Pennsylvania and One Hundred Pictures of the Sky

Recently my brother and I took a quick trip to eastern Pennsylvania to spend a much needed weekend hanging out with friends. It's been an age since I hopped in the car for a good old road trip and it was only a couple of hours in when I remembered why. 

I have the world's tiniest bladder.

Seriously. I'm like an old man with a prostate problem. 

I'm sorry for sharing, it's just, if you ever want to take a trip with me, you should probably know that.

Bathroom stops aside, it was a lovely drive. Sam doesn't let too many people between him and the driver's seat of his beloved car, so I did zero percent of the driving. But I didn't mind. We listened to Stuff You Should Know podcasts and I took pictures of the sky.

And the tunnels that cut through the mountains. 

We got there on Friday evening and it was a relief to pile out of the car and sit around a crackling fire and catch up under the stars. We told stories and jokes and riddles and laughed until my eyes were crossing from fatigue. 

P.E.I.

"I was Prince Edward Island born and Prince Edward Island bred and when I die I'll be Prince Edward Island dead..."

Amazing how just a few lines of a silly old song can bring back such memories. Have I ever told you about Prince Edward Island? 

No?

Well, let me tell you. My maternal grandfather was born and raised on this beautiful little island, nestled above New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. He became an American citizen after he met and married my sweet Bostonian grandmother and has lived mostly in the States since then.  After their children grew up and moved away, my grandparents purchased a small plot of land in his childhood province and built a cottage just a mile from the sea in Point Prim.  They spent nearly every summer for almost twenty years in this cottage.  Though we usually lived quite far away, my family would take the occasional trip up there and spend a couple weeks with them.  One of my earliest memories is standing on the deck of some distant relative’s fishing boat, watching the men toss lobster crates overboard and then heft them up again later, full of dripping seaweed and squirming crustaceans. 

It was the beginning of my deep abiding love for the ocean and also the beginning of my complicated relationship with seafood.

But I digress.

San Antonio, Part 1

Rather than bombard you with a squillion pictures all crammed into one post, I decided to break up my trip to Texas into three posts. You're welcome.

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On Thursday I ducked out of work at lunch and hopped on a plane to Texas.  After a pleasant trip to Dallas next to the world's quietest baby (seriously, I was like, lady did you drug your baby, wait don't answer that I don't even care) and one more flight in front of a man being "escorted" out of the country (not kidding, his hands were zip tied together and he kept yelling at his "handlers" a.k.a. INS officers in Spanish, drama!),  I arrived in San Antonio just in time for for dinner with my sister and her husband. We caught up over hamburgers and I got to meet the sweetest little dog named Bella.  Falling asleep under my sister's old daisy quilt, I could hear crickets and birds settling down for the night and the sound made me smile because it meant it was still warm enough outside for them to make music.  As much as I enjoy winter, the stillness of a cold night is too lonely for my taste.

Friday morning my sister and I went for a jaunt in Eisenhower Park and we chatted about life and things as we took in the view from atop a small wooden tower.

 BLUE SKY. AND LEAVES. AND SUNSHINE. AAAH!

Showing off my modeling skills in nature, obviously.

 Looking out to the quarry.

 Love you my dear.

She's not pouting, I'm just taking her picture from a creepy angle.

....seriously you cannot take me anywhere, I am always up to no good.

Lessons from Abroad: The Price of Public Restrooms

One little quirk about Europe is that generally, to use a public restroom, you have to pay for it.  It can be anywhere from a few cents to 2 Euros/SwissFrancs, not enough to break the bank, but enough to be a nuisance.  I can't tell you how many times I held up the line as I dug around frantically in my pockets/backpack for enough spare change to get me in to the throne room. Whether it be a dour-faced attendant in a striped apron, a coin-slotted turnstile, or simply a white china plate, your business remains unfinished until the money leaves your hands.

Now in my home city, I soon figured out which department stores and restaurants had free bathrooms. But when I was traveling, I used what I could find and it always came at a price. How I grumbled and pined for the restrooms of the motherland! Get in, get out, your wallet untouched! I have to pay to relieve myself? How preposterous!

