A Collection of Perceptions

Lately the only travel I do is between here and California. This is by choice, which isn’t to say that I don’t occasionally miss traveling, perhaps in part because for a stretch of about five years, I was doing almost nothing else. Regularly experiencing the unfamiliar became my familiar. Now, I miss it most during this time of year, which I think of as my Grief Trifecta: Jackson’s birthday in April, Mother’s Day in May, then D-day (if you don’t know my history, “D” stands for death) in June, one upon the other with a short space of breathing room in between in which to gird my loins. Do people still use that expression? I looked it up and it turns out it comes from the Bible, referring to tucking one’s long robe into a girdle (i.e., a belt) in order to keep it out of the way of physical labor, though gradually the term broadened to include mental labor as well. 

These days my day-to-day routines and interactions with my 94 year old father serve as building blocks, frozen chunks as well as floating particles which I drop into my memory well, from which I will draw in the years to come. I am keenly aware of how soon he will be gone from my life forever, and I understand that I have a chance here that I didn’t have with Jackson. I may not be able to choose my memories now any more than I could then, but I’m more conscious of them as they pass through my fingers. I linger longer. Obviously I expected Jackson would grow up and leave home, move on to a life of his own, but his time never felt finite to me the way my father’s, or even mine, did (and increasingly does). Our life together felt fluid, and in a way, predictable. I had living, breathing examples all around me of what, presumably, was to come. I realize now only a parent of a child with a terminal illness would ever see their child’s time as finite. The others expect to die first, so why think of what will happen (long) after they are gone? They won’t be around to face it, so they don’t need to think about it. In a way though, old age in a loved one is a terminal illness. It advances to the point where you can’t deny its looming shadow, growing darker and more pronounced, and because of this you see every day as potentially the last in this life as you know it to be. Complacency is not your bedfellow.

I had hoped being around my family during my Trifecta would lessen the blow, and reduce the time spent girding. I feel less alone than I did before, but I find myself loathe to share the depths of my grief with others who may feel it less and/or feel their own and/or not want to witness mine. With each layer of intimacy removed between the griever and the grievee, surely there exists an increasingly remote distance, added at increasingly faster speeds, to the sense of loss one continues to feel over time. 

This year, unlike when I was traveling, there are no automatic, organic distractions – no exotic smells or cheeky monkeys to remind me, in a way “the news” never can, how vast and diverse our planet is, yet how intricately interconnected all of us are who live upon it. How trivial, minuscule and fleeting each of us really is. How momentous in possibility any one moment might be. And for all the overuse the word receives, how being “mindful” of this can be healing.

Two down, one to go. The plan this D-day is to drive about an hour north to a small town on the Chesapeake Bay where I’ve reserved a room at a bed and breakfast for the night, thus creating my own small distraction, a new unfamiliar. I won’t think less about Jackson, nor will I not cry, miss him, or mourn his death. You take yourself with you, after all, wherever you go. I will think as I often do about the words that people use when they hear about disaster, disease and death, and how those words morph into labels they apply to themselves and others, like badges of honor or self-selected scarlet letters. In particular, words like survivor and victim. How we take these labels and incorporate them into our identity, using them to distinguish ourselves from others, set us apart, except for the select few with whom we believe we share their criteria (our club. Do you remember the line by Groucho Marx, “I wouldn’t want to belong to a club that would have me as a member”?). How we think our character is somehow shaped by which label we choose for ourselves, and conversely, that the label reflects our character, as well as what we expect from life, perhaps even receive. Am I weak because I got knocked down and find it so difficult to get back up? If so, is this why I’m a victim, or the result of my victimhood? If I get through a traumatic event and I’m still standing, am I by definition strong and tenacious? Is strong morally superior to weak? Is stoicism preferable to visible struggle, and does what doesn’t kill us really make us stronger, or does it just bring us one step closer to death? Will the meek inherit the earth?? 

In the end, of course, none of it really matters – what we choose to call ourselves or other people – ultimately Death sees to it that everyone is victimized, and nobody survives. The very opposite of the labels we would wish for ourselves are chosen for us, and words are just words. Perhaps we put too much stock in labels, and waste too much time pondering, picking and preferring them. Perhaps there are more important things to think about, and do.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some loins to girder.

The days are quickly becoming warmer, with temperatures in the 90’s recently. It feels too early to me for that kind of heat, and of course it is. (We all know about that.) During the day it’s oppressive, especially when it’s humid too, which is usually the case. 

Since I grew up here, you might think these first few days of summer-like weather would lead to memories of my youth in the suburbs of Baltimore. But the summers of my entire childhood were spent in national parks scattered across the country, predominately in the west, so most of them were quite unlike summers here. More trails than roads, more animals than people, vividly colored wildflowers growing freely outside the front door, and in general cooler, shorter, drier summers. 

So on days like this my mind goes to our visits, on the way to and/or from the parks, to my grandparents’ farm in Kentucky, where the climate was much the same as it is here. Without air conditioning and being outside much of the day anyway (I was, after all, a child whose first priority was play), I remember feeling hopeful and spoiled in the placid early mornings, heavy and sleepy in the middle of the day, and soothed when the sun went down and the insects began to sing. An evening’s entertainment for myself and my older brother entailed slipping outside at dusk with an empty jar apiece and collecting as many fireflies as we could inside them, marveling at the succession of brilliant spots of light appearing then disappearing within our hot little hands. 

