Chapter 16
I was beside myself, freaking out at what was about to happen. I was with Mum at Sydney Airport, about to leave Australia for the very first time in my life and embark on a life-changing experience at just 18 years of age. Suddenly I panicked and my 12-year-old self tearfully said, ‘Mum, I know this is stupid and the timing could have been better, but I think I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to go. I want to stay here with you.’
Through tears of her own, Mum craned her neck as she looked up at me, now a strapping young lad, powerful on the outside but vulnerable on the inside. With love in her eyes and a depth of feeling in her voice that I’d rarely heard, she put both her hands on my cheeks and pulled my face down towards hers so that we were almost eye-to-eye and she said,