And then I came home. 
One road trip after another, one gas station/fast food restaurant bathroom after the next and now the shoe is on the other foot.

Oh Europe. I would throw a thousand glittering coins at your feet to see the pristine chambers within your rest stops. Oh Switzerland! How I long for your motion-activated air fresheners and your self-cleaning toilet seats. A hundred sonnets I have composed about the white sparkling walls, the floor-to-ceiling stall doors, the alpine-scented handsoap! I offer you my pockets, all my riches, for the chance of one more use of your facilities. Come now, and we shall perform our ablutions with delight in the ambient lighting and softly playing elevator music of the room for "Les Femmes".

But it is not to be.  A single, salty tear rolls down my cheek as I perch uncomfortably on the metal prison pots of the Midland Community Park restroom, that are somehow always wet and always cold, even though it's 90 degrees outside. On the way to the faucet, my feet dance a complicated samba around the prostrate carcasses of dead cockroaches and pools of dear-goodness-I-hope-that's-just-muddy-water. One, two, three futile pumps at the soap dispenser, a sad wheeze of plastic the only indication that it once contained the promise of clean hands.  With a mournful sigh, I push on the "Hot" tap, hoping the temperature alone will cleanse the filth of this horrible experience. 1.7 seconds later, the water shuts off with a gurgle. Thus begins the confusing process of holding the faucet on with one hand while rushing to wet the other. 

And then the drying, or lack thereof. If it's not the weak breeze of an air dryer, it's scratchy brown paper towels that leave splinters in your hands. Finally, the escape route: an intricate strategy that involves opening the door with the paper towel and then lobbing it into the trashcan. One misplaced trashcan, one empty dispenser and the whole jig is up. I JUST WANT TO LEAVE WITHOUT TOUCHING ANYTHING. 

And so I come to you, reader, embittered but reproved. Learn from my woes: "Free" is not necessarily better, especially when it comes to the bathroom.  If you ever visit Europe, don't complain about the price of the public restroom.  Take a moment and enjoy the fact that you will be far less likely to leave with some sort of communicable disease. And for those of you sticking around the States: If you can't hold it til you get home, at least bring hand sanitizer with you.

A Jar of Hidden Things and Secret Thoughts

This is the story of my coming home, but more than that, it's the story of me coming to terms with myself.  The time has come to share. I brought out the jar and have poured it out on this page.  It's the heaviest, most serious post I've ever written, so if you only come to this blog for laughs and recipes, please skip to other entries. 

Let me start with the obvious: 1) I'm home from Switzerland 2) I haven't been writing about it.  I've been going along with the thought that I owe you (the reader) nothing and therefore no reason to lay it out there. And then I read my dear friend Julie's post about ziploc bag honesty and it cut me to the core. This is why I stopped writing.  I can't write what I'm not feeling. There hasn't been a Things I Love This Week post in ages, because I'm not in a place where I can stop to smell the flowers and appreciate the little things.  The words are forced and fake, so I don't write them. But at the same time, I'm terrified of being honest in my blog, because I can't even be honest with myself.

I've been hemming and hawing, nervously guarding this experience, keeping it trapped in the swirling mass of all the everyday stream-of-consciousness thoughts of being:

"I think there's a Goodwill on the way to the grocery store.....if I am merely the sum of all my day-to-day choices, who am I today?.....must remember to call Grammie back...I love that turquoise sweater....what am I going to do with the rest of my life?......ah perfect, adding vinegar to regular milk will substitute for buttermilk....was Switzerland a dream? did it change me at all?....why aren't pet foxes a thing? must marry someone rich/smart to make this happen." 

For a very long time, there's been a heaviness to my thoughts.  A dark cloud, full of stinging rain that threatens to burst in my mind at any point.  I used to love long drives. Not just 45 minutes through the countryside, but 10, 11 hour roadtrips to the East Coast. "Don't you get bored?" people would ask. But no, I could just become so utterly absorbed in my thoughts that the hours and the miles would fly by.  Something about just me, my music, and the rhythm of the wheels, that appealed to my unburdened, idealistic mind.  Such clarity that comes from hours of letting my mind wander uninhibited!