I felt much the same rhythm to the days during my time in Asia a few years ago, though I was there in autumn rather than summer, and how much or little rainfall we got was more of a determining factor, compared to temperature, on the course of our day. In tropical climates where the seasons are defined by amount of rainfall, you wouldn’t do anything or go anywhere if you were waiting for a cool day. Air conditioning is not ubiquitous as it is here, and since I typically travel on a fairly tight budget, I could never count on staying in a motel that had it. When we did, it felt like a grand luxury. Cheap motels are the norm across much of Asia if you aren’t too picky, and my half of a night’s stay averaged $10 at most. We never considered camping, the first thought in places like the U.S., Canada, and much of Europe. 

I recalled this fact recently when I read about a couple who were motorcycling around India and chose to camp, which proved to be a big mistake. Even if inexpensive lodging weren’t readily abundant, India, like most Asian countries I’ve visited, doesn’t jump to mind when I think of places to camp. There are people everywhere. There are no secluded public spaces, there are no campgrounds either public or private, or national parks that provide camping facilities. There is little to no chance of finding any privacy anywhere. I expect if you were up in the Himalayas you could find wilderness, people-free zones, and perhaps there, camping would be a viable option. But not anywhere near the cities, which are wall-to-wall humanity. Anyway, this couple chose to camp, and they were attacked by a gang of men who beat the husband and repeatedly raped the wife, then disappeared into the darkness, leaving the couple, battered and bleeding, with little to no hope of anyone ever finding, much less prosecuting, the perpetrators of this violence. Those men, the criminals, surely committed their atrocities within a stone’s throw of other people who might have intervened, people who were accustomed to tuning out the sounds around them that accompany everyday life in an overpopulated, poverty stricken urban area in the 21st century: cars backfiring, horns honking, bottles breaking, doors slamming, and people making the noises that people make – moaning, crying, shouting, wailing. These men did what they did and then walked away into the crowded streets, melted into the masses, absorbed into the darkness. 

I wondered what led this couple to think it would be safe to camp there. Were they new to overland travel? Were they trusting of everyone, even strangers? Had they not researched their destination ahead of time? Or was personal safety not something they had yet to consider, because it had never been an issue before. Do you have to have been traumatized in some way, I wonder, in order to feel that the world is inherently unsafe? I’m sure there are people who are raised in families where this sentiment is passed on to them, through repeated stories, cautions, and behaviors, but is this enough? Or do you have to have known that at a visceral level, strongly enough to resist the urge to do something you suspect is reckless because it is so tempting? And where do you draw the line, between caution and risk? It is one of the saddest realities most of us will have to acknowledge at some point in our lives, that no matter how many precautions a person takes, how many risks they avoid, it is so often mere chance that leads tragedy to befall them. It is always someone else, until it is us, after which we take every step with our eyes wide open.

For the couple who were attacked, this is almost certainly all they will remember of India, forever – they are forever changed, forever scarred. I hope it won’t stop them from traveling though, from giving other places and other people a chance to make their mark, to layer over the trauma with happy memories, not undo it (that’s impossible), but perhaps to begin to redeem; that experience if not those men in particular. Isn’t that really what we look for in life, if we persist in living, not just existing? Layer upon layer of some shade of beauty or joy to redeem all that which is not? Take precautions, and take risks. It’s not one or the other, and there are no guarantees which way it will go, whatever you do. 

I have persisted in living, so far anyway. Most days my layer of redemption is thin and pale. That’s okay though, because they accumulate, these layers. Today it’s forecast to be 92 degrees in Baltimore, so outside of a morning walk, I’ll probably stay indoors. Baseball season is underway, and the Orioles have gotten off to a fine start, leading their division. Most of the games have been played in the evening so far, with a few afternoon games thrown in, typically on the weekend, but today will be the odd weekday afternoon game. I’ll sit in an armchair in my father’s living room where he’ll have the radio on, turned up loud because his hearing isn’t what it used to be. We’ll listen to the game, we’ll cheer together whenever they score, and mutter blasphemous clichés when they don’t. When Gunner Henderson steps up to bat I’ll smile to myself because he bears a strong resemblance to Jackson in both looks and demeanor. In my mind’s eye, for an instant, it’s Jackson up there (who used to play baseball too), then the moment passes and someone else is in front of home plate. The windows will be open because my father hasn’t yet turned on the air conditioner, and between the breeze and the overhead fan, we’ll be cool enough on a sultry summer’s day.

I’m on the Gaspé Peninsula of Quebec, Gaspésie to the locals, with my friend Lisa. We’re touring this gentle yet wild jut of land in the high-roof, extra long Ford Transit she and her husband transformed from an empty cargo van into a fully functional camper van. Though I’m not sharing in the driving due to insurance liability reasons, I’m getting a good taste of what it’s like to drive, park and maneuver this size vehicle simply by watching her and feeling the pitch of the van as we move to and fro. I could perhaps get used to the challenge as she has, grow competent even, though it’s becoming clear to me that should I decide to pursue extended time traveling in a vehicle, I’d much prefer something smaller all the way round. As long as I had a wide swathe of space high enough in which to stand upright for cooking and cleaning, being only one person I wouldn’t need as much room as this van provides.

For the last day or two we’ve been trying to keep one step ahead of Hurricane Lee, so our original plan to meander slowly around 132 counter-clockwise has altered. Instead, we’ve moved quickly south through Amqui and Chaleur Bay toward Forillon National Park. Percé Rock is barely visible in the rain and fog that has penetrated the area for the past 24 hours.

