Jun 20 2012

The Hand-Off

They hoisted their heavy cartables up on to their back, the lift and twist on to one arm and then reaching the other back, blindly, to find the strap and slip beneath it. It’s a motion they enact several times a day without thinking. Each time I see it, I wince. Their school bags are so heavy. The number of books and notebooks the girls are required to cart back and forth, daily, is pretty serious. Some days it feels like Short-pants‘ bag weighs more than the pack I carried on the Camino.

They trampled down the four flights of worn, wooden steps and out the door to the street. The morning was fresh, a downpour during the night had cleared the air and cleansed the streets. Short-pants grabbed one of my hands and Buddy-roo seized the other, sandwiching me between them.

We talked through the order of events for the day: how I’d come back to school to help out with the line rehearsal for Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, the year-end production of their theater atelier in which I was also implicated, having volunteered to create and manage the changing of sets via Powerpoint presentation; how our “sitter” would come to get Short-pants and sweep her off to an orchestra rehearsal; how Buddy-roo would go home with a friend because I had an appointment, how the sitter would pick her up later and get them dinner; how the rest of the week’s homework had to get done early because of the school play. Every day has been like this, a full schedule of meetings and hand-offs, the three of us shuffling around to all the final rehearsals for theater, orchestra and tap-dance performances that culminate during these final weeks of June.

It was perhaps not the best planning that De-facto would leave Paris the day after I returned from Spain. I’d hoped to be on the Camino few days longer, but the reality of my responsibilities stepped into the spotlight and delivered a long monologue about how I’d been away already a luxurious amount of time and I had no right to even think of sulking a moment about returning home a few days earlier than my original plan. And by the time I got to León, I missed my family something fierce. I started to dream about the girls throwing their thin, pale arms around me, the sweet smell of their breath, and their soft, smooth, hands in mine.

Apparently they missed me, too. The day before I returned home I got a message on my voicemail from Buddy-roo, describing what had been the “worst day of her life” and how she wished I’d come home. Once I was in the door, after two days of train travel to get there, De-facto appeared with a small tub of a water and a sponge, in homage to my experience at the Ermita de San Nicolas, and washed my weary pilgrim feet. The next day, however, he put his own feet on an airplane and left me in charge in Paris.

After weeks of walking slowly through life, I was immediately asked to sprint. The multi-tasking, order-barking, for the third time please brush your teeth, up-in-the-morning-out-the-door routine a stark contrast to the contemplative preparation of my backpack each day before setting off to walk on my own. The fetching and feeding of children, the hither and yonder to get them to this and that rehearsal, catching up with the details of our household, resuming my professional duties, let alone catching up with any friends put many things on the plate that I had so thoroughly emptied during my walking sabbatical.

This is probably just what St. James had ordered for me. I’d been gone for nearly a month and I’d forgotten how to be a parent. Had De-facto been around, I’d have let him keep the lead role. In his immediate and complete absence, I was forced to remember how and when to cook for the kids, how to help them stay on top of their homework, how to motivate them to do the chores that earn their allowance, how to read with them a bedtime and sing them soothing songs to coax them to sleep.

I did, however, forget to suggest a bath, and the girls went for a good long stretch without one. The day after my return, I’d washed and dried every towel we own. Nearly a week later I noticed they were still perfectly folded on the towel rack, untouched.

Maybe there were a few other things I forgot about mothering: like how to bury my nose in my computer, or how to send texts on my phone on the walk home from school, how to snap at them sharply when I’m distracted or frustrated. I’m hoping these might remain absent from my fashion of parenting.

Especially the electronic part. I see so many people on the street, walking and tapping their thumbs on their smartphones, oblivious to the friends beside them and the world around them. If this is the only thing I learn from the camino – when you walk, just walk – it’d be enough. How good it feels to stop the constant multi-tasking and just be with the sights and sounds of even an urban stroll, to be fully present with my daughters, but also with myself. My feet are now in street shoes rather than hiking boots, stepping on pavement rather than a dirt track or a hiking trail, but why should that make a difference?

