The walk from Estella to Los Arcos (approximately 21km), passes by the ancient monastery of Irache in Ayegui, which has two fountains: one for water, and one for wine. More than 100 liters of wine are dispensed in the wine fountain each day for pilgrims passing through, and I’m not going to lie: despite my non-impressive wine tolerance (after a couple glasses I’m a high-pitched comedian), I was so looking forward to this wine fountain. The rest of the walk passes through small villages and vineyards, but there are no services for the final 12km into Los Arcos, so you’d better come stocked with your own water (and wine). It was always my intention to keep a travel journal on this trip, in which I would write at night or early in the morning, when normal people sleep but I read, write or lay awake hating myself for not being able to sleep. I was going to post some pictures on Instagram and write long newsy posts on my FB author page, and like and share the posts from my fellow travelers and feel particularly accomplished for having experienced so much and felt so much and grown so much. ^^ This is the bitterness of pandemic life talking, as I write from my tiny house, my narrow window on the world since March 12. It’s not just the experiences that didn’t happen, but it’s the memories that weren’t made. We may get back to Spain and the Camino someday, but until then, we won’t have our giggling stories about the wine fountain or how far off the trail I had to go to find a private place to pee before Los Arcos. There will be no travel journal to thumb through later, when I want to reminisce. And there won’t be, a year from today, a FB memory popping up: a smiling selfie, a snapshot of the monastery, a group picture at second breakfast, the pilgrim’s dinner at an albergue. We hope you enjoy looking back on your memories on Facebook, Paula. ** Facebook is good at reminding me of things that I would have forgotten, like the time a bird sauntered into our house through the French doors, or the time we won two pitchers of beer at the pub on trivia night. Sometimes heart-wrenching things pop up, too, like the note about putting our cat down after his terminal diagnosis, or the memorial service for a dear friend. Four years ago today, Facebook tells me, I was speaking in the Bay Area for a short leg of my Drowning Girls book tour. Two years ago today I was in Manorbier, on the southern coast of Wales, enjoying the lead-up to a friend’s wedding in the town’s medieval castle. It was a dream in a week of dreams. And then, there was a year ago. I was sitting on my front porch, watching wind billow through the Modesto Ash trees that were once lovely (and are still sometimes lovely) but which the city refuses to remove or properly care for. They are now hollow tinderboxes, and the gusts of wind were threatening to bring them down. My neighbor came and stood next to me, and for a while we looked worriedly at the trees together. Eventually he went back inside his house, and almost immediately there was a horrific crack and a giant limb fell onto his son’s truck. I raced around the fallen limb to get my neighbor, who apparently listens to the television at a very loud volume and had missed the big event. We moved the branch, he moved the truck, and I called the city to let them know that the rest of the tree was in bad shape. Due to the high volume of calls… And then I phoned Will, who was en route from Oakland airport in thick traffic and right then climbing the Altamont. In case I’m not home when you get here, I told him, don’t park near the front of the house. The trees are-- And then he said, “Oh, shit, shit, my car just exploded, I have to get off the phone.” Dead air. I called him back, and it went to voicemail. I texted What’s going on? Are you okay? I called my friend Adam in a panic, and he told me to calm down, not to worry, he would come over. Another gust of wind hit the tree with the downed limb, and another. I watched it sway, brittle and creaking, and then with a giant snap, the whole thing came down, hitting another tree on the way and taking out a massive limb. And reader, I started to bawl. As Jane Austen wouldn’t say, I started to absolutely lose my shit. ** Will called back ten minutes later. His car had suddenly died—a blown head gasket, we later learned, and goodbye chocolate brown Mini—in the middle of stop-and-go traffic, and a passing motorist had helped him push it to the side. I told him about the tree, around which most of the neighborhood had gathered, snapping pictures with their phones. “We’ll be okay,” he said, soothing my tears although he was the one on an overpass with a dead car and no hope of a tow truck for hours. “It’ll all be okay.” I didn’t say all of this on Facebook, although I posted my own picture of the tree, its carcass splayed in the street for an hour or so before someone came to haul it away. (It was another week before the Mini was towed from a service lot to our house, and that carcass stayed in our driveway for months before someone came to haul it away.) This is the problem with snapshots, of course. They only tell part of the story; they only capture what’s in the frame. That moment can be perfect while a few feet away, the world is falling apart. That moment can be perfect, while tragedy is coming around the corner. Still, they serve as reminders. I was here. We were here. This happened.