Nonetheless we’ve made time to visit various natural, cultural and historical landmarks along the way, including waterfalls, small fishing villages, sculpture gardens, and lighthouses. We see so many covered bridges that they all start to look the same, so much so that we visit the same one twice and don’t even realize it. The peninsula is as charming and captivating as I’d been led to believe by the many videos I watched and articles I read, and I’m already thinking about coming back one day. I’m pleased too that the people are so friendly, having heard several accounts about everyone in Quebec being unfriendly, rude, occasionally even hostile, to native English speakers. I’ve been to Quebec before but only briefly, not long enough to get a feel for the personality of the province. I do speak French, but it is far from perfect, and I return to my long held belief that if tourists to anywhere behave respectfully toward their hosts and make a genuine attempt to fit in by learning a few crucial words of the local language (“please”, “thank you” and “can you help me” foremost among them), you will make out okay. Most Québécois that we meet speak at least some English and seem willing if not keen to use it, and I think more importantly, they appreciate the effort of a tourist trying to politely, rather than assumingly, communicate with them.

In Fornillon we have our first (and as it turns out last for awhile) full sunny day, the calm before the storm. Lee, now being referred to as a post-tropical cyclone, is scheduled to arrive in earnest tomorrow afternoon, and we’ll need to head out early. We spend the day hiking, managing three different trails over the course of the day. The first takes us to a small waterfall; the second up Mont Saint-Alban to a platform over Gaspé Bay where we spot seals below us and with the help of my binoculars, can just make out Newfoundland across the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the east; the third one, Cap Gaspé, meanders up a trail hugging the coast to a lighthouse.

We see several seals playing in the surf close to shore before we even start, surfacing and diving back and forth, then popping just their heads up long enough to get a good look at us, but not long enough for me to snap a photo. Twice along the trail we see whales breaching and spouting a fair ways off shore. At the top we gaze out at the view, read the plaques relating local history below the lighthouse, and with the first decent phone signal we’ve had in days, both Lisa and I call home to check in. 

I came on this trip with a fair amount of reluctance because a few weeks ago my aunt was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Before I left we got the news that her treatments weren’t working, and she wasn’t going to continue them. I told my father to call me at any time if he wanted to go and see her, and I’d cut my trip short and come straight back. I hear the sadness in his voice today as he tells me that when I get back, he’ll be ready to go see her. “Should I return now?” I ask. He says no, finish my trip, enjoy myself; when I get back will be soon enough.

We stay ahead of Lee only long enough to turn inland just a bit, far enough west that we can hunker down for a day while it spits and blows but does no harm to our immediate surroundings before it dissipates and blows away. I spend the next few days trying to enjoy myself as my father suggested, but the dark cloud that hangs over me is increasingly cold. I wake up one morning with a scratchy throat, the next with sinus congestion. By the end of the week I’m finding it difficult to pursue with any enthusiasm the hikes we take in Gaspésie National Park or elsewhere. I have no energy and my muscles, especially my leg muscles, ache almost before I even move them. I power through, convinced I’m just fighting off a cold, until Thursday morning. We’re at a campground outside Quebec City, ready to spend the next two days exploring the Old Town, then another two days in the Eastern Townships south of the city. Lisa has found a self-driving cheese tour of the region that sounds interesting and delicious, an almost decadent way to end our trip.

My father calls me early, before we catch the ferry across the river into Quebec City. In the moment his voice breaks with the strain of emotion he can no longer contain, so too does my heart. This will be the second time I’ve lost a loved one to a malignant brain tumor, and the march of its destiny is as ruthless this time as last: the sudden and crushing diagnosis, the flow and ebb of hope, the leaden weight of despair. My aunt isn’t young. But she is, was up until a few weeks ago anyway, vibrant, smart, funny; engaged and engaging. I love her. It’s too soon.

Suddenly I feel every ache, twinge and spasm of fatigue and weakness I’ve been whitewashing for the last few days. My body and mind are united in dread. We go into Quebec as planned but rather than flitting about town discovering the many pleasures and surprises the city holds with Lisa, I head instead to the Tourism Office where I get online and make phone calls, looking for the fastest and most efficient way to get home, ultimately keeping my original flight with Air Canada but moving it up to fly out of Toronto on Saturday, the soonest we can get there safely, instead of the following Tuesday. She wants to see us. She wants to say goodbye. I desperately want this too.

The next couple of days are a race against time. Memories of walking the Camino de Santiago, the last time I found myself in this situation, overtake me. I was holed up in Leon for a few days because my back had gone into spasm, and being in any position other than supine and motionless sent excruciating shockwaves coursing through me, when I received the news that Mugsy, our beloved dog, the last remaining member of my little nuclear family, was dying. Then, as now, I hurried to get back, scrapping previously made reservations and scrambling to establish new ones, commanding my body, and when that failed, begging my body, to cooperate. I lost that race. I fear I will lose this one too. As I cross the bridge from present to past I begin to cry and can’t seem to stop.

It takes me a day and a half to get back. My flight is canceled by Air Canada because of the latest tropical storm, and the replacement they offer me takes me through Chicago, where I end up missing my connection and have to spend the night. It’s one in the afternoon by the time I haul myself out of an Uber and go inside. I want to turn around and leave again, to get in the car and start driving for Kentucky, but I know I won’t be going anywhere for a few days. Whatever I’m sick with is probably contagious, and mask or no mask, I can’t risk passing it on to my aunt or her husband, to my brother or my father. I think of the expression hurry up and wait. “She knows you love her,” my dad says. It will be what I will tell myself again and again, where I will hide, where I’ll search for solace, if this time, again, I am too late.

I’m walking in the cemetery across the street from my father’s house. It’s been so hot lately that I’ve made it a point to get out early (ish), after a quick cup of coffee and a few pages of whatever book I’m currently reading. My father walks in the cemetery too but he’s typically there the minute the gates open, between 6:30-7:00, and back by the time I’m ready to go. I can’t get up that early without setting my alarm. I still don’t sleep through the night, and if I know I have to get up at a certain time, I’ll hardly sleep at all, waking up over and over to check the clock, wondering if it’s time to get up yet, not trusting, never trusting, that my alarm will go off as programmed.