Last night, a friend helped us out, fetching Buddy-roo at the cabinet médical after a routine eye exam to take her to a tap-dance rehearsal. Short-pants and I, after our own eye check-ups, went back to school to attend a presentation about the class project, an imaginary overland voyage through Europe to Russia. The kids learned a number of songs during their pretend travels, and they lined up in the front of the room to sing them to us enthusiastically.

I scanned the group of long tall bodies, remembering when Short-pants and her classmates were squat and miniature, marveling at how they’ve all grown up. It dawned on me that this was the end of their time together in the primary school. Next year they’ll move up to the collège, with the more independent and demanding schedule of middle school, and probably a heavier book bag.

But last night they were still kids, an innocent, exuberant chorus, trusting each other, their teachers, and all the parents in the room. I hadn’t expected the rush of nostalgia prompted by the sight of these now-bigger little people collected together, about to walk into the next stage of their life. I looked around and saw that I was not the only mother with her hand on her chest and a tear on her cheek, that others were equally moved by this moment.

We’ve walked our children to this point, held their hands, juggled schedules to get them to all the places they needed to go to be able to be right here, now, with everything to look forward to. They’re almost out of our grasp, which is why it’s so important to cherish those precious moments when they still offer up a small, soft hand on the way to school, and why I’m so glad I came back home to do just that.


Jun 11 2012

Not in a Rush

When you slow down, a window opens and you see things you couldn’t see before. When you take your time, you sense things, because you’re not rushing through life facing forward, you’re ambling along, receptive to what’s around you. When you give yourself time, you think things through, following a string of thoughts from one thing to the next and then further. Unlike the one-thing-to-another we experience while surfing the web or multi-tasking through a busy day, staccato and mercurial, the thought process that accompanies a long walk in the country is calming and fluid, like waves of water rolling forward and back and forward again. It doesn’t take very long for the chatter to cease, the chirping in the back of your head quiets and the mind is filled with simpler thoughts. There is space for bigger thoughts, or the smaller thoughts have room around them to echo. You start to really see what’s inside you and around you, and notice things that you don’t notice when you’re in a rush.

~ ~ ~

Walking through Pamplona, one of the early stops along the Camino – this was in the beginning of May – I couldn’t help but be reminded of the rituals we enact there every July during the fiesta. It was odd to walk through that city without people and music spilling out into the streets. I walked down the empty Calle Merced, where in two months time, to the day, there’d be long tables set up end-to-end in the street, and friends would be assembling for a breakfast of greasy eggs and chorizo or pochas and red wine. I love those breakfasts, especially when the jota singers among the group stand up and sing their beautiful Navarran ballads. A man named Puchero is a force behind this, his voice bold and full, like his body. When he sings, his mouth stretches wide with each vibratoed note, his eyes bore into you, tearing sometimes because he is singing with such force. If he sings to you, the only thing to do is look right back at him with the biggest smile ever, and stay present to fully receive the song, sung in Spanish and if it is later translated, you are moved by the choice of words and their meaning.

For a minute, I wondered if the Fiesta Nazi, in a fit of generous mischief, would make some arrangement for Puchero to show up at my party and surprise me with a birthday jota. It would be only an hour’s drive for him, and not unthinkable for her to orchestrate something like this. At the same time, it was pretty far-fetched and highly unlikely. Still, I permitted my imagination to hold this image for a few minutes, just for the pleasure of the fantasy, picturing him singing to me and giving my assembled friends this taste of the Navarran culture. A little Walter Mitty moment during my walk.

Two weeks later, when the pit crew kidnapped me to go to my party, I found myself back in Navarra. The day before the big celebration – on my actual birthday – we decided to drive by St. Jean Pied de Port to see where I’d started the Camino. My credentials were getting full – I collected stamps not only from where I slept each night, but from the churches I visited and many of the cafe-bars I stopped at along the way – in St. Jean I could stop by the Camino office and get an extra pilgrim passport to use when my original one got filled up.