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Puente la Reina to Estella is a 20km hike, mostly through little towns: Mañeru, Cirauqui, Lorca, Arandigoyen, through vineyards and olive orchards. When Will and I were first paying attention to COVID-19, in the first week of March, we saw the news of the outbreak in Italy, the horrible death toll, the overwhelmed hospitals and morgues. I remember that we were sitting in front of the television, and we looked at each other. Well, shit. Although we held out hope, expressed in odd moments during the early stages of our quarantine--maybe the virus wouldn’t be as bad as the early reports, maybe it would clear up soon, maybe travel would be possible after all—it was soon clear we wouldn’t be heading to Spain on June 1. In fact, the Camino groups we follow online were issuing clear and urgent warnings: If you are here walking, stop now. Make your way out of the country. Go home. If you are at home—stay there. Do not come. Travel restrictions soon followed: “Only Spanish citizens or citizens/legal residents of EU or Schengen countries may enter Spain. U.S. citizens without Spanish/EU/Schengen citizenship/residency likely will be barred from entering or transiting Spain by air, land, and sea.” As of June 6, there were 241,310 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Spain and 27,135 deaths. 490 deaths were in the Navarre region, where we would have walked today. Health care workers have made their own protective equipment, and nursing homes have been overwhelmed. (See source.) This is no time to be a tourist. ** There are two ways to go through the world: as a traveler or as a tourist. I’ve been both. I’ve been the tourist who hits the highlights of a city in a day or two and returns home with a few trinkets in a suitcase, a basic understanding of geography, a few snapshots of customs and cultures, a shallow understanding of people and place. In 2002, Will and I were making our way from Venice to Rome via train, when we ran into an American couple about our age. At this point we’d been traveling for a couple weeks, and we’d had very few full conversations, due to our limited guidebook phrases and the fleeting nature of our encounters—friendly wait staff, harried news agents. We immediately started chatting about where we’d been and where we were going, and about five seconds later, I realized I disliked these people intensely. It wasn’t just because the man kept referring to the Pantheon as the Parthenon, as in “I hear you can walk right into the Parthenon as long as they aren’t holding a service.” I gritted my teeth, whispered “Pantheon” under my breath. It wasn’t just because the woman was asking if I knew where to find Prada, where the best shopping was. At her feet were several crisp paper bags bearing the names of high-end designers, the contents wrapped in tissue. At my feet was my grubby backpack bearing two changes of clothes, my travel journal and the novel I would rather be reading. At the train station, we parted ways, but the next day, there they were: arguing in front of the ATM near the Pantheon, their angry English soaring over the busyness of the square. I linked arms with Will and pulled him the other way before they spotted us, toward a fountain alive with splashing children and a nearby gelato cart. I have thought of these people often over the years. It’s easy to be scornful of them, easy to judge with very limited knowledge of their situation and only this small snapshot of time. And also I’ve worried that I’ve become them—I have a larger bank account than I did eighteen years ago, and maybe I’ve become somewhat jaded as a traveler: been there, done that. ** A tourist sightsees, skimming the surface of the locale; a traveler digs in to experience the culture, the customs, the food, the people. A tourist has no understanding of the place, and therefore leaves without it making a deep impression on them. Oh, Rome is great. There’s a fantastic Prada on Via de Condotti! A traveler wants to understand, to visit places beyond the Ten Things to Do In… list. A tourist blusters into a new landscape, looks around, finds fault with the way the landscape is different from what they expect. A tourist speaks boldly in their native language, passing judgments, wanting to educate others, needing to be heard. The traveler is quieter, an observer rather than a doer, a listener rather than a speaker. A tourist has the answers--the guidebook provides them—even if they are superficial and incomplete. A traveler uses the guidebook as a starting point, but does their own investigation, talks to the people who live there, hears from others who don’t share their perspective. ** I have been a tourist in my own country, too—in my own community. I have not always investigated, not always dug deeper to understand the history, to find the truths or confront the lies. I know this is privilege: I can make it through life without too much unpleasantness. I can sit back and be