Tag Archives: travel

God Says “Duh” To Me

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Half a year after Richard died, I visited San Francisco for the first time with my sister, Gay, and our sister-in-law, Beth. Gay was there for a conference. Beth and I were there to stay at the Palace Hotel on someone else’s expense account. Man, they have plush robes at that hotel. Nicest robe I ever almost stole. Also a sauna, town cars at your disposal, a brunch buffet with everything from sushi to crepes, a concierge every 20 feet. We were living high on the hog that week. I don’t know how I’ll ever come back down to the Sleep Inn between the interstate and Sonic.

One morning, Gay had meetings to attend so Beth and I were on our own to navigate the city. We decided to do some sight seeing up on Nob Hill (because you can’t get lost if you keep going uphill!). My friend, Gleam, had a thing for labyrinths and had told me much about the labyrinths at Grace Cathedral atop Nob Hill.

Now….I’m not normally one for church. At least Grace is an Episcopal church–they don’t make me itch and twitch quite as severely. I’m a church tourist, at best. Grace, however, quickly became one of my most favorite spaces I’ve ever had the privilege of visiting. I found real sanctuary there. It’s a welcoming congregation. The first chapel I stepped into remembered thousands of lives lost to AIDS. The “Life of Christ” altar by Keith Haring is surrounded by symbols of many faiths and a simple circle for people like me. This was Haring’s last piece of art. He died two weeks later from complications of AIDS, in 1990.

grace-2005

When we were there that October of 2005, the main aisle had been decorated with a genuinely soul-lifting art installation. This tiny thumbnail is the only record of it that I could find (because 2005 is like the Jurassic Period of the Internet). Translucent ribbons swooped from the ceiling, suspended by invisible wires. Hues transformed from deepest red toward the altar to pale sunshine yellow down the aisle. The floating fabric sculpture reminded me of a fiery spirit, 100 feet long. The motion of it, the color, the space inside it–all took my breath away. While Beth explored the side aisles, I slipped into a pew and sat quietly, just so I could share the same space with the fiery spirit. That’s when I began to cry. I missed Richard so deeply. He and I had spent many an hour exploring the cathedrals of Europe. Now I was learning to adventure on my own.

Beth had been giving me my space, but we eventually came back together and talked about what to do next. I felt like I was holding her back, but there was one thing left to do at Grace. I trusted her enough to risk making a fool of myself. As we stepped out into the afternoon light, I turned to her and confessed, “I want to walk the labyrinth.”

She was game. Beth’s not usually one for any kind of mumbo-jumbo–she was totally humoring me. “You’re going to need to explain it to me. I don’t want to screw it up.” I told her what I knew of them from Gleam, who had made a pilgrimage to Chartres with the last of her strength. Cancer took her the next year.

Here are the instructions for the Grace Labyrinth:

The labyrinth has only one path so there are no tricks to it and no dead ends. The path winds throughout and becomes a mirror for where we are in our lives. It touches our sorrows and releases our joys. Walk it with an open mind and an open heart.

Three stages of the walk

Purgation (Releasing) ~ A releasing, a letting go of the details of your life. This is the act of shedding thoughts and distractions. A time to open the heart and quiet the mind.
Illumination (Receiving) ~ When you reach the center, stay there as long as you like. It is a place of meditation and prayer. Receive what is there for you to receive.
Union (Returning) ~ As you leave, following the same path out of the center as you came in, you enter the third stage, which is joining God, your Higher Power, or the healing forces at work in the world. Each time you walk the labyrinth you become more empowered to find and do the work for which you feel your soul is reaching.

Beth and I chose different starting points and began our walk. We had the place to ourselves, which let me let go of some of my inhibitions about doing something so mystical in public. I focused on the soles of my feet and the contact they shared with the ground, just like in Buddhist walking meditation. I felt safe in the maze. Not rushing, just doing. The rhythm of my steps did help me let go of the details of my life. I felt the grief slip away, the anxiety abate. My quieting mind sloughed away the months of grief, the months of worry, winnowing it all down to the real question that weighed down my heart. The question I wanted to ask of God when I got to the center of the labyrinth:

“Is Richard OK?”

