! She must have said "What if I pushed the harp over a cliff?"
LOL. The first email was quite stiff, the way I'm used to them being, but the second one was flowing and open. And she said she wants to meet me. And about twenty years of love for her that never dissapated has begun to flow out in tears. I have no idea what will happen if we meet. I don't even know if she'll be in town when I go: she might be at a dramatic workshop with a university.
What if she hugs me and kisses me on the neck like she did last time? Will I be able to stand?
What if we sit and talk into the wee hours? What if... oh, the what ifs. I have to let this whole thing go, as there is no telling what will happen or if she'll even be in town. But the emotions are rolling back and my love for her, having been on a slow boil for two decades, continues to bubble, bubble, toil and trouble.
You can't deny that two decades is a long time. And just a few words on a computer screen can turn me into a driveling idiot...it's like she tossed a very hungry, very sad and lonely dog a juicy bone.
But then again, it would seem she was a lonely old dog herself... she spoke warmly of me. I know that I walk a thin line with her. I can only pray that if we do meet, I don't frighten her by blubbering and dissolving into an insipid puddle of goo.
There was one time at the height of our friendship, when things were mostly good, that we had been hanging out all night and I rose to leave. She hugged me and...the hug lasted for twenty minutes. I had my coat on but no matter: the sweat rolling down my back, we held tight.Very tight.
And we cried. And we cried. And between the sweat rolling down my back, the tears rolling down my cheeks, and the tears from her cheeks, I came away from that hug soaking wet but so full of her love that I wanted to be somebody.
I don't know what that hug was about but I always suspected it spoke volumes we couldn't say to one another. I fear that if I do see her again on this trip, if we have another one of those hugs, I may not come out of it intact.