Today I look for the fox we’ve both been keeping our eye on, a skinny, mangy thing that both my dad and I are hoping will recover from his affliction. I say mangy because this is what we have diagnosed him with based on his appearance: mange. He’s practically hairless, seems tired, even listless, and scratches himself a lot. Mange, it turns out, is common among foxes, coyotes, and other canids, and is highly contagious. This, Mr. Google tells us, is why wildlife rehabilitation places don’t want you to call them, or worse, just bring in a fox you’ve come across that’s got mange. That’s assuming you could catch one in the first place, which seems to me highly unlikely, given how furtive and wild they are, even suburban foxes like the ones around here who must be used to living among humans. Mr. Google says you should just let them be, let Nature take its course. Some will die from it, but some will survive and recover.  

I call him Brother Fox, using the term of endearment a character in books by one of my favorite writers uses, though I have no way of knowing the sex of this particular fox, so I could just as logically refer to it as Sister Fox. I think too of a song my father used to sing to me at bedtime, about a fox who went hunting late at night and raided a poultry farm, returning to his den with at least one goose and a duck, a feast he, Mrs. Fox, and their ten small baby foxes set about consuming, but only after dismembering them with the aid of a great big carving knife. 

The third and final fox reference that pops into my mind this morning is that of Br’er Fox, from childhood stories by Uncle Remus. Of course Uncle Remus wasn’t his real name. In fact it wasn’t even the alias of a real person. Uncle Remus was a fictitious character himself. I think about the different writers I know of who used an alias to publish their work. George Eliot comes to mind, who probably did so because she knew her chances of being published were infinitely greater if the general public believed her to be a man. Ayn Rand, George Orwell, and Lewis Carroll used aliases too. Then there are those who published some books under a pen name, and some under their real name. This is a longer list, and includes many writers most people have at least heard about, even if they haven’t actually read their books. People like Mark Twain, Agatha Christie, Benjamin Franklin, Stephen King, and Lemony Snicket, to name a few.

I suppose the reasons for using a pen name are many and varied. When I picked a pen name for myself, I did so mostly because of my reluctance to call attention to myself, a characteristic most introverts share, and further enhanced by my shyness, which has increased significantly over the last several years. So using an alias, when you publish something you’ve written, especially something that’s personal in nature, seemed logical to me. Look at what I’ve written, it says, but don’t look at me. It protects you, to some extent, and equally importantly, the people you write about. You might get rich as a result of what you write, even famous, but your success won’t entail being recognized the way it would if people put your real name together with your books. Of course writers in general don’t have to contend with face recognition the way film stars or athletes or anyone frequently in the public eye does. Even if they become a household name, they rarely have to hire private security in order to avoid being mobbed in the streets. 

I thought long and hard, and the pen name I eventually came up with, while having the same number of syllables as my real name, had a softer ring to it and, unlike my real name, which ends rather abruptly, could sit inside a person’s mouth until they ran out of breath, and then, leave as a whisper. Everyone I ran it by, which admittedly was just a few people, liked it, or so they said. Maybe they merely didn’t want to hurt my feelings, because when I told Leigh what I’d chosen, he laughed and said it reminded him of a porn star. 

By the time I finish my walk, I haven’t even glimpsed Brother Fox in the distance, much less come around a corner and run smack into him, as I’ve done on other occasions. He’s nowhere to be seen this morning, nor has he been for the past several days. Is it already too hot for him to be out and about? Is he doing better, and therefore back to more typical fox-like crepuscular behavior, rather than running around all hours of the day to find things to eat, because it’s hard to get enough calories when you are constantly scratching and shedding from an infestation of scabies-like insects essentially eating you alive? Or has he succumbed to the scourge, crawled under a bush somewhere to die? And if he has, is it our fault? Are we, humans, responsible in the same way we are for much of the havoc Mother Nature is currently wreaking across so much of the world? Have we, by our behavior – through neglect, greed, self-absorption, hostility, even indifference – increased the prevalence, perhaps the virility, of afflictions like mange, and in doing so added to the risks certain species of wildlife must encounter?

Two days later I walk again, later in the morning than I’d intended. There’s a funeral taking place, so I skirt the edges of the cemetery then take a detour around the back where the staff keep a ready supply of dirt on hand and frequently deposit stumps, downed branches and rocks. I don’t expect to see any wildlife, given the time of day, the heat, and the abundance of cars and people just beyond the overgrown rise where I’m walking. My tennis shoes crunch gravel and twigs along the way, and I’m paying little attention as I turn a corner. That’s when I see him. Brother Fox. He’s directly in front of me on the path and for a split second we stare at each other, motionless, then he leaps up into the wooded hillside. The foliage is thick and he disappears instantly. I remain stock still, hoping if I’m quiet enough he might think I’m gone and poke his head back out. Just long enough for me to get a good look at him. From the brief glimpse I got, he doesn’t look quite as scrawny as he did, and he has more patches of fur than he did before, in particular a white bushy tip on his increasingly furry red tail. 

Long moments pass. A bird flits here and there, but otherwise there is no movement, and finally I give up and proceed on my way, feeling the way I do when a stranger has caught my eye and smiled at me in passing, creating a connection no less real for its brevity in a world that feels hopelessly bereft of connection lately. I’ve received a small but unexpected gift, and it dances across my skin like a soft breeze, leaving a tingle behind. For an instant I am young again, innocent of horror, tragedy and devastation, knowing not what life is capable of except that it holds promises, untold yet within our grasp.

