Janice Horton - The Backpacking Housewife - The Next Adventure

I’ve missed a whole year of birthdays and anniversaries and other special family days too.

When I last checked in with my family, via a wi-fi signal in a port of call just several days ago, I discovered that my eldest son, Josh, and his girlfriend, Zoey, had just got engaged. That was unexpected. I mean, he didn’t even have a girlfriend on the scene when I’d left.

He sent me a lovely photo of the two of them taken at their engagement party.

A party that I missed.

I’d called the happy couple as soon as I could to offer my heartfelt congratulations. But then our conversation had quickly resorted back to the question of when I might be coming home.

And that was awkward, as I really didn’t have an answer.

When I speak with my younger son, Lucas, he often sounds surly and uncommunicative and he makes our long-distance conversations hard work. I ask him about his day and what he’s been doing over the weekend and how his work is going and he’s dismissive. Call it mother’s intuition, but I worry if there is something going on that perhaps he’s not telling me?

I also worry if I even have any mother’s intuition left these days.

I could of course be worrying for nothing. But getting any information from Lucas about his life is impossible when he immediately switches the topic of conversation from him back to me. And I’m told once again, how most people’s middle-aged mothers (and I’m only forty-eight for goodness sakes) take daytrips to The Lake District and join Book Clubs, rather than go backpacking around the world and then join the crew of an ocean-going ship.

I listen and I agree. I know both my sons are missing me and they also worry about me.

I worry about them too. I worry about missing them. I constantly stress over whether I’ve done a good enough job as a mother to leave them to it now that they are both in their twenties?

What if they do need me? Even though they are grown up successful young men.

And, because I’m not there, who do they turn to if they need advice or emotional support?

Their father? What kind of example is he when he’s proved to be an untrustworthy liar?

And how do they really feel about their parents being divorced now?

Perhaps it’s because I haven’t exactly been able to talk to them about their anxieties or concerns in any depth over the past twelve months? Not since that time just before Christmas last year, when they both flew out to Kuala Lumpur to see if I’d lost my mind as well as my homing beacon. In speaking face to face, I’d been able to reassure them. Whereas now, I find it frustrating how feelings are a difficult subject to tackle by text message.

Somehow, words seem to get scrambled and become devoid of sensitivity.

That they don’t reflect what’s really in the heart.

Not to mention autocorrect issues and textspeak which often make matters so much worse.

Only this week did Josh question my overt use of: WTF.

I thought it meant: Well That’s Fantastic .

And so, of course, I’ve been using it rather a lot.

For the last couple of months, I’ve been tossing and turning more than this ship.

I’ve been losing sleep, while trying to work out how I can continue to live a nomadic lifestyle with Ethan, while also maintaining a tangible and meaningful connection with my family. But having it all seems impossible.

I don’t feel Ethan is the kind of man to step back from the helm and retire.

And I simply can’t be in two places or on both sides of the world at one time.

I’ve had to confide in him over feeling permanently at sea these days. Although, I was using that as a metaphor for our nomadic lifestyle, rather than our ocean-going situation. He’d listened to me and he’d said he understood. He said that he understands all my angst and guilt.

But, I’m not sure that he does fully understand, because he has no family of his own.

I tried to explain about my mum to him. ‘She’s not getting any younger.’ I said.

Which, in hindsight, didn’t best explain how I really feel about her needs, her age, her fragility, and not being there for her.

Ethan had simply replied. ‘Well, Lori, my darling. None of us are getting any younger.’

And, of course, he’s quite right. Yet another reason for us all to grab life and really live it.

Ethan’s parents died a long time ago and, from what I can gather, he was still in his teens at the time. I don’t know exactly what or how it happened. But they do seem to have passed away at around the same time as each other. I wonder if they were in some kind of accident.

Only, he doesn’t talk about them very much. Maybe it’s too painful for him?

It’s also entirely understandable that he is perhaps unable to truly empathise with me and all my worries over my two sons or an aging parent. Although, with his roots in Scotland, I find it hard to accept there isn’t at least someone somewhere in the world who is related to him.

An uncle twice removed or even perhaps a distant cousin?

When we had briefly talked about it once, I’d suggested doing a bit of genealogy research to check for anyone who might be a relative, or even a black sheep in his clan. But then I’d noticed a vein in his temple starting to visibly pulsate and how quickly he changed the subject.

A shout disrupts my thoughts and I turn around to see Ethan on deck.

‘Lori! I have news. I have great news!’

A smile spreads across my face. I watch him in amusement as he struts his stuff, wiggling his hips and dancing through the early morning sunbeams and across the main deck towards me, wearing an unbuttoned shirt and baggy khaki shorts, while waving his satellite phone in the air. I laugh. I do love his boundless energy and passion.

Ethan has the heart of a lion, but he extrudes all the enthusiasm of a child.

I mean, just yesterday, as we sailed past the island of St Martin, he was positively whooping about a pilot whale and her calf swimming off our bow. Last week, he sounded the muster alarm when he spotted a record number of dolphins following in our wake. And, last month, when our research vessel Freedom of the Ocean rallied on a conservational issue off the coast of Costa Rica to stop illegal shark finning, he stood out on deck beating his chest like Tarzan.

But I have perhaps not seen him quite as exuberant as he is today.

Several of the crew whoop loudly in response, as I wait to hear what crazy escapade he might have conjured up for us next. Life with Ethan is always an adventure and to my certain knowledge every one of those adventures has been the result of a phone call.

‘My darling, I believe I’ve found us a piece of dry land that we can finally call home.’

I catch my breath and my heart skips a beat. His words wash over me through the warm and salty air between us. Did I hear him correctly? Did Ethan Goldman, nomadic eco-warrior and king of the seven seas, just say dry land and home in the very same sentence?

Had he really been listening to my worldly woes?

To my worries about my family and how much I miss them?

Had he really understood and been putting together a plan for when we got back here?

‘Really? Oh Ethan, that’s fantastic! Where is it?’ I gasp.

‘Here. In the BVI’s. Although I’ll have to head over to Grand Cayman to sign the lease.’

‘Here, in the British Virgin Islands? A lease? Are we renting a house?’

My brain clicked into overdrive. Is this plan of his both the answer and the compromise?

The resolution to the conflict in my double life?

A base for us to work from and for us to call home?

Only moments earlier, I’d been imagining a heartbreaking and distressing scenario, where I was sobbing into Ethan’s pineapple patterned shirt and saying goodbye to him this afternoon.