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Suburban Chicago, Late May

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Barb Morris Camino de Santiago

I’ve been steadily writing a novel for over two years – a blink of an eye in novel-writing time. The first scene came in a dream. I crafted my own NaNoWriMo in March of 2017, using the dream scene as a jumping-off point. That writing was “pantsed,” writer-ese for “Screw planning! Let’s just see what happens!” What happened completely took me by surprise. You can read some of it here. Following those crazy days, I introduced planning – crafting a coherent narrative, introducing additional characters, and writing missing scenes. The first draft is almost finished! Here’s the opening chapter of Lost and Found: A Journey on the Camino de Santiago (working title).

Suburban Chicago, Late May

Martha handed in her keys for the last time and went home to empty her closet and dresser. She took all the sensible clothes, the khakis and cardigans and school spirit t-shirts and sturdy shoes, to Goodwill that afternoon. She kept only a few pairs of blue jeans and two t-shirts for gardening.

A bright yellow t-shirt and lime green skirt were hanging in the Goodwill window. They went fabulously with the plastic flamingo pink flip flops in the shoe section. Martha bought them all.

The next day, the books. All gone. She’d left her classroom library and best practice books for the bright shiny teacher taking her place. She fully expected the new teacher to throw the texts away, but held out hope that some kid someday would read Wizard of Earthsea. She took all the self-help and the novels to Goodwill, too.

Two days after her last day as a sixth-grade teacher, Martha walked out the front door of her mostly empty house and climbed into the waiting cab. She carried only a backpack that held two changes of clothes, a few basic toiletries, her Goodwill purchases, and her trekking poles. Inside the backpack was a smaller bag with a paperback book, passport and credit cards, and 300 Euros donated by her former colleagues at her retirement party. She hadn’t wanted a party at all, so it was a small gathering of team teachers and a couple of principals. She was the last of the group that had started teaching together 25 years before.

She was flying United to La Guardia, then Iberia to Madrid. From Madrid she’d take a train to León and the bus to Pamplona, where she’d start walking the Camino de Santiago de Compostela.

Santiago de Compostela, the terminus of many Caminos – routes from all over Spain and from a few cities in France. And from Portugal. Even from England, although that route was mostly the ferry from Portsmouth, then three days of walking in Spain.

Martha thought, not for the first time and certainly not for the last, that she was crazy to be doing this. She was 62 years old, healthy but not in perfect physical condition. Her Spanish was rusty. And she was alone.

What better way to mark the end of an era? What better way to tend the ending of her working life and to invite in whatever was next? You see, she didn’t know what came next. When her retirement had become public knowledge, the Camino was a handy answer for the inevitable question at staff meetings and in the teacher’s lounge, a place she usually avoided. Martha had asked her principal not to tell anyone until the new teachers for the coming year had been hired. She didn’t want her retirement to be a distraction for the last couple of months of school. She just wanted to teach – to pay attention to this ending as fully as she could.

The questions. Oh, the questions. “So, Martha, what are you going to do next year when we’re all back in school? Do you have plans? Are you going to get another dog? It’ll be nice to spend more time with your kids, won’t it?”

She’d answer, “Actually, I’m spending the summer in Spain, walking the Camino de Santiago.” She liked the surprised look on their faces. She’d enjoyed surprising someone for a change.

The inevitable follow-up question was, “Who’s going with you?”

“No one,” she’d say. “I’m going by myself.”

“Is that safe?” they’d ask.

“A lot of people do it, so I hope so. It’s fine. Joy is meeting me in León for a few days in the middle to check on me. I’ll email the kids when I have wifi.”

She would see the doubt cross their face and find it mirrored in her own thoughts. What the hell am I doing?

Yet there Martha was, at Chicago O’Hare, checking her backpack, carrying on only a book and the small bag. The ticket agent wished her a good flight as she handed over her boarding passes. She went through security to the waiting area, sat down, and fought the rising panic that had become her constant companion. Fear’s voice with its predictable litany once more took a run through her head: This is a batshit crazy idea. I don’t know why I’m doing this. I don’t have to do this. I could walk right through that door there and catch a cab back home. I could be in my house tidying up and tending the garden. I could start the kitchen remodel. I could paint the study. I could wake up in my own bed. I could get in shape for this. Train for it. Do it next fall when it’s cooler. What the hell am I thinking? 

Somehow, she kept her seat. She let the voice yammer on, and sat. She stayed in her seat until her flight was called, when she stood up and walked down the jetway and onto the plane. She found her seat and, once again, she sat. She didn’t speak. She didn’t trust herself to speak. If she talked, she’s not sure she’d ever shut up. I’m alone on this fool’s pilgrimage, she thought. No conversation with strangers will change that. Just for a moment she pondered taking a vow of silence for the duration of this journey. She could hang a sign around her neck that said, “In Silence.” Tempting.

She didn’t get up until the plane landed at La Guardia.  Her flight to Madrid didn’t leave for three hours. Three hours. Three hours to change her mind. To come to her senses. Her backpack would go to Spain without her. Then she remembered the empty closet. The empty bookshelves. The almost-empty house. Her empty former life. What had she done?