It rained last night for the first time in longer than I can remember. The splatter against my bedroom window woke me up – a sound grown alien in its rarity – then lulled me back to sleep again, no less comforting, perhaps more so, for its unexpectedness. Fires continue to burn through parts of California and other western states, as hurricanes and typhoons blow and pound across other parts of the world. Diseases claim lives at increasingly alarming rates, as do suicides and other acts of violence. Nations impose their hardline wills on unconsenting subjects, on other nations, on the world at large. Species are dying, snuffed out one by one like discarded, used up cigarettes. 

Like most people who strive for good mental health, I skim the headlines cautiously for news that I need to know, seek out as much information about those subjects as I can handle, and let the rest go. Not float away exactly, rather rest uneasily on the brink of my conscious mind, where it will either settle in or fade away as input does that doesn’t turn in to memory. I don’t know how anyone can absorb it all and truthfully I don’t think they can. There is too much disintegration and disarray, too much despair in today’s world, and it’s all in our faces, at our fingertips at all times, harassing us and weakening us. Where do we find strength?

Everyone has their own means and methods. I read books, take walks, do yoga, and cook. I do online volunteer work through the website Zooniverse, contributing to data collection in any number of scientific research projects. My favorites are the observation and classification of wildlife around the world. I practice my Spanish and French, confident I will use these skills again. I email various travel companions and together we brainstorm ideas for upcoming adventures together. But these forays, these long, slow, restorative – for me, strength giving – experiences, have been too few and far between lately, and I’m anxious to move them from the speculation stage to the planning stage to the action stage. I want to buy a ticket, and go.

Mark too has fallen victim to his wanderlust lately, and suggested we plan a trip to Cyprus. I quickly agreed. We can get there without too much fuss, and the cost of food and accommodation is relatively low. We’ll rent a scooter or small motorcycle, enabling us to see much more of the island than we could using public transportation. Our plan is to spend three weeks in the southern, self-governed part of the country, then one week in the northern, Turkish ruled half.

I’ve stayed put for so many months partly to save money and to avoid the likelihood of contracting Covid, but recently, primarily because I am in the process of moving house. Like many people I know, I’m increasingly aware of the delicate impermanence of absolutely everything in life, especially as it pertains to the people we love. Jackson’s death served as a massive launch in that direction of course, and since then every time I see or speak to someone I love my heart squeezes a little bit tighter. Every time, I feel a little bit more lonely with the thought of not knowing when I’ll see them again, of losing them altogether, and with the knowledge that the holes within us will deepen and spread if we don’t fill them while we can. 

My father is 92. He’s in better shape than most people his age, and many younger, but he’s frail, and has had a number of falls. Living on the other side of the country from him, it’s a time consuming process to see him. It takes planning, expense, and it’s inevitably all too brief. I’m tired of my visits with him being something I have to plan weeks or months in advance, of fearing that when the phone rings and it’s him or my brother, any news will be bad. So I’ve made the decision to go back to Baltimore for awhile and live there, to be a temporary resident if you will, rather than a temporary visitor. I know it isn’t where I want to live for the rest of my life, but since it’s where my father lives and is determined to stay, it’s where I want to live for the rest of his life. 

So next month I will migrate east, my car packed with only a few essential belongings and my house plants, everything else in storage for the time being. I’ll settle in, then I’ll join Mark in Cyprus for November, and in December, I’ll return for the first time in over 20 years to my “home” in Maryland. I’ll spend Christmas with my father and brother for the first time since Jackson died. (It will be the first time I’ve felt able to be with people at Christmas in over eight years.) The dread that I usually feel when contemplating the holidays is still there, but it’s softer this year when I think about being with my family. I’m scared though, of the move itself, of leaving behind the tangible connections to Jackson that have trapped and consoled me both, that once cast aside can never be recaptured. It’s all well and good to say we carry people in our hearts or that they live in our memories; the fact is, once they die they don’t live at all anymore, these are euphemisms and rhetoric that we tell ourselves, and others, in an attempt to ease the impact of their absence. They are gone, and what we hold on to, if we can, are tokens, mementos, and memories. We can take tokens and mementos, like memories, with us wherever we go if they are small enough, but what of the larger, unmoveable ones, the rooms, the walls, the ground under our feet? Places hold memories too, memories we can see, smell and touch, memories that live outside of us: fingerprints, breath, footprints, scent. When those are gone, left behind, what will remain? Will it be enough? I suppose I’m afraid to find out. And then there’s a part of me that feels a sense of relief, relief that I feel strong enough to try. And something else. Even now, a fair amount of wonder: that I am still here, that there are bits of me, bits of my life, old and new, that I am finding the strength to discover and reclaim, to call my own, and on a good day, to share with others. 

What is there to say today that I haven’t said a thousand times already, and thought a gazillion times more? I miss him desperately; it isn’t fair; I want him back. I’d like to be able to add “but”… but I am getting better. But I am hurting less. But it’s not so bad anymore. 

I can’t. 

The best I can do is say I keep crawling through this murky sea of molasses that is the process of learning to live with Jackson’s death. Today is the very worst day of the year, the one where my anger competes with my sorrow, and sometimes wins. It is the day when I truly feel hate. How dare those two men be so selfish, so careless with the life of another person? I often wonder if it would be easier to forgive them if I thought they desired forgiveness. Maybe. Probably, in all honesty. 

I walk to the Elfin Forest and sit on the hill by the side of the highway like I do every year on this day. It’s important that I go on this day, because seeing the beautiful memorial of plants and rocks for Jackson that some unknown person erected here fills me every time with gratitude, and I need this gratitude to mitigate the anger. On my way home I pick a few sprigs of sage, then a twig from a butterfly bush, another from a New Zealand tea tree, some tall yellow flowers that I suppose are considered weeds by the side of the road, and a few stalks of lavender. I add some rosemary, the only blooming flower from the California Carpenteria plant in my yard, under which Mugsy lies, and as an afterthought I pick a long stem from the jasmine bush trailing up my fence, fragrant and slightly sticky. I bundle them all up together to take to the cemetery. Usually I take a simple bouquet of rosemary – rosemary for remembrance – but today I want as much color and smell and texture as I can get my hands on. I place it on his headstone, then lie down on top of the grave and stare up at the sky like I always do. I look for clouds, to try and assign a shape to this one or that one, a game we used to play when he was a little boy. A zebra! Look, a dragon! But the sky is cloudless today, clear and blue. 

