April 26-27. Orcas Island toward Amsterdam

Friday night 8:55pm, April 26 (Pacific time). Saturday morning 5:55am, April 27 (time in Europe). Sitting in an airplane about 37,000 feet (7+ miles above the ground), 2 hours and 40 minutes to go before we reach Frankfurt. We are about half way between Iceland and the UK. 

Dear Trail Friends,

I am sitting here in this dark airplane feeling twitchy and uncomfortable, looking at the flight map on my personal screen and feeling guilty about the “loud” light it blasts into the darkness. There - that’s better. (I turned it off.)

We somehow managed in this seemingly full flight to be given an empty seat, so Chris is stretched out on the two seats beside me (the middle and window seats). I am in the aisle seat. 

We had an unpleasant little surprise this morning when my boarding pass didn’t have “TSA precheck” on it. The first woman checking boarding passes at the entrance to the pre-check line thought they might let us go through, but when we got to the official checker at her podium she sent us back. (Chris could have gone through but didn’t want us to be separated). So we headed for the regular security line - it wasn’t terrible, we had plenty of time, but it was unexpected and we felt knocked off balance a bit. Then an agent hailed us and directed us into a special, much shorter line, clearly from kindness meant to honor Chris’s age. Later, at the Lufthansa departure gate, an agent came over and told us not to bother gettung inti the boarding line. Instead, she said, she would send us up to the gate so we wouldn’t have to wait. She addresses Chris as “Mama,” which I took to be a teen of respect to older women in her culture.  Chris has mixed feelings about the kindness extended because of her age - and I think I understand her mixed feelings. There is something a little bit condescending and depersonalizing about it - but it is still kindness. 

Chris, I think, prefers being idealized. My sister Judy mentioned our planned tour in her grief group. It turned out the facilitator was a Pacifica graduate. “Chris Downing!” She said. “She’s a QUEEN.”  But, Judy said, we all know that she’s actually a goddess, not a queen. 

On the other hand (we are maybe to three hands by now), is simple. After Chris read my first blog post (in which I boasted a bit about her lectures) she said she hoped I wasn’t going to raise everyone’s expectations too high. That reminded me of my first time in Paris when I was waiting in line to see Saint Chapel. There was a man in line in front of me who was speaking on and on about how beautiful it was. “You’re not going to believe it” he said. “When you walk into the room, it will take your breath away. You’ve just never seen anything like it.” Then when I did walk into the chapel, I was disappointed. Somehow his enthusiatuc report had interfered with my making my own discovery and forming my own relationship with the beauty that surrounded me. I don’t know what determines when words open up possibilities for engagement and when they foreclose them, but I hope the words I write here will open possibilities and not close them off. 

That brings to mind a memory image of when I was a little girl and we brought a monarch caterpillar home to raise in a shoebox  (with a branch of milkweed). The caterpillar had metamorphed into a chrysalis and then emerged as a butterfly. I held my finger very still and the newborn butterfly stepped onto it. I was able to carry it outside and to wait while it opened its wings, lifted off into the air from my finger, and flew away. 

Free association is like that. When the professor would say to me, day after day, “Just say whatever comes into your mind, don’t censor anything,” I slowly learned to trust in and to notice  “whatever comes.” For me, the experience of analysis was essentially practice in being open to the new and unknown. I still find it amazing that Professor Freud’s imaginary presence was so real for me that he made me feel safe enough to face the unknown in myself. 

It is funny to be writing this up here - high in the sky inside this dark plane. It feels like a liminal space between one world and another. 

As I was boarding the plane, a young father stood near the front of the plane, holding a baby boy. Gazing directly into my eye, the baby reached out to me and clasped one of my fingers. I was moved by his unguarded welcome.  “I hope you can keep your openheartedness your whole life” I said to the baby.  “It’s worth it.” He smiled, then turned away from me, to greet the next passenger coming on the plane just behind me. 

