Portrait of a Gypsy

My mother told me once that her family is descended from gypsies, so wanderlust was woven in her blood. She left home at seventeen, was married at twenty-one, then divorced, then married again, and then divorced and so on. She told me that love was one of those things that will just up and leave sometimes, and you have to follow it. So she went after it, all over the world.
I found a photo of her when I was a child, standing at Mount Everest Base Camp. She told me it was quiet up there, and peaceful. Of course, four feral children left her with few moments of peace, but in tropical Darwin she built something more than a house. She raised her children the way she wanted to be raised, and when she had built for them a strong base, she left them to the world. By the time that blood kicked in again it was a mighty force that blew her over the ocean to Bali, where she started afresh.
She told me once that she wanted to have somewhere that was hers that nobody else could touch, like a photograph of her dreams. She’s got more photos than most people can claim, with more faces and more adventures than there are words to describe. But she’s not finished yet.