My Camino Guide: words of wisdom

December 4, 2017 / wanderinglightning / 0 Comments

Both the owl and the Third Eye are symbols of wisdom. The Camino scallop shell is here a turban like those worn by Sikh gurus, teachers of enlightenment. “Only that life is good in which the inner battle is fought with determination, through patience and wisdom.” (Tenth Guru Gobind Singh)

“The Camino – it is therapy. I go deeper.
I become animal, natural.
I have gone beyond the seasons.”
— Antonia, Cicilian, living in Marseilles

“It’s beautiful to experience the struggle.”
— Jana, 18yo, student from Amsterdam

“All our culture is from this story.”
— Joanna, teacher, Krakow, Poland

“Every year, more people are walking the Camino.
I think that means something.”
— Fred, approx. 30yo, librarian from Versaille

“I will not let you go unless you bless me.”
— Jacob wrestling with his angel, Genesis 32:26

sand and foam

November 30, 2017 / wanderinglightning / 0 Comments

I found La Virgen
made of sand
and coursing tears
never ceasing
outpouring love
her robes
flow to the sea

Last of the beaches. Tomorrow I will come to the fork in the road – Norte or Primitivo. The Primitivo cuts cross-country, inland, through the mountains. It is the oldest stretch of the Camino, and daunting, from the stories I have been hearing. A test of endurance.

I hadn’t realized I would feel heartbroken, leaving the sea. In the morning, I stepped onto my first beach under heavy skies, meandering between the grassy dunes and surf. I found sea glass and a piece of shell. And then, wandering toward the far end of the beach, I came upon a miracle.

How shall my heart be unsealed unless it be broken?
— Kahlil Gibran, “Sand and Foam”

There she was. My Own Virgen. She Who Hears…Me. Alone on an empty beach, my eyes could not look away from this apparition of the Goddess of Mercy made of the sand and sea. Water bubbled up from unseen creatures or unseen pools, rising through the sand, creating a halo of flowing hair and robes like a current of love bringing Her to life in front of me. I felt my heart rise as well, singing a song I could not yet hear, breaking open like a wild wave over dark, volcanic rocks.

We choose our joys and our sorrows long before we experience them.
— Kahlil Gibran, “Sand and Foam”

I had no scientific explanation for the coincidental alignment of all the bubbles and all the tiny rivulets creating this work of living art. Synchronicity, that I was the one who came upon such a sand painting as it was happening, finding meaning in the random. Sitting on a rock near Her, flowing with the long, slow tides rolling before me, I wrote poetry, in gratitude.

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A beachside cafe opened, so I had coffee in bare feet. Brushing the sand off, boots on, I hiked to the next beach. This time, I swam, in big, strong waves like galloping horses, waves to take seriously. I watched new surfers learning the read these waves, skinny young high school kids nervous to go too far from shore.

A big red-bearded man appeared. Striding across the beach in his wetsuit with the relaxed, confident manner of experience, he and his board entered the water without a sound or a ripple. I watched him paddle out beyond the youngsters, then in one easy motion, stand up and surf effortlessly, gracefully, back in over the roaring waves.

Great beauty captures me, but a beauty still greater frees me even from itself.
— Kahlil Gibran, “Sand and Foam”

He reminded me of my oldest son, Zachariah, a big red-bearded man of the mountains. Yet Zach moved with the same relaxed confidence, graceful and athletic. I smiled at the bearded surfer from far across the beach.

Everywhere I had walked in Spain, I had seen little ones with blond curls, memories of little Zach drifting after them down sidewalks and beach promenades. My first child; how to explain to your first child what they mean to you, how they changed you just by their appearance in the world.

It was but yesterday I thought myself a fragment quivering without rhythm in the sphere of life. Now I know that I am the sphere, and all life in rhythmic fragments moves within me.
— Kahlil Gibran, “Sand and Foam”

Zach was born mellow. A spiritual seeker by nature, he became a deep thinker by habit, not content to only understand why things worked the way they did in life, but always asking why they couldn’t work differently. Better.

