Category Archives: Travel & Place

Birthday Cake: Abroad

Posted on by under Travel & Place

I plan trips carefully, choosing my companions with as much thought as I can. Still, despite my best efforts, things sometimes go awry.

This was how I found myself in Europe over my birthday, right in the middle of a two week trip which was meant to be an adventure. Communication hadn’t functioned, and I opened my eyes each morning to greet my worst nightmare: lonely in a foreign country. Isolated in someone else’s house. Out of place in someone else’s life.

I was staying in the heart of the small country of Luxembourg, which is situated between Germany, Belgium, and France. The entire country is smaller than the state of Rhode Island.

On my birthday, my hostess decided that I should have a birthday cake. For a moment, my spirits rose. She asked me what kind I would like and I answered honestly. “Chocolate, with coconut icing.”

She searched through her cookbooks until she found a recipe she thought would do. Then she got out the ingredients and turned the book over to me, sitting at a barstool to watch.

My experiences with baking have been rather fraught. Once, I replaced baking powder with baking soda in a batch of biscuits, ending up with hard, pungent rocks. On another occasion, I attempted to make peanut butter cookies for a beau’s father. When my mother saw them, she buried them in the kitchen trash can, covering them with other trash to hide them from view.

Cara, bakingMy hands shook as I began to follow the recipe. I didn’t talk much, I knew my voice would shake, too.

I had never used a kitchen scale, and it took me a moment to figure it out, reading the recipe and matching it to the new units of measurement.

But, like my childhood hero Amelia Bedelia, I took a little of this and a pinch of that and made cake batter.

We made several small cakes instead of one large one, and while they baked, I stirred up the frosting, following another recipe. It was a little stiff and a little sweet for me, but by then I was spent. I frosted half of the small cakes and allowed them to sit on the counter.

When I tasted one that night, I was overwhelmed by the feeling that it was dry. No amount of water seemed to help.

In spite of my disappointment about the way the trip had gone, I was keenlybirthday cake: abroad aware that I might not be in Europe again for a long time, if ever. It was heartbreaking to feel that the trip was a waste. I promised myself that I was not a waste of a trip.

We traveled to Orval, to learn how the Trappist beer was made and to sip hot chocolate in the chill of the early afternoon. We darted through rain in France, consuming pastries and coffee, the only one I was confident pronouncing: cafe au lait. I endured the stomach aches I got after these cups of coffee, my stomach rebelling at all the dairy.

I inspected leggings at a shop in Germany, only to be hard-sold by a salesgirl who searched a long time for the right English word: those will make your ass look hot, she said.

mint teaOne sunny day, we took the train to the Netherlands to meet a friend who lived in Amsterdam. We spent the day walking around Maastricht, and I reveled in the overheard English words, and the tea I had learned to order, made with fresh mint in a clear glass.

My friend was at ease in the city, in the country, and I couldn’t help but be at ease with her as she smoked a sultry cigarette every hour or so, like clockwork.

I have never experienced friendlier sunshine than I did in Maastricht that day.

For the rest of the trip, I ate birthday cake for breakfast.

I rose earlier than the other occupants of the house, partly because of jet-lag, and I presume, because of anxiety.

I ate the cake until the small round mounds became too hard and my hostess threw them away.

An Inner Place

Posted on by under Guest, Travel & Place

Japan is a particular place, unique unto itself and settled into that particularity. When I am there, I feel completely at home and completely foreign. There are people going about their daily lives, following the predictable patterns that smooth the tasks of everyday living. Yet there are also subtle differences that unsettle a visitor such as myself when I disrupt these easy, orderly patterns.

Just over a year ago, I was fortunate to have work bring me back to this country that alternately fascinates and perplexes me. For eight days in the cold of February, I traveled. I spent the time mostly on my own — Tokyo to Fukuoka to Nagasaki — navigating the obvious that did not seem obvious to me at all, at first.

I did things like standing alone on a cold and windy train platform wondering “Where are the other passengers?” and then realizing that they had stayed inside, not passing through the gates until a moment before the train would arrive. Because, of course, this was Japan. The train would arrive precisely when scheduled. I entered the bus terminal by the wrong door and fumbled about for the tray and tongs so I could choose my items at the bakery. Every day I made mistakes.

However, I recall most clearly the kindnesses of those who nudged me into success.