Her phone rang. Her son.

“Hi, Matt.” So much for the vow of silence.

“I’m fine. I’m sorry I didn’t call. So much to do. You know. Yes, I’m in New York between flights. The Madrid flight will be boarding any minute. You got the itinerary I sent you, right? I’ll check in when I have wifi. Yes, sweetie. I promise. Give Flora a kiss for me. Spain is a first world country, dear. Thank you for taking care of her. I’ll miss you. Not going to back out now, dear. I’ll be fine. I love you. Mwah. Bye.”

Martha silenced her phone and put it away in her bag. She sat, unmoving, until her row was called. She got up and walked to the gate and down the jetway, onto the big plane that flies across oceans. She found her seat, shoved her little bag under the seat in front, buckled her seatbelt, looked out the window, and smiled.

All I have to do is put one foot in front of the other, and walk. Babies do that. I can do that.

She’d had so many ideas about this Camino. So many theories. So many thoughts. Now it was here. She was suddenly aware that she didn’t know anything anymore. She didn’t need to know anything. All she had to do was walk. All she had to do was follow the arrows and walk to Santiago.

But first, she had to get to Pamplona.

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Barb Morris Camino de SantiagoTHIS IS A SCENE FROM MY CAMINO NOVEL-IN-PROCESS. PLEASE SEE THE FIRST EXCERPT, “THE MESSIES,” WHICH INTRODUCES THE NOVEL AND WHY I’M POSTING THIS WRITING IN ITS RAW STATE.

So here our three travelers are, Hope on the floor and Martha and her mom on a soft couch covered with an Indian throw, safe and warm in the arms of the Hospital of the Soul. Hope is happily eating sugar cookies off of prettily-flowered china and chattering away. She licks her fingers with gusto and relish, licking the sugar and crumbs off, then swiping the crumbs off her plate with her finger. Hope is content, and so is Martha as she watches Hope’s contentment. She’s aware in a corner of her mind how truly bizarre this is – sitting in the warm living room of a house in Spain called the Hospital del Alma with her dead mother and her little daughter who until just a few hours ago was curled up in a chest freezer nestled in her chest, naturally, right beside her heart.

Martha realizes that her heart has been keeping Hope alive all these years, and the Hospital of the Soul is the perfect place for the three of them to be.

 I wonder if others can see all three of us, or if I just look crazy and alone from the outside. But I choose to believe the evidence of my senses – here these two are. Hope is eating cookies. My mom is next to me, drinking chamomile tea with honey. I feel warmth from the wood stove. I can see and hear María outside building a mosaic in the patio’s east wall. A pine tree I don’t know the name of overhangs the glass ceiling of this room.

 I am simply grateful to be here.

I love this space. I love the earthiness and the colors and the constant surprise. I love the hospitality of it – not a Parker House hospitality, but a hospitality of the heart and home. This is a place on the Camino designed for one purpose only – refuge for peregrinas’ souls. A Hospital of the Soul. I love the complete lack of expectations and judgment. “Come in and sit.” That’s all. Warmth, nourishment, comfort, welcome. All it needs is cats.

And at that moment Martha see kittens in the back, on the patio, and the place is complete. She could sit here forever.

This magical child who’s evidently not an apparition will need some clothes. Are those rubber-toed red sneakers adequate to the task of walking at least a little every day? They’re from a time when support in kids’ shoes was nonexistent. Martha hears herself worrying about Hope’s shoes, because she has no idea what she’s going to say to Maria at dinner when she asks for their story.

Here’s all she knows: she retired from her teaching job, a job she loved for many years and was good at, because it was time. Class sizes were growing, the kids were getting harder to reach, and she had less time and creativity because of mandated curriculum and tests every other week, it seemed. So it was time. She would have done a few more years, but then the district sweetened the retirement deal for older teachers and she jumped ship.

My kids didn’t need me, I’d seen The Way and done a little research, and I knew I needed a Thing to Do right after retirement. An intentional journey wanted to happen and the Camino met that need – cheap, flexible, set up for solitary walkers. A week after I turned in my school keys I was on a plane to Madrid, then a train to León, a bus to Pamplona, and another bus to SJPP*.

Everything had been pretty normal for the context of doing this crazy thing of walking 500 miles to Santiago, for the first week or so. Little stuff had started happening around then. She’d found herself taking unplanned side excursions and detours, sitting by the side of the track for a few hours, walking by herself a lot. These things just seemed to happen. But once on the Meseta, they’d come fast and furious, getting odder and odder all the time. The voice in the Templar church. The cougar who talked. The jar of messies. She was beginning to get used to it. Retrieving her daughter from a freezer in her chest and having her mom come along to help thaw her out was only the latest. It was also, she knew, of a completely different order of magnitude of crazy. These two seemed to be real people. Her mom she could explain, sort of. This little girl dressed in clothes from the 1960s, not so much. What will they tell Maria, she wondered.

Just then Hope got up, wiped her hands on her 1960s trousers, and climbed into Martha’s lap. She put her arms around her mom’s neck, said in a muffled voice, “Thank you for unfreezing me,” and fell asleep. Martha glanced at her mom and found her mom looking at her. They shook their heads, smiled, and returned to silent fire-watching. El Hospital del Alma, indeed.

