Greek Terracotta Vase

It was the Greek terracotta vase that did it. Chipped on the rim, a tourist's cheap keepsake, mine for $1. 

Why did I buy it?

Because I didn't want to move house. In the midst of morning sickness, we were moving. Somewhere. Our landlord needed to sell our house to buy a home of her own. In my more dramatic moments, I thought of it as having to leave the only home my son had known. I was gloomy.

And this is how we found ourselves, at the height of 2008's rental crisis, on the cusp of winter, traipsing across Melbourne to see yet an another unknown house in an unknown village.

The house was white, old and small, nothing to look at from the street. It had large windows. The gateposts stood at awkward angles. It was easily the worst house in the street. But it had a ramshackle appeal - the garden was large, with old trees that promised to be leafy. 

While we waited for the open inspection, we perused the tiny strip of shops. Then it seemed like a place that time had forget: cafes frequented by elderly patrons, which closed at 4pm, and all the shops closed on Sundays - like Victoria of twenty years ago. 

Yet a place with two op shops couldn't be all bad, could it? It was in one of them that I chanced upon this lost piece of the plaka. I'd never have bought it as a tourist, but to encounter it here in this foreign place?  

What exactly did the terracotta vase do? 

It reminded me that I was capable of changing - that I could leave the safety of the familiar and known.  I had done it before when travelling - a journey to Greece, in particular, remains pivotal to my adult life and relationships. And this vase must've had its own journey to end up here. Did someone who lived here own it?

And so finding the vase, for me with my clay feet, seemed like a good omen. It helped to shift my perspective, to remind me that change - like travel - can be an opportunity, an adventure.