The gesture of allowing me to go ahead in line that was also guidance about which line I should be in. The hotel staff member who made hot water for me since the instant hot water machines were obviously beyond my experience and thus ability. (He explained that he wanted to be sure the temperature was just right for the specific tea I had selected, silent on the reality that I had not been able to procure any water for myself at all.) The sushi chef who realized I had not ordered what I wanted and gently recommended that perhaps I would be happier with the alternative option offered.

Slowly I relaxed into the flow of the crowds around me, trusting instinct rather than ability to read directions or make logical sense of behaviors I observed. Eventually I found the patterns that guide those who are able to expect and predict rather than bumble and trip. Through this becoming, I reflected on the paradox that, the more foreign my surroundings, the more familiar I become with myself – that self that is always within me but is not always present to me.

Becoming so dependent on others as I did is not easy for someone as driven and self-sufficient as I. My first tendency is to resist – to insist that I can figure it out on my own. To declare that being alone does not mean I am incomplete or incompetent. I have come to realize, however, that if I can quiet that voice; I can hear another. It too is mine but it is the voice that reflects rather than analyzes, appreciates rather than judges, and welcomes the generosity of others — accepting the community that makes me more than I can be on my own. More fully myself. More familiar. More whole.

On my final day walking from shrine to shrine and temple to temple in Nagasaki, one of the vendors insisted that she take my picture with my camera “so that you will always remember this place.” She meant because of the signs below and between which I was standing, tall signs identifying Sofukuji Temple in golden Japanese script. She did not know that she was capturing for me a moment in time to which I had journeyed – to that inner place in which I re-find myself.

* * * * *

photoremember“An Inner Place” was written by Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe. Lisa is a librarian and is many times published, but always scholarly, professional pieces. It is a new venture to write in this genre, and she will have to think about whether she will do it again.

Lisa lives in Urbana, Illinois. When not at home, she lives easily out of a carry-on bag for up to weeks at time. Lisa can be found on Twitter at@lisalibrarian.

Bridge Crossing

Posted on by under Guest, Travel & Place

The sky is spitting at me as I start making my way across the Birmingham to the South Side. Others may take offense at such rudeness from above, but I am not overly worried about it. Black clouds are rolling in from the west and it appears that I am on the brink of an odd February rainstorm.

I continue my brisk stride down the fading bike lane. It was only striped in November, but its disappearing lines assume an older age. It reminds me of a relationship that is exciting while new, but gets neglected after an initial flurry of attention. Does anyone build anything to last anymore?

A car zooms past at an unnecessary speed. Thank goodness for these bike lanes…why do people drive like idiots? I realize that I am moving quite fast myself (for walking of course) and that a small sense of indignation has risen into my chest. I may not be in a vehicle, but I still get caught up in the rush of morning traffic. I slow my pace only a little: part of me wants to get caught in the moment and in the storm, though part of me only wishes to get to work and stay dry.

I cautiously traverse the on-ramp and hurdle the barrier guarding the sidewalk. My feet hit the other side and continue their dutiful march towards the office. I breathe a bit easier having a concrete wall between me and the traffic and lose myself in my thoughts.

BirminghamBridgeWhen crossing a bridge, I am most often merely trying to get from point A to point B. When I take a slower mode of transportation (my feet, for example, or by bike), the line between the destinations, the journey, becomes more important and focused.

In contrast, when I cross a bridge with a car or a bus, am I really bridge crossing, or is it my vehicle transporting me from one point to another? Do I hear my feet hitting the pavement below? Do I feel the raindrops and wind stinging my face? Do I really see my surroundings when a window is framing my view, the world passing by in a blur?

The difference between bridge crossing and bridge crossing is in the experience of the moment. Actually, it is a state of mind:

When I am in a hurry to get to work in the morning, even though I am walking, I am not really crossing the bridge: I am just trying to get to work.

At the midway point of the bridge, the spitting turns into a light sprinkle and breaks my reverie. I look over the railing to the river below. The Mon is usually pretty muddy, but I find that this is even more the case today. It had been calmly flowing in the weeks before: Now it seems to have snapped. It has been holding back for a long time and is just now letting go.

It is a hard process: to let go. The waters seem to dig their heels into the bottom of the riverbed in protest and make everything cloudy. I remind myself that it is a cycle that nature – and a human heart – goes through: The water rises and falls in its own time.

The sprinkle is growing steadier as I descend the stairs from the bridge walkway. My mind turns to schedules and coffee and nine-to-five matters. I check my watch: 8:55. I quicken my pace.

I see other people on their way to our huge renovated warehouse of an office building. They come from all directions, pulled somewhat unwillingly towards the same point as if by some unseen magnetic beacon. Most of their faces have the same blank look of Monday.