Eventually they heard the back door opening and María making noise in the kitchen. “I’ll go see what I can do,” said her mom. She heard her mom ask in Spanish how she could help. María evidently found her something to do, since the next sound she heard was voices and occasional laughter. The sounds of wine glasses being filled, along with cooking noises and smells, came from the kitchen. Her mom came to her with a glass of Riojan wine.

Martha reached out a hand to take it, saying, “Mom, I’m so glad you’re here with me. I don’t understand it, but I’m glad. I think I might be crazy.”

“You’re not crazy, sweetie. You’re wondering how long I’ll be here, right?”

“Thanks, Mom. Of course I am. And I’m also trying to just be here now and enjoy this gift. Since I’m not crazy.”

Her mom smiled and returned to the kitchen. Martha sat, a daughter she didn’t have this morning on her lap, and drank her wine. I’ll take it, she thought. I’ll take it. I won’t get to keep it, I sure as hell don’t understand it, but I’ll take it. I’ll enjoy every minute I get with these two, and I won’t mourn them before they’re gone.

Supper starts with a salad of baby greens and peas, because it’s June in Spain and Maria’s garden has just started producing. The flowers and tomatoes will come later, in a month or so. Chicken and rice, and quejada for dessert. Hope has been pulled up to the table on a stool, and she’s digging into her chicken, cut up for her by María, and her rice. She eats the peas with her fingers, eschewing the lettuce. It’s her first real meal in decades – she’s been kept alive by Martha’s heart but she’s hungry for real food.

This meal is delicious. “Gracias, María. Es delicioso,” Martha says. María responds, “Y gracias para ustedes. I am happy you are here.” Hope keeps shoveling it in, humming happily. Then she looks up and says to Maria, “I’ve been frozen next to my mommy’s heart for a long time. Today she found me and unfroze me, and here I am!”

Her mom added, “And I was walking along and saw Martie sitting on a rock in a field of poppies, this one on her lap, and I thought they might need help so I went to see what was up. As I got closer I could see that I knew them. Then I saw that they were Martha and Hope, both of whom I was surprised to see. Martie because I’m dead and she’s alive, and Hope because I hadn’t seen her since she was a little girl.”

Okay then, thinks Martha. She won’t be any help explaining this to me, or anyone else. Maybe when you’re dead you just take weird shit for granted.

María simply nodded and took another bite. “There were angels all round you three,” she said. “You were glowing when you entered my house. It’s called El Hospital del Alma for a reason.”

*SJPP is Camino shorthand for St. Jean Pied de Port, a small, charming Basque French town that’s served as the Camino gateway over the Pyrenees into Spain for a millennia or more.

Camino Fiction by Barb Morris

The Emergence of Hope, Part Two (Camino Fiction)

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Barb Morris Camino de SantiagoTHIS IS A SCENE FROM MY CAMINO NOVEL-IN-PROCESS. PLEASE SEE THE FIRST EXCERPT, “THE MESSIES,” WHICH INTRODUCES THE NOVEL AND WHY I’M POSTING THIS WRITING IN ITS RAW STATE.

Martha is sitting in a field of poppies with a frozen child in her lap. She notices that although poppies are soporific in stories, on the Camino she hears them say “Wake up!” She croons to the child, strokes her, puts her cheek to the little girl’s cold face, listens to the Meseta wind and watches the poppies sway, for what seems like hours. Softly holding this frozen girl – waiting for signs of life.

She sees peregrinos walking in the distance – they’re far enough away that she can’t tell them apart – occasionally one will notice her and wave. She waves back so they know she’s okay. A woman leaves the road and walks through the poppies toward them. Martha watches the expressions cross the woman’s face as she gets nearer. She sees surprise, concern, comprehension, and finally immense kindness.

“Hola,” she says. “How can I help?” They recognize each other’s American-ness by all the nonverbal cues – North Face and Osprey, smiles and eye contact.

“She’s frozen. I’m thawing her.”

“You must be tired. Let me take a turn.” Martha realizes that, yes, she is indeed tired. The woman takes her towel from her backpack and spreads it on the ground, then sits on it and reaches her arms to Martha. Martha gently hands her the curled up girl child.

The woman asks, “Where did you find her?”

“In my chest,” says Martha.

“Ah,” says the woman, and she looks at Martha with deep brown eyes. “I understand.”

Martha knows those eyes. She’s looking into her mother’s eyes. As their eyes fill with tears, the girl child stirs. Martha reaches out a hand to the girl’s face. It’s warm, and she catches a tear softly falling down the girl’s cheek. Thawing is happening rapidly now – the little girl is breathing and stretching and making little noises as she wakes up – Martha sees that this child is younger than she thought – maybe 4 or 5 – red rubber toed sneakers, little jeans, a pink shirt, fine brown hair cut like a bowl on her head like the Beatles used to have – and deep brown eyes looking up at her and her mom.

“Hello, sweetheart,” says Martha.

