Author Archives: admin

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).

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.

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}”.

Naked Among Friends

Posted on by under Guest, Travel & Place

The day of the trip was gorgeous, sunny and warm. I arrived at the shoreline nervous and hopeful, wanting to make a good impression. Sarah had invited me to the lake, and Sarah would understand how I felt. She was a female pastor, like I was. We both knew what a struggle it was to feel out of place in a profession that tends to be mostly male and mostly older. I didn’t get invited to golf games or men’s retreats, and so I wanted to make the most of this day–connecting with colleagues while inner tubing and water skiing.

16810235579_4f640d352a_oAfter setting up lawn chairs and drink coolers around a barbeque pit, Sarah asked if I’d like to try jet skiing. I’d never ridden a jet ski before, but watching people zipping around the lake inspired an unusual confidence to try something new.

I watched as Sarah took the jet ski out onto the lake, the handlebars parallel to the footstand as she floated on top of it. Then, as she picked up speed; she came up to her knees. Finally, after going even faster and taking the handlebars up to a perfect 90 degree angle against the footstand, she happily stood tall on the tiny machine cruising along the top of the water.

It looked easy, as hard things often do when done by an expert. When she handed the jet ski over to me, I made my first attempt, revving the engine too soon and losing control before I got the chance to raise to my knees. I tried again, same result. Over and over I held the handlebars, floating on the surface, coming close but always losing my grip and letting go before I could stand up.

Without fail, as soon as the the handlebars slipped out of my fingers, the jet ski would begin to circle, zipping around and around in the cool black water like an eager puppy hoping I would play its favorite game, waiting for me to regain control. Frustrated and embarrassed that everyone on the shore was watching me get schooled by this tiny plastic machine, I tried to keep smiling as I adjusted my swimsuit and climbed back on, sure that I had it in the bag this time, only to feel the jet ski power away from my tired hands again.

On my ninth attempt, I felt it. I was going to get up this time. I had the handles firmly gripped and as the motor began to pick up speed, I was ready. And then – whoosh – the force of the motor blew back into the water and took the bottom of my black tankini with it.

I was naked from the waist down.

I motored forward, trying to slow the machine as I bobbed behind it, holding the handlebars horizontal on the water. Each second put me farther away from my now missing bathing suit. Even if I could have stood up, I didn’t want to show off my exposed lower half to everyone enjoying their afternoon at the lake. As it was, the force of the motor was pushing that most buoyant body part to the surface, effectively mooning every passing boat.

Not knowing what else to do, I decided to cruise into the cove where our group was eating lunch. I thought if I explained the situation while staying a little way out from the shore, I could ask someone to throw me a towel and possibly save myself the humiliation of this new group of friends and fellow ministers seeing my backside.

I held steady in the water at the edge of the cove.

“You guys,” I yelled. “The jet ski blew off my bathing suit bottoms. Can someone throw me a towel?”

After a few moments of confused looks from the shore, I yelled again, hoping someone would take pity on me.

A guy in his lawn chair stood up and yelled back, “Um, we don’t know you.”

I looked again and realized that indeed, this was a different cove and a different group of people than I had come with. I waved and began to motor away, my rear end floating to the surface as the strangers on the shore began to cheer.

I found our friends two coves down. I tried yelling for help but before I could even begin my story, they applauded, laughing, and threw me a towel, telling me that they’d heard me yelling to the strangers down the lake.

The camaraderie the rest of that afternoon was rich, the ice having been clearly broken by my lake-wide display. Instead of being embarrassed or feeling alienated by my escapade, I felt the welcome and affection that comes with shared experience. I lost my bottoms and with them my nerves, finding instead a place among friends.

* * * * *

100_1050“Naked Among Friends” was written by Lindsey Smallwood (far left). Lindsey loves being near the water and usually manages to stay fully clothed. A former pastor and teacher, she now lives in Boulder, Colorado with her husband and two young sons where you’ll often find her chatting at the park, walking by the creek or writing on the couch. You can read more on her blog Songbird and a Nerd or find her on Facebook.

