The Dice (by Heather)

Do you have choices? Write about making choices (or not) and the consequences.

This story is autobiographical.

Sometimes you know you have the power.

One such moment occurred as I leaned against the piano, half listening while our good friend Thom quietly played something jazzy. Another cluster of friends grouped around the fireplace, feeding logs into the fire and discussing the end of civilisation. It was 28 years ago, at the peak of the cold war with a global recession threatening. This group of friends had been discussing possible perils, painting scenarios and hatching plans for many months. There were eight of us, a diverse lot – including a mother and teacher (that was me), a computer analyst (my husband Rick), an accountant, a stock market analyst, a cook, a shelf-stocker and a first violinist for the Vancouver Symphony. The group was informally led by Klaus, an eccentric genius who had been a scientist researcher at the Berkeley lab’s particle accelerator before escaping to Canada for tax evasion.

The plan at the top of the group’s list involved moving to Australia – a peaceable, English-speaking, democratic, warm and fertile country tucked safely away in the southern hemisphere. No one had actually ever been there but it looked like a good, safe place to raise a family and live a life.

…So, back to the piano, with Thom tickling the ivories. On that particular evening, notwithstanding my casual demeanour, I was terrified – and it was because I had the power. I was the one who recognised the group was at a cusp, that we had begun talking in circles because we were breathing the thick atmosphere that precedes a major decision to be made. Somebody was going to have to say, “Stay or go? Give it up or get moving?” And I knew that I, as a mother of two (a newborn and a two year old), close to my family with a strong network of friends, had the most to lose and the most to gain. That, and a reputation for being grounded and practical, gave me the power.

Suddenly I had an image that there was a giant dice in front of me, and that I was shouldering it up, up, up onto its sharp edge. I pictured how I could walk over to my friends and say, “Look, we’ve had a great time talking; let’s pack it up and make the best of what we’ve got here,” and the dice would effortlessly topple back to its normal position.

Or I could say, “Okay, time to make a move, who’s down to the Australian embassy with me tomorrow?” and the dice would topple the other way. The Australia way; the falling-off-the-end-of-the-earth way. The Here-there-be-dragons way.

So I took a few deep breaths and concentrated for a moment on Thom’s rich chords. I checked the dice, poised there in perfect balance. Then I walked over to the fireplace, waited for a break in the conversation, and said, “So what’s the deal? Are we going to keep talking, or give it a go?” It was a gauntlet thrown at the suspended dice.

There was a long moment of silence. I watched the dice hover, the faces become tense. Then Klaus said, “Well, the lady has issued us a challenge!” and the dice slowly toppled. At least, MY dice toppled. Over the next few minutes, everyone else confronted their own totems of choice and one by one, embraced a new future.

…Which brings us back to today, almost 27 years to the day since we arrived in Sydney with two small children, 100 cubic feet of possessions and very pale skins. I’m sitting at my favourite café, a spot right on the water (over the water, actually) in a little coastal village called Manning Point, in New South Wales, Australia. I’m admiring a cormorant who’s drying himself on a pole. A few minutes ago I watched a dolphin glide in and out of the water. Rick is off on his daily beach walk. Our beautiful house perches on a hilltop a few kilometres from here. I will video-conference with my mother on Skype later this morning. An abundance of wonderful friends surrounds us.

I saw none of these things in that moment while the dice stood on its edge. I also didn’t see, for example, that we would spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in travel expenses and lost income travelling back to see our families. I didn’t see that when our children became adults, they would be drawn back to Canada to try their hands at the country of their birth. I didn’t see my father or my brother drawing their last breaths while I was twelve thousand kilometres away.

How can you ever know these things?

You can’t. You can only watch for the power, for that moment of choice, and do your best inside that moment.

And then watch for the dolphins.