This is weird, she thinks. I’m sitting in a field of Spanish poppies with my mom, who’s been dead for twenty years, and a little girl I found in a freezer in my chest. Okay, then. Smiling, she lies down in the sun in the poppies, looks at her mom cradling the smiling child, and closes her eyes. She feels the rocks beneath her and knows she’s getting dirty and damp, and she doesn’t care. It’s totally worth it to feel the Earth along her entire body. Ground below; air and sky above. Poppies all around. She reaches out her hand to the woman sitting next to her, places it on the woman’s nylon-clad leg, and relaxes. As she falls asleep she wonders – will they be here when I wake up?

They are. They are deeper in the poppies, holding hands, the little girl bending to smell each flower and laughing as they sway in the breeze. The sun was halfway between noon and the horizon. Martha is hungry. She sits there watching the two dear creatures, listening to her daughter’s tinkling laughter that sounded like a creek in the summer and her mother’s low murmurs in response.

That’s surprising, she thought. That’s who she is to me. Martha stands up, brushes the dirt off her legs with a swish, and says, “Hey, you two. Let’s go find supper and a bed.”

They turn and start toward her. Her daughter lets go of the older woman’s hand and runs toward Martha. “Mommy! (That settles that, thought Martha.) You’re awake! Grandma and I were looking at the pretty flowers. She says they’re poppies! Let’s go to that town over there!”

She pointed her little finger toward the town they could see beyond the trees – a large church and monastery at the base of a terraced hill with a ruined castle plopped on top. Who does that? wonders Martha. Who’s designing these quintessential Camino vistas?

She shoulders her backpack and takes her daughter’s hand. Her mom folds up her towel, wipes off Martha’s pants with it to get the last of the dirt, stows it in her backpack and puts it on, straps on her poles, and heads through the poppies back to the road.  There are just a few pilgrims still walking as Martha and her girl follow the older woman to the road, holding hands.

Martha understands that her Way just got a lot more complicated. And more companionable.

I don’t know how long I’ll have my mom with me, and my daughter probably isn’t real either, she thought. This is so interesting, and I’ll ride this wave as long as it lasts.

An hour later they walk up the cobbled street through the old gate into Castrojeriz. Martha and her mom have taken turns carrying their little girl, whose name it turns out is Esperanza, almost always called “Hope,” most of the way. As she explained, “I’m tired. After all, I a little girl, and I just woke up after being frozen for a really long time.” Martha suspects she also wanted to feel her mothers’ arms around her, holding her, singing to her, telling her how glad they were that she woke up.

It was like that, that this one, now three, arrived at the door of El Hospital del Alma. And how it is that they are the fortunate pilgrims who find themselves sitting in front of a warm wood stove, drinking chamomile tea with honey, eating cookies and chocolate-covered strawberries off flowered china plates, asking the hospitalera where to stay, and are invited to stay in her one guest room that just happens to be empty that night.

“I will cook for you dinner,” says María, “and you will tell to me your story.”

Camino fiction

The Emergence of Hope, Part One (Camino Fiction)

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Barb Morris Camino de SantiagoTHIS IS A SCENE FROM MY CAMINO NOVEL-IN-PROCESS. PLEASE SEE THE FIRST EXCERPT, “THE MESSIES,” WHICH INTRODUCES THE NOVEL AND WHY I’M POSTING THIS WRITING IN ITS RAW STATE.

Martha is walking. Always walking. Although the sun is shining, for now, yesterday’s rain is still very much present in the deep Meseta mud and the puddles. Her shoes are muddy. The hems of her pants are muddy. Her mood is muddy.

What the hell am I doing out here? Martha thought, not for the first time and almost certainly not for the last time.

“You’re here to heal,” said the Voice.

Oh, God. Not you again. And what does healing look like? Healing looks like wholeness, and connection to Source, and health. So that’s wholeness, holiness, and health, right?

The Old English root* is very happy right now. As she walks, she takes those words one by one.

Wholeness. Opposite of split apart. When something’s whole, everything is attached and doing its job. Wholeness has good boundaries – intact boundaries. There’s an “in” and an “out.” I know what is inside me and what’s not inside me. I know what’s me and what isn’t me. And I feel and am aware of ALL of me. I don’t split off the shadowy parts – the parts that remember bad stuff and feel shitty.

 And what does “feel shitty” mean? It means feel sad and hurt and small and powerless. That sounds like childhood stuff. Wholeness means feeling the feelings of the little girl hearing her brother being beaten; watching her dad drive away with her cats to the pound; losing her dad, brother, sister, and mom – oh, my – that’s deep pain. And no one saw me. No one cared. It’s the anger at being powerless and invisible, too. So “wholeness” means welcoming and loving those memories and that knowledge. Wholeness is gathering in ALL of me in and feeling those feelings. Wholeness is care for ALL of me – body, mind, soul, emotions.

Walking and thinking. Thinking and walking. That’s Martha’s Camino, today.

