Wayfaring Stranger - as in...

..travelling through this world alone...That bright bright land, to which I go...I know dark clouds will gather round me, and I know my way be rough and steep... The beautiful fields lie just before me.

...the lyrics of Natalie Merchant's ballad stops me in my tracks, still and always.

I have companions along my way yes of course, close ones, treasures. And yet, there's an element of solitude in every life. Making my ways around the globe, through many lives, often a stranger. In the French way, like foreigner, not the English way like strange/weird/unknown. I've been one of those all my life: since I said eggs-eier at the age of two in England, learning my first English words.

Then to Malaysia, thankfully learning English there from another fair-headed girl who lived across the road, and in a Montessori pre-school. On to Australia, where at 7, I was told I must know about Hitler 'because you're German'! More strangeness. A childhood of wayfaring with my family, travels overseas to relatives and new shores across Asia and the Pacific, unlike many Canberra children at the time.

Then Sydney, making my way into adult life. Travelling again, now more to Asia between work and studies. Never making the gap year trip, never taking a big flying leap into the true unknown, always aware of needing to provide for myself, make something of myself.

Often a stranger, speaking German in Europe to avoid obnoxious Australians, French in Thailand to duck under the radar of the Germans or Australians there. Speaking all three with a cousin on a road trip through Vietnam, just to entertain ourselves and others. Because we could.

Then more ways, across Australia, with a new husband, then two surprising boys - treasures, perfect, so different though we made them both. Travels as the wife of a medical student, student life for him, motherhood and full time work for me. And a big decision to take it all to Newcastle, to settle, be responsible to our family. Another new start, a house, a garden, and always this restless stranger-self. Always from here/not from here.

And always the music, always songs, always searching out new tunes for the soundtrack of my life. Afro Celt Sound System, Buddha Bar, Natalie Merchant, Michael Franti. Again now, in Ireland, searching for new sounds. Kila. Michael McGoldrick. O'Death.