Tag Archives: stuck

The More Interesting Route

Posted on by under Iconic Place

One of our travel books called it “the less-straightforward but more interesting route,” which was all we needed to know. Of course we would go that way. There was no need to confer, even as extra-considerate newlyweds. We were, after all, celebrating what could certainly be described as a “less-straightforward but more interesting route” to marital happiness. Why opt for the utilitarian route now?

It was Day 2 of our honeymoon, and the route we chose was true to its description. Winding dirt and smooth clay paths led us uphill through a neighborhood of plaster-covered homes, crowded together all hodgepodge, like blocks set in place by a toddler. In some places, the walkway was close enough to the homes for me to touch the lace curtains fluttering in screenless kitchen windows, not that I dared to—just walking by made me feel apologetic for encroaching on what most Americans would label “personal space.”

narrowpathBut we were not in the U.S. There were no wide lawns or privacy fences buffering personal space from public. Instead, we could smell garlic and lemon wafting from windows, and hear the bang of a wooden spoon on the side of a pot, the voice of a woman calling to a child, and the mysterious foreign chatter of a television show.

We walked by dogs lying lazily on shaded stoops, never tied up but also not interested in us; only their eyes moved in the heat of the day, keeping watch as we passed. Brightly-colored laundry was hung out on lines in narrow alleys between the homes, coordinating with bright pink and red flowers planted in pots and window boxes.

As the path continued to switch-back and fork every-which-way, it became clear the travel book Jason carried was no help. “Do you think we’re still on the right path?” I whispered, hoping to avoid being an “annoying tourist.”

“We’re still going up, so that’s a good sign,” Jason whispered in response, with a grin. I smiled inwardly at how automatically my writer’s mind turned everyday comments and experiences into metaphor. Are we on the right path? We’re still going up! Anything is better than being stagnant and stuck. Life is a journey. What happens along the way can be more important than the final destination!

It was all so cliche, but how could I resist? I was on my honeymoon, celebrating the hope rooted in a second wedding after years of feeling stuck and deciding that marriage—the whole idea of it—wasn’t for me. Now I was exploring new lands with someone who made every step one of companionship and possibility. I was able to be in the moment, both to feel seen and to look around and enjoy what I saw—to consider who I was in that place and time, rather than living in desperate impatience for the faint idea of what I thought my life would be.

*   *   *   *   *

Just when I felt certain we were lost in the maze of quaint domesticity (which certainly isn’t the worst place to be lost, metaphorically or actually), we spotted a sign propped in someone’s garden, hand-lettered with the word “Acropolis” and an arrow.

signingardenSomething about its complete lack of official pomp and grandeur made us laugh out loud (and take photos). I imagined a man making the sign, perhaps at the request of his wife who had long grown weary of confused, insensitive tourists calling out to her while she hung laundry or watered her flowers: “Excuse me, is this the way to the Acropolis?” The sign communicated that wry note of impatience, but also one of pride, as if to say the people who lived their everyday lives along the way to this magnificent site fully understood the value of this treasure they had to offer the world. If tourists walked daily by their windows to get there, so be it.

Soon after passing the sign, we emerged from the jumble of garlic-sauteing and television-watching and dog-napping. We could see the Acropolis ahead. Having taken the “more interesting route,” we arrived at the back entrance of the fifth-century BC site, passing through the Theatre of Dionysus, where people were setting up a very modern sound system for a performance that evening.

We climbed further, up and out, toward the Parthenon looming above. Its ancient structure was partially engulfed by scaffolding, perhaps marring the view as seen through the eyes of a romantic, but also pointing to the reality of the architecture’s age and value; it had weathered much, and was worth meticulous preservation and care.

Jason and I stood silently side by side, taking it in, struggling to grasp the weight of history, the span of time lying between us in that moment and all that had come before—in our small lifetimes and for centuries and generations back. Then we walked on, ready to see what was next.

parthenon

***

Kristin bio YAH

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.