April 22, 2009

It's all good... - Amy Larkin

I never met Ray, in fact i knew nothing of him until he had already passed away. I was on my first trip overseas on my own, i was a very naive 19 year old leaving the shores of Sydney, Australia and the safety of my family for the big wide world and going to take on the world in San Francisco. My Aunt bought me a book to make the plane trip move a bit faster, she picked up "it's all good" because she thought it was about an adventure across the USA (which it was i guess), and because the Daddo family are famous in Australia and she thought it was going to be a story of how Andrew Daddo made it big. It was so so much more. I can not express how different my life would have ended up if i had never read this book. I did actually get a car (def not as cool i know!) and drive from New York to San Francisco, and i made my sister fly from Australia to do it with me - it was the best experience of my life. But so much more then that it made me realise it was more important to be passionate about what i was doing then anything else, when i returned to Sydney 13 months later i dropped out of Law degree at university and started a teaching degree - sure my father wasn't happy, but i was and he in time would realise it is much more important that i am happy and passionate then that he can tell his mates at the golf club that his daughter is a lawyer.

The reason i am writing this to you now is that i have just finished reading the book for the second time, 3 years later for some reason i picked it off the shelf. I have just graduated as a Teacher (with honours) and am happily teaching a 2nd grade class, and love getting up every morning. And no matter what, no one can ever ever take the memories that i have with my sister exploring the US away from me.

I never met Ray...but he most definitely changed my life.