Last week, I took a trip to Massachusetts with my sister, and it was clear my love affair with the open road was no more. I got into the driver's seat, adjusted the mirrors, and let my mind wander as Eva drifted off to sleep next to me. There's a certain point in between the miles where the usual brain chatter fades away and the memories and deep musings begin.  The thoughts of gas prices and where we would stop next faded away, to be replaced by a happy memory of an evening with all the family in the living room of our cottage in England. I paused in my mind to walk around the memory, picking up and examining the pleasant little details. Watching my cousin open her wedding gifts. Someone was braiding my hair, the sense memory of fingers next to my scalp.  The sound of spoons clinking against teacups. A general sense of togetherness and being loved. But of course, the evening didn't last forever. We got up and filtered out of the room and the memory began to pass, the warm golden ribbon of good feeling melting away. 

It's funny how memory works; things dash across our mind at the speed of light but sometimes it stops to savor a specific event, moment by moment. But then it's over and the faces of my various family members slipped out of my mind's eye as quickly they left the room that night. It picked up speed, the rest of that English vacation, flashing by, leaping forward through that summer, and all the things and choices that led me to that moment of leaving for Switzerland.  That terrible, gut-wrenching instant when my family's faces disappeared beyond the security gate and I was alone in the airport, facing the biggest experience of my life. When I slumped down into the blue plastic chairs of the terminal and cried so hard I thought my boots would fill with tears and float away.  
 In that moment, a cold fear gripped my heart. There I was standing on the brink of the unknown, not ready to jump but with nothing left to hold onto.  Everything familiar was moments from being left behind, tiny shapes disappearing into the blue as the plane carried me away.

As I was reminiscing in the car, the same feelings crept back over me.  Because I'm in that exact same place right now.  I'm home from Switzerland, earlier than planned, and the world is a huge white canvas.  Somewhere in my mind I know that I should be excited by the wide world of possibilities before me but I'm terrified.  I'm unemployed and living at home, with no idea what the future holds in store.  What if I don't have the right tools?  What if I fail?  What if the best I'll ever be in this life is already behind me?  These are the things I think about if I let my mind wander.  The icy fingers of doubt sneak in and take over.  I was suddenly afraid to be at the wheel, as though on top of everything else, I would lose control of the car too.  Eva had to drive the rest of the way that day. I wanted to run home and crawl under the covers.

That's the difference between me then and me now.  It never occurred to me to gather my bags and run out of that airport, back in the direction I came.  I knew there were two little Swiss children 4500 miles in front of me, waiting for their new nanny.  I knew there were lands and people and things and moments that I would come to love just as much as the ones I was leaving.  So I sloshed off to the bathroom, mopped up and actually slapped myself in the face. I looked hard in the mirror at my watery eyes and told myself that I could do this. "Get a grip. Go tackle this, like you tackled college. Like you tackled that terrible job at the dog kennel. Like you know enough about football to be using such words as 'tackled'. And if anyone asks, that growing red mark on your cheek is rosacea."  

And I did. Deepest of breaths, stepping onto the plane and again the memory slides out, whizzing forward to the present day. It became true: there are lands and people and things and moments from those seven months that I love so dearly.  Experiences I would not replace for all the tea in China. But I changed. The cold fall wind blew in and stayed; it seemed to hollow out a space inside me.  It was like a hole appeared in the fabric of my being. Small enough to go unnoticed for awhile but big enough for all the sunshine and self-confidence to slowly leak out.  And the most maddening thing: I don't know why or how the hole got there.  

And then one day I was standing in a crowded museum in Paris, in a crush of people admiring a Vincent Van Gogh collection when it seemed like all the oxygen left the room.  For no reason at all, that cold fear from the airport was back. And it brought a friend: pure, unadulterated panic.  Waves and waves of it, as though I'd been thrown into the ocean and had forgotten how to swim.  It caught me completely off-guard.  I took the train back to Switzerland early Monday morning, a thousand questions plaguing me. And then it kept happening, regardless of time and place. Out of nowhere, fear and panic would encircle me and link arms. The more I struggled, the tighter the grip until suddenly, release. And I'm on the floor, sweating and gasping for air.  