shocked that people are angry, that anger can turn violent. It is easier, although too deeply unsatisfying, to be a tourist. It is more challenging, but deeply rewarding, to be traveler. Today’s walk, from Pamplona to Puenta la Reina, would have been 24 km, including a steep ascent up to the wind turbines and the Alto del Perdón (the Pilgrim’s sculpture) outside Zariquiegui. (These names! I love them.) The Alto del Perdón, also known as the Mount of Forgiveness, features prominently in The Way, the Estevez-Sheen film about the Camino. It’s not that the act of walking, for most, is intrinsically difficult. (Wrap that knee and you’re good to go, girl!) When I look at the estimates on Google maps—although I’m sure I walk at a slower pace—it doesn’t look so difficult. Walk for five hours, with a break for second breakfast somewhere along the route? No problem. It becomes more difficult when it’s a daily thing, when the blister on the pinky toe doesn’t have a chance to heal, or the little twinge in the ankle becomes a bigger twinge, when the nights of not sleeping well begin to add up. Today would be the point, I imagine, when the newness wears off and the task ahead--nineteen more days of walking—becomes not an abstract plan on a spreadsheet but a hard and sometimes bitter reality. One tired foot in front of another for nineteen more days. ** The word “discipline” seemed apropos for this moment—but not quite. Because it’s early and my coffee hasn’t sunk in yet, also because there may have been a lot of wine consumed last night around our backyard firepit, I used the thesaurus to find what I was looking for. But the synonyms I found were even less right: “correction, chastisement, castigation, self-restraint, order, control, regulation, strictness, obedience, authority.” Nah. All of those seem too rigid to describe the experience of the Camino; they imply some external taskmaster, with a ruler or a whip, standing by to provide the necessary castigation. The Camino—a spiritual journey as much as a physical one—has to come from within. Real change always does, even if there’s an external spark. The heart has to be soft, malleable; the mind open. I thought I was going to write about writing today. That’s my discipline in real life, seven days a week when I open my laptop by six in the morning with a plan of what I’m going to accomplish: this scene, that chapter, twenty pages of revision, etc. Writing, like yoga, is a practice. Its goal is not so much perfection as the realization that comes with repetition, with daily, steady practice. Over time, the body becomes more limber, the muscles stronger. It’s the same with writing, although the muscles are skills being honed, the clarity is with how the story needs to go. (Maybe I am writing about writing after all.) ** A week or so ago, when the protests over George Floyd’s murder began to gain momentum, and when some of the protests became violent—I sat up, paid attention. I live in a little white bubble, not because I don’t know and love people of color, but because ultimately, I don’t—and can’t—have their same experiences. (One example: A few years ago, I tried to pay for a bagel at JFK with a counterfeit $10 bill. I didn’t know it was counterfeit; it had been passed to me with my change at the last place I shopped. Still—nothing happened to me. The police, who were surely everywhere in the terminal, weren’t called. I wasn’t detained for questioning. Certainly no one put a boot on my neck and held it there while I struggled for breath. The clerk simply passed it back to me and said, “Um, miss, this isn’t real.”) I posted on Facebook last week that I was looking to learn more about race in America, and my friends did not disappoint. This led to a chat with three of my colleagues about a text we wanted to read, and then an invite to an anti-racist book club. I’m exactly one chapter into White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo and feeling rocked-to-my-core convicted. This is me. She’s writing about me—well-intentioned but ultimately clueless. Here’s where it comes back to stamina, to the idea of practice. DiAngelo writes that white people (a generalization, but one created and validated through the structures of society) don’t have the stamina to talk about race. We don’t have the depth of knowledge necessary to sustain a complex conversation about race. We tend to fall back on individualism--but my experience! We become too easily offended--but not me! We deflect--but what about….? We become aggressive--who are you calling a racist? ** The walk is hard. It’s uncomfortable. It’s easier to do one five-hour commitment and be done with it than to put the shoes on your sore feet the next day to do it again. It’s easier not to examine myself, not to hear heartbreaking stories, not to accept hard truths. It’s easier to not begin a journey where you know you might stumble, fall, fail in a noticeable way. But if the heart is soft, the mind open, the practice can begin. Zubiri to Pamplona is a 20 km walk through tiny towns (I love these names: Illaratz, Ezkirotz, Zuriain and Zabaldika, among others) and picturesque countryside along the river Agra. The journey ends with the