It’s not easy being soulful in a binary world of right/wrong answers. Impatient with ordinary limitations, Zach pushed himself to grow, often in unorthodox ways, always searching for meaning. It was here that our paths aligned, and collided.

The song that lies silent in the heart of a mother sings upon the lips of her child.
— Kahlil Gibran, “Sand and Foam”

I was such a young mother. Pregnant at 19, I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t listen well to what he was trying to tell me. I didn’t know to let Zach lead his own path of discovery, and just come along with him to avert disaster. Disaster was the only path I knew. So I blocked him at
every turn.

Zach wasn’t going to fight about it – not about anything. But he wasn’t going to take the status quo for an answer about anything, either. It wasn’t that he was belligerent: he was just not wired for mindless conformity. He simply refused to stop questioning perceived limits.

I later found out the term for this behavior: experiential learning. Experiential learners make great experimental theorists, eager to test their hypotheses by testing themselves. They hurl themselves against arbitrary boundaries and sail over the edge of the known world, bound for discovery. These are the brilliant fools for understanding who rush in where angels fear to tread. Explorers.

A traveler am I and a navigator, and every day I discover a new region within my soul.
— Kahlil Gibran, “Sand and Foam”

All along the Camino, I found Zach exploring paths in front of me. His energy was my energy, but better – less burdened, lighter, more free. Where I had to break the wave of my heart upon the rocks, Zach was the experienced surfer, gliding over these troubled waters, fearless to be tested. Showing teenage me how it’s done.

For 30 years, I had forgotten to thank him. For the surfing lessons. For appearing in the world. To Me.

When I was pregnant with Zach, I studied books about the progress of his development, noting week by week what new milestone he had reached – fully formed spinal cord, heartbeat, fingers and toes. I read about the process of labor and delivery, stages, centimeters of dilation, the thinning of effacement, how the baby moves down and heads out into the world on his own.

Yet, when the time came, it was not in stages – it was all in waves. My water broke in a steady stream, and as we left for the hospital, this inland sea continued to flood. As the contractions became stronger and steadier, I found the best way to manage them was to ride them – I surfed over the crests of the contractions. Sometimes, I was inside the wave, bent low but somehow still on my feet, seeing all the world a watery turquoise of filtered light. I surfed those waves until we both made it to shore, drenched and totally alive.

As I watched his bearded double smoothly cruise all the way in to the beach, I heard the tune of the first song I would write on the Camino. The first of many.

When Life does not find a singer to sing her heart she produces a philosopher to speak her mind.
— Kahlil Gibran, “Sand and Foam”

Brushing the sand off, boots on, I hiked to the next beach. Listening. Humming.

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Heard El Bufones before I had fully come upon them. Here, waves break inside cracks and caves in the cliffs. The sound is incredible: low, like a great drum, like the waves are breaking within a mountain cirque under black storm clouds and you are inside it as well, within the sound.

I was actually standing above, overtop the crevices, listening to the earth and sea make this deep music. But it doesn’t matter where you stand – it pulls you, like gravity; the world contracts around you, close and listening. At high tides, the cliffs will spout water like whales, the earth breathing as it swims through its oceans.

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At the last beach, the waves were almost nonexistent, just rising and falling water. Mellow. Nothing to body surf, nothing to worry about. Cooled from the hot sun, rinsed off and relaxed,
I got to lay on the beach one last time, watching all the people walking, wading, playing beach badminton; hearing calls for children to come eat, the triumph and glee of missed racquet hits, the seagulls crying and turning along the shore. Finally, I just lay looking at the clouds changing overhead.

