From the bookshelf to the backyard

It’s 11:00pm on a Wednesday, and I’m perched on my bed in my apartment in Alicante. I’m not in a writing mood, but I am trying to stay committed to this practice. I often overthink these newsletter/blog post things and think they need to have some grand gesture toward an extraordinary realization—when really, I made this to be a place to reflect and honestly communicate about my study abroad experience. Right.

I’ve just finished consulting my Notes app and camera roll for inspiration and reminders of what has happened in the past week. Nothing caught my eye, but again, I’m committed.

I’ve finished yet another book in the past week, Jojo Moyes’ Me Before You. Yes, it’s also a movie, and yes, I saw it in theatres when it came out in 2016. I’m typically not one to reach for a sappy rom-com novel, but I devastatingly only had enough room to pack one extra book, so I’m taking what I can get. Nestled between an array of travel guides and Spanish dictionaries, I found Moyes’ novel on the bookshelf in my room of my Alicante flat.

And what a refreshing read it was! Getting lost in a whimsical, heartfelt fictional story was admittedly, quite healing. I didn’t know how badly I needed it. I would recommend you other books before this one, but I do recommend exploring literary territory where you don’t usually venture. It will be fun. Maybe.

My weekdays are relatively mundane between a full class load and its proper homework. Thank God. I love routine. There is the occasional mid-week outing for tapas or gelato, but for the most part, I love to spend my weekdays moving to the humdrum beat of everyday. It’s my favorite dance and the most spacious place for prayer (prayer as in slowing down and opening myself up to the wonder of the world—see “This morning…” post for more).

My weekdays are also a prep for whatever the weekend holds, for wherever I am headed next. Full travel weekends are so draining to me, but that’s apparently not stopping me anytime soon. Last weekend’s adventure was a sweet day trip to Valencia with my study abroad program. I was as exhausted as all get out, desperately trying not to be miserable and fussy. But there was moment in the afternoon that shifted my posture.

I was standing just outside the Mercado Central in Valencia. I had just purchased an afternoon pick-me-up in the shape of a café con leche in a Styrofoam cup. I was waiting on three friends ordering street paella and was relieved to have just a few moments to myself, listening to the violin-cello duo across the way playing some famous classical song I know I’ve heard before. I took a few deep breaths, looked around, and admired the peachy pastel building off in the distance and the beautiful white one before me. I watched a father earnestly grab his little boy’s hand before entering the busy market. I saw an adorable old couple—my guess in their 80s—sipping espresso and enjoying pastries of some kind at one of the small, round tables lining the plaza. I saw smiles and heard laughter and music and a lot of Spanish I didn’t understand. And just like that—a prayer.

It's so easy for me to get caught up in the plans and the speed and the happening all around me. I cannot keep up with the go-go-go like I used to, and when I try too hard for too long, I turn into a grumpy snail. But thank goodness for prayer and its friendly reminder to “walk slowly and bow often” (ty Mary Oliver, “When I Am Among the Trees”). My saving grace.

Of course, everything in life reminds me of a Mary Oliver poem, and this occasion in particular reminds me of her piece “When Death Comes”:

When death comes like the hungry bear in autumn; when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut; when death comes like the measle-pox

when death comes like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering: what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything as a brotherhood and a sisterhood, and I look upon time as no more than an idea, and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth, tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

I mean to include this less in a morbid sense and more in a “let’s look at the bigger picture” sense, but truthfully, I am terrified to die. I often convince myself that my minor headaches are symptoms of terminal cancer. The fragility of life scares, perplexes, and reminds me, like Mary Oliver says, that I don’t want to end up only having visited this world.

While this could come across as an invitation or encouragement to “carpe diem” every day, I think it is quite the opposite. I think it is resisting the idea that you need to do a lot or travel far to live a meaningful life. Amazement is in our very own backyards or at most, just down the street. Perhaps death also means a hardness or blindness to the possibility that wonder is always at our fingertips.

I want to say all my life I was a bride married to amazement.

It’s sort of ironic that I’m talking about appreciating the wonder of your backyard when I am across the ocean from my own, with plans to travel elsewhere just about every weekend. But if I’ve learned anything from this it’s that sometimes we don’t know just how much we love what we have, where we are (or were), until we’re uprooted and repotted across the ocean. How lucky I am to have beloved people to miss while I’m gone; what a gift it is to have such special people in my life!

I’m absolutely leaning into this experience which I am extremely fortunate to have, but I am resisting the idea that studying abroad must be the mind-blowing, life-altering thing it is often made out to be. While my trip has been so wonderful and eye-opening thus far, I am still very much the same person, just with a few more places crossed off the map and some more street smarts under my belt.

If you need me, I'm either on the train with my face shoved in a book, enjoying(?) a run by the beach, on a free walking tour in the city of the weekend, or I’m probably taking a siesta. There’s a chance I’m convincing myself my leg pain is terminal cancer, but I’m trying harder to maintain space for margin—the birthplace of prayer.

I think of each life as a flower, as common as a field daisy, and as singular

Thank God for backyards and glorious monotony.

All my love, talk to you soon,

Cate

A girl in Valencia.

A cathedral in Valencia.

A silk exchange in Valencia.

A girl in an aquarium in Valencia.

A sunset in Alicante.

Xoxo.