arrival in Pamplona over La Magdelena Bridge (Puente de la Magdelena). Pamplona, with nearly 200,000 people, is one of the largest cities on the Camino Francés, and it’s wild to think of approaching it on foot, entering the hustle and bustle with our backpacks and water bottles and trekking poles and hangry stomachs. Pamplona, of course, is famous for the Festival of San Fermin, immortalized by Hemingway in The Sun Also Rises for its encierro (running with the bulls) and subsequent corrida (bullfight). It’s a weeklong festival held in July—but not this year, when Spain has suffered such devastating losses from the pandemic. This time, we were planning to roll into Pamplona as pilgrims, walk around the city, drink Spanish wine and reminisce. Because reader—Will and I have been here before. In 2006 we scrimped and saved and spent two weeks in Portugal and Spain around the time of the World Cup (which captivates Europe much more than the US and is therefore worth mentioning). Will swears he didn’t plan our trip specifically to coincide with the Festival of San Fermin—but I’ve had enough years to consider this and realize that’s a load of crap. He wanted to see the running of the bulls. Scratch that. He wanted to run with them. ** Tonight at my home in Modesto, the mail carrier delivered a handwritten letter from my dear friend M, a reliable and always interesting correspondent. She spends her summers in Montana and we share letters and postcards each year—newsy stuff about our lives and the weather, our long summer reading lists. We rarely email, never call and don’t text—so these letters are tiny, perfect treasures I keep near me for weeks, unfolding them to read and read again. If we were on the Camino right now, we would have our cell phones with us—the wifi off during the hike and on when we connected each night at the albergue. If we were walking right now—in that other plane of existence where there was no pandemic—it would have been surreal to know that back at home, the US was coming apart at the seams, with protests in major cities, riots and tear gas and curfews flooding our feeds whenever we clicked on a social media app. Are you okay??? we would text our friends and family and then wait out the time zones for an answer, anxious and sick. Back in 2006, Will and I had a shared Yahoo address (remember Yahoo?) and we wrote emails every other day or so from an internet café. It would be years before either of us had a smart phone, and to get to the internet café, we had to navigate from fold-out maps in our guide books (remember fold-out maps? remember guide books?). My mom- and dad-in-law saved printouts of these emails and gave the stack of papers to me a few weeks ago: “Remember when you wrote us all those emails from Spain?” I do, I do. And I sat down right there and read the stack from beginning to end, each a tiny, perfect treasure of its own. Here’s a missive from Pamplona: ** 7/11/06 4:30:01 AM Pacific Daylight Time Kaixo! Well… we survived! Will survived the running with the bulls (coming as close as 3 feet to them) and I survived my worrying and the running of the tourists to the bus back to San Sebastian. Will actually said that he’s skydived, bungie-jumped, cliff-jumped, and this was the most intense experience by far. I took a video on my camera and caught him toward the end of the run, but I didn’t have the best vantage point—there were literally thousands of people there and if you had a backpack you couldn’t be inside the interior fence of the run (apparently bulls can hook their horns on backpack straps and take you for an unexpected ride), which actually was okay with me! So we got up at 4 this morning to catch the bus, experienced the absolutely crowded and rowdy streets of Pamplona, and have just now (1ish) arrived back in San Sebastian. There was a major run for the bus, and despite the fact that we stood in line at 9 a.m. or so to head back, we didn’t actually board until 11:30, and even that seemed uncertain—apparently they oversold tickets or something, so it was quite a mad push to board the bus. I’ve spent enough time around dirty people for the day and feel like I’ll need a second shower. Just wanted to dash this note off because I knew some of you were worried. Will says hi. You wouldn’t recognize him; he has a big head right now. Thanks for your emails—love the info on Baxter, Mom D., and hope your wrist is feeling better, Mom T! Love you all… Paula y Will Along the Camino, pilgrims stay in albergues—hostels with open or minimally private spaces, with bunk beds and limited shower times and communal meals. Having survived some relatively rustic summer camp experiences, dorm/apartment living and that time we slept on the floor with our two dogs before the new mattress arrived, I figured I was prepared. We were coming with our own crew, of course—Will and I, plus our two dear friends—and there was a communal nature to this from the beginning, with the planning and group texts and the trip to REI in Concord for a packing-for-the-trip lesson, not to mention long dinners and our every-other-week training walks. But we each had a different reason, a personal one, for wanting to do the trip. This