During the dark December months of the 2020 pandemic, I received news that my mother’s cancer had worsened. I live in London, although my family home is in Australia, which remained closed to the outside world for almost two years during the pandemic. For the first time in my life I experienced exile.

Dreams overlapped with memories of my childhood home, as I tried desperately to travel back to my mother and the rest of my family. The bath in my London flat became a space craft in which my son and I imagined flying home, guided by the stars, kept safe by the light of the moon. We searched for a path through the night sky, the knowledge that we were linked to my mother by the womb-like containment of the sky. Winged creatures took on new meaning as we remained in London, stuck, and unable to fly home to my mother. The hard edge of the bath changed from a vessel in which to dream, to a solid porcelain cage.

As the months trickled slowly past my longing to be home grew unbearable. The landscape of my childhood home mixed with memories of my mother, and the two became inseparable: one belonging to the other.

Adelchi and I managed to journey home in late February 2021. After 15 days in quarantine, Adelchi and I could finally see our family. Adelchi crept into my parent’s room each morning, a daily pilgrimage to be with them, their bed now a place of comfort and dreams.