I am forever walking upon these shores, betwixt the sand and the foam.
— Kahlil Gibran, “Sand and Foam”

I learned the differences in waves today. The trepidation I felt about the Primitivo had become a readiness to rise above. My poem, about the shell I found on the beach of the miracle, became the song I was hearing. Hearing, and being heard, the song no longer silent.

that water will make foam
still a mystery to me
the placement of these pebbles
on the sand
so ordered and so free
how each one shines
from where it’s been
beneath the waves unending

Feast of Saint James

November 29, 2017 / wanderinglightning / 0 Comments

the tolling of the bells
high to low
high to low
as I look across
green hills
sheep in pastures
houses in the valley
sweet with fruit trees
the wooly white of plaster
red tile roofs like apples
dropped on long stone walls
high to low
high to low
as I look across
great mountains
looming from mists
towering into cloud and time
paths I cannot quite see
but want to find
a space to breathe
in hillside rain
high to low
high to low
the tolling of the bells
as I look across

As I left Piñeres and the stunning view of misty mountains, I came upon the painted stones.

What a wonder. I suspected they were painted by the same artist whose folk images were framed on every floor of the rectory, my favorite a group of chickens, reminding me of the Chicken Fiesta.

These rocks were painted with images and symbols of Astorias and the Camino, phrases like “Camino Magic” sprinkled throughout. Even after the fiesta of colorful stones ended, here and there I found a star, then another, yellow, painted randomly on rocks within the stone wall along the path.

Finally, a sign: Camino de Estrellas. So I had traced the Camino of Stars, quite fitting after the rainbow arching from the rectory to the mountains yesterday evening. Following these heavenly signs, I walked into the The Feast Day of Saint James.

According to the stories, James was an ordinary guy, a fisherman with his brother. As Jesus was walking his path, doing his Galilee camino, and passing the place where they were fishing, he apparently worked a miracle, so that as they pulled up their nets, the nets overflowed with a catch so heavy the fish wriggled and flipped in enormous heaping mounds in their boats.

And just like that, James was hooked by Camino Magic.

He became one of Jesus’ apostles, and after Jesus’ death, he reportedly traveled to Spain, teaching and preaching the truth as he had come to believe, a truth of transformation. A gently rebellious belief in the power of one life connected to the sacred. As if it might matter. As if this sort of connection might save our lives.

Foolishly returning to the scene of these crimes of transcendence, he was of course killed; beheaded without mercy, by Herod, while in Jerusalem. Yet now, the Camino Magic picked up where Herod left off. Give it to La Virgen de la Barca or simply to James’ only known followers, Athanacio and Teodoro, somebody is believed to have retrieved his body and brought it all the way back to Spain, across the sea, burying him in an unmarked grave in an open field. Time passed: centuries.

Nearly 800 years later, a hermit, a peasant, a man of no standing, an ordinary guy, had a vision. His name was Pelayo. He saw a star shining brilliantly on one spot on the campo, the grassy fields, and he believed this had a deep and powerful meaning, a connection to the sacred. As if it might matter. So he found the local bishop, and took him to the exact spot, and where the star had shone so brightly – they uncovered buried bones.

The bishop declared them the lost bones of Saint James, Santiago. He became Santiago de Compostela, Saint James of the Star Field, as did his tomb, within his chapel, which became his cathedral, within his majestic city, on his camino, which extended across all of Europe. Three major pilgrimage destinations arose for early Christians: Rome, Jerusalem, and Santiago de Compostela.

Herod’s fear and intolerance were defeated by Camino Magic. By the Camino of Stars, which led from a star shining over Jesus’ storied birth in a stable, to a star shining over James’ bones in a pasture. Nobody important, these two ordinary guys, Jesus and James.

Nobody important, either, this guy Pelayo, whose name means, “of the sea.”

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Walking in the light rain yesterday, I found myself turning over the puzzle of my mother like a Rubik’s cube in my hands. What to do with her, what to do. Finally, I asked out loud into the rain, “What happened to you? Where did you come from?”

I know, and yet I do not know. I hiked along, examining her story from all sides. I wondered how she felt when she was seven years old and her mother had a stroke. Did anyone explain it? She must have been very scared, and very sad, and, I would bet, very alone, from what I had seen of her family. Over the next ten years of her young life, she watched her mother slowly deteriorate, stroke upon stroke, upon stroke. Until the one that finally ended her life. When my mother was only seventeen.