Pelican photo by Lars Plougmann

 

Mi Tierra

Posted on by under Guest, Travel & Place

After nearly 24 hours, we finally landed in Havana. It was May of 1998, the summer after I’d completed my sophomore year in college, when I accompanied my mother back to her homeland, an island she hadn’t seen since 1971 when she boarded a plane as part of the Freedom Flight program. Our multi-stop journey — Los Angeles to Houston to Cancun to Havana — was made with each of us wearing several layers of clothing, all of which we would leave behind. That’s what you did when you visited family in Cuba.

Exhausted, we stood before an inspector who began to pick apart our luggage, item by item, all of which Mom had carefully selected and weighed, because the rule was if you were over the weight allotment, they would require some kind of remittance. Knowing this, Mom slipped our inspector a twenty dollar bill, and just like that, we were allowed to move forward.

Just on the other side of the makeshift cordoned off area for those waiting, was our family—the real people whose names and faces I’d only known through photographs and stories that occasionally worked themselves from my mother’s memory. After a round of hearty hugs, Mom and I were ushered into a relic of a car and off to her cousin’s apartment. With the windows down (the AC had long since stopped working), we drove through the damp Caribbean air under a silken evening sky. I found it hard to believe we were actually here; we were in Cuba, finally. It wasn’t a mythical land about which was sung to me through lyrics from my mother’s albums. This place was in fact real. I let my head lean against the doorframe and listened to the salty waves crashing against the stone walls along the famous stretch of Malecon that held up this crumbling city.

We spent two weeks in Cuba, visiting with family and taking in as much as we could. I got to see the elementary school Mom attended, and the apartment where she had lived with her own mother. Everywhere we went we were treated like royalty—brought to tables bowing under the weight of feasts prepared. Someone had gotten wind that I loved mangoes, so at every stop there was always plenty of fresh mango, the flesh of the bright orange fruit so sweet that it could have only ripened under an island sun. We walked through abandoned sugar factories, gnawing on the raw cane. There were trips to swimming pools, and dinner dances at rooftop bars. Music and laughter was never far from our ears and lips, and someone was always telling me a story of when my mother was a little girl. This woman I had only ever known as my mother, a figure I often worked hard to steer against as a teenager, took on a new light. She had a history that was all her own, one apart from mine. For the first time I saw her as an individual.

My favorite memory rests with the particular leg of the trip that took us to Camaguey, the town from which Mom came. We were sitting in the backyard of someone’s house, most of the women busying themselves with putting the meal together, while the men were planted in a circle, passing around the two bottles of rum we had purchased with our American dollars at the local store. There was the sound of glass clinking as someone poured himself another swig, callused farm-worked hands rubbing scruffy cheeks, and laughter. There was so much laughter. At some point someone arrived with an accordion, and the group broke into a spontaneous rendition of Guantanamera. I know the lyrics because I grew up with them, Mom singing the song at parties, or turning up the stereo if the track came through the speakers. I knew Guantanamera, and I felt part of these people, this island, this place. I sang with them, our arms interlocking with one another, feet tapping in rhythm, the accordion scissoring its soulful notes through the heavy afternoon air.

The toothy smiles, the plumes of dust kicked up by our dancing heels in the backyard of our cousin’s house, the smell of stewing goat meat on the open fire in a makeshift shack of a kitchen. That scene has been stitched into my history and I often wonder what will happen to our connection with Cuba when my mother is gone. She is the last true link to the island, and all the history that lies with those people, the ones with whom we danced and sang.

DSC01229My own daughter, Lucille, was born in October of 2013. Weeks into her new life, my rawness into Motherhood, I discovered that if I wore her strapped to my chest and played music, her screams would calm as she became lulled by the rhythm of my dancing body. Often, the music I played  was Cuban. I recently posted a picture of my daughter wearing a woven fedora. The caption read, Ella no nacio en Cuba, pero la isla vive en su corazon. Translation: She wasn’t born in Cuba, but the island lives in her heart. It’s in her smile — the one I gave her —the food I make, the music we listen to, and the intangible way my mother has taught me to live life. And now this breathes in Lucy, stitched in the fabric of her flesh, in all the ways that can be seen and unseen.

We are always there.