Holiness – knowing I’m going to die?! Being open to the More in which I live and move and have my being. Trusting what I know from that place in me that’s connected to ALL THAT IS. Holiness is fostering that connection, or is that “health”? Health is everything I do that fosters holiness and wholeness. And there’s actually a lot of overlap between wholeness and holiness. Holiness underlies wholeness. Holiness is the foundation of wholeness. Wholeness without holiness is struggle. It’s knowing that I’m held in Love that makes wholeness possible – it’s faith in the ultimate okay-ness that allows me to invite the memories and the old feelings back into the light. The submerged and frozen feelings – like a chest freezer in my chest! A good place for a chest freezer, right?

She is suddenly afraid of her post-Camino life. Eventually she’ll have to stop walking, right? Eventually she’ll get to Santiago, or Finisterre, or run out of money, or her body will give out somehow, and she’ll have to face her future. A wave of panic sweeps through her – heart racing, breath shaky, hands quivering, skin sweating – what will she do with herself when this is over?

The Voice asks a question: “Sweetheart, what do you WANT to do?”

And she knows that the roots of the panic are in the old tension between doing what she thought she should do and what she wanted to do. It’s been a long time since she’s known what she wants to do. Really, truly, deep in the core of her being wants to do. A very long time.

Martha understands her job now: pay attention to what she really, truly, deep down in the core of her being wants. And the parts of her that she split off – the girl with the sadness – have wisdom for her. The girl who knows what she wanted got left behind – frozen in the chest freezer – for safekeeping, it turns out. She’s there, along with powerlessness, invisibility, anger, and deep hurt. She’s so sad and wounded. She’s lying in there, all curled up, covered in frost, eyes closed.

If I thaw her out I’ll be a crazy person. But she knows what I really, truly want deep down in the core of my being. She knows. Did I put her in the freezer? No, I did not. I didn’t know she was there. I didn’t know I was there. She’s a part of me.

 Okay, then.

Martha walks off the path and sits on a rock in the sun. She reaches into the chest freezer and picks up the frozen girl child. The child is solid and sturdy. And cold. So cold.

Martha cradles this girl to her body, gently stroking her, putting her warm cheek against the child’s frozen face, and waits. Hours pass. She notices, for the first time, that she’s surrounded by bright red poppies. Poppies everywhere, white daisies and sky-blue cornflowers mixed in. The Meseta breeze blows. The flowers sway. The trees in the distance move, too, and she feels the warm air on her skin.

* Our modern English words heal, health, whole, and holy all find their root in the Old English word hāl, which means “healthy and entire.”

The Rain in Spain (Camino Fiction)

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Barb Morris Camino de SantiagoTHIS IS A SCENE FROM MY CAMINO NOVEL-IN-PROCESS. PLEASE SEE THE FIRST EXCERPT, “THE MESSIES,” WHICH INTRODUCES THE NOVEL AND WHY I’M POSTING THIS WRITING IN ITS RAW STATE.

It’s a cold rainy day on the Way. A perfect day for pondering discomfort. Rain on the Camino means you walk in the rain. Unless you stayed the night in a hotel and you can book another night, you have to leave. You could go find a bar and sit there until the albergues open at 2:00, but, really, what’s the point of that? You might as well walk. The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain – decidedly NOT true. Galicia is famous for being rainy, and it’s NOT in the plain.

One of the best pieces of advice Martha gleaned from the American Pilgrims on the Camino Facebook group was to buy an Altus poncho in St. Jean*. She’s grateful for it today. It’s big enough to cover her backpack – it comes with a pouch that snaps in and out – and it covers her legs, mostly, too.

The downside of not using a backpack cover is that if she needs something in her pack she has to get under the poncho somehow. The upside of the Altus covering her pack is that her pack stays dry, unlike the packs of the people she sees around her that are covered only with the backpack cover. The rain, especially this windy rain, will find its way in and around the cover. She’d rather have a wet body and a dry backpack.

Fortunately, along most of the Camino, there are frequent bars for getting warm, or at least warmer. This morning they’re packed full of wet walkers. Martha wedges her way through the pilgrims congregating in the main room jostling for the barkeep’s attention, and finds a place for her backpack, poles, and poncho where it can drip a little and hopefully not on someone else’s stuff. It’s dark in this bar – nooks and crannies all packed with pilgrims seeking refuge from the deluge outside. It’s an incessant rain. A thoroughly wet rain. NOT liquid sunshine. Feeling inside her layers for her passport and money, she pulls out a few Euro and joins the throng of peregrinos waiting for coffee. She’s pretty sure some of them are feeling impatient. They want this process to be efficient and orderly, but this is Spain. The land of six-hour workdays and afternoon siestas. Spaniards don’t rush, and they don’t like loud, pushy Americans and driven Germans.

She waits, drifting along with the tide of people toward her turn to order. “Café con leche, por favor, señor,” she says. “Y tiene tortilla? No? Pan tostada? Bien, gracias.” Toast it is. She ponders, again, the wonder that is Spanish toast. This is breakfast. Perhaps she’ll find tortilla further along the Way – or perhaps this will have to do until lunch. She’s already hoping for soup to go with her bocadillo*. Bread, bread, bread. All this lovely bread. It would be hard to be gluten-free on the Camino. It’d be easier to be vegetarian, by far. She sees out the door on her way back to a table in the corner, squeezing between dripping peregrinos, carrying her coffee and toast, that it’s still raining.