is the paradox of the Camino—at its heart, it’s an individual walk. You don’t walk hundreds of miles to please someone else or to fulfill their dreams. And even when you walk next to someone, the walk is a mental exercise—more man-versus-himself (woman-versus-herself) than a battle of the elements. ** I imagine the first night of our walk being a challenge—we would be exhausted from the climb the day before and be asleep the second we were snug in our sleep sacks. Or maybe not. Maybe the noise of the albergue—the snores and shifting and farts and random beeps of electronica—would keep us awake. Maybe the feeling of being very far from home would hit hard and sink in. Maybe I would miss too terribly LG’s nine-pound body tucked up against my side. (She’s basically a blanket and therapy pillow all at once. It’s hard to sleep without her.) We would wear our walking clothes to bed and wake in the dark, each at our own time, pack quietly, leave early. There was much talk of the breakfasts (plural intentional) we would eat—first breakfast before hitting the road, second breakfast a few hours in. (I have rarely seen my husband so happy as when he was contemplating a second breakfast.) One by one, we would walk, and one by one, arrive at the next stop, eager to reconnect, to fill each other in on our thoughts. Lived individually. Experienced communally. It’s a strange time to think about community, since I’ve barely left my house since March 11—only for daily walks, mostly alone, masked trips to the grocery store, that one mad dash to Home Depot for wasp spray. My community has been disembodied heads on a Zoom screen—friends, family, colleagues, my writing group. Also, community has been the people I’ve encountered on social media—some grieving, some protesting, some frustrated, some angry, some silent. Like passing through an albergue, scrolling my Facebook or Twitter feed is being all up in someone else’s business. People can be the absolute worst. And also the best. I wanted to write something uplifting, like “we’re all in this together.” We are—whether we’re on the streets or in front of the television or madly arguing with a stranger on Facebook (cough—wasn’t me)—but we’re not all going the same direction at the same time. Like being on the Camino, this is an individual walk, but our footsteps echo and our actions cast shadows. ** Of the four of us traveling on the Camino, I was always going to come in last, hitting town when everyone else was settling down to meal #3. That’s fine—it’s not a race. I’m just acknowledging that I’m a slower walker, that I might need to rest my knee, that I’m someone who likes to see everything and stop to write things down. I was always going to get there eventually. Yesterday I began reading my way through the Justice for June doc linked here, and I joined an anti-racism book club to discuss White Fragility. (Do you want to join me? Leave me a comment or shoot me an email.) Others who have gone before me have done the hard work and blazed the trails, and for that and so much more, I’m grateful. On the first stage of the Camino Francés (The French Way), pilgrims leave Saint Jean Pied-de-Port, hike over the Pyrenees, and arrive at Roncevalles in Navarre, Spain. It is arguably one of the toughest days of the trip, as it is around 25km (15.5 miles), and has an ascent of 1400m (roughly 4500 feet) before beginning a descent of 650m (2000+ feet). This is the day where people on the Camino learn whether they have worn the right shoes, protected their feet from blisters and in general prepared enough for the trip. In the movie The Way, this is where Michael Douglas’s son, played by Emilio Estevez, dies during a storm. (This part was explained unsatisfactorily, I thought—particularly because as a potential pilgrim I was interested in not dying on this stage of the journey.) Will, who read a dozen books about the Camino, watched a million YouTube videos and talked to everyone who would talk to him about their walks, kept telling me, “Once you make it over the Pyrenees, you’ll be fine.” This became my internal mantra during our training hikes—all but one on the flat land of California’s Central Valley. But I bought the right shoes and the expensive hiking poles. I lifted leg weights and did 100 squats each night before bed because I was going to make it over the Pyrenees, damn it. Because I was hardly going to quit then—not at the start of the journey. *** We may never know if I could make it over the Pyrenees. Here in real life, I tripped over my flip flop last week and fell down exactly one stair and possibly broke a toe; I have an unexplained bruise on the underside of my arm and a small welt at my hairline from not fully ducking under a tree branch. If anyone was going to have trouble on the Pyrenees, it was going to be me. (And this is to say nothing of my poor, beleaguered, still struggling knee which has a slight dislocation and an unrepaired meniscus tear and randomly clicks and swells. Buy me a drink and I’ll talk to you about it ad nauseum. But not here. Not now.) The start of any journey is a mix of anticipation and anxiety. The uncertainty, even with a roadmap, is often enough to keep me from