Seventeen-year-old me remained quiet. I looked at them both, trying to place them side by side. But while the image of my young self was feeling stronger and more real within me each day along the Camino, this image of my young mother shimmered and rippled, blurry in the mist.

Passing a roadside shrine, I found a very young image of Mary with her Baby, like a teenager holding a child. Like my mother, who was not allowed to walk across the stage at her high school graduation, her seven-months-pregnant belly announcing that her baby would be born sooner than anyone found comfortable. She had met a very charming young man, flattering her with attention and promises. She had to be gasping for air, having just lost her mother after a decade of childhood agony, the pressures of graduation upon her, pinning her hopes on her application to the Art Institute of Chicago, where her graceful lines and deft touch could be transformed into a life of beauty.

I wondered now if the waiting became too much; if it felt like centuries passing overhead, while your heart remained buried, unmarked. Unknown. I have never known if she was accepted to the Art Institute. I only know that she gave birth to my brother, and married the charming abuser, and struggled in menial typing jobs, night jobs, watching her earnings blown like dry leaves on alcohol and partying with drinking buddies, on make up to disguise bruises. I know she scrimped to save a few hundred dollars to hire a divorce lawyer. I know she felt a rageful triumph in serving the papers to his unsuspecting, blinking, stammering face. I know she and my brother ate dry corn flakes without milk and survived on her night jobs, with family and acquaintances babysitting.

And I know when she met my father, he was married, but unhappy; handsome and charming, but safe; a man in uniform, a former Marine now in law enforcement. I know she worked for him as a secretary. I know he saw her and thought she was stunningly beautiful. I know he gave her a ride, helping her pick up her little boy after work, and I know she intentionally left the tiny rainboots in the back of his cruiser.

We talked before his death, years ago, my father and I. I know he saw her as his salvation, his ticket out…the same way she saw him. He lost everything when he chose her – his family, his career, respect, trust. I know this proud man was mocked for following his heart. And I know that, though he wanted to be a man of peace, he was a man of passion.

He loved her to the end, to his very last day. And I could never understand it. I hadn’t known her then. I never met that young woman. Except, I did. I just didn’t remember meeting her.

He left everything behind for her, seven months pregnant – this time, with me. I would be the only baby whose birth he remembered like a photo framed in his memory. I would be the child he asked to help him as he was dying, to preserve his dignity and pride. I was nobody; I was child #8 of 10, the child who crushed my mother’s hope to give him a son. It was the worst task he could have given me. It was the most significant and beautiful task of my life. And she was the link between us. She gave me this father, who was safe, and strong, and devoted to a woman who wielded the pain of her childhood like a sword, trying to behead a hydra she could not defeat. Beheading the child instead, armored in a scream she never voiced, this motherless child become childless mother.

Maybe it is that She Who Hears the Cries of the World cannot hear what cannot be uttered. Or maybe we cannot see our one true believer, the ordinary guy who saw us at the window and thought the light shone from within us. I think it more likely that we cannot ask for mercy, nor offer it, if we have no concept that it might exist in the world.

Seventeen-year-old me recited some Shakespeare from British Lit class as we made our way along the muddy path together:

“The quality of mercy is not strained;
it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
upon the place beneath. It is twice blest;
it blesseth him that gives and him that takes….” 

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At the albergue, we were all surprised and touched when the nearby community came together and prepared mounds of food just for us, los peregrinos, for The Feast of Saint James. In the sloping backyard, on long tables pulled into the grass, arrived platters of pinxchos, serrano ham and sausages, egg and potato tortilla, baskets of bread, wine, beer, local cider, and oh, my beloved bizcocho.

I had been talking about this day for weeks – but never expecting an actual feast. I had thought I would celebrate quietly, mindfully perhaps, perhaps with others if they wished.

But the locals were having none of that. Laughing, singing, they would lift trays of food and carry them to us, urging us to eat more, drink more, handing food down to us from above, creating a community celebration as we sat in the grassy field, all together. It was like Christmas in July. Like Dios de Los Muertos in Colorado, where you picnic on the graves of those you love, with those you love. Only here, those we loved were those we did not know. Except, we did.