The rain is really starting to come down now. I alight the stairs towards the employee entrance and seek cover from the rain. I see a flash light up the sky and hear the subsequent crack of thunder. I pause, hoping to at least watch the storm for a little longer, but someone is behind me, so I enter the building.

I remember so vividly these ten minutes of my day, crossing the bridge, while the rest goes by in a forgotten blur…

“Why can’t my whole life be like crossing a bridge?” I ask myself as I punch the elevator button. I breathe deep, step into the elevator and take note of the strength of my still beating heart. I silently pray gratitude as the doors close in front of me.

*   *   *   *   *

TriciaThickBikes“Bridge Crossing” is by Tricia Chicka. Tricia is a multi-media artist, massage therapist, cycling advocate, outdoors enthusiast and theatre lover from the city of bridges: Pittsburgh, PA. When she is not walking across bridges, she is more often than not cycling, bussing, or (begrudgingly) driving over them. She loves the power of words and sometimes pretends to know how to string them together in meaningful ways. You can find other musings posted on The Chicka Blog (www.pachickster.blogspot.com).

Stuck, Unstuck

Posted on by under Travel & Place

It was January—that moment when, in Michigan, you are still descending into the depths of winter. (Never mind that the days are getting longer, lighter.)

I was continuing to descend, too. My descent was more deceptive than winter’s—a postpartum swirl of hormones and emotions that could just as easily trick me into believing I was rising as falling. There were moments of brilliant sunshine on fresh blankets of snow, joyful baby squeals, and the sense that I had never quite been whole without this little one in my arms. In those moments I felt buoyed. Was the falling sensation I felt actually a rising—a trick of the mind?

No, that wasn’t the case. At least not in any comprehensive, lasting way.

It’s hard to say what exactly triggered me to finally shut down that January day—to batten the hatches, boarding up windows and barricading with sandbags as if to protect myself against a storm I had been watching move toward me. Now I know this about depression: the “what” or “why” hardly matters. It’s not as if identifying “what” means it could all be easily “fixed.” It just was what it was—a mix of chemicals and hormones, disappointments and anxieties, fear and regret, converging and swirling. And suddenly that day, that moment, I couldn’t keep up the charade that had kept me inching forward on previous days.

I could only sit, blankly. Sometimes with quiet tears forging new paths down my cheeks.

Finally, while my baby napped, I called my mom. I couldn’t speak, of course—couldn’t begin to explain a thing about what was happening inside me. But she still heard me, like mothers do. She heard the tears from 70 miles away, where she sat in my childhood home, and she knew I was stuck; she knew I needed to move.

“I’m coming to get you,” she said matter-of-factly, not asking or suggesting, only stating the fact in a way that allowed me to breathe a bit deeper.

So I sat as she drove to me through the frozen world. I don’t remember her arriving at my house, or helping me pack a few bags, transferring the baby’s carseat from my car to hers. I only remember the drive home—to the place I still considered home. I was, after all, only a decade removed from the time I had last lived there, the summer I was 19.

291654079_bc3cf3ce06_bMy mom had dark chocolate in her car, and as we traveled she told me to eat as much as I wanted—that it was good for me. She didn’t ask me to explain anything, didn’t ply me with questions or ask what I wanted or needed. She simply directed and gave, taking the wheel both literally and figuratively as she moved me from point A to point B.

As we traveled I felt the panic and confusion within me dislodge and begin to move downstream. I cracked open the shutters on my mind and began to take in where I was: The warmth of the car and bitter-sweetness of the chocolate. The beauty of the snow stretching out from either side of the two-lane highway—the way it was whimsical decorating the evergreens, and then sophisticated blanketing the ground, seeming to change color as it rose on hills and dipped into valleys, the late afternoon sun slanting onto its smooth surfaces.

I took in the one-stoplight towns in a way I never had before, even though I’d passed through them dozens of times behind the wheel of my own car. There were people on the sidewalks, bundled against the cold: a mother walking slowly as her snowsuited toddler kicked his boots through the snow; a group of three teenage girls who seemed to meander and stall, in spite of the cold.

The towns were then behind us, the speed limit rose, and I saw the sad, sinking homes down along the river, a man getting out of his rusted truck, pulled up alongside a satellite dish. Closer to home, the terrain flattened, presenting farm houses and sleeping winter fields. There was nothing remarkable along that stretch of road—no one, I imagine, living remarkable lives. There were just lives, and I noticed them as my mother carried me along.