It was lunchtime in France – only a few miles away, over the border in Spain, lunch was still something to look forward to – and we decided to eat in St. Jean, installing ourselves at a table on a restaurant terrace along the street. We’d barely clinked glasses when a squat, thick man charged up to our table, trailed by about a dozen other people.

“I know those two girls,” he said between a string of colorful curses. We knew him, too. It was Puchero. By chance, he happened to be visiting St. Jean Pied de Port with a group from Pamplona and just happened to walk down the street where we just happened to be seated. We were as surprised to see him as he was to see us. The Fiesta Nazi didn’t miss a beat. “It’s her birthday,” she said, pointing at me, “sing her a jota!”

Without hesitating even a second, he launched into song, his robust voice belting out a wailing call. His face right away red, the veins in his temple squeezed as he forced every cubic inch of air out of his lungs before a new breath and a new phrase. He literally stopped all activity on the street. Every passerby, every diner on the terrace, every waitress, every shopkeeper, craned their necks to watch and listen to Puchero as he sang me my birthday jota.

It was framed slightly differently than my fantasy of weeks before, but nonetheless, the same elements were there. But this had not been organized in advance, it happened by chance, that Puchero was there and we were too. Had I experienced some kind of premonition? Or had my little fantasy sent out a request that was answered? Or was it all just a coincidence?

~ ~ ~

The first time I had the dream was in Estella, five days into the Camino. I guess you could call it a pilgrim-stress dream, in which I walked to the next town only to realize I’d left my walking poles in the previous night’s hotel. I woke up, relieved to see those familiar bastóns leaning against the chair, that I hadn’t left and walked an entire day’s stage without them. I had the dream again, the next night, waking to check that my poles were still there beside my bed.

A few days later, I lingered in a room I’d shared with five others, letting them all finish their morning ablutions first so that I might have a more leisurely and private departure. (This was prior to the hot meseta after Burgos, when my timing changed and a just-at-dawn departure was required to make tracks before the midday sun.) On my way out, I set my poles against the table by the door, stopping to take advantage of the wifi signal in the lobby to send a word of love to De-facto before heading out for the day’s walk. The door closed behind me, and I walked three blocks before realizing I’d left my poles at the albergue. When I returned, the door was locked and when I knocked, nobody answered. I sat on the stoop wondering how long I’d have to wait to get my poles, when I remembered I’d called the proprietor the day before, his number was in my phone memory. A quick call and he was there in 5 minutes, unlocking the door so I could reach in and retrieve my walking sticks.

Hold on to those poles, I told myself.

~ ~ ~

He stood to the side of the path and beckoned to me, holding out a small bag. “Would you like an olive?” he said, “I just opened them.”

Always accept small gifts on the Camino, I’d been told. So I reached in and pulled one of the plump green olives from the package, trying not to put my sweaty fingers in the juice that preserved them.

“I’m Mark from Michigan,” he said. I hadn’t met that many Americans along the way, he reminded me how exuberant my countrymen can be. He thrust the small bag toward me again. “Have another olive.”

I’d been singing to myself all day, a kind of stream-of-consciousness name-that-tune, when one simple word could provoke an entire medley of songs. I took another olive, but held it in my hand while I sang to him one part of a song from Godspell, which includes the lyrics,Your wife is sighing, crying, and your olive tree is dying.

The song is actually a duet I used to sing, in spontaneous moments, with a good friend Dilts – we called each other by our last names as a form of endearment – his part fast and syncopated and my part slow and melodic. The last line of my part: When you go to heaven you’ll be blessed, oh yes, it’s all for the best.

Mark from Michigan looked me straight in the eye, just the way I’d looked at Puchero when he sang to me, for the entire song, which I did not rush through, but rather sang to him very deliberately, emphasizing especially the word olive, to nod my head at the cause for this melody.

“That’s beautiful,” he said, when I finished. “If I go to heaven, I’ll wait for you there.” I ate my olive, thanked him again, and walked on.

Singing that song had conjured up images of my friend Dilts, his wry smile and his dry wit. He died eight years ago, cancer took him before he could turn fifty. I carried him with me for several kilometers, vacillating between missing him fiercely but also laughing out loud at things I remember him saying and doing. A lasting image of him, still in my mind now: his smart-ass smile, one eyebrow raised and jubilant fist in the air. I had Mark from Michigan to thank for conjuring up that string of memories, all from one single olive.