Surrounded and served by the kindness of strangers, we toasted each other. God rest ye merry.

bits and pieces

November 29, 2017 / wanderinglightning / 0 Comments

she made us
dinner of nothing
we added
little bits of nothing
sat together talking
through our daily bread
of nothing
really
such a feast

Instead of getting to Villahormes, I stopped in Celorio. An older man in Poo had recommended Celorio, and he was right: for 15 euros, I had – a private room. The luxury of opening up, spreading out. I hung my washed laundry on hangers that now felt foreign, strange in my hands. I laid out all my stuff on the bed and aired out my pack. The things that mattered included my sleeping bag, water bottles, light trail foods, socks, towel, passport, wallet, and guidebook. And I cast a dim eye on the guidebook. The rest – clothes, toiletries, metal bowl and spoon, even my duffle-turned-pack-cover – was superfluous, but added a degree of ease and comfort, each earning its keep in situations where the albergue kitchens were ransacked bare, even of dented cookware and half-melted spatulas, or in the infrequent deluges of rain. But the most precious item, the one I would carry in my arms like a baby if I had to, was my notebook.

Everybody had something, it seemed. A woman carried a ukelele, a man a guitar. A camera was precious to this person, a sketchpad and pencils to another, like Svend. Miguel wore tiny bells that chimed. One man carried an enormous, elaborately carved didgeridoo. They all added weight, or awkwardness through gates and city crowds, or issues in the rain. And they all seemed to be about creating, expressing ourselves and relating to each other and to the Camino itself. We wore our hearts on our sleeves for all to see, carrying them on our backs like millstones of freedom, each with our talisman.

I was writing faithfully, every day, little observations, snips of poetry, descriptions of fascinating characters, obsessively counting kilometers, ignoring kilometers in favor of deeper meaning, describing my epiphanies, my food and my blisters. My notebook would be my memory, I knew, but something more: it was my roadside shrine, my daily chapel. It was my zendo, the place I sat still; it was my mosque, the place I bent low in prayer and spiritual communion.

Most days after writing, I would rewrap my notebook in the plastic bag from my socks purchase, followed by the mandatory antibacterial plastic bag from the albergue that was sure every peregrino had bedbugs. I would tuck it back into my backpack, and then, every day, I left everything behind: to take a shower, to make food in the kitchen, to see the city, to head for the beach. We all did. We grabbed a handful of money and our IDs and went to live in the moment, with nothing but our selves.

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I had been thinking I should buy a swimsuit, maybe as a souvenir after Santiago. However, walking through the town of Llanes earlier, I passed a woman in a sidewalk kiosk selling handmade cotton bikinis, each one unique, because they were made from leftover fabric samples and scraps. Clever and resourceful, she was excited to take the risk, set up shop, invest in herself and her idea. One suit caught my eye, flowers and polka dots, and I bought it without even trying it on. Because I knew it would be perfect – and it was.

The rest of the day, I carried her creativity and colors with me as I hiked toward Celorio. My mind turned over images while I found myself alternately singing pieces of old rock ballads and my grandma’s church songs, humming and la-la-ing in the places where I had forgotten the words. Marching along to my play list, I would sing until – someone fired a cannon. Abruptly, I halted, listening carefully, trying to locate the source. But in the hills, the sound echoed randomly. I started again, hiking the perfectly normal trail under blue skies, eventually humming and then singing again. Into the great wide open, under the skies so blue, into the great wide open — BOOM! BABOOM! A rebel without a clue. This was not the sound of hunters, or firecrackers; this was definitely cannon fire.

I passed a terribly rundown shack, an improvisation of found siding and patchwork roof coverings sunk low into a hollow between hills. A dog hurled itself against its chain, barking maniacally from the shadow of an old van parked out front. Eyeing the strength of the chain, I passed by quickly. BABOOM! The dog ceased his tirade, looked around, then started up again, sending me on my way. No cannons at the shack, I noted ridiculously.