Toward the end of our journey she told me a story about when she was a young mom—not to say “I know exactly how you feel,” but just, I suppose, to broaden my perspective and help me see beyond the walls of my confining mind, just as putting me in the car helped me to see beyond the walls of my house, my life, which had become too small.

What my mother knew, what she taught me, is that becoming “unstuck” involves some form of moving, traveling, even if you don’t know exactly where you need to go.

 

The Three M’s

Posted on by under Travel & Place, Uncategorized

“Leave it all on the top!” was written among the other encouraging words. My co-workers had presented the pink bandana covered with inspirational phrases as a gift.

That pink bandana was now tied over my dirty hair. I cringed to look at our guides with their inadequate gear as I looked down on all my carefully purchased attire, bought just for this moment.

It was summit day.

The night before, our support team had made chicken for dinner. I knew that chicken had been carried on someone’s head for the last five days and tried not to think about it.

After the meal, our guide, Wense, came to give my sister and I a pre-summit day pep talk. The highlight of his speech featured showing us an oxygen tank that he would carry for emergency situations.  I wasn’t comforted.

Wense rattled the tent long before the sun rose, indicating it was time to get started. We wrestled into our clothes and emerged from the tent, strapping our headlights to our foreheads.  He looked expectedly at us, silently asking us if we were ready to begin. Melinda took a step forward toward the trailhead and I forced myself to follow her.

The first stretch of the summit was bouldering in the dark.  Yep, maintaining balance, moving from rock to rock, in the dark. I tried not to panic. As I looked at the twinkle of head lamps making their way up the dark mountain, I took a breath and told myself, “Do it for Melinda. Do it for Matt.“34239_409440772942_6699517_n

Since my brother, Matt, had been killed a few years earlier, Melinda and I had gone to crazy places to see the sun rise on his birthday. This year we were going to summit Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. It is the tallest peak you can climb as a recreational hiker.

The first few hours passed with few words and my continuous mental mantra, “Stay calm. You can do this. Just keep moving.” Or, the African version, “Pole, pole.”

Melinda was in top physical form. I, however, overcame a major mental hurdle just putting on a sports bra. I had done a minimal training plan…walking to work a few times with my pack, climbing the one local peak a few times. I wasn’t nearly as prepared as I should have been and I knew it. But, Melinda had convinced me to do the trip saying, with a twinge of exasperation, “Mary, you could do it right now if you needed to!  You’d be surprised what your body is capable of.”

About 60% of the way to the top, it was clear that my sister and I were traveling at different speeds and needed to part ways. We stopped to take a “just in case” photo. She pressed the button, and then again, and then again. After several attempts, she couldn’t get it to work and shook her head in confusion. Later, she realized she had a pressed the On/Off button repeatedly, absolutely unaware. A first indication of her altitude sickness.

A few minutes later, I caught up to her as she vomited into the rocks. She went to get a drink out of her water, but the line stretching to her mouth had frozen. She did her best to spit and without hesitation, she pushed forward. The junior guide followed a few steps behind her.

As the sky began to light up and we rounded a corner, I could see the summit, still off in the distance. Doubt was taking root. “Oh, it’s still a long way. Can I do this? Do I even want to?” I asked myself.

The terrain had turned to rubble, and with every step forward, I slide back a few inches. The backwards motion was wrecking havoc on my mental game and my breaks grew longer and longer. Without a word, Wense pressed his shoulder against my back, prodding me back into motion. He didn’t appear to even be exerting himself.

My mental toughness wearing thin, I couldn’t rely on my own pep talk any longer. Starting to think about calling it quits, I turned to divine help and the rhythm of words.

“Hail…“–one step.

“Mary…” –another.

“full…“–eight inches forward.

“of grace…“–another.

The Hail Mary is 23 steps long.

After I finished the whole prayer, I would pause and then, go after it again. Another 23 steps. Another plea for help. Over and over.

Somehow, beyond my comprehension, I made it. The summit!!! Amen!

I was too drained to do much celebrating. But, I had done 35892_881344741012_7154721_nwhat I needed to do. I had done it for Melinda, for Matt, and for myself.

My sister left three M&Ms behind at the highest summit post, a small token of remembrance for “the three M’s” as my mom had called us.

Enjoying the view, I turned to glance at the trail and knew that I had indeed left it all on the top. Thank God for gravity and momentum. The trek back was a stumbling, fuzzy, grumpy blur except for one vivid memory where Melinda turned and said, “I have never seen you like this. Are you okay?”

I wasn’t. But, I would be…we had done it!