Everything on the Camino is a metaphor. How you do anything is how you do everything. She’s thinking about her students. Her FORMER students – how some of them were so open to screwing up, and some were so resistant. It’s about how well you tolerate discomfort, she knows. She knows this about herself, too. Her first instinct when she’s uncomfortable is to run home to mama. Go back to where she felt safe and warm and dry and unthreatened. It’s taken a long time to train her brain to overcome its first impulse. Part of that training comes from working with kids for as long as she has – she pretty early on noticed the disconnect between her wanting to be good at something right out of the gate, and encouraging her kids to explore and be messy in pursuit of a goal.

There they are again! Messies are part of learning. She knows this. Being okay with messies – seeing messes as compost rather than mistakes – has been huge in her life. Part of her goal, Martha realizes, on this camino craziness, is to get really good at messes. To take her best shot, to leave before she’s ready, to follow her gut and listen to her heart. To see the messes as holy – sacred – inevitable byproducts of growth. Necessary for growth.

Maybe messy isn’t even the right word, she thinks. Maybe it’s like the furrows left by the moles – or pencil shavings – or a snake’s skin, or dead leaves and shed branches or a beetle’s carapace after metamorphosis (do beetles shed their shells?) – like the chrysalis a butterfly leaves behind. Every process requires a mess if it’s deep enough, maybe?

Is my former life a chrysalis hanging on last year’s yarrow? I kept thinking the chrysalis was my forever home. Every metamorphosis, every turn of the wheel, every ride around the change cycle, leaves pieces behind. Every death and resurrection leaves a trail – a bundle of clothes inside a tomb. A memory.

 I am so fucking wise, she thinks. When did I get so smart?! But it’s true. We all have these cycles. Cycles within cycles within cycles. And even though the Camino is a line from pt A to pt B, it has cycles within it. There’s the big beginning à middle à end à beginning again one from SJPP* or wherever, walking for 30 or 40 days, ending in Santiago, then going home. Within the big one, which is ALSO embedded in the larger cycle of my life, there are smaller cycles. There’s the cycle of each day, and the meeting walking parting cycle of ephemeral relationships, the cycle of each mile, the cycle of each step, even the cycle of each breath. There might be an accumulation and letting go cycle, too. Breathing is like that. Eating is like that. We breathe in O2 and exhale CO2. We eat food and let go of pee and poop.

So maybe messes aren’t negative at all – maybe they’re inevitable byproducts of changing ang growing. They’re our shed skins and chrysali (Gk?) and fallen leaves and husks of seeds. We are designed to grow and change. Learning is our job. And the only way to learn something new is to do something new. And the only way to do something new is to do it. And the only way to do something new is to embrace the feelings that go with not knowing how to do something and doing it anyway. Some of us are better at than than others, but ALL of us can learn it. (Or relearn it.) We all used to know it, when we were babies and we didn’t know about mistakes. Then school got ahold of us, and parents who needed us to be certain ways – to be competent so they felt competent, maybe, and we learned that learning was supposed to be seamless or we weren’t doing it right. And if we couldn’t do it right, we probably shouldn’t be doing it at all. If we couldn’t get it right pretty quick, then it wasn’t what we should be doing and we needed to go find the thing we COULD get right really fast, because that was our calling. And then we needed to keep doing that one thing over and over for the rest of our lives.

Does anyone do the Camino perfectly? Martha wondered. What would that even look like? Let’s see. You buy all the right gear the first time. You always walk as far as you intend to walk, and you always find a bed in your preferred albergue. Or, if you don’t, some lovely local gives you her spare room and you become friends for life. You never pee behind a bush or take a shit in the trees. No blisters and no injuries. You always have exactly what you need, and are able to give to less-prepared peregrinos from your excess.

Ewww. That sounds awful! That sounds dry and sterile and dead.

 How about THIS  for perfection: you do enough research and then you go and you survive. A lot of stuff goes wrong or doesn’t go the way you hope it will. There are times you’re uncomfortable – tired, cold, hungry, unsure, sore, scared – and yet here you are. You get through it, increasing your tolerance for feeling tired, cold, hungry, unsure, sore, and afraid. You roll with it. You surf the waves, rather than having a reeally good expensive boat. You’re IN it, rather than on it. And there are moments, even hours and days, of bliss and joy and exultation and warm happiness and simple true connection – of feet on the ground, breathing and walking and listening and seeing and smelling and tasting – feeling how strong your body is and how big your heart is and how delicioso it feels to be wild.

 The rain continues to fall steadily as Martha leaves the damp warm dark bar. She peers out from beneath the already-dripping hood of her Altus poncho and finds the arrow* embedded in the rain-slicked cobbled street. She follows the arrow, hoping to get another ten kilometers under her belt before stopping for the night. 

*CAMINO PLACES, NAMES, AND THINGS WHICH WILL NEED TO BE DEFINED, OR PERHAPS I’LL INCLUDE A CAMINO LEXICON.

