I remember turning 50. It was the first year of my freedom. I had, the previous year, hit a brick wall, in a manner of speaking. The road well travelled, the wife and mother, the business partner, the following, always following, stopped me one sudden day in my tracks. I looked around to see nothing new although the horizon lay wide and open and, in my case, uninvestigated. I turned and saw the mud and trudge marks, my own, winding back, back and into the far distance. How orderly, how obedient, how thoughtless. Thoughts rampaged through my brain as if released from prison, all tumbling and somersaulting with glee at their new found freedom. They chattered about new beginnings, about hope and choice and other constellations beyond the one I had, heretofore, considered the only one out there, the only one a-sparkle in the heavens above me. It scared me to death. It lifted my spirits. I had no idea what to do next.

What do you want to do next? The question came loud through the chattering, tumbling, somersaulting chatter. I caught my breath and looked around for what? An angel? Suddenly I felt the cold and numbing wind that blew across these acres of plough and winter and shivered. I was alone with this, with the stop, the wall, the track and the crazy rebel I had suddenly become. I’m not saying I hadn’t rebelled before, never kicked against the pricks, all of them, but I had done my rebelling cautiously and often in secret. Never had the thought of such a walk away from what was expected of me landed in my head, my heart, with such a determined thump. All the way back to the dismal rented cottage squatting uncomfortably within these acres of plough and winter, I talked myself back to sense and sensibility. Behave. You said you would. You’d be letting him down. People will tut and judge. You will tut and judge. All the rest of that day I was battered by opposing factors, big strong factors, and equally matched in this ring of indecision. And then he came home. I saw his smile, his welcome and felt like a creep, the worst kind of creep. I had, a few days before, contacted a local college about joining an art course full time. I had an interview on Monday next. As I sat him down and told him my plan, he didn’t understand. More creep. I told him of the interview. Next year, he asked, smiling his approval. No, I said. Now. Even more creep.

But he came with me for the interview. You’ll start on Wednesday, said the head of art. The course has already begun. I accepted and he said nothing against my decision. I had no car. Small inconvenience he said. Small? We’ll find one. And, within 24 hours, Miss Daisy came into my life. Although he didn’t like me baling the business, abandoning him just on a ‘whim’, he only showed his disapproval through silence, sighing and a bit of head shaking now and then. The following year is history now, the subsequent sales of hundreds of paintings, the move back to the island, the way freedom spoke to me that day and turned my whole life from tinned peaches to crepe suzette. Had I continued the obligatory trudge, I would never have learned to really live.

Now I. have a son about to turn 50. It hardly seems possible. I hope freedom speaks to him too. Freedom is a decision and it lies in the grey of life. The ‘either’ and ‘or’, the black and the white, are just dilemma horns. In between lies the opportunity for colour, a blank canvas, the chance to create a whole new story, not necessarily requiring an abandonment of commitment. Relationships can survive, even thrive on change, however uncomfortable that change may be for a while. But many, no, hundreds of thousands, stay on track, unhappy, unfulfilled, un pretty much everything. We are not here on this earth, in this life, to be humdrum nor trapped. We are here to create magic. And, it takes courage to turn around, I know, courage we all have.

So……what do you want to do next?