Learning something new is a mystery, a treasure hunt, a game of hide-and-seek. Just like when my grandma taught me to make quilts, you matched up scraps, holding small colorful bits together, stitching one short side so that now you made a connection. Joining your connected pieces, you could start to form a larger, more useful whole.

Now, I wore my new bikini to the Chicken Fiesta, by the beach, in Celorio. With festive scarf skirt wrap, of course. Mystery solved: cannons are a favorite way to celebrate fiestas in the small coastal villages of northern Spain. I saw the last bit of a traditional dance, lots of hop-stepping, drumming, and bagpiping, the ghost of a Celtic past peeking through, but now with castanets. The dancers’ rhythmic turning in traditional peasant costumes was hypnotic, as they stepped forward and back, encircling each other above the turning of the waves.

The Chicken Fiesta was a weekend family holiday, a midsummer excuse to eat – chicken – and play together. That was it; I asked several people. Just chicken…and being together.

So today’s great concerns for me became evening out my peregrina farmer tan, and finding some chicken. I dozed on the sand under a soft sky, played in the waves with everyone else, got a glass of wine – and chicken – from the beachside bar, and dozed again on the sand. Because today was Chicken Fiesta. And today was Sunday.

I was starting to put it together. This whole day of rest/sabbath thing was brilliant. Just let it go. Leave your stuff and your backpack, your worries and your cares, and just live. Eat, drink, and be merry, for once in your life.

You can’t control everything. Really, anything. Who knew. BOOM.

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I was the first to arrive at the old rectory on the hill. Facing a wall of lush, green mountains, it stood quietly meditating in the mist, serene.

I knocked on the door, surprising the man inside, who came to the door to send me away and then realized with a start that a peregrina had arrived, sola. Embarrassed at his small mistake, he blushed red and checked me in, writing my name and passport number and birthdate and age (“cincuenta y uno?” “si, si”) and country (“Americana – bienvenidos!”) into the boxes in the grid across his page. Demographics checked, X marks the spot, he came to the final question: reason for walking the Camino?
Espirituál. He smiled approvingly.

Giving me a tour, I felt happily at home. The main room was snug and warm, even with its brick floor. Upstairs, multiple small rooms held many bunks, with long, door-length windows between, shutters pulled open allowing the massive presence of the mountains to quietly enter. I chose a bed immediately up the narrow twisting stairs, and proceeded down to the herb-filled boot room to drop off my boots, and through the side door to the outdoor showers, each enclosed, in the walled garden where I could wash my clothes and hang them under the portico.

Clean, refreshed body and soul by showers of water and of words into my notebook, I sat at the large table in the main room, adding shells to Saint Thomas. Everywhere I had brought my walking stick, he became an instant conversation starter, a Camino talisman in his own right, as he was covered with the generosity of peregrinos. Everything about him was a gift, from his colorful orange cord, then a cotton string the color of peaches, onto which I had hooked one of the tauburu earrings from Begoña, and now aqua-hued plastic cord to tie the shells of las playas onto him. Even the tree I snapped him from had given him to me. Saint Thomas was my daily reminder of the adage we were all learning to live by:  the Camino provides.

As I tucked him away under my bunk, who should arrive but Saulomon and Karolin. “Barbara! Come on, come on – I am going to make a feast! Come, join us in the kitchen,” Karolin grinned, arms wide for hugs. So, as Karolin cooked pasta, adding some tomato, a bit of green pepper, a small onion, a little garlic, Saulomon and I made a salad. I contributed the last of my sunflower seeds, and a small tangerine. And all the while, we talked of nothing, and everything.

stuck with you

November 24, 2017 / wanderinglightning / 0 Comments

I found myself making up new words to old songs, singing endless rounds of such classic hits as Steve Miller Band’s clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am, “Stuck In the Middle With You”:

Camino is to walk in the way
that you want to walk every day
it’s so hard to get up out of this bed
and walk with all the stuff in my head

mountains to the left of me
ocean to the right
here I am
stuck on Camino with you

yeah I’m stuck on Camino with you
and I’m wondering what it is I should do
yellow arrows all point the way
unless they point the other way

mountains to the left of me
ocean to the right
here I am
stuck on Camino with you

well I started out with nothin’
and now I got nothin’ left;
when your back’s against the mountains
look at all the beaches
say hmm mm mm mm mm mm
hmm mm mm mm mm yeah….