 

Walk. Eat. Sleep. Repeat. (Camino Fiction)

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Barb Morris Camino de SantiagoTHIS IS A SCENE FROM MY CAMINO NOVEL-IN-PROCESS. PLEASE SEE THE FIRST EXCERPT, “THE MESSIES,” WHICH INTRODUCES THE NOVEL AND WHY I’M POSTING THIS WRITING IN ITS RAW STATE.

The next town is coming closer. Martha doesn’t want to be with people tonight. She wants to sit with this place in her soul. Enter it and not be distracted. Not have to interact. She understands now those peregrinos who have passed her, unspeaking, earbuds in, no eye contact. They were simply finding solitude.

The gravel Camino becomes a cobbled street as Martha enters the town. She looks for an albergue with a bench and flowers out front – it’s her rule to look for flowers. Three doors up on the right – geraniums – Las Aquedas. The door is open. The hospitalero* is seated behind a rickety blue table covered with paper, his guest register open on top of the pile.

“Hola, señor. ¿Tiene una cama?”

He looks up, taking her in kindly. “Sí, señora. Tengo una cama para usted. Bienvenídos. Pasaporte y credential*, por favor.”

Martha shrugs off her backpack and digs out her American passport and pilgrim credential. The hospitalero writes her name, passport number, and nationality in his register. Solemnly he inks his albergue stamp, presses the stamp carefully into her credential, and dates the stamp. In this way, she’ll prove her journey to the volunteers at the pilgrim office in Santiago to receive her compostela* at the end of this ridiculous walk. “¿Cuanto cuesta la cama?,” she belatedly asks.

“Seven euro,” he answers, in English. “If you want breakfast it will be ten.”

“Breakfast, please. Grácias, señor.” She hands him a €10 note, picks up her backpack, and goes to find an unclaimed bed. As late as she is, it’ll almost certainly be a top bunk. Which makes the inevitable peeing in the middle of the night an unwanted adventure, but so far so good. She hasn’t killed herself yet. All the bunks along the walls are claimed, top AND bottom. This albergue, like many others, has crammed more beds in to take advantage of the increased pilgrim traffic since Americans and Koreans have discovered the Camino.

Damn Martin Sheen*, she thinks, not for the last time. And, also, bless him, Lord. That, too. I’m here because of him. And so are all these other people. She spots a bottom bunk smack in the middle of the big room full of bunk beds – almost all with backpacks propped beside them and a few clothes – shirts, pants, socks – strewn on them. Most hospitaleros frown on pilgrims putting backpacks on the beds. She’s not sure why.

Some of the beds have clotheslines strung in front, with towels draped on them for a little privacy. She puts down her backpack, sits on the bed, and carefully takes off her shoes and socks. Then, slowly, she removes the betadine-soaked gauze from Max to see how he’s grown. He’s thriving. Tonight, she thinks, it’s time to try the needle and thread. Enough is enough. Crocs on, she gathers her albergue clothes, towel, washcloth, and Dr. Bronner’s lavender castile soap (the all-purpose Camino cleaner), being careful to remember her ziploc-bagged passport, credential, cash, and credit cards, and goes in search of the showers.

Would these be co-ed?, she wonders. Would the hot water last? Would there even be water pressure? How long will it take her to figure out the controls? Would there be a way to keep her clothes and valuables dry? Would the lights go out mid-shower? Would there be a door, even? There wasn’t, always. So many unknowns, every night. And every night, it seems, she learns another thing she’s taken for granted that is evidently up for grabs in a Spanish albergue.

After the blessedly warm shower, she washes her other pair of underwear, her socks, and her t-shirt. Everything else could wait a few more days. Out comes the all-purpose Dr. Bronner’s lavender castile soap again – lavendar to repel bed bugs, an occasional problem on the Camino. Some peregrinos wash their clothes in the shower, also frowned upon by hospitaleros and other pilgrims.

Supper, as she promised herself, she eats alone.

The next day, as usual, she’s one of the first ones out the albergue door. Even though she paid for breakfast the night before, she’s left at the crack of dawn. Not before the crack of dawn, like some potentially annoying peregrinos who strap on their headlamps when it’s still dark and rustle their belongings into their packs and creep, they think quietly, out the albergue while the stars are still out. She’s not that driven.

But she relishes the half hour or so before sunrise – the brightest stars are still shining, and there are only a few other pilgrims as the sky lightens and she walks through a mostly quiet village – the only sounds the crunch of her shoes, the tap of her poles, early birdsong, and roosters waking up. She loves this time, she’s discovered, when rural Spain smells like wood smoke and sheep shit. She’ll stop for breakfast – toast and café con leche – at the next village. For now, it’s just good to walk. Hospitalero coffee is never as good as the café con leche she’ll get in the bars. And somehow the toast isn’t as good either.

What is it about Spanish toast anyway? Who knew a 60-year-old American woman could walk for miles fueled only by toast?! Surprising – she who spent decades as a carbophobe. She sort of lives for Spanish bread. With jam and lots of butter, at breakfast. And a chocolate croissant for a snack. And tortilla. Ensalada mixta* for second lunch or for dinner, because it’s the only vegetables she’ll get all day. Fresh-squeezed orange juice she’ll discover later.