~ ~ ~

I made it to León, after 20 days of walking, covering 450 kilometers. The very last leg, by bus, as I didn’t want the lingering memory of this stretch of the Camino to be the industrial suburbs of the city. I figure the day I walked on the Camino Baztanés from Urdax to Elizondo is like extra credit, and makes up for the sage decision to avoid the plight of an urban pilgrim. A friend, an avid hiker, had joined me for these last two days of walking. Even she agreed this was a better choice than to march through truck fumes and under highway on-ramps. I could see much of the Camino route from the window, so I followed the trail with my heart, even though my feet were on the bus.

We took a train from León to San Sebastian, and in the rush of getting off the train, I neglected to pick up my poles, which I’d meant to strap to my backpack, but hadn’t gotten around to it, as they were useful until the last moment getting on the train. I’d put them on the overhead shelf and when I pulled down my pack, I somehow didn’t think to grab them. In fact, I didn’t realize they were missing until we’d walked ten blocks through San Sebastian in search of our hotel.

I didn’t get upset, even though they’d carried me so many miles, even though they’d become an extension of my arms, and probably a savior of my back, even though I loved the little feet I’d bought to cover the noisy metal tips. I let them go. Not that I gave up: once we checked into the hotel, the proprietor was very happy to help me call the RENFE and register the loss in their records, just in case. The next day I visited the lost and found at the terminus, the same station where we’d board our train to Paris. There was no sign of them. They are in someone else’s hands now, but hopefully helping them to walk as well as they guided me.

I wasn’t paying attention. That’s when you miss things. But hadn’t I seen that coming?

~ ~ ~

Word passes on the Camino without texts or emails. The weaving that happens as you walk puts you in touch with different people over the course of a day. You might walk with someone for fifteen minutes and then pull ahead, only to run into them again a few hours later when you’d stopped for a rest at a village cafe. Or someone you hadn’t seen for days would somehow get in step with you again. In the meantime, they’ve walked and talked with others, and if there is news to share, it gets passed along. After Burgos, there was a rumor about someone who’d gone to sleep in the albergue there and hadn’t woken up. This wasn’t the first death I’d heard about during my walk: a 65-year old man had a heart attack on his very first day, going over the Pyrenees. The story told was his wife had died the year before, his Camino was meant to help him sort through it. Nobody I spoke with felt too terrible about it. “Perhaps he’d joined her,” they said, or “it’s not a bad way to go, walking the Camino.”

The amazing night I stayed in the Ermita de San Nicolas, after our feet were washed and our dinner was finished, my friend from Romania turned to me and asked if I’d heard about the man who died in Burgos. “You knew him,” she said, “I saw you talking to him.” She described him, but I couldn’t place him. She kept saying his name, but it didn’t register. “Yes, you knew him,” she insisted, “Mark, Mark from Michigan.”

I fell silent then, thinking about the lyrics in the song I’d sung to him, remembering our very brief exchange. Did I see that coming? Was it just another coincidence? That day, the day I shared his olives, I must have been paying attention to something.

If there is a heaven – and I’m not always sure of it – but if there is, I hope he’s there. I hope he’s met up with Dilts, who can sing him the other half of the duet. And if he is waiting for me there, well, I hope he knows I’m not in a rush.


Jun 4 2012

Trust the Road

20120604-183830.jpgThe long stone building stood adjacent to the Camino, like a ancient fortress, or a chapel – or both – offering protection to passing pilgrims for centuries. Inside, the cool air refreshed and inspired a mood of tranquility, a pause from the endless step-after-step of the road. Two men welcomed passers-by with gentle Italian accents, offering a bench to sit on, a break from the hot sun, cool water to drink and a tap to refill water bottles. I marveled at the nearly medieval setting: the vaulted ceiling like a church, the small, narrow windows set up high like a fortress, the furnishings like noble dining room. At one end, a rounded chapel, with religious images and artifacts of the Camino. At the other, bunk beds in a row against the wall. I’d read about this albergue in the guidebook I’ve been carrying by John Brierley, a mix of practical and mystical tips for walking the Camino de Santiago. The Ermita de San Nicolas is a small way station, without electricity and with only 12 beds. Brierley wrote that and if you can get a place on a mattress here you should consider yourself lucky.