Everyone else seems to have forgotten the significance of this date, or if they haven’t they choose to keep it to themselves. The only ones I am certain remember are his half-sister Jeanna, who every year without fail writes to me on both his birthday and the anniversary of his death, to say she is thinking of me; and my almost-daughter, whose birthday is today. One of life’s sick jokes, that is. She rarely calls me on this day, but I know it isn’t for lack of remembering. I mean, how do you forget something like that? A couple of years ago she asked me if I’d like to spend this day together at some point. Covid came along, they moved, and it hasn’t happened, but I like to think it will, and that being with someone I love so much and concentrating on her rather than dwelling within will restore some of this day’s natural hopefulness to her, and by proxy, to me. One stitch at a time.

Tomorrow I’ll call Dad to wish him a happy Father’s Day. I can hear the conversation in my head. I’ll try very hard to keep the tremor out of my voice, and he’ll try very hard not to hear it. “I’ve been thinking about you lately,” he’ll say. I’ll hear the very slight hesitation in his voice, like he knows there’s something he’s forgotten, that it’s nagging at his subconscious but won’t bare itself. He has done what most people I know have done, neatly organized and boxed his thoughts of Jackson into memories, from present into past, so they are quieter, less ragged and ill-behaved. Less demanding. It’s a choice I’m not free to make, not yet anyway; perhaps I never will be. That remains to be seen. He’ll know some landmark in my life has come and gone, but he won’t remember which one. They sort of jumble together when he allows himself to think about it. After a few minutes of small talk, he’ll let himself say this aloud. “What day?” he’ll say. Then his voice will trail off. In the wake of my silence, he’ll start again. “What day was it Jackson died? I’m afraid I’ve forgotten.” 

I’ll take a deep breath before I answer. “Yesterday, Dad. It was yesterday.”

We are two-up on a 125, again. As was our experience on such a small bike in India, we are fully loaded with a backpack apiece strapped onto a makeshift luggage rack (in this case a thick plastic cutting board Mark has drilled with holes to accommodate tie-down straps), a tank bag, and I’m carrying a messenger bag slung across my torso. Unlike our experience in India, this isn’t how we were meant to ride. 

We’re heading from Mark’s small village in Devon to an even smaller one in Cumbria. We recently returned from a 10-day ride on Mark’s BMW R-80 G/S through Wales and over to Herefordshire to visit my friend Pippa and her family. This is the same bike that carried us across the American Southwest on one occasion and the Northwest on another without incident, if you don’t count repairs Mark was able to make himself given the proper tools and the space in which to work. Yesterday, in preparation for the ride to Cumbria, Mark went outside to clean up the BMW and give it the once over, only to announce when he came back in that the rear wheel bearing had failed and we weren’t going anywhere on it. Given that the bike has almost 200k miles on it, it’s only surprising it didn’t break down while we were on it and riding some distance from his home. Wales, for instance, or on the way to Cumbria. 

“We’ll have to take the Honda,” he said. So far we’d been using the 125 only for short trips to buy groceries and the like. “Does it have panniers?” I asked, hoping they were stashed away in the garage somewhere. “No,” he said. “They don’t make them for this bike, it’s too small. I’d intended to modify the BMW pannier frames to fit it at some point but I haven’t got round to it.”

It’s raining when we leave Thursday morning and the forecast is for showers on and off for the next several days. At my insistence we made a hotel reservation halfway, at a small town outside of Birmingham, when I thought we’d be riding the BMW but didn’t want to push it to get there (a distance of more than 300 miles as the crow flies) in one day. We haven’t gone far before I’m wondering if we ought to have planned on three days with the Honda, since we can’t take any of the major highways (or M roads as Mark calls them) because the bike won’t go fast enough to keep up with traffic. 

I also know it’s only a matter of time before we get lost, given Mark’s stubborn refusal to ever use a Sat-Nav device. (Some people, almost certainly blissfully naive and inexperienced travelers, will occasionally reinforce this bad behavior by finding it romantic and saying so. I, on the other hand, find it maddening. I don’t disagree that paper maps are wonderful for long range planning, for looking at the big picture before and after a trip. Indeed, I love printed, colorful, folding maps. But when it comes to the daily ride in an unknown and perhaps alien environment where roads may or may not be sign-posted, it seems to me that the paper map should play back-up to its more modern cousin the Sat-Nav.) Every conversation we’ve had on the matter results in argument, with me sighing heavily and rolling my eyes and Mark mumbling some nonsense about Google sending people down nonexistent roads, and ends with him swearing allegiance to his paper maps (“I’ve always used them and by god I always will!”) while I grit my teeth and fantasize about telling him that he can damn well find someone else to ride with in future. 