MP Top of Kili35892_881346712062_403916_n

 

Good to Be Home?

Posted on by under Travel & Place

It’s always the same, coming home from a vacation–that last block before our house.

We drive up the hill, and turn under a canopy of locust trees. On our left, there’s the big rhododendron bush, the vacant duplex with the colorful window frames, two red brick rentals, and grass. On the right, there’s trash tucked into the undergrowth, and sometimes a neighborhood deer, nosing through a discarded fast food bag.

“Boo!” I might say to the deer. And if the leftovers aren’t that fascinating, the deer might even look up. City deer are never afraid; I could yell, “We’ve been away! For weeks. We were really far away. Didn’t you miss us?”

And if deer could roll their big doe eyes, she just might. But instead we drive on, pulling up in front of our house.

Home! Finally, we’re home. But how can coming home feel so familiar and so surreal, all at the same time?

* * * * *

Several years ago we made the adventurous (or foolish) decision to drive to New Orleans with a three and a five year old. There and back again, with overnights at a friends’ house in Charlotte and a cabin in the northeastern Alabama woods, it was about thirty-five hours of driving.

And after thirty-five hours of the Veggie-Tales CD, let me tell you, we were ready to come home. But as we drove that familiar last block (no deer that night), waved to our neighbors, and greeted our black cat, something wasn’t quite right.

It was as if we had never left. But we had. After two weeks and two thousand miles, our eyes were now accustomed to new sights and unfamiliar places. I felt uneasy in the old and familiar.

Strange.

But there wasn’t much time for reflection. Instead, there were tasks–get the girls in bed, empty the cooler, take off the bikes. Home quickly became a to-do list. Our room was the aftermath of our two-weeks-previous packing tornado. The girls room was worse. A Goodwill trip, perhaps a dumpster, was in order. I suddenly became nostalgic about living out of suitcases.

It was home. It was really overwhelming.

5861512547_e3e80f63b3_oTime had passed, things had changed, but the same skirt that I had rejected while packing was still sitting on my bed. I regarded it as a foreign object–the North Carolina mountains seemed nearer. Was it only a week ago that I biked the streets of New Orleans? And that lovely cabin in Alabama… I could almost smell the pine trees. Were all of these places and moments just postcards and photographs now?

I threw the skirt off the bed and lay down.

* * * * *

The next morning I had some coffee in the backyard. The chickens were doing their chicken-y things in the run, the kids were swinging under the magnolia tree,  and the sun was shining through everything green.

It was good to be home.

Eventually I slowed down enough to remember one of my favorite quotes. From G.K. Chesterton. The words rippled through my head as I sipped from my warm mug, stilling me.

The fatal metaphor of progress, which means leaving things behind us, has utterly obscured the real idea of growth, which means leaving things inside us. 

Ah… here was a key. I took another sip.

The thing about coming home is that it is work. Good work. But it is not only the work of unpacking, laundry and trying to find the darn cellphone charger. It’s not just returning to my email inbox, catching up at the office, or purging excess stuff. Coming home is also the work of figuring out what my experiences of far-away places will mean in my close-to-home places.

Coming home is allowing myself to be different than I was, and giving the left-inside things room to grow. And as I sat there, under the same magnolia tree, surrounded by the same neighbors and the same city deer, gearing up to clean my room, I sighed and smiled.

“There’d better be some new things in there,” I thought, laying a hand on my breastbone as if I might feel something move. “Two thousand miles is a long was to go for some postcards.”

 

Postcard picture by Else-Marla Tennessen 

Don’t Get Too Close

Posted on by under Guest, Travel & Place

A story about looking for love when you’re traveling.

“I guess I’m still trying to figure it out,” he says in reply to my question a few minutes earlier.

I put my phone back under my pillow, trying to think about what to say. It was after 2AM in Antigua, Guatemala, a tourist town a few hours away from the city in the mountains where I had been living for the past eight months.

A year ago, I had Don'tGetTooClosenothing to lose. No job, no apartment, no relationship to leave behind. So when I was offered a teaching job in western Guatemala, I said “yes”. I imagined myself being free and independent, ready to take on the world. But when I found myself in a place where my primary dating requirement was “guy who speaks English”, the internet became my connection to the outside world.

So when I woke up one morning to find a message in my inbox, I was intrigued.

It’s funny how quickly a new possibility can begin to consume my thoughts. This is usually the time when I start pushing away, afraid of letting myself be overtaken by someone who I have never even met. I start imposing rules, censoring words, allowing weeks to pass between short conversations.