It was just before noon. I’d walked since 6:30 am but with more breaks than usual, covering about 18 kilometers, less than the usual daily distance, which might range between 22 and 29k. I was in good form, though, not yet ready to stop for the day. I rested there for a while, just to take advantage of the ambiance, but before long I stood up, grabbed my walking sticks from against the wall and took to the road.

Just beyond the albergue, a stone bridge crossed the rio Pisuerga and I stopped midway and looked back. I wanted to keep walking, but there was something back there, something calling me, an opportunity to stop for an afternoon in the quiet and reflect, the serenity of the setting, the experience it might hold for me. I mulled this over for at least ten minutes, standing there on that bridge.
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A German woman, crossing the bridge, stopped to talk with me. I told her my dilemma. “If you are torn, then go back,” she said. “I stayed there when I did the Camino before, and it was a special night.”

That was all I needed, a slight nudge to break the equality of my options. I turned and walked back, against the traffic of pilgrims. Remarkably, in that 50-meter stretch, I met several friends I’d made over the last days. An American couple I’d bunked beside at the albergue in the one-horse town – literally, it had one church, one bar/restaurant, one funky but cozy albergue – of San Juan de Ortega. Just behind them, two Spanish guys who called themselves my dos Sanchos, after Don Quixote‘s sidekick, with whom I’d had a long, late lunch the day before in Hontanas, and then a picnic that same night when the older Sancho‘s wife and daughter showed up, like a pit crew, with a huge feast, an impressive spread of homemade tortilla, fried pig’s chin (very tasty), and an array of salads and bread and wine we shared from a wineskin pouch. The younger Sancho, whose wife will bring his horses to Leon so he can finish the Camino on horseback, urged me to go on with them, offering the promise of another pleasant lunch together. But I knew – and I was literally walking against the tide of pilgrims – that I needed to stay in this remote, roadside station. I waved goodbye to all these fellow walkers, such fast friends we’d become in such a short span of time, and retraced my steps to the albergue, presenting myself to Augusto, whom I’d spoken with before, asking him if it was too early to request a place in the ermita that night.

Yo te visto,” he said. He’d seen me stop and ponder my decision on the bridge. He took my backpack from me and carried it into the building, even though it was earlier than the usual hour for accepting boarders.
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I sat at the table while he explained the rules and procedures, nothing unusual from any other albergue I’d stayed at, except here there was no fee, only a donation if I was able to contribute. Because it was so early in the day and I was the first pilgrim to ask to stay, I had a very private shower, despite the communal bathrooms in the back, and washed all my clothes in a big basin and hung them on the line next to the red flannel mattress covers that were flapping in the wind, drying after being washed after the previous night’s pilgrims. I’d noticed them hanging on the line when I approached, they reminded me of my mother’s sheets. I longed to help fold them, but I’d learned right away – when I’d offered to help – that the guests were not to do any work at the albergue.

“A pilgrim’s work is to walk and reflect,” Augusto said. “Our work is to feed you and give you a place to wash and sleep.”

I spent the afternoon writing, reading and resting. I sat in front of the building, watching pilgrims come down the road and peek in. You could see they were impressed with its mystical quality but also intimidated by its solace and simplicity. But by the end of the afternoon, 11 of the 12 cots were filled. The last person to walk down the road, with the absolute intention of finishing her day here, the Romanian woman whose wisdom I wrote about in my last post. Our hug was fierce, we had not seen each other since we had that conversation on the trail, days before.