I know he can’t be here. I know he’s not here. I know I can’t know where he is. But…is he OK?

That’s when God said DUH to me. Not in a mean way, more in an “of course, sweetie, bless your heart” way. It wasn’t a thunder thump of a DUH. I was open to what was there for me to receive and the gift that I received was a simple, quiet knowledge that Richard was beyond all the hurt. I was the one who was hurting, but I could set down my worry about him. That’s the burden I left in the center of the labyrinth.

On my exit journey, I did experience Union. I felt empowered to do the work for which my soul was reaching. Healing myself. I smiled a lot on the way out.

The story of the labyrinth came back to me this week because every time I’ve tried to write a word about anything, my mouth is filled with ashes and grief for my friend, Chris. Last week, Chris’ beloved daughter died suddenly, leaving two beautiful and bright children whose hearts could be broken forever by this. I worry for Chris because no parent should have to lose a child and Chris has had this happen to her twice. Both of her daughters have gone before her and that’s not fair. There are no words for what it is.

In the autumn of 2005, when I was sunk in grief and learning to live in the world again, I got back from San Francisco and began to plan my solo trip to Paris. Chris, Gleam, and the rest of our writer bunch cheered me on. The week before my trip, we gathered together for my bon voyage dinner. Chris presented me with a soft blue beret and scarf to keep me warm in Paris. She had knitted it from the leftover yarn from her grandson’s blanket. The son of the mother who is gone now. The blanket, the beret, the boy–they’re here. The beloved is gone.

I hope that grief, even a grief this abysmal, can be like the labyrinth. A path we all walk, in our way, that teaches us to receive what we need to receive and empowers us to continue the work for which our souls reach.

If you pray, pray for Chris and Wayne and Amy and Charlie and Emma. May they find some peace on this journey.

Petanque

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Today’s writing prompt was “If you had a time machine and you could return to one point in your life, where would you go and why?”

My first reaction to this game is always, “What’s the POINT?” It’s silly to think that I could go back and change a major event in my life. The whole skein unravels if I tug on one thread and I like where I am now. Even with sadness that I’ve known, how could I push it away without pushing away the gladness? Would I go back to that day in grad school when I first laid eyes on Fartbuster? Or to the day I found out he was cheating? Why? If I weren’t that broken-hearted person I became because of loving him, I wouldn’t have been on the side of the highway that morning that I met Richard. And he wouldn’t have had me beside him when he died. I can’t have one without the other. It’s all one life.

Maybe I could revisit a time in my life when I had a clean house and nine hours of sleep a night, but I would undo the tired joys of having two people who light up when they say “Mama!”

As I was pondering this, my friend Robin sent me a Wendell Berry poem:

No, no, there is no going back.
Less and less you are
that possibility you were.
More and more you have become
those lives and deaths
that have belonged to you.
You have become a sort of grave
containing much that was
and is no more in time, beloved
then, now, and always.
And so you have become a sort of tree
standing over the grave.
Now more than ever you can be
generous toward each day
that comes, young, to disappear
forever, and yet remain
unaging in the mind.
Every day you have less reason
not to give yourself away.

~ Wendell Berry ~

(The Sabbath Poems, 1993, I)

“Every day you have less reason not to give yourself away.” So where would I go in my time machine? I don’t want to undo anything, but there is one time I wish I had said Yes instead of No. When I held myself close instead of being open. A small sadness but one that has stuck with me. Here’s when I would go now that I have less reason not to give myself away:

Paris. December 28, 2005. A chilly gray morning in a small park by the Eiffel Tower. It was the third day of my solo trip to Paris and I had my feet under me. I’d seen the view from the top of the Tour back when I was 21 and in Paris for the first time. So that morning, as a widow waking up to the world again, I avoided the crowds and barkers near the base of the attraction and walked farther away. To get some perspective.

My hands were jammed into the pockets of my black cashmere coat, the one I bought just for that trip so I could look more French and less American. A red and yellow crushed velvet scarf warmed my throat. Just a woman, walking in Paris. On her own.

I stopped to watch a group of elderly men playing petanque. It’s like bocce or lawn bowling, but French. There’s one small ball in the middle of the sandy court and each player throws larger metal balls at it in the hopes of tapping the “jack.”