I began to fear the feeling.  There was no way to predict it or prevent it.  Sleep eluded me and I lost all desire to eat.  I didn't want to leave the house. And then I didn't want to leave my bed.  I was locked in an endless loop of fearing the fear.  It was starkly clear that this was more than I could handle alone.  I needed to leave Switzerland.  And thus, the reason I came home, with no fanfare or forewarning, and four months early. 


So here we are, a little over a month past the day my feet were back on American soil.  I'd like to say I bring you this story from the other side of the valley, but I would be lying.  Obviously, I've taken the proper steps to getting on the road to right, but I'm not there yet. It would be naive to think I could shake this off like a bad head cold.  
The fear is still there, lurking always. It comes over me but feels more familiar, predictable even. I'm learning how to deal with it. I wish so urgently to understand it, why it's there. Perhaps one day I will. Not to mention the regrets: so many regrets about leaving early. So many people I never got to say goodbye to, leaving in such a fashion.  So many people I miss so achingly each and every day! I know even though it feels like a mountain, from the other side this will look like a speed bump. For now, I'm trying to get back into a rhythm, distracting my mind to get through the day; baking, organizing, shopping, cleaning even.  In the name of progress though, I'm trying my hardest to get back to that place where I can look in the mirror at my watery eyes and be completely honest with myself.

Of course I could do this privately and not on the Internet, but I need it out there staring at me in black and white to acknowledge its presence.  I am very good at avoiding dealing with things when they are kept secret in my mind.  And perhaps that is the root of the problem in the first place. So please don't disparage me for sharing, this is not for attention or some sort of sympathy vote. In fact, I hid it because I was afraid it would change the way people would act around me.
What I ask now of you, reader, is that the next time you see me, no matter what sort of relationship we have, don't let this be an elephant in the room. Don't feel like you need to walk on eggshells or pat me delicately on the hand.  I have been altered, but will not be defined, by this experience. 

Well then, let's all have a smile and a hug. I'm all weird and emotional and not sure how to end this so  for goodness' sake, stop reading and go watch the video of the kitty riding the turtle's back.

Les Montagnes

Disclaimer: I have trouble with the picture tool in Blogger, the format is not easy to work with so I'm sorry if this looks a mess. It's different in every web browser and on every screen.

Let's play a little game of word association. I say Switzerland, you say....Alps!

Last Friday night, the calm was broken by three hilarious people (Dario, Alaina, and Caro) swinging by my village in a jam-packed-but-just-enough-room-for-one-more Passat. "Allons, to the mountains!" we cried and off we went.

After an hour and a half, a bit of weekend traffic, some terrible honky tonk country music, and an ice cream stop at McD's (where the drive-thru employees were serenaded to in a falsetto rendition of a hymn), we screeched to a halt in Aminona, a cozy burg midway up a mountain. Arriving in the dead of night, this is all I got from the 8th floor balcony of Dario's apartment:

I knew we had climbed in altitude, and were among the Alps, but there was no giant spotlight to give me a clear view of what the landscape actually looked like.

We went quick to bed, Caro, Alaina and I stuffed comfortably into the smaller bedroom and Dario, rattling like a bullet in a tin can in the big room next to us. With snowboarding on the agenda, we eschewed the lazy Saturday mentality and popped up at 8 am, fresh as daisies. I was still rubbing the sleep out of my eyes when I stepped out onto the balcony.

HELLOOOO. Best wake-up ever. I literally stood there, rooted to the deck by the vision before me. After that, it's a little bit fuzzy, but I may have shouted something about being on top of the world, startling a flock of birds flying below me. That's right, below me. "Ladies and Gentlemen, in the event of a change in cabin pressure, HANG ON TO YOUR HATS, WE'RE IN THE ALPS." 

Much invigorated, we sat down to one of the best aspects of Swiss livin': breakfast. Yogurt, tresse au buerre straight from the oven, and homemade jam. Also cake. But that was because it was Dario's birthday.