At 7:30 pm, our hosts rang a bell and escorted us to the rounded chapel-like end of the long room. Twelve chairs were arranged in a semi-circle. The two Italian men donned shoulder-length brown capes with large scallop shells attached, the symbolic uniform of their confraternity. They talked about the privilege of being in service to pilgrims, a long winded explanation in Italian – there were six Italian speakers staying that night – and shorter translations in English and Spanish. To symbolize this service, they produced a metal basin with a pitcher of water, and one by one, washed our feet. The gesture surprised and moved each one of us. We were then invited to be seated at the table, set for our dinner, lit only by candles. A huge bowl of pasta with red sauce – prepared on a gas stove since was no electricity in the albergue – was placed at each setting. As much as I love Spanish food with its eggs and pimentos and potatoes, the pasta was a nice change, served with a generous amount of imported parmesan. The red wine was plentiful, second helpings thrust upon us, good conversation and laughter, a hearty meal for belly and the spirit.

As the sun set, we prepared for bed. When the last pilgrim crawled into a bunk, Augusto blew out the one candle still burning. I did not move again until the morning, when the noise of breakfast-in-preparation woke me gently and I rose for a cafe con leche and bread and Nutella, before setting off again, slightly sad to leave but thoroughly composed, light-footed, ready to walk.

~ ~ ~

Last week, on my return trip to the Camino, I was at the bus station with an hour to kill between transfers, so I combed through my guidebooks and sketched out how I might walk over the next days. I calculated distances for each day and made reservations at charming little hotels and casas rurales, mapping out a very nifty little plan.

I have cancelled all but one of those reservations.

Each day, I’d realize that I wanted to stop sooner because a town had a certain charm, or I’d want to go further because I had the stamina to keep walking. I’d call to cancel my reservation with an apology, and I’d always find some other perfect place to sleep, in a room with a dozen others or by myself, it was always the right choice.
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I think it took me this long to surrender to the Camino. Plans are nice to have, but on this path they are unnecessary, or even burdensome. I finally learned to trust, fully, that wherever I end up, it will be the right place, that there always a shower, a meal and a bed. A Dutch man, doing the Camino on his bicycle, told me how he rode into a small town one evening and there were no beds available at any hotel or albergue. A local family took him in their guest room.

So I start off each morning with an idea of where I might want to end up, but otherwise let my feet tell me when to stop, or when to keep going. One day I walked 37k because it felt so good to be moving. The scenery is beautiful and I am fully aware of it – I am part of it. I wish I could live my life this way, trusting the road so fully, not trying to plan or control it, but just to be on it. Of course, I should mention that it took some clever planning to clear the decks so I could do the Camino. There’s the rub.

I was musing about all this when I came upon a small cafe-bar, deciding to stop off for a lemonade. There was an open wifi network there, so I checked my email. I was so immersed in the messages from home that I hardly noticed the four sloppy-drunk men at the bar, until one of them came over and pretended to be reading over my shoulder. I knew how to handle it: playfully rebuffing him at first, then, when that didn’t work, making a fiercer boundary until he left me alone. I managed it without a big fuss, but it interrupted my mood. I guess sometimes you can’t trust the road, at least not completely.
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But I want to. I want take this trust back home with me. I want to transmit it to Short-pants and Buddy-roo, this feeling of having faith in whatever unfolds, making the best of what is, realizing that among all the choices you have in any given moment, most of them will be exactly the right choice, if you show up for it fully committed. But I also want to help them understand when not to trust so fully what the road brings, how to set your own course, how to draw boundaries, how to protect your open, tender, heart while taking on four drunk men in a bar. Or how to trust the clarity of your own voice amidst the cacophony of others crowded around you. I want them to be able to trust the road, but also to know when to trust themselves instead.

It has taken me 18 days of walking and 400 kilometers – that’s 250 miles – to slow down enough to hear my own voice, let alone to trust it. I’m just over halfway to Santiago, and in a few days I’ll have to head home, and leave the rest of the Camino for another time, next fall or next year. I don’t know what’s going to happen when I go back to the day-to-day of my life, to the bombardment of information, obligations and responsibility. Can I stay in this cool Camino groove? Can I bring its rhythmic calm back with me? Can I trust myself – and the road – and keep walking the walk?