They chided each other after bad throws. Their laughter billowed in clouds in the frozen air. Their heads were covered with black wool berets. They rubbed their hands together to keep them warm and blew hot air into them while they waited turns. They whooped like little boys and clapped at a masterful toss. They argued among themselves over the close calls.

They were busy enjoying each other and didn’t seem to mind that I was watching them. I watched them for several minutes as my still feet grew colder and colder. It was time to get back to walking before I froze in place. I pulled my camera from my messenger bag and took a few snapshots of their game.

Then, in the way of French men who love all kinds of women, even the sad and dark, one of them signaled to me to come over. I smiled broadly but didn’t come any closer. Another grandpere turned to me with a friendly wave and invited me to join the game. I laughed out a “Non, merci!”

Then I continued my walk.

That’s the moment I would return to. I would say “Oui, s’il vous plait! Merci!” I would let myself be welcomed. I would let myself be awkward and silly.

I would give myself away. Un petit cadeau.

Here’s a gift for you to share with someone today.

If you’d like to read other “time travel” stories, check them out over at My So-Called Glamorous Life.

Gratitude for This Day

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This day is trying so hard to be perfect that it’s just becoming a little show-offy. Like the beautiful and sweet toothy Midwestern girl who knocked sinewy Miss New York down to first runner up in the pageant. Here are a few things I’m going to write in my gratitude journal for Wednesday:

The weather in Chicago tonight feels like something that the Chamber of Commerce ordered up to persuade people to move here. Seventy and blue skies with a soft breeze. While shopping on the Magnificent Mile, I bought myself a little green and white scarf to WARM UP.

This city tries hard to be beautiful (and succeeds). It’s the cradle of skyscraper architecture. Invented here, not in New York! I have rested my feet by plinking fountains, marveled at street planters overflowing with orchids and looked out over a lake so blue it’s hard to believe it’s not an ocean.

When I asked the doorman for directions to a pizza place, he winked at me and asked if I was buying. The waitress at Giordano’s complimented my use of “y’all.” Gaggles of tourists don’t mind looking like tourists. I’ve gotten friendly answers from every person I’ve asked for help. I like Chicago so much because it bustles with NICE PEOPLE. Even when your car gets blocked in, it’s by an ice cream truck.

Getting to spend time with Jessica, who lived across the hall from me for six weeks in the summer of 1985, when we were at Governor’s Honors. I haven’t seen her since high school. I was a little intimidated about seeing her—she graduated summa cum laude from Princeton and is the managing editor of a prestigious scholarly journal. And—even WORSE—she has the most beautiful hair. I had such a good time catching up with her that now I’m going to have to miss her when I go back home!

(That’s her up there dealing with the ice cream truck).

The food, good lord, the food. A stuffed crust pizza with the perfect balance of salt and butter in the flaky crust. An engineering marvel akin to the John Hancock Building. Two glasses of rose for lunch because red would have made me want a nap. Tapas at Emilio’s for dinner—dates wrapped in bacon, garbanzos whipped with olive oil and served with shaved radishes and grilled peppers. A cold bowl of gazpacho. Goat cheese rolled in candied pecans with a pear poached in wine on the side.

I get to spend four nights in a hotel bed. No one has played hide and seek in it. No cats have left hair on the pillowcase. The sheets were washed by someone else, very recently. I can sleep in the shape of an X and use all four pillows. I can turn the air conditioning down to 64 and snuggle under the duvet.

My room overlooks Navy Pier, so I’ve been watching the Ferris Wheel spin around and around. I think the Ferris Wheel was introduced here, during the Columbia Exposition in…1896? It was the American answer to the Eiffel Tower!

And while I was sitting here watching the Ferris Wheel, I heard an odd booming noise. Fireworks! On a Wednesday night!
I got over the delight of that and got back to writing when a huge golden moon appeared out of nowhere. It’s lighting up the rippling surface of the lake.

Like I said, Chicago is kinda showing off.

Five Things I’m Taking To Chicago

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1. Five hundred business cards with my new logo! I hope that’s enough.