If I was doing the Camino wrong, I didn’t wanna be right. Yesterday, it rained, rained desperately, like tears of grief that would never stop, and I spent the day covered, my pack covered, seeking cover during the heaviest downpours under porches of chapels, or cafe awnings where locals held the door open for me to come in, aqui, aqui. Hiking in the rain was a gray, solitary pursuit, ameliorated by my new rules of Camino play: rainy days are unlimited coffee days! I made a game of finding as many coffee opportunities as I could without deviating too far from the path.

Every time I sat at a long bar or a small table, and the bar man set my tiny white cup of thick espresso and cream before me, I smiled. Every single time. I smiled across the Atlantic Ocean, 5,000 miles west, toward my daughter in Boston. Emma. Her credo: always take time for a coffee. “Salud,” I would offer as my lips met the rim of the cup. Health…for us both.

Emma had been my traveling companion for a long time now, though she was only recently out of college and into her first professional job. My fourth child, of star-crossed passions, she streaked across our sky and beyond us like a comet. This fiery spirit stood defiant on all things worth fighting for, graciously folding her flaming phoenix wings and allowing me to approach her with tantalizing treats in my outstretched hands, such as her baby bottle of milk, or a cookie, or her blankie. Because Emma was the fiercest baby you ever met, a toddler standing firm against the impending doom of her mama counting, “1…2…3…” while her older siblings peeked around the corner in terror and in awe, whispering to each other, “Oh god, Emma – what happens at five? What happens at five?” She survived.  If I put her in her room for a time out, she kicked against the door, hurling her tiny body against it, refusing to be confined, or silenced. She thrived.

My intimidation techniques had absolutely zero effect on the glory that was Emma. And so, seeing that I was outgunned, I gave them up. Instead, I resorted to bribery. Because the treat that most tantalized this tiny beastie – was coffee. Mother of the Year would feel a tiny tug on her pant leg, and look down from reading the paper to see an adorable face turned beseechingly upward, angelically asking, “Widdo taysee?” If she was behaving, then, with a practiced slurp, she got a little taste of my creamy coffee.

And thus we became pals.

By the time she was in middle school, we both enjoyed going to coffee shops. By high school, we were regularly meeting up there to write together, taking a hot sip and dashing off lines in a notebook to prompts we created on the spot. I loved to see her eyes flash as we listed three random words or phrases to be included and then said, “Go!” Scribble, scribble, scribble, her hand worked in rapid circles, while I dashed my slanting arrows into the list and then called, “Time!” Our agreement: keep it short. Our editing practice: don’t edit. Say it and be done with it. Next.

But we had a problem, and it was me. I got sick. Accustomed to good health, I had no regular doctor, so I pinballed from one to another as they tried to figure out what was causing my symptoms. Finally, a routine checkup pointed the way.

I had HPV. Not the easy kind, the kind that arrives like an awkward guest but then leaves and never returns. Not the embarrassing kind, the kind that gives you warts in places you’d really rather not have them and makes you feel like the awkward guest threw a filthy, disgusting, all-night kegger in your home, coming back periodically with the lie that this time, no parties, swear.

No, my HPV was the mean kind. My HPV was the clever, sweet-talking professional guy who brought you flowers and told you that you were the only woman in the world, and by the end of your relationship, he was standing over you in bed, ripping the blankets off at one in the morning and yelling that this conversation is not over yet. Because it wasn’t over yet. This abusive relationship would never end. I had persistent, high-risk HPV; it refused to leave, even if I got a restraining order and changed my locks. It was trying to kill me. With cancer.

When the older kids came home for Christmas, I went in for surgery, thinking to burn the HPV out. Homewrecker that it was, it hid, then created infection and mayhem. So two months later, I had another surgery, removing everything – not just cervix, but uterus, ovaries. Do it and be done with it. I would not lose this fight.