In this moment, I realize that I’m scared.

I’m scared of never settling, of never figuring it out, of never getting it right. I’m scared of being irresponsible, of wasting my life away. I’m scared of the people who talk about me behind closed doors, saying “she could have been so much more.”

I’m afraid of allowing myself to love someone who doesn’t have it figured out either. Not because I expect perfection, but because when I look at someone else and see my own faults reflected in him, I see a relationship built with toothpicks and glue. I’m looking for someone else to hold it all together. I need him to be stronger than I am.

After all, I have tried that before. I have waded through the months of confusion that come from dating someone who is deeply uncertain about everything. Once I return to the United States, still without a job or a real life of my own, I’m afraid that person will be me.

So I want to tell him the truth, I want to tell him that I don’t have it figured out. I want to tell him:

Don’t get too close, I’m dangerous.
Don’t get too close, because I’m broken.
Don’t get too close, because I don’t have it figured out.
Don’t get too close, because I might leave.

How do people do this, I wonder? How can we allow someone else to hurt us, or to be hurt by us? When we’re all stumbling around blindly, making mistakes and trying to “find ourselves”, everyone is a risky commitment.

I wanted to roll over and ignore the message in my inbox, but as I lay there, staring at the ceiling, I had an idea. “Maybe relationships require us to change,” I said. “Maybe we need to find someone good, and then figure it out together.”

“Maybe so, but I’m still not there yet,” the realist replied.

It was a relief in some way, knowing we both told the truth. But still, we are stuck in the stalemate of I live here and you live there and I want this now, but I might want something else tomorrow. Giving someone else permission to change us doesn’t come easily, but I think it’s the only way out.

The desire to leave is a powerful feeling. That desire to leave brought me to Guatemala, and it became like a thread that stretched for thousands of miles, connecting me to another person with the same desire. Love, however, comes not from a desire to leave, but from a decision to stay.

Maybe this isn’t happily ever after. A leap of faith can’t fix everything, nor can a plane ticket bring two people closer together whose ambitions might be miles apart. But someday, everything will change. Someday I will say let’s figure this out together. We can fix what’s broken. And if you leave, I’m leaving with you.

I don’t know who I will be saying this to, but God, if you’re listening, I have a suggestion.

* * * * *

beccaBecca is a teacher who has discovered writing as a cheaper form of therapy. Originally from Chicago, she spent the past year living and working in the town of Xela, Guatemala, where her hobbies included squeezing onto tiny, overcrowded busses, reading in the park, and smiling and nodding when people spoke Spanish much too quickly. She blogs at beccanelsonwrites.com, where she is passionately spreading the word that it’s okay to fail. You can also follow her on twitter @beccaliz.

To Love a Place Is to Love the World

Posted on by under Travel & Place

Last week, I walked out of my families ranch house at the late hour of a summer sunset. The night was clear, the air was finally relieved of the record rainfall Texas experienced in May, the stars were already shining, and the sun was releasing its last embers on the edge of the darkly hued sky. I was taken away by that beloved place. I was almost breathless as the moon rose to meet the dying sun, and simultaneously I was saddened by the thought that maybe someone else does not have a place that wraps them in their love for it.

Every summer since I was 18 I have gone somewhere outside of my beloved Texas. I have been back to China, all over Europe, to Russia’s great city of Moscow and its deep eastern heartland in Siberia, seen a sunrise against magnificent Mt. Kilimanjaro in Kenya, and also seen maybe the world’s most beautiful sunset on the island of Santorini south of Greece. I have been to almost every state in the US on yearly road trips with my closest friends. I spent parts of last summer in Columbia, my first trip and hopefully not my last trip to South America, Colorado, New Mexico, and several other long road trips through the state of Texas.

Yet I never set out to be well travelled, nor do I consider myself someone who seeks adventure. But here I am in my late 20’s and by most measures well travelled, maybe it’s a product of affluence plus my generation’s disposition toward travel, but even then, I have gone to more places than those averages would suggest. Sometimes I have gone at the behest of others, sometimes because I was just curious. I have been to every continent except for Australia and Antarctica, yet I never intended to go anywhere. I love where I live. I love Texas.