beginning altogether. Can I do this? (Yes, probably.) Am I going to enjoy it? (Possibly. Sometimes ‘during,’ not so much.) Will it be what I expected? (No. And that will make it better.) There is something to be said, right at the outset, at the first step on the trail, for the comfort of our own bedrooms, our routines, our pets and our people, all of which are being left behind. There is something to be said about the day’s first cup of coffee poured from the French press, for a reliable shower head, for picking a book off one’s shelf and cuddling up for an uninterrupted hour. Comfort. Status quo. Complacency. I’m on a different kind of journey now, unplanned and uncharted. The days stretch before me, and while you may be disappointed to learn that I have been watching America’s Next Top Model reruns in all their overblown campiness, I’ve also been reading the news, listening to voices I haven’t heard before. I’m examining things that I believed to be true, things that have been too hard to look at for long without blinking and glancing away. The thing about a journey (unlike a trip, maybe) is that it changes you—it must. The things that happen on this journey, the things you experience and learn, don’t stay behind in a hotel room or the cramped overhead bin. They come with you. They become a part of you. You become the you that you are because of them. (Too much?) In pre-pandemic life, we would have arrived in London by now, and after a few hours, been on a plane to Biarritz, and from there, a bus to Saint-John-Pied-de-Port. When I googled the name to make sure I was spelling it right, this picture popped up, and a little part of me died. This might be the time to mention that while I love traveling, I’m not always the best traveler. I get a little tense on planes—not physically sick, just… tense. My husband gets onto a plane and falls asleep before the safety instructions. I get on a plane and fall asleep never. The happy-go-luckyness of my fellow passengers who can shove headphones in their ears and drool on their travel pillows amazes me. At some point, my subconscious seems to have decided my role for me—if I’m not paying attention, this plane is going down. It’s a lot of responsibility. In fact, it’s downright exhausting. So I would be arriving in London a cranky mess, chasing down a bathroom post haste, alternating my guzzling between water and caffeine, nodding off while we waited for the next flight, then the bus. At some point I would see a zombified version of my non-travel self in a window: darker circles under the eyes, sallower skin, limper hair. I would begin to prioritize my needs in a sort of Traveler’s Hierarchy: shower, food, sleep or shower, sleep, food? In 2002, Will and I went on a whirlwind month-long trip to Europe, partially funded by the last bit of cash on my student loan and my first semester of teaching. (We were young, and this seemed like a very good use of our funds. Now I’m older, and this still seems like a good use of funds.) We flew into Paris, got on the wrong train, walked a bit in the wrong direction and eventually took a taxi to our hotel. We showered and collapsed onto the twin beds, even though it was the middle of the afternoon. (Pro tip: don’t do this, even if it seems like a good idea.) We were probably asleep for half an hour when there was a knock on our door, then a key turning, and while we sat up in bed, too stunned and groggy to protest, someone from housekeeping came in and removed the quilts from our beds, chattering all the while in French. We fell back asleep and woke later, turning to each other in a daze. Did someone come in here while we were sleeping? Did she take the quilts off our beds? We spent four days in Paris, but this mystery was never solved, and the quilts were never returned. Arriving someplace new can be overwhelming. It’s the strangeness coming at you all at once—the language, the food, the customs, the cars speeding past on the “wrong” side of the road. There are two ways to handle the newness of international travel. In one, you take your (American) privilege and barrel through the new place, trying to get it to conform to your expectations. What do you mean there are no waffles on the menu? I must have waffles! The logical end to this approach, after a constant tug-of-war between expectation and reality, is a miserable trip, with no understanding when you return of the place you have been. We take ourselves—our backgrounds, our insecurities, our own odd little habits—with us. Wherever you go, there you are. The other approach is to fumble your way through the new landscape, mispronouncing words in conversation and trying again, laughing. The other approach asks you to be mainly silent—a listener, an observer, saving up the moments to process later. ** Lately, I’ve found myself waking up in the morning and wondering where I am. I’m in our house, of course. I’m in our bed, and Will is next to me, having taken more than his share of sheets and pillows. LG is tucked under the covers, her body warm against the back of my knee. Baxter is snoring on the floor next to the bed, the deep, dreamless snores of a 105-year-old. I pinch myself, and I am alive. So