We crawl through one small town after another, and soon after we leave Mark’s house, I’m already looking forward to stopping for the night. It’s 10:45 am. Traffic, crosswalks, and red lights take up so much time that we can’t afford to stop once an hour or so for five minutes to stretch our legs, something I really need. Making frequent breaks even more unlikely is the fact that with the bike piled so high with our stuff, I can’t climb on and off by simply swinging my leg over the back, rather I have to find a place to stand at least as high as a curb and preferably higher, from which to launch myself up and over the seat. Before we set off, I reminded him of this, and stressed the need to stop only where there’s that an elevated surface at my disposal. As it is, with an inseam of barely 29 inches, I struggle every time. That afternoon, Mark pulls off in the sloping gravel parking lot of a cafe where we hope to take a break from the lashing winds and rain with coffee and a snack. As I look down at the faraway, uneven ground, he chirps “Can you hop off please?” Taking a deep breath, I slide down the left side of the bike but can’t get my right foot over the seat. I pull, waiver, then begin to tip. “Shit,” I say aloud, knowing what’s coming and that I can’t stop it. Next thing I know I’m on the ground, with my messenger bag wedged under my back. I crawl onto my hands and knees, stumble to my feet, and glare at Mark. His eyebrows are threaded together in concern as he reaches out and pats my arm. “Ooh, are you okay?” he asks, getting off the bike. I mutter that I’m not hurt beyond a sore palm where my left hand hit the pavement, then we walk up to the café door only to find out they closed for the day approximately seven minutes ago. To his credit, he solicitously asks after my welfare from time to time the rest of the day.

Friday morning brings rain yet again, and it worsens as we ride. We lost close to an hour yesterday when the road signs Mark was following disappeared and we ended up riding far beyond what should have been our turn off. I fear more of the same today as he struggles to read his written notes, gradually leaking onto his maps pressed down under the opaque rain cover wrapped tightly over his ragged old tank bag with its broken zipper. Our route today is less straightforward, with more and smaller roads to find and follow.

By late afternoon, I’m exhausted. It occurs to me that Mark must be even more tired, considering that he’s doing the driving, the weather is crap, and he has no windscreen (“I tried a windscreen on a motorcycle once but it made me feel like I was riding in a video game so I removed it”). When we stop for gas I ask him how much longer he thinks it will be before we arrive at our destination. “If we can find the road we need, we should be there in an hour and a half,” he says. I bite my tongue. I resolved before we left Devon not to argue with him anymore about getting lost, maps, and GPS devices. I didn’t say a word yesterday nor have I today, even when he was ranting about the pathetic lack of signs on our chosen route and cursing the local planning commission and their lack of foresight. Mark and I aren’t in a “relationship” – nary a kiss has ever passed between us (and I’m grateful for that, and for the ease of our friendship.) Yet a friendship is of course its own relationship, equally deserving of respect if it’s to endure. Thus there are times when you have to shut your trap if you want to keep the peace.

We get back on the bike and head north. Before long it’s pouring down rain again. Eventually Mark has to pull over because he can’t see clearly. (His motorcycle gear consists of jeans, a waxed cotton jacket that is water resistant at best after years of daily use, a beaten up, open-faced helmet, neck scarf and goggles.) Somehow his goggles have acquired a layer of grime or grease over the lenses that won’t come off no matter how many times he wipes them. We stop in a lay-by for trucks and after watching him scrub futilely at them with rain water and spit, I remember the half a lemon in a paper bag I brought with us when we left yesterday. I dig it out of my messenger bag, hand it to him and after a few swipes of his lenses with it, he can see again. We get back on the bike and as we pull out of the lay-by, I see one of the truck drivers watching us closely, a bemused expression on his face. From the comfort of his cab, he may be thinking what fools we are for traveling on a motorcycle in such lousy weather. Or he may be wondering why we are riding two-up on such a small bike. But I think it’s more likely that he’s noticing what I notice every time I sit behind Mark on any motorcycle anywhere. With his back erect, his neck scarf flapping in the breeze and his goggles wrapped around his old helmet, he bears a remarkable resemblance to…. well, you know.

For your information: our hotel was called Hatherton Inn at Stafford. It was reasonably priced and clean and in a quiet area, with pleasant and helpful staff. I recommend it. We ate dinner at the Littleton Arms, a short walk down the road. They serve fresh local food and beer, and though we didn’t stay there, they do offer rooms. The wait staff was exceptionally friendly. Prices were average. I recommend this place too.

Like many people who thrive on travel, I have been restless. Okay, thrive may be an overstatement in my case. But the point is, every day it gets stronger, this pull toward the road, toward movement and change of scenery. I’ve been watching Michael Palin travel videos, Nature videos on PBS, and reading my favorite international authors, imagining myself wandering through their descriptive, exotic settings. But it’s not enough. So a few weeks ago I decided it was time to begin, however tentatively, planning a trip. Who knows when I’ll be able to get a Covid vaccine; I’m at the end of the line according to the predictors, so spring is likely to be the earliest unless availability increases beyond current expectations.

I’ve traveled almost exclusively alone since 2014 with the exception of my motorcycle travels (with several people but most recently and most often with Mark). Mark has been to every continent on the planet and a majority of its countries, so he isn’t especially keen to revisit his old haunts, preferring instead to go to new places like Bhutan and Japan. (He hasn’t been to Central America so that is a place we may yet visit together.) That leaves me with a lot of ground to cover on my own.

So I began looking for another travel companion or two for some of my destinations. My dearest friends have careers, relationships and/or children, all stumbling blocks to joining me for more than a week or two somewhere. This leaves me with one alternative: meeting someone new. This is a tricky undertaking for me. I’m not looking for a romance, short or long term, and in case you don’t already know this about me, I’m one of those people who generally prefers the company of animals and plants to other humans. I’m shy, introverted, and insecure, acutely aware of the ways I no longer fit in, and unsure if I ever did. My reason for wanting someone to travel with on occasion is a matter of practicality above all else. There are places where women are safer in numbers (let’s face it, those places where this isn’t the case, at least to some degree, are vastly exceeded by those where it is). The cost of accommodation is halved if you have a companion, meals can be shared, as can excursions or activities (snorkeling, rafting etc) that cater to couples and groups. I rarely experience loneliness as a result of being solitary; my bouts of loneliness are primarily rooted in Jackson’s absence and therefore internal. I can be in a room full of people and feel devastatingly alone. But there is no denying that it’s helpful to have a co-planner, someone to take the load off when I’m tired, to suggest activities when I don’t have the energy to research, and to be a buffer when I don’t want to make connections with others around me. And at the end of the day, it sometimes feels good to have someone to tell about some new experience, or better yet someone with whom to share the experience itself. There is undoubtedly some truth to the adage about the power of shared experiences.