*    *    *    *    *

3_9_14 (25 of 27)“Mi Tierra” was written by Ilene Marshall. Ilene resides in Pittsburgh, PA, with her husband and daughter. When she’s not documenting her life through photography, she attempts to capture some of it in writing. She has been a teacher for 11 years, but finds that often times, the biggest lessons aren’t found in books. Ilene blogs at “These Marmalade Skies,” and her photography can be seen at Ilene Marshall Photography.

In Defense of Wanderlust

Posted on by under Guest, Travel & Place

Standing at the peak, the wind whipping my hair across my cheeks, I close my eyes and tilt my face to the sun. I stretch out my arms and turn up my palms and breathe. I open my eyes and try to absorb the techni-colored panorama of jagged, white mountain peaks, emerald pastures and shimmering diamond lakes reflecting back the exact impossible blue of the New Zealand sky and I think, Heaven looks like this.

I sit on the back of a scooter, hands gripping the waist of the twelve-year-old boy who is my driver as we zip down the jungle roads to a breakfast of green leaf pancakes with palm sugar. We dodge a rooster strutting cockily across the road and I can’t stop smiling from ear to ear because heaven feels like the wind blowing past my face as we bump over potholes, winding our way through the Balinese jungle.

In Canterbury Cathedral I kneel, dappled by colored light from the stained glass windows and thinking about Augustine and about Thomas Becket, crouching on these very stones, heart pounding as he waits, pleading with God to spare his life. I inhale and imagine Becket in heaven, smelling the aroma of this same sweet incense in the throne room of the Most High God.

On a mountain in Peru a whole village of Quechuan people, dressed in layers of wool in all the colors of the rainbow, sing a song about their beloved mountain, Huascaran. They sing in high-pitched nasal tones a song that sounds like some combination of zydeco and a tribal wail. The sound is harsh and grating to my ears and yet I can’t help thinking that this is what heaven sounds like – a great cacophony of sound.

In an old Communist youth camp beside the mighty Volga River hours north of Moscow, I tuck a room full of 9-year-old orphan boys into bed. I hug Dema’s freckly face to my chest and kiss the top of his head and think, The kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these. “Spokie-Nokie,” I say, and turn out the light.

* * * * *

Once, a few years into our marriage, my husband and I had an argument about travel. We had hoped to take a trip, but car problems and taxes and medical bills had strained our very limited resources. It seemed like a trip was out of the question and I was profoundly disappointed. At some point during the conversation Jonathan said to me, “I know you’re disappointed, but there will be other opportunities in the future. I don’t understand why you are so incredibly upset.”

And I said (as dramatically as it sounds), “Because this is the purpose of my life!”

And he said, “You can’t be serious. You basically just told me your life’s purpose is to take vacations.”

What I couldn’t articulate in that moment was that traveling is a deeply spiritual experience for me. Traveling moves me to worship in a way that nothing else does.

What does it mean that the mountains melt like wax in the presence of the Lord until you’ve stood at the top of a great and glorious mountain?

What does it mean that all of man’s accomplishments are like filthy rags beside God’s splendor until you’ve seen the Sistine Chapel or stood on the Great Wall of China?

Why does it matter that God is a father to the fatherless if you’ve never known the orphan?

How can you understand what it means that God holds the whole world in the span of his hand if you’ve never been outside your hometown?

What does it mean that heaven is filled with people from every tribe and tongue and nation if you’ve only known people from your own?

“The whole earth is filled with His glory,” cry the angels. I want my life to be about seeing and spreading that glory, even to the ends of the Earth.

new-zealand

* * * * *

Bio PictureAuthor Bio: “In Defense of Wanderlust” was written by Lily Ellyn Dunn. Lily was born and raised in South Louisiana, went to college in Illinois, started working in North Carolina, and currently lives with her husband in South Korea where she is a teacher by day, a writer by night, and an ice cream connoisseur all the time. Lily blogs about life, faith, and everyday grace at http://lilyellyn.com. Find her on Twitter @lilyellyn

New Zealand photo credit to Jonathan Dunn

 

Alone in Central Park

Posted on by under Alone in Place, Guest

New York City has iconic buildings. Movies and television shows are set there. It’s a magnet for business and the arts and everything in between. Who wouldn’t want to live there?