By 10 am, literally steps from the apartment, we were in the télécabines heading up the mountain.
After what seemed like ages of me pretending I was not inwardly freaking out (I have a thing about gondolas/ski lifts), we burst forth into a crazy blinding wonderland of uninhibited sunshine and glittery snow:

Quel bonheur! Finally, before my very eyes, the glory of the Swiss Alps! A sight that inspires music, poetry, prayer, and altitude sickness.  I confess, this was not my first time in Alps. The first time was in December at Les Mosses, a ski resort at a lower altitude and in a valley of mountain peaks, so the view was not expansive. 

The three intrepid snowboarders set off to carve up the terrain with their mad skillz, or whatever you sports types say in this situation:

I, clearly not being a sports type, set off on a hike for some exercise and the opportunity to take in the landscape and ridiculous self-timer shots of myself:

We reconvened on the terrace in the afternoon for some food, a few good laughs, and a chance to replenish the sunscreen. 

 

Off once more, I went on another hike to take photos in the afternoon sun.

Mission accomplished, I'd say.

With this exhilarating scenery before me and a feeling of complete peace and harmony with the world, obviously I felt the need to share. I made a really expensive phone call to my parents from the top of my peak, ignoring the time difference to exclaim over what I was feeling. 

Not entirely satisfied, I also recorded a video. Upon further review, I have concluded that it is not footage worth sharing in such a public forum. It consists of a rather shaky 360 degree panning shot, followed by three minutes of me shouting excitedly and launching into an unnecessary yet profound speech about being open to incredible experiences in life. Also, at one point in my exuberance, I make the wrong to choice to rip my hat off, exposing what was most definitely not a good hair day.

Alas, I finished my philosophical musings with a glance down the mountain to see there was no one on the slopes. A tiny bit worried, I hustled on down to the ski lift to see with relief that it was still running. 

As Caro and I waited for our turn to go down, we soaked in the views and of course, took advantage of the photo op on the now empty slopes.

Dario and Alaina, having trekked over to the lift for the glacier,

were not so lucky getting down. They caught one of the last chairs, and got stuck in midair for twenty minutes. Quel disaster. My "tiny thing about ski lifts" would have been much more visible, had I been in that situation. Fortunately, I was not there, and all four of us arrived safely at the bottom.  

We hustled to clean the apartment and hopped back in the car for the long drive back. Yawning and sore, we glided comfortably along the autoroute in the evening glow, managing to miss most of the "end of ski holidays" traffic. All back to Dario's parents (the Krebs) at a reasonable hour, we were in bed asleep before 9:30. Well, I was. But we all know what kind of party animal I am.

Sunday was a glorious day of union meetings and a yummy venison dinner with the workers at the Krebs. And of course, more cake. I don't know about Dario, but that was the best 28th birthday I've ever had. And I'm not even 23 yet. 

We can safely file this into the "one of the best weekends of my life" drawer. Moral can be divided into 3 parts: 

1) The Alps are worth seeing in person.

2) It is possible to have a completely satisfying day at a ski resort without strapping on a pair of skis. 

3) One can never have too many self-timered shots of oneself.

Thanks much to Dario, Alaina, and Caro for including me....you are a solid crew!

Good Morning Paris

The sun has risen but has not shown its face from behind the clouds. It's just a mite chilly in Jillian's apartment but I have enough blankets to burrow in like a mole setting up for winter. Even the unexplicable construction occuring outside at 8 am is a pleasant change for my ears.

Last night I arrived after the world's most unnerving train ride (police men and drug dogs, I'll leave it at that)
and was greeted by a friendly and amusing Scotsman, who walked with me to await Jillian in her apartment. We were soon joined by Jillian and a cheerful Canadian and whiled away the evening hours with some pasta and copious amounts of tea. It was a pleasing introduction to what looks to be another fantastic weekend.

This random post is my excuse to say I wrote something this week. I'd say more but this French computer has the world's worst organized keyboard and I'm reduced to picking out the letters with two fingers like a sad overworked, underpaid 55 year old receptionist who never took a typing class. Also there is the promise of bagels if I venture outside today.

Until next time then. Start your weekend early today, I won't tell.