2. The Hamsa hand I bought in Paris. It protects from the evil eye and catches luck.

“Hand of Miriam” or Hamsa (Arabic) used to ward off the evil eye.

3. Wonder Woman! She’s riding in my messenger bag for the whole conference.

4. My gratitude journal. It goes EVERYWHERE with me!

5. My White Knight. The one who will save me. The brave and bold. Me.

6. Oh, and several pairs of these. Clean.

Click those links to read some classic Baddest Mother Ever stories! And share them with your friends!

Thanks for all the love and support and encouragement. I’m EXCITED!!!

They Sell Underwear In Europe

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It’s a CARRY-ON!

The Blogher conference is 72 hours away! I’ve checked the weather in Chicago. I’ve got 500 business cards with my new logo (and I’ve even practiced the “quick draw” to get them out of the holder…I kid you not). I’ve borrowed a notebook computer so I can look like the cool kids when it’s time to take notes. I went to the grocery store and stocked up on things G can cook easily when he’s taking care of the kids for four nights. I’ve done the laundry. Twice (darn you, cats).

Now it’s time to pack. And I don’t feel ready.

Whenever I am nervous about going on some new adventure, I recall another piece of travel advice dispensed by Richard many years ago. “They sell underwear in Europe, Ashley.”

Scene: It’s 24 hours before our flight to another country. I’ve got three lists–purse, carry-on, checked bag–and they’re organized by item type. I’m crossing through each item and double-checking. I’ve already got backup copies of my credit cards, passport and insurance cards zipped into the lining of my jacket AND in the inner pocket of my purse. All toiletries are organized in clear containers and ziploc bags, with double bagging around the more gooey items. But I’m still nervous about forgetting something.

Richard, on the other hand, walks to the dryer and pulls out a load of clothes, folds them loosely and slings them into a bag. Zips it up and he’s done.

As I’m dithering about forgetting something, he says, “Let’s go! As long as we have a credit card, we’re good. They sell underwear in Europe.”

It reminded me of the line from Absolutely Fabulous, when Eddy and Patsy are trying to leave on holiday and Eddy keeps running around saying, “Money! Tickets! Passport!” And then she runs out to the car but has to return three times to get…you know. Money. Tickets. Passport.

Overthinking things? Perhaps.

But there was that one time that G and I flew to Brasil with the kids and realized that we had left Vivi’s beloved Pengy in the car. Try scrounging through the Sao Paolo airport in search of a replacement penguin. Or the time Richard and I went to Bermuda with a broken camera (Grant had dropped it while taking pictures of his feet) and came back with three rolls of pictures that cut our heads off. Or the time I needed Imodium RIGHT AWAY in Oxford on a Sunday morning.

What’s your thing that you just can’t travel without?

My Mourning Jacket

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My Mourning Jacket

While I was digging around in my closet to find the Cancer Pants, this silk jacket tapped me on the shoulder and asked if I might be so kind as to share its story, too. It’s a story that goes all the way back to Berlin in World War II. Then it rushes forward to one of the saddest moments of my life.

I’m not much for Church with a capital C, but I do enjoy old churches, especially quiet ones. In the center of bustling Berlin, smack in the middle of its busiest shopping street–Kurfürstendamm–stands the ruin of a church. It’s the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, built in 1892 and destroyed by Allied bombs in 1943. The shattered tower of the original church still stands as a memorial to the war and its losses. Next to the old tower, a new modernistic column rises from the traffic. From the outside, I found this new tower repugnant–like a silo. Berliners aren’t all fond of the design–it’s often called “The Lipstick and the Powder Box.”

But inside…oh inside there is peace and joy and beauty, all built pane by pane from the pain left to Germany after the war. The walls are made of honeycomb concrete to keep out the noise from the street. Suspended inside the honeycomb are over 21,000 panes of glass, mostly blue, but shot through with red, green and gold. Like those beads that I talked about after the Boston Marathon bombings.

Richard and I visited there on a sunny spring afternoon. Stepping inside was like walking inside a kaleidoscope. I sat on one of the simple pews and let the peace enter my heart. In that same week, we had been to Prague, where my heart was broken in the Jewish Quarter, then on to Dresden, where I faced the reality of what American firebombs had done to that beautiful city, then on to Berlin with Checkpoint Charlie, the Brandenburg Gate, and the Reich-stag. The lime blossoms along Unter den Linden. The pilfered archaeological treasures at the Pergamon Museum. Everything that week was related to war and my heart had grown heavy with trying to take it all in. This broken church gave me sanctuary.