I had been to the city a few times. I had ridden the subway, wandered through FAO Schwartz, and even watched from along the route of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. So, I was comfortable with New York or at least felt confident I would be sooner rather than later.

I waved good-bye to my brother as he drove back to Philadelphia. I was in my new home, in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Yes, it was actually a dormitory, and it was for graduate school, but I was living there. It was my new place.

The weather that first Sunday in September was storybook perfect. Blue skies, light breezes, and deep greens. I wanted to be in Central Park. I packed some reading material, found the subway stop and hopped the ‘B’ train. As the train rumbled along, my stomach churned with anticipation. Each subway stop was destination to be studied and stored in my memory. The reading material would have to wait.

Finally, Central Park.

NYC-Central-Park-from-abovIt oozed vitality. Baseball games, picnics, concerts, and walking tours. Each step further into the park revealed more. Where would the next winding path leave me off?

While more an observer than a participant in this exotic landscape, it was part of my home. And I was determined to know all I could about my new home.

A huge line of people was formed. Curious, I struck up a conversation with a girl with a pretty smile, “What are you waiting for?”

“For Shakespeare tickets.”

“Oh.”

“Shakespeare in the Park tickets.”

“All these people are here for that?”

“Tonight’s the last night, and it’s supposed to be great.”

“Which play?”

“The Tempest with Patrick Stewart. You haven’t heard about it?”

“I’m not from around here.”

We talked a while. She was cute and friendly. Her boyfriend seemed to like her too. “Hey, do you mind saving our spot for a little while? We’ve been here awhile and want to go for a walk.”

“I don’t mind.” And I didn’t. Waiting in line for Shakespeare tickets – did it get any more New York? With the couple gone, I took out my book and read the Fitzgerald novel I had in my bag while I noshed on my bagel. I couldn’t focus. The humanity overwhelmed me.

But I knew no one. And no one knew me.

When the couple came back twenty minutes later, I was happy to see them. Their arrival meant my departure. After a, “sure, no problem,” I walked away and left the park.

A few days later, school began. Despite my desire to go back to Central Park, I was too busy settling into my classes and all the responsibilities that entailed.

Then one night, news came of a woman attacked in Central Park. The woman had been jogging on East Drive near the Lasker Rink at 103d Street. Police had a number of details: dragged down a 20-foot embankment, killer apparently tried to rape her, violent struggle, and body found sprawled by stream under a stone bridge.

She had been dead three hours when another jogger found her. Despite all the details, police could not identify the victim, and they asked for help. Finally, her identity was discovered. She was from Brazil and was described as living a solitary life. The murder dominated headlines for weeks. The police were stumped.

Had I been there? Was this where I was walking just a few weeks back? Was I in a dangerous place? Should I have been more careful? Did the woman jog past me on an earlier run?

I was fascinated over her and the story. How could someone live in such a big city and have so few connections? How could someone be murdered in this city of constant activity, and no one see the gruesome act?

On a trip back home, my parents asked, “So, what do you think about living in New York?”

My answer wasn’t simple. The same thing that I love about New York was the thing I hated about it. I could go anywhere and know no one. The ability to be anonymous was freeing and exciting. Trappings of expectations were gone. However, despite being surrounded by hordes of people wherever I went, I was alone. All I saw was a faceless throng.

And I wondered, “Did anyone see me?”

ME (1)Larry Bernstein is a freelance writer, blogger, and educator. He and his family live in North Jersey. He writes about education and religion as well as business profiles. Really, he just likes to tell stories – both his and others. He blogs at http://larrydbernstein.com/me-myself-and-kids/ and is on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/Writings.of.Larry.Bernstein.

 

Somewhere Else

Posted on by under Alone in Place, Guest

The red numbers on the digital clock switched to 4:55 as I entered through the bank of glass doors, stepping from fading daylight into a fluorescent glow. A few yards down the hallway, I found an empty space of wall to lean against. I tried to exude an air of contentment and assurance as I avoided the eyes of others trying to do the same.