Chris and I said goodbye to our kittens yesterday, then headed for the ferry. Photo 1 shows the kittens in their tree as we said goodbye. 

At the ferry landing I took a short walk around the parking area (where cars line up for the ferry).  As I walked, I wondered - as I often do - about how to open my heart on a short walk in the way the trail allowed me to open my heart on my long walks. How can I let myself be present to the place and the moment and the feeling of “here I am,” even without the gift of walking the trail from dawn to dusk and sleeping under the Stars night after night? Photo 2 is a from a “found” moment of feeling fully present on the short trail beside the ferry. 

I am noticing a quite sweet feeling associated with being on vacation and free from the pressure and responsibility (that I put on myself) to work at my life, to make my time matter. I love the freedom and ease of this vacation feeling.  I found myself looking forward to getting to the airport early and eating lunch at Vino Volo, and drinking wine in the middle of the day (which for Chris and me means being “bad” - in the best sense of the word). 

In the morning before we left, Chris was at her computer adding a few last touches to her lectures. Photo 3 shows her sitting at her computer with her window garden outside, filled with tulips. We weren’t in full-blown spring yet on Orcas (for me, real spring arrives when all the trees burst into blossom), but the tulips were blooming.  (Incidentally, the coffee cup in Chris’s left hand in the photo is her Freud cup (from the Freud museum in London).  She drinks her coffee from it every morning. Freud really is an important presence in our home.  Here’s a close-up of the Freud cup in photo 3a. )

It was fun to have an overnight in Seattle (after the ferry but before flying to Amsterdam), where spring had fully arrived. Photo 4 shows the pavement strewn with pink petals from a blossoming tree, and photo 5 the orange tulips and purple azalea. 

I’ve decided to give up worry and fault-finding for May (and this last part of April) inspired by Orcas retired teacher Laurie Oakes who told us she gave up fear last year for lent. I find that once I notice that I am worrying or faultfinding, the big challenge is to find something I can switch my attention to. I find worry and fault finding very compelling. Looking around and finding the things I like (the shapes of trees, the light green color of new leaves, the bright orange of tulips and purple of azaleas) was sometimes compelling enough to help my attention move on. It’s amazing how much impact colors and shapes - the beauty of things - can have on my body and senses. At those times I feel so lucky to be alive. Much nicer than worry or faultfinding.  But not  always easy to get there. 

Now they are turning on the lights in the airplane. It’s almost 7am in Frankfurt (where we will be landing at 8:40am.)

So now I am thinking that this post is way too long and still hasn’t said what I really wanted to say (faultfinding) and I am concerned that you may not be enjoying it, or that you will give up reading (worrying). Okay. I’m giving those up, right? Giving up familiar habits of thought, which brings me to the very edge of the unknown, just as Freud used to do in our analysis. That point where I let the butterfly go, or meet the eyes and hand of a child. The moment of “here I am.” 

It takes courage, doesn’t it, to show up with an open heart? I know the lure of alcohol and drugs is that they are like “get out of jail free” cards - they make us feel  as if we could open our hearts without having to pay the price, without having to take the risk. 

But I am also grateful for the ways such “props” sometimes  help us find our way. Photo 6 is Chris at Vino Volo at the airport, with our two flights of wine, one Oregon Pinot noirs, one Washington Cabernet Sauvignons. I had a beet and avocado arugula salad with chicken - so fresh and the vinaigrette so delicate and precise. Chris had smoked salmon on crab salad on crisp little crostini with big olive-sized capers. It is such a pleasure to relax and feel pleasure in food and drink. Okay that sentence is a tautology - but you get what I mean, I hope. Such a pleasure to be able to open to the possibility of pleasure. 

Thank you for walking with me. All day I think about writing this blog and collect moments and stories and string them together looking forward to sharing them with you. I wouldn’t be able to do it for myself alone, so it’s a gift I can only give to myself because I am giving it to you. So, as always, I thank you for walking with me and making this experience of walking possible. 

See you on “the trail.”