Recently, I have been watching a couple documentaries titled “A Long Way Round” and “A Long Way Down” which are about Ewan McGregor and a friend riding around the world on motorcycles. My close friends and roommates watch them because they are planning on going around the world for a year starting this summer. Half-jokingly Ewan will make the same remark whenever he gets to a beautiful place on his journeys: “Ah, this looks like Scotland.” And then he’ll say something like: “the Scots created the rest of the world and they made it in our image, that’s why the world looks like Scotland.” It’s funny mostly because he’ll say it about a place like Russia or Ethiopia, so far from Scotland, and in many ways so different from his home, and he’ll say it in this quirky, nerdy scottish accent that would make me laugh anyways. But there is still some honest to goodness wonder in Ewan’s voice as he says it. He believes it to some degree, and you can tell he really relishes the different, but similar beauty.

In a similar way in all my journeys, I have found the places I have loved most, the places I found most beautiful, reminded me in some way of Texas while also being extraordinarily different. Kenya shaded its rough West Texas red dirt with a wide Texas sky, yet there were zebras and Giraffes running around underneath this indescribably massive mountain. I found it astonishing and bemusing when all the Kenyans wanted my rough, beaten cowboy boots because they realized just how well it would suit them walking on their red dirt, just as I find them befitting while walking around on my grandmother’s land in South Texas. I loved them for it, and I loved Kenya for its  its shadows and shades of Texas. I learned to love all of it that was beyond what I knew, but it started from the roots of what I already loved. Its beauty grew on me because of its strange sameness. Maybe that is the essence of beauty: a new appearance which evokes a beloved place while simultaneously changing the way we loved that past place.

It’s an often spoken cliche that it’s easier to love all of mankind than it is to love a single person. But we batter the word ‘love’ by using it too often to mean too many things. To love something, someplace, or somebody requires a textured romance, a felt knowledge of its individual flecks. Our human love, the real kind that comes from our bodies, souls, and minds, is bought with the precious care of given attention. The one thing that I can add in this time of travel and placelessness is that if we pay attention to the little beauties in the places we go, we will find in them hints of our home. And if we have known a place where its sights and sounds wrap us in the arms of our love for it, we may find that to know a place is to know the world and to love a place is to love the world.

Under The Creation of Adam

Posted on by under Guest, Travel & Place

I rocked her, swaying side to side and revolving in place, while she was snug against my chest wrapped in the carrier. Audrey was loud and upset from a missed nap on a day out in Rome, so I quietly sang to her hoping she’d nod off.

I had always hoped to be here, but never imagined it would be with my husband and our two young children. I had envisioned endless time and a schedule that only I would be subject to. But there we stood, all of us, in the Sistine Chapel, under The Creation of Adam. I wanted to sit and stare up at this masterpiece, but instead we were working to hush our children, using quietly-hissed demands. Finally, with an ache in my neck from craning it backward and the weight of the carrier pulling at my shoulders, I made my exit sooner than I’d wanted.

sophia_audrey_romeA few days later, I was picking up my almost-two-year-old off the cold marble tiles at the Galleria dell’Accademia, setting her upright again. Then I asked my four-year-old to stand instead of walk-crawl on her knees which was an obvious distraction in this place. All of these parental musts couldn’t help but overshadow my few brief glances at Michelangelo’s 16-foot statue of the David. I was hoping for an emotionally holy-artistic experience, but there wasn’t time for it. A moment later, we whisked our children outside where they had permission to be as loud and playful as they wanted.

During these angry-annoyed moments with my children, I imagined what it would be like to travel without kids: the simplicity of putting on my own coat without having to bother helping anyone else; the unhurried and uninterrupted time to contemplate and comprehend the artistic and historical; the delicious glass of red wine sitting on the table, unafraid of being spilled, just waiting to be slowly enjoyed, savored.

You get the idea.

Traveling with kids, in a constantly changing environment, is one of the most stressful endeavors I’ve experienced so far—“Just eat the gelato and watch Elmo on the iPad and sit still for one minute, damnit!!”

We are slow travelers. Our pace is interrupted by children trying to get our attention. Our backs get sore from holding children who refuse to walk on their own or who would otherwise get lost in the London foot traffic. They need us over and over again. We are the exhausted ones, trying to enjoy, trying to be thankful for both having the opportunity to travel as well as for parenting these little ones of ours. We live in that dissonance every time we embark on another journey. We hold onto our sanity as tightly as we can while also grasping at the coat sleeves of our children.

We’ve learned about the medical system in five different countries and are pros at locating pharmacies and finding pediatric medicine. Despite multiple attempts to force our daughters to experience the local flavors, we often eat lunch at yet another McDonald’s. We also feel the sting when we’ve paid our child’s entrance fee to see the 1000-year-old castle and they are more interested in the grass surrounding the castle.