Glass designed by Gabriel Loire

It might be my imagination, but I think I recall that some of the glass from the bombed Kaiser Wilhelm Church was collected from the ruins and incorporated in the new windows. Even it it’s not true, it should be.

A few months after that trip to Germany, I found the “stained glass” silk jacket. It reminded me of the blue windows in Berlin.

Richard died on March 16, 2005, at about 6:30 in the evening. I slept on the couch that night because I couldn’t sleep in our bed. My cousin, Annette, came across the street, gathered up the sheets and washed them for me that night. She knew what to do.

After his parents woke early, I retreated to our room and closed the door. I crawled up in the rented hospital bed, curled into a tight ball, and cried myself back to sleep. There over the place where his heart had stopped beating. I slept so soundly and woke rested after only two hours. His father knocked on the door to tell me it was time to go to the funeral home and see to arrangements. I asked if he could go without me but I had to be there–because we had married, I was his next of kin. His own father couldn’t sign the papers. I had to.

I put on my stained glass jacket. Ever since then, I think of that day, those papers, when I see that beautiful jacket. How my hand shook and hesitated over the cremation request. The moment when I had to commit the body I had loved so well to oblivion. How his father steadied me with the idea that this fire, this final fire, would be the thing to clear his body of the cancer he had fought so bravely. Like a child, I wiped my tears on the sleeve of that silk jacket, and they blended with the blue, the red, the green, the gold.

Mope On the Plane

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The Reefs, Bermuda

See this hotel? This is The Reefs and it’s one of my favorite places in the world. It’s the place where I discovered that Bermuda really does have pink sand, right there on that pristine, private beach. It’s where I learned to take tea at 4pm every afternoon on that veranda overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. It’s where I learned that fish make a lot of noise underwater. When we snorkeled around those rocks, right beside the parrot fish and the yellow tangs, I heard a sound like Rice Krispies just after the milk is poured on–the sound of fish nibbling on the coral reef. It’s where I learned that you NEVER tell other travelers what you paid for your vacation because it turns out that we paid about 20% of what other people had paid to be there!

It’s also where Richard gave me a piece of advice that I remember to this day, especially on Sunday evenings when my brain is turning towards Monday.

“Mope on the plane, Ashley. Mope on the plane.”

We were sitting in two of those cushylounge chairs on the pink crescent of beach. It was our last day of vacation in Bermuda. Seven days of pink sand, conch fritters, evening dances, afternoon tea, scooters, Dark and Stormy drinks in the hot tub, kayaking, snorkeling, and wishes made under the moon gate. Our flight wasn’t until later that afternoon, so we had stowed our bags with the concierge in order to spend every possible minute on that beach. He was enjoying himself. I was pouting because we had to leave. It wasn’t fair–other people were just arriving. Other people had another week to go. Other people came to The Reefs EVERY YEAR. Some people even got to live on Bermuda. But not us. We had to go home.

I wasn’t talking much. I was nursing my hurt. The only conversation I seemed capable of making was, “I can’t believe we have to leave.” Finally, the man who could shrug off most anything pulled his head off of the rolled up towel he had made into a pillow and said, “Ashley! Mope on the plane! You are wasting precious moments of THIS on THAT. I’ll talk about leaving when we’re in the shuttle or at the airport, but right now….NO.”

I think that’s pretty smart stuff for a Sunday night. How much of life do we spend moping while we’re still on vacation…metaphorically? How much Sunday gets eaten up with dragging our feet towards Monday? How many days do we grind through in anticipation of vacation? (I know I am right now…the count is 26)

So now when I want to stay present in the good times, I remind myself to “mope on the plane!” Even these days, when my passport has expired and I plan vacations around things that can entertain a toddler. We spent two beautiful vacations at The Reefs–once for spring break and once for New Year’s. I was lucky to have pink sand between my toes, even if I had to come home eventually.

Three stages of the walk

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