The heavy drone of exhaust fans and clanking of dishes rose above the silence. The aromas of greasy pizza, chicken nuggets, and french fries were already permeating my clothes and hair.

As the minutes ticked by we slowly converged to form a line at the register. Coming together, but all still alone, like beads strung on a necklace.

When the clock finally read 5:00, my nonchalance turned to hustle. It was easier to eat before the cafeteria got busy.

It hurts more to be lonely in a crowd.

After swiping my card, I strode as fast as I could to pick up my silverware and tray, all the while scanning for which food line would be the shortest.

Salad again.

Once my plate was heaped with greens I walked swiftly toward an out of the way table—three from the back next to the windows overlooking the softball field. The table I chose everyday.

The table where I hid—hoping no one would notice me, praying someone would see me.

The three empty chairs at my four-person table formed a fortress between me and everyone else. I could restaurant-690951_640watch them—filling their plates, joining friends in laughter, or trying to hide behind their books—from my rectangular island of neutral laminate.

We were all students at the same college. We were there for a similar purpose and supposedly held similar values.

But I didn’t belong.

As I quickly ate my spinach leaves, the clamor continued to rise. The line at the register had shifted from sporadic individuals arriving early to avoid the crowds to the crowds themselves—chatting groups of friends, sports teams, entire dorm floors.

The tables started filling up, my sign to get going. I rushed to finish my meal before the groups looking for somewhere to sit started looking my way, eyeing me reproachfully for occupying a space for four.

I resented everything about the cafeteria. The cacophony of laughter and conversations highlighted the connection I was missing, while the greasy food smells clung to me as a reminder. The people went about their lives as if I wasn’t even there.

I blamed them for my loneliness.

And I blamed myself for not being acceptable. For not being lovable.

Everyday I sat at that table counting down the days until I could be somewhere else. A place where people were kinder. A place where I was worthy of love and belonging. A place where I could be the person I wanted to be.

I sat and watched my peers, but I didn’t really see them. I was so focused on being somewhere else that I didn’t see where I was.

College had promised a fresh start somewhere new.  But instead, I found myself biding my time until I could graduate and move on. Even after I had the diploma in my hand, I carried with me the expectation my next job, home, or friend would bring contentment. No matter where I was, I looked ahead to the next place.

A decade later, a simple phrase in a sermon challenged my perspective.

Invest where you are.

As God told the Israelites when they were exiled in Babylon, don’t hold yourself aloof waiting to be rescued. Don’t while away your time believing you’ll soon be somewhere that really matters. Don’t just survive the place where you find yourself. Invest in the place of your exile and build a home where you can flourish and help others thrive. Whether you’re here for a moment or a lifetime, this time and place matter. These people matter. You matter.

My cafeteria table didn’t have to be a place of exile.

I can’t go back and change my experience, but I can invest where I am today. When I feel unnoticed I try to remember to look around for others praying to be seen and invite them to the table.

I don’t know where I’ll be tomorrow, but today I want to pull up a chair, grab a slice of pizza, and join the conversation right here.

Will you join me?


JohannaSchram (1)Johanna Schram feels most comfortable in places that are cozy and most alive in places that are spacious. Though the city changes, Wisconsin has always been the state she calls home. Johanna is learning to value wrestling with the questions over having all the answers. She craves community and believes in the connecting power of story. Johanna writes to help others know themselves and find freedom from the “shoulds” keeping them from a joyful, fulfilling life at joRuth. She can be found on Twitter @joRuthS.

Island, Dharma, Cup

Posted on by under Alone in Place, Guest

“It was a bad breakup that brought me to the dharma,” a teacher once told me. The dharma — and whether or not I’ve been brought to it — is an open question yet. But it was surely a bad breakup that brought me to the island. And the island that made me whole — not just once but twice, so far. It’s good knowing there’s a place that heals heartbreak, because life can be generous with the heartbreak sometimes.

