the other life

i'm an australian in some deep way. the other life i could've had.

the thing is this; my parents were given a choice. alaska or australia. these opportunities were available to them after we lived in california. i was going into fourth grade, so becca and i weren't really told about the options at the time. i found out later i could've been an australian. mom was more inclined to go to australia, but we all would've had to give up our american citizenship and she wasn't too hip on that, so off to alaska we lumbered. and here i am. alaskan to the core.

but australia... it certainly is a tempting thought. who would i be if we had moved there? surely more active... skinnier? tanner? i understand that there is a bit more sexism there, as in women haven't got the same opportunities as they do in america. maybe that's false info. i don't know. i've never been, so i really can't say. i'm not even sure *where* in australia we would've gone... considering dad was a botanist/forester we probably would've lived in the bush. so we would've moved to a rather insular community that maybe didn't like newcomers. not much different than the tiny eskimo community we moved to here in alaska. maybe i would've turned out exactly the same... nature v.s. nurture, right?

the romance of another life... with no mistakes in it. *that's* what's tempting about it, really.