that, of course, I understand. But in other ways, the world is alien to me, an unfamiliar landscape. I lift my phone from the nightstand in the morning and scroll through pain and suffering, through fear and vitriol. I grieve. I try to understand. Sometimes I block or unfollow. I turn the phone off, walk into the other room, come back later for another hit. Much of the world has become incomprehensible to me, and I don’t have the language to respond. I don’t know the customs, and I’m unsure how to adapt. The process of this arrival has been very different. We have all packed our bags, and here we are in this uncomfortable, inevitable moment. Inside our bags are those beliefs and experiences, and maybe they don’t feel quite right at that moment—we’ve packed sweaters and sweatshirts but it’s blistering hot here. The landscape is new. I'm listening. I’m learning the language. The plan, in pre-pandemic life, was to leave SFO at 8:50 a.m., arrive in Toronto at 4:50, and fly from there to London, arriving at 6:35 a.m. UK time. From there, we would make our way to France by plane, train and/or bus. To make an early morning flight, it would have meant a pre-dawn drive through crazy Monday morning Bay Area traffic or a hotel in South San Francisco the night before, then the craziness of TSA to the international terminal, the pre-flight jitters, a rushed breakfast of overpriced coffee and a plastic-wrapped muffin, the relief of being on the plane, the journey for the moment out of our control. In real life, I’m sitting at my kitchen table at 5:58 a.m. with the first of several cups of coffee. Baxter, our 15-year-old beagle, is wandering aimlessly around the room, a personality trait that has come with old age. Circle, circle, poke head into corner, circle, nudge my leg, wander outside through the open French doors and come back again. We were up late last night, watching CNN until I couldn’t watch anymore. It seems important to watch, to witness, to pay attention, to understand and grieve. The watching itself is not strenuous or demanding, and yet somehow it is both. I felt that heaviness this morning, waking up, one slippered foot after another making its way down the hall. Will is going back to work today--work work, as I keep calling his physical office 45 minutes away, although he has been working from home during these long weeks of the pandemic. For a while we were coordinating our schedules to avoid Zoom calls at the same time, in our two spare bedrooms that had become back-to-back offices, our voices sneaking in through the other’s ceiling vents. On my teaching days, I only had time to come out for a bathroom break or a quick snack made in the kitchen and scarfed in front of my laptop, between emails and conference calls. But I’ve been done teaching since May 6, my grades submitted as of May 13. Also, normally, I’m working on a book—a rambling first draft, a ruthless second draft, a refined third. But the book is out of my hands now, and the waiting has begun. My writing now feels aimless, like word doodles. Like a going-senile beagle circling the room one more time. I’ve been existing in a weird little bubble: working outside on our large and overgrown backyard to stay out of Will’s way, showering in the early afternoon, laying down on the bed to read a few chapters and waking, dazed, two hours later, hungry but not sure what meal I’m supposed to eat. It’s not that I have nothing to do—it’s just that with everything else cancelled, the sense of urgency has disappeared. I do want to repaint the front porch, but the summer is stretching out long and empty before me. There is time to paint the porch and repaint it a dozen times, not that I plan to. There is time, too much, to clean out the old shed, to sort the accumulated junk in the hall closet. Things I would have attacked with gusto, with a plan and a purpose, have fallen into this bubble of nothingness. I didn’t expect to have this time, and I’ve been alive long enough to know that time is a luxury—priceless and rare. It also feels heavy now, a weight settling on my shoulders. The pattern of my life for the last nineteen years has followed the semesters—the marathon-like ending of classes, conferences, grading, grades, and then a break. Travel, usually, or some giant, pre-plotted project, like painting the exterior of the house or writing the first draft of a new book. Travel, for me, is equal parts getting away and going somewhere. Away from the routine I slip into so easily and depend on so heavily, toward a different kind of life, a new possibility. I keep thinking that there is no takeoff today, so there can be no landing. But then—pour cup two, add a splash of cream—I remind myself I’m alive, that we’re alive, that in very many ways I’m damn lucky. I wanted to walk The Camino to quiet all the noise and figure some things out. It might be telling that I thought I needed to go halfway around the world and away from just about everything and everyone to do that. But instead I’m here, in my kitchen, my feet planted on the ground, and it’s time to see what’s next. |
Paula Treick DeBoardJust me. Archives
December 2023
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