I first found the island in the pages of a catalog. I was just twenty years old, stuck in a humid, landlocked city and itching to get free of a relationship that was hurting. I felt bound to my lover by the delicacy of her mental health; if I went for a long walk to look at the magnolias, I might come home to find her in the bathtub, bloody from a half-hearted suicide attempt. I couldn’t even get to the “bad breakup” stage until I got her some Prozac or something, but that was easier said than done. Going away to college seemed like it might let her down gently. So I looked for the furthest college I could find and found it: a bare refuge of a school, small, out of the way, on the northern ocean’s edge. A place I could start again.

When I told my lover what I hoped to do, she applied and got accepted herself. So my triumphant ride to freedom was on a Greyhound, half the country over with a woman who, by the end, would barely speak to me. That was a pretty bad breakup.

Halfway UpWe went such different ways that few would believe we’d ever known one another. Free, finally, to take long walks without having to worry what sadness might be waiting for me on my return, I fell hard in love with that island. I got a bike and rode it off roads and on, deep into woods bringing nothing with me but my thirst; and I drank from dripping rocks and soaked moss and boughs laced with fog. I would throw my bike into the brush at the base of a mountain trail and climb over red rocks up into a sky that fell over ocean and pine. Until I was finally strong enough to leave.

And it would be there, to that island, that I would drive almost 20 years later, having learned that marriage can be a multiplier of loneliness. That your heart can break with longing for love, despite the ring on your finger and the child you created together out of your two bodies.

I found myself, once again, climbing those rocks up into the sky, this time with a daredevil child in tow and an old dog that preferred the gentler trails. We climbed higher than the vultures and watched their finger-wings glide below us. We’d walk out like dancers on bits of board into a swamp and sit quiet to hear the peepers. I carried my daughter on my back when she got weary, pulled ticks off the dog and I woke early, to see the sun purple the nearest hillside before anyone stirred. And my heart knit itself back together in the astonishing, delicious aloneness.

I wasn’t lonely there, until a few years passed and brought me into love again — unexpected, unsought — and yet there it came, just as thunderous as heartbreak, just as undeniable as the ocean. And I mourned to leave the island, but love rendered it the wrong place to be; if I stayed, I stayed alone, with my love far from me. So I followed love, back to the mainland and away. It nearly broke my heart to do.

It’s been five years now and I haven’t been back since. And I haven’t really needed to.

There’s a story about a teacher who describes the dharma by holding up his teacup. “This is my favorite cup,” he says, “I love it in every way. And I consider it broken already.”

I like tea and I like teacups and I first heard this story as a caution against getting too attached to things. I could also hear it fatalistically: nothing lasts forever, so be ready. But the first part of the story is essential, I think, the part about loving something in every way. Because one of the ways things can be is broken — and hurt, diseased, suffering. What kind of love encompasses even what our hearts rebel against?

On the island, I can be alone and whole, not aching for any place but where I am. But I’m not from there, I’m from away. From the places where I’m broken already, and learning to love, with this heart I have, in every way.

*   *   *   *   *

Alison on a rock“Island, Dharma, Cup” is by Alison Coluccio. Alison lives with her partner and teenaged daughter in Ithaca, New York, in an urban eco-village, where she loves gardening to build bird habitat and fun food. In her not-spare time, she studies plant genetics at Cornell in a USDA lab. She’s worked with people and plants in Togo, West Africa and Irapuato, Mexico, and her writing on seeds and spirituality has appeared in Parabola. (Landscape vista photo, above, taken by Caitlin Regan.)

 

Alone in the City Again

Posted on by under Alone in Place, Guest

In one of the final moments my Chicago community gathered together, I knelt on a swiveling armchair and squeezed my shoulders in next to Caitlyn and Ben’s.  We peered out the window in the boys’ Logan Square apartment; its angle pointed to the intersection of Kedzie and Schubert Ave where rain fell on the aftermath of a car crash.

Alone in the City AgainThe crash had thrown a cooler from the back of a truck, and now, the contents of a summer picnic spilled on the pavement. The doors of the truck remained open, the driver long since run away.

As sirens bent around buildings toward the scene, the sky opened to sheets of water and timpani thunder. Spectators hurried inside, looking back over their shoulders, hoping to catch a last glimpse of the action. Maybe like me, they found it easier to look on the wreckage of someone else’s life than to face their own.

Lord, I don’t want to be alone in the city again.

