A little (big) love story

Once upon a time there was a Welshman who loved to ride bikes, climb mountains and dive in the ocean. Steve had been through a lot; a life of service, a lot of it not knowing if he’d see the next minute, let alone the next day. He’d also had cool adventures and travelled around the world, climbing, scrambling, skiing and cycling everywhere he went. At one point he’d returned to studies and then started a new, very different career in a health profession. He loved walking; was always walking. Mostly on his own.

He’d lost some dear friends. And recently, his mum. She was his closest friend and confidante. He’d held her hand through years of illness. 

He was beside his beautiful daughter through her journey with cancer just a few years ago. Then, when thank god she went into remission, he chose to finally take some time out. Time to heal and reconnect, to find a new direction. Time to slow down. He went to a tiny island called Gili Air in Indonesia and started to make a new life for himself. And then the world closed down. The following year he hung up his shingle on Lombok, the mainland.

Once upon that same time, there was me, an Australian woman who loved to ride horses, look at mountains and swim in the ocean. I’d been through a lot. A life of stress and some mistakes, and I’d been in a pretty dark place. Also I had two amazing kids and some snippets of adventure and travel. At one point I’d returned to studies and started a new, very different career in a health profession. I loved walking; always walking. Mostly on my own. 

I’d left a long unhealthy marriage, and then had been lucky to fall into a love story with a beautiful man that, as stories often go, ended sadly with his tragic death. I chose to finally take some time out and found myself on Gili Meno, a tiny island in Indonesia, with time to heal and reconnect. Time to slow down. There I made a new life for myself and found another love with a beautiful soul, which also, like many stories, ended sadly with his unexpected death. 

The world had just closed down.

So there they were, this man and woman, just kilometres apart as the world stayed closed and became rather messy.

Exactly a year later, in the UK, Steve’s daughter fell and seriously injured her back. He immediately bought a flight ticket, packed a small bag, and put his stuff into boxes to leave with a friend in Lombok for when he returned, hopefully soon. 

That same day the UK announced that in just four days, it would close its border to anyone coming from Indonesia, even UK citizens. And so, wanting to get to Wales to visit my daughter before that happened, I immediately bought a flight ticket, packed my suitcase, and locked my front door.

The next day on the mainland in Lombok, I saw Steve in the hospital PCR testing clinic as he walked out and I walked in. We didn’t meet. 

The day after, negative test in hand, when I boarded the plane and walked down the aisle to my seat, there was Steve, sitting in the seat right next to mine. We were the only two non-Indonesian people on that Jakarta flight. 

“Hi,” I said, through my mask. I had my ear buds and a podcast ready in case. I’d sat next to some doozies on flights before. 

“Hey, how are you?” he said, through his mask. His voice was calm and pleasant and British. I felt immediately at ease.

“Are you rushing home before the border closes on Monday?” I asked. 

He didn’t know the border was closing, and told me about his daughter. I told him I was going to visit my daughter in North Wales. What are the odds, he was from a village just minutes from hers. 

We discussed border issues and quarantine, PCR tests and vaccines, as people did. We talked about our life in Indonesia. Steve told me about all the diving he’d been doing, and I told him I’d just started diving the year before. We could’ve even been diving at the same site at the same time, before the world stopped. He told me how he used to walk around Gili Air most sunsets. I realised it would’ve been exactly the same time as I’d walked, often, at sunset around Gili Meno; the two of us virtually alone on the beaches of those two tiny Indonesian islands just 1km apart. 

He told me about his mum. I didn’t tell him about Harley and Made. We talked about Welsh mountains, and Canada, and Australia, and Indonesia. In fact, we chatted for the entire flight. Wearing masks. When the plane landed, we exchanged numbers to stay in touch; after all it was a crazy world and we seemed somewhat kindred spirits on similar journeys. 

And stay in touch we did. At first random texts just checking in. Then we texted more often. Then we started sending voice messages, it was so much easier to share more in voice messages. And at our age, there was lots to share and unravel. Then phone calls! So nice to really listen to each other, to hear the warmth, the sadness, the laughter, the respect.

Gosh we had a lot in common! The way we thought about things. Our opinions. Interests and values. Our dreams. Our history. 

One thing after another was astounding. Both our daughters were born three months premature in 1991. He used to live around the corner from the childcare centre my grandson attended. He knew all the walks I was traipsing around in the hills with my daughter’s dog. We were both mostly pescatarian and partly vegan. I knew a bit about the medical and nursing aspects of cancer, and back injuries, and emphathised with his daughter’s struggles. She’s an opera singer and teaches music, as did his mum and grandmother. I love singing and my grandfather was a piano teacher. We both have tattoos; one of Steve’s incorporates a tiny semicolon. I learnt that he also never drinks coffee – but what are the odds that his favourite hot drink for more than 20 years already had been the yummy chai latte with non-dairy milk? There was so much more. And sometimes we texted each other in Indonesian. 

A few times I went to a theatre that was just down the road from his sister’s house in North Wales. But he never did manage to come up there to go walking with me. His daughter suffered one complication after another and times were really tough. He stayed on, and got a job, in England. 

The UK gave me more vaccines which allowed me to fly from Wales and enter Canada to visit my son. Steve could relate when I tried to do cross-country skiing at my son’s place, because he’d been a competitive cross-country skier many years before. And he was very familiar with the rocky mountains I walked in when I stayed a while in Jasper. 

A few months later, when I returned to Indonesia, I showed Steve how I loved collecting small bits of tiles that got washed up on the beach; and he showed me his big collection of small stones from beaches and mountains around the world. 

One day I asked Steve if there was anything in nature that reminded him of his mum. He told me robins, absolutely robins. It was robins for me too. Whenever I’d been out walking in the UK, if I saw a robin in a tree, I’d feel it was Made’s spirit staying close to me. Because of that my daughter had even given me a small robin made from wood that had been hanging in my house in Indonesia since the year before.

Then I visited Australia, and when I was in the camping ground in Byron Bay (my favourite place), Steve told me he’d camped in Byron years before, but that he hadn’t stayed long because a plague of jelly fish had made it impossible to swim. 

When I got back again to Indonesia, Steve and I shared full moons, time in my yoga shala, walks in the UK countryside and walks on Gili Meno beach. 

We switched things up. Video calls! It became a dance, both of us felt something unexpected but very special growing. Neither of us wanted to say it. But then one day, almost a year after we’d met, it was time. I wrote a poem. He understood it. He wrote one back. We decided to dance the chance. He said it first, but if he hadn’t I would’ve. It was inevitable. It was right. It was destiny. Both of us believe that our whole lives, with all the highs and lows and loves and losses, led us to this. This. 

People have genuine concerns about ‘online relationships’, especially for middle aged women, but this was not an online relationship. This was a beautiful connection between two people who’d met, not online, and not at a bar, but randomly on a plane. It’s amazing how well you can get to know someone, and how much you can discuss through constant communication when there aren’t the tangible physical aspects. And was it random? Nah. We both believe our guardian angels sat us together on that plane. 

And then finally, 15 months after that flight, we met up again in the UK. And it was wonderful.

It’s no easy thing to love again. It’s no easy thing to risk losing again. We’ve taken the risk, a big risk that’s for sure, but so worth it. We are truly blessed.

And so it’s a new chapter in our stories. Actually, now they are new chapters in the one book. And this book, I pray, will be a really big book with a for-real, happy-ever-after ending.