And yet, there is a special medal we earn for bravery and for courage when we travel with our children. We receive more smiles and more forgiveness for not speaking the native language when locals see how distracted we are with our littles. On many occasions, we’ve received “ciao bella” from older Italian couples with lovely wrinkled grins as they gently touch our children’s cheeks. Our itineraries always contain a stop by the city park where children don’t care about languages spoken other than the universal language of play. The grinning faces of our children has been enough to earn them a few extra free pieces of Swiss chocolate. Traveling with children means we get to be silly and laugh about the stench of whales exhaling through their blowholes. We get to observe more—such as the differences between ladybugs in Denmark and in Sweden— because we are slowed by our children’s stubby legs and handholding.

They help us care and they soften us.

One day we will love telling them about their travels as young children, and by then I won’t remember all of the hard parts. Instead, I will remember the amazing: daring to take our two young children into a world that has such breathtaking beauty and such magnificent diversity, and telling them about the God-made things and the incredible things people have constructed. All of our experiences in traveling with our children—hurriedness and limitations clipped by slivers of pure amazement, delight, detail, forgiveness and companionship—are woven through the spirit of our family story. That story is our masterpiece.

*   *   *   *   *

bio-pic_small“Under The Creation of Adam” is written by Lisa Collier. Lisa moved from Pittsburgh in 2012 and is currently an expat living in Doha, Qatar as a trailing spouse. Her husband, two girls and dog make this place a home. Lisa took on the challenging but wonderful experience of homeschooling this past year.  Lisa has traveled quite a bit, but the view from inside the train on the way from Milan to Zurich was one of the most breathtaking scenes of all. Read more on her blog, “Once You are {Real}”.

Distance

Posted on by under Travel & Place

A damp chill in the early morning air, unusual for April this far south, makes me shiver. My azaleas and dogwoods are laden with buds yearning to give a color show of pinks and whites.

“Maybe my wisteria will be in bloom when we get back,” I say to myself.

“Come here and tell me what you think,” Tom calls.

Milk crates and boxes filled with antique glass bottles are packed in the rear cargo hold of our SUV. Like a chess player contemplating his next move, Tom, my husband, is surveying the situation—rotating the multi-sized containers until he makes a space for “just one more.” We are preparing to leave for a collectibles show and sale in a small Virginia town nestled in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

“Where in the world are we going to put our luggage, our clothes on hangers, and my tote bag?  I  ask.”Something’s  got to give.”

***

The April tax crunch and an impending audit of our family business have pressure-cooked the creative juices and energy out of me. Tom rarely smiles. Our tempers flare—often. Silence follows. We’ve settled into a rhythm: Work. Sleep. Eat. Work. Sleep. Eat.

Five hundred miles of interstate stretch from Memphis to the Virginia state line. West to east we follow a route we have traveled many times. Tom drives, with a slight hunch of his shoulders, leaving a space between the seat and his back. I absentmindedly reach over and rub his back, circling my fingers over flannel and the nape of his neck.

I see cows graze in a pasture, dots of black scattered across a pasture of brown and patchy green.

“There are your cows,” says Tom with a knowing smile.

As I begin to tell a childhood story about my pet cow, I stop myself and apologize for re-hashing a tale he has heard many times during our 30 years together.

“It’s okay,” he says. Tom smiles, reaches over, and squeezes my hand.

Nearing Nashville, the road begins a gentle climb, bordered by an irregular wall of layered rock. Small trees struggle to maintain their footing as they grow through crevices in the stone. A few reddish brown leaves have hung on to their spindly branches since autumn.

***

A sign greets us: Welcome to Virginia. Virginia is for Lovers. The interstate winds slowly, flanked by deep ditches and streams of water littered with broken Styrofoam, food wrappers, and beer cans. Tidy white clapboard houses, with painted shutters and porches for sitting, live in the shadow of houses with unhinged shutters and collapsing porches.

JESUS IS LORD. WE SELL GUNS. proclaim the signs nailed side by side on the back of a weathered shed with a rusty red metal roof.

“Oh my goodness!” I exclaim. “I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.”

Our route leads us off the interstate to a two-lane highway with the occasional pothole. I hear the tinkle of shifting glass in the back of the vehicle and gasp. Tom assures me his careful packing will protect the fragile bottles from breakage.

Spring is coming slow here, also. The forsythia is starting to splash her cheerful yellow against the canvas of winter’s lingering gray. Slips of green are pushing through the pea-gravel at the side of the road. The mountains rise above this plateau, inviting us to travel to higher ground.

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photo by Lisa Phillips