And neither would Emma. Just a kid in high school, 17-year-old Emma got herself to and from classes, to and from work. As the double-whammy effect of double-surgery anesthesia knocked my central nervous system around like a series of punches to the head, I made the medical circuit again, cardiology, neurology. And Emma hung in there with me, encouraging, smiling, offering me a little tasty coffee, from her job at the downtown coffee shop. She stood firm, scared but invincible, and at the end of the spring, we made it to her sister’s college graduation. And a few years later, I made it to her own college graduation, from Colorado all the way to the east coast, to Boston. Thousands of miles.

Emma was the baby soothed if I sang to her. I was performing on stages in Denver when she was born, and she refused to be left out of all those songs she’d been hearing in utero. So when she was an infant, I held her in my arms, under the spotlight, and I sang. I sang all my words, pain or joy, in all my tunes, melodious or melancholy, and she was right beside me.

Twenty-three years later, my gate was boarding at Logan Airport in Boston, the plane bound for Spain. Emma handed me a card, one we’d found together on my first trip anywhere, my trip to New York. The trip Emma encouraged and cajoled me into, so that I would finally travel.

Off you go.
And if things had been different
maybe you would have done this already
maybe you would have had different kids, fewer kids, no kids at all
maybe your life would have had a different story
maybe you wouldn’t care so much about people 
maybe you would care more about people
and still.
Here we are.
And this is your life.

Fly away and live it.

No kids at all. When I had my own glorious phoenix, standing guard over my dreams like a fiery, rebel angel sent from the stars.

*       *       *       *       *       *       *       *       *       *       *       *       *       *       *       *       *

Instead of going to Pendueles, I stopped 2 km short. The rain was unrelenting, and as I hesitated at a crossroads looking for a sign, I heard my name: “Barbara! Won’t you come and stay with us?” It was Saulomon and Karolin, hanging out of an open second-story window over a bar.

“Is that an albergue?” I asked, squinting as rain hit my eyes.

“Oh, yesss,” Saulomon purred, “warm and dry.” He grinned, delighted with himself.

“Yes, come!” Karolin called down. And so I came in out of the rain.

As my clothes and jacket and towel all spun in an unexpected clothes dryer, I stopped downstairs in the bar for a snack. I saw a beautiful, round cake that reminded me of Marisa’s. “What is the word for this cake?” I asked a peregrino beside me at the bar.

The bar man saw me looking and pointing. “Bizcocho,” he answered, adding more I could not understand.

“And it’s homemade,” the peregrino translated.

“Si, señor, bizcocho, y cafe con leche, por favor,” I told the bar man, who nodded. It arrived warm and satisfying. Salud, Em. I have to teach you this magic word: bizcocho. Emma was still traveling with me, beside me every step of the way, sharing every cup of coffee, her card bookmarking where I’d left off in my notebook, reminding me as I opened it that I was not alone. Go live your life. My pen began scribbling the slanting arrows of my thoughts into the prompts the day had provided.

To come in out of the rain is to finally gain some sense, they say; but in practice, it was not so much common sense I was learning, as trust. To seek shelter in a storm requires that you stop blindly struggling on alone, and find people who will stick with you, call your name, sing along. It’s to start to figure out that life can be easier than you’re used to, better than you thought possible. To find a place where you can feel safe, welcome to come in and warm yourself by the fire, or by the dryer, or by the homemade bizcocho, and coffee. Salud.

wall mural outside Santander

My Camino Guide: gearing up

November 22, 2017 / wanderinglightning / 0 Comments

16. Don’t fight the backpack. The backpack always wins.

17. Boots off midday – socks too. Feet up if possible. Do this while drinking something delicious.

18. As soon as you feel a twinge in your muscles or a hot spot on your foot – STOP. Drink a lot of water. Better in 15 minutes. I’m here to tell you.

19. First available bed. Take it.

20. You get stronger. It gets easier. The blisters end.