I found several websites devoted to the search for a travel companion, but the first few I came upon either charged a fee or, upon perusing the listings, felt too much like a dating website. Then I read a blog post by a woman who recommended a site exclusively for women. By taking men out of the equation, the likelihood of mistakenly choosing someone looking primarily (covertly) for sex is reduced. I read a few profiles and saw three or four women who, at face value, looked to have travel styles and personal qualities that might be compatible to mine. I composed a profile and sent out inquiries to these women.

I received positive replies, and we began correspondence. I’d mentioned my reasons for traveling in my profile on the website and disclosed Jackson’s death in the process, figuring it was best to get that out of the way and in the open from the start, so that anyone who was innately uncomfortable with grief would have an automatic out before ever taking a step in. One woman wrote to say how sorry she was about what happened, and said something to the effect of not being able to imagine how difficult these past few years had been. I wrote back and thanked her for her sentiments, and asked her some questions about her travel goals and time frame, and her life in Nevada. In her next email she answered my questions, then related to me that her car had broken down on Thanksgiving morning as she was preparing to drive to San Diego to spend the holiday weekend with her son and his family. She went on to say that she wasn’t bothered by the breakdown because she interpreted it as a “sign” that she shouldn’t make the trip and concluded with the ever childish, always banal and for me, anger-triggering bromide: “I believe everything happens for a reason.” 

She was talking to someone who had experienced the death of their child, who had told her so, and to whom she had one day prior expressed her sympathy. How did she expect me to interpret that remark? I know she wasn’t trying to hurt me. I don’t think she even stopped to think how I might hear, “Your son’s death happened for a reason,” but I can only conclude that she thinks this is the case. She had just said “everything,” had she not? That is the nature of these toxic panaceas, they address it all, from broken down cars to death. 

I could write an entire essay on the casual brutality (albeit unintentional in most cases) of that one sentence and indeed have written an entire essay on that sentence and a few more like it (see the link for “Don’t inject your religious beliefs into my grief” on this blog), but the gist of my antipathy to that kind of blanket and simplistic thinking is this: It isn’t really thinking. It’s a substitute for thinking, and when used in reference to trauma someone else has endured, it minimizes the suffering the person is experiencing. In the case of a death, it goes on to trivialize the life they are grieving for by implying that it wasn’t important enough to be spared, that their death was perhaps a punishment, or that it is meant to teach someone (presumably the listener) a lesson that they must have needed to learn. That there is a “reason” obviously presupposes some force (“God”, “the universe”) to which the speaker has chosen to assign prescience and omnipotence, a force which controls everyone’s destiny: every second of every minute, every thing good, bad and indifferent, that happens in the lives of all 8 billion people on the planet and, by extension – unless only humans are so lucky – the lives of all the animals, birds, fish and insects (of whom there are 10 quintillion. Yep, that’s 18 zeros.) Maybe even plants. After all, they’re living too. The bottom line is it’s dismissive, it blames the victim, it imparts not a scintilla of knowledge nor does it accomplish anything except to make the speaker feel better and the listener feel worse. It is a non-thinking person’s answer to anything and everything, a lazy way out of addressing and reckoning with anything, good or bad, which they don’t understand or for which there is no reason – only a cause and effect chain of events that brought about the event in question, which they may never be privy to – from the breakdown of their car on the day they were hoping to travel, to the death of a loved one and everything in between.

I refrained from replying immediately, instead taking the day to decide whether to write back and ignore it, write back and address it, or just cease communication and hope she’d get the point. The only choice that felt right was the second. I’m gentle by nature and I have always avoided conflict if possible, but I also value honesty and one of the things that’s changed about me since 2014 is my lack of patience for listening to drivel. It’s a liability, I realize, and it has and will continue to cost me.  

I tried to be tactful, but I don’t know if I succeeded. I explained that she had offended me with her offhand remark, offering a watered down version of the above, and asked her to please think carefully about saying such a thing again, to perhaps even reflect upon what such a statement actually means, and why she has chosen to adopt such a theory. I concluded by saying that we may be different enough in world view that we wouldn’t make good travel companions.

I half expected her to write back and tell me where to stick it, while secretly hoping she’d write and apologize. But she didn’t reply at all. I decided it was for the best, but at the same time part of me felt guilty, wondering if I had overreacted. I spent a good week fretting about the matter, contemplating sending another email asking her to just forget it, and suggesting we start over. 

But a week later I am resigned to the facts. I only have so much energy, and I want to spend it wisely and be fruitful. My threshold for emotional stress has been severely compromised by my grief, and I have no idea how long it will take before it begins to rebound. Meanwhile my priorities have shifted. While I always want to be kind and wouldn’t hurt someone’s feelings on purpose, protecting my own feelings has become at least as important to me as protecting the feelings of others, and far more important than the feelings of mere acquaintances and strangers. 

So I let it go, and wrote instead to the other three women, revealing with each successive email more and more of who I am and what matters to me. With a bit of luck, we’ll meet up down the road.

Here’s a great article about the recent trend our society has fallen into of mistaking pretty words and wishful thinking for wisdom. It’s brief but eloquent. I encourage you to read it rather than watch the video.