# 8. Apron Strings and the Cutting of Them.

Summer storms are so fantastic. You can forget everything in the midst of something so much bigger than yourself. I stand on the wide veranda, making trails with my toes in the ancient dust, letting the smell of the rain wash over me. With each flash of light more rains spills onto the hard ground. More and more rain. Heavier and heavier. The solid gray light hides everything. I can no longer make out the familiar shape of the beaten-up ute, the towering stringy-barks or the collection of slap-dash sheds that litter our property.

I close my eyes. It feels different already. I have to let you go. No forward motion can be made while I continue to cling to these glossy-magazine memories I have of you.


The sudden urge to walk out into the rain overwhelms me. Why not? The sticky heat presses in on me as I dance out into the rain. I take the three stone steps quickly, sticking my dry tonuge out as I go. The rain flattens my fly-away hair and makes my clothes heavy- but I suddenly feel lighter than I have in months.
How could life have ever been so complicated? It's just me, twirling in the rain a thousand miles, a thousand years away from everything.

I suddenly remember my mother, yelling as the first clap of thunder broke through the air. Slippers flapping she would run to whisk the laundry off the line. We'd watch awestruck as the rain bucketed down on her and still she'd stubbornly wrench the clothes, pegs and all, away from the sopping clothes-line. She was a sucker for a lost cause once upon a time.
But it doesn't matter. This is a memory that no longer belongs to me.

I think of the papers, pamphlets and brochures hidden beneath my matress. A pointless precaution I take to humour myself, no one would enter my room these days. Clear evidence of a lifetime of wishful thinking. Still, I must have known all along that these papers would be my saving grace. Papers so creased with wear, they are barely legible. Times, routes, fares. Maps and maps. Black and white information that will get me out of here. I think it is finally time. I have money, mind-numbing work at the local post office proved to pay off. No, money was never the issue. I am simply too sentimental for my own good. But it's time. Evan will survive, the boys will survive. It's time to make sure I will survive too.



And with the first of this years summer rain, I finally have a plan.