There were eight of us, expatriates of our college suburb in some stopgap Alone in the City Again 2time between college and the rest of life: six boys who lived together in Logan Square, their around the block neighbor Caitlyn, and myself.

My first year in Chicago, I fell into the trap of urban loneliness; it is easy to remain anonymous in a city—wake up, go to work, return to your little compartment, and shut the door behind you, waiting for an invitation to join the bustle. I was a first year teacher, falling asleep to episodes of “Mad Men” at 7:30 p.m., clinging to perceptions that I could not “fit in” with the cool kids.

By my second year in the city, my unhappiness persuaded me to try something different; I resolved to fashion Chicago into a home. I began to invite people over, rationalizing that perhaps others wanted someone to organize togetherness as much as I did.

With fluttering heart beats and shallow breath, I pushed all the chairs in my apartment into the living room and rigged up a digital antenna to broadcast the 2012 summer Olympics. Amidst my good intentions were less noble feelings of desperation: “like me,” “love me,” “stay with me.”

Talking myself into courage, I clung to a Field Of Dreams like promise that if I built the parties, meals, and traditions, the community would gather. And it did.

In summer, friends propped themselves on pillows that leaned against the rails of the back porch. We watched movies on a wobbly projector screen, and I served bowls filled with stove-popped popcorn drizzled with browned butter and rosemary. The boys came over to my apartment with ravenous appetites and cases of PBR. They recited compliments and “mmmms” around the table, sons of polite mothers.

We lived a sitcom city life, but I soon realized I had built a foundation of cement for a shantytown. The others talked about leaving, about futures beyond the walls of the city. I began to panic. What was wrong with Chicago? What was wrong with me?

On one afternoon, we draped a picnic blanket over the boys’ front steps. I sliced Brie and apples, arranging them on a plate to eat with a baguette and glasses of red wine. The conversation drifted towards careers and futures. Tim mentioned moving to Denver and my heart lurched.

Caitlyn suggested an exodus to her home state of California. Ben proposed working in his cousin’s bookstore in Portland. I tried not to scream, “Why not here?” Instead, I cried on the car ride home.

I felt like a little girl begging her parents not to leave her with a babysitter; if I could have clung to their legs as they tried to drag their feet out of the city, I would have.

At one of our three 1920s parties, I hung my head back, warm with gin, and listened to the lullaby of our conversation. Marty argued with another friend about the Meyers Briggs of Jesus, and Caitlyn and Andrew made the floor moan and creak with their dancing. I knew that we had become something together. With such bounty, maybe no one would ever leave.

Please God, let no one ever leave.

But tonight with the news that Tim had an interview in Washington D.C., I finally gave myself permission to take inventory of our dwindling social circle. Tonight we were together for Caitlyn’s farewell. Andrew left in May for another continent, and Ben would leave by the end of the month for Grand Rapids. Others cast their lines towards new horizons, waiting for any tug towards something different. Already there had been garage sales and exchanges of items that couldn’t fit in moving trucks.

I strung my problems together, making them into one giant demon that tormented me with questions and fears. Suddenly the boys leaving meant I shouldn’t take risks, that all my prospects for marriage would be over, that I could not discern the whispers of God’s will, that I had proved unworthy of love and ended up a failure. I grafted each of these things to the paths my friends took away from the city, away from me.

Daniel played Beethoven’s seventh symphony as two tow trucks pulled the wreckage of the crash away in different directions. The thunderstorm, the car crash, and then a silent ride home with Tim—signs and wonders denoting the end. I wanted the city to swallow me into its dark belly.

I forgot how lonely the city could feel at night.

*****

Meredith Bazzoli“Alone in the City Again” was written by Meredith Bazzoli. Meredith has spent her whole life orbiting around Chicago and its suburbs. She currently resides just west of the city with her husband Drew, who grew up a hoosier. She never thought she could marry one of those. Meredith writes, performs improv comedy, and teaches in West Garfield Park (all stories for another day). She seeks to start conversations about the life we stuff under the bed and keep off our Instagram feeds.

You can connect with her at www.veryrevealing.com

Black and white photos from the night in the essay by Daniel Saunders.