I want to travel, Martha thought. I want to live in Spain for awhile. I want to really BE here. Maybe a volunteer hospitalera? I promise myself I will not let myself be tethered. I will not let myself be caged. What’s an Airbnb in Madrid in July and August? Or Glasgow? Or Belfast?  Or London? Or Galway? It’s so easy to get tied down. No No No.

Her mind panics. How would I support myself? How would I live?

And then there it is. The Voice. Writing and art, Martha. Writing and art, poppy seed. Writing and art and living REALLY cheaply. What do I need, after all? Clothes (a few), a place to sleep, food to eat, a way to keep clean, a way to make a living (computer and art supplies?)… I don’t need so much. I don’t need a car. I don’t need a wardrobe. I’d LIKE a little dirt.

All of this as she walked the first couple of miles of the fifteen she had planned for the day. She already knew it was going to be one of those Camino days full of voices – days that were coming more and more frequently. Shirley McLain’s* got nothin’ on me, she thought.

We make choices that lock us in before we know any better, she saw. We believe the lies about achievement and career and A to B to C in proper order. We believe the lies about rules and earning love through compliance and being useful to others. I just want to be WILD. I just want to be free for a change. That’s what I want. That’s all I want. 

And immediately the fear and the doubts creep in. As she walks she can feel them. They’re a constriction around her heart. I’ve never even written so much as a short story, she thinks. And what about helping people? Aren’t I supposed to help people?? I’ve never sold a painting. I’m going to make a LIVING at this?! What the FUCK am I thinking?!

Then below the panic, below the fear, the ground, she heard the Voice say, “Artist.”

You are my artist. You are one of my artists. You are one of my poets and painters and storytellers. You have the heart for this work. You’ve been a teacher. Thank you, my dear. Those kids needed you, and I’m grateful. Now it’s time for something new and deeper and unknown. Teaching was the freest path you could take when you believed the lie that you had to earn MY love and your worth.

I don’t know how to do this, she answered. Also, who ARE you?

You know who I am. The Earth Voice continues. When you feel afraid, it’s because you’re believing something that’s not true – like there’s a right way and a wrong way, you have to look competent, you have to be right, you have to get it right. There is no such thing as right.

Martha thinks: But how will I do this without a plan?

Earth answers: Here’s the plan, dearest: there is no plan. We don’t need no stinkin’ plan. (The Voice is evidently a fan of classic movies.) You show up and create – let out all that stuff inside you – bottled up and wanting to move through you – and that’s the plan.

Martha answers, This is crazy. This is batshit. You know that, right? 

Then, after a few minutes of walking, she whispers, Can I really DO this?

What would happen if you didn’t, my love? replied Earth. My strong beautiful artist, I love you so much. You are SO strong. There’s no statute of limitations on creativity, dearest. There’s no statute of limitations on being who you are.

*CAMINO PLACES, NAMES, AND THINGS WHICH WILL NEED TO BE DEFINED, OR PERHAPS I’LL INCLUDE A CAMINO LEXICON.

 

The Messies (Camino Fiction)

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Barb Morris Camino de Santiago

I walked the Camino de Santiago with my husband in 2014. Last year I had a vivid Camino dream about a small door within a large door that opened into a Templar church. From that dream emerged a series of scenes that have become the bare bones of a novel. I’m posting some of the scenes in their raw form, starting with “The Messies.” I’ve done some revising for readability; however, in the spirit of Martha’s messies, what you have here is pretty much how this scene emerged onto the page. It’s not perfect, and I’m letting it out anyway. I invite you to share your reactions in the comments.

The hero of my story is Martha, a newly-retired school teacher walking the Camino de Santiago by herself. This scene happens about ten days into her Camino, a journey which will take her about six weeks altogether.

I am a mess, Martha thinks. I am just a mess. Maybe I’ll always be a mess. Maybe being messy is just how I am.

Of what does this mess consist? Memories, dreams that never saw the light of day, abandoned goals and desires – What do I do with all this mess?

Walking by myself I can’t be distracted. The lid wiggles loose and the messies start to crawl out. Am I big enough to contain my messies? There are so many of them! They seem vaguely malevolent. They’re wild and angry, exulting in their newfound freedom and room to roam. They surge out of the jar and crawl all over my insides. I can feel them clinging to my chest wall and hanging on my heart. They’re crawling all around inside me. They crawl up into my arms and down to my hands. They gleefully grab my organs and skitter down my legs. They’re so glad to be free – these messies. They’re blue and black and red and green, with wild fur and eight legs and googly eyes and fangs. I’m afraid of them. They’re a little crazed, a little frantic.

I really am going a little crazy, Martha thinks. But let’s go with this: I’ve taken the lid off – the lid has wobbled loose on the Camino. Day after day of walking has jostled the lid loose. Day after day of being a stranger in a strange land has jostled the lid loose, and the messies have taken their chance. They’ve rushed up and out. They’re now crawling around my insides – around my chest between my lungs and chest wall, around my heart, up to my shoulders and down my arms. They like the bones for traction.  

Martha’s mind is going crazy with dismay and worry.

It feels good to have the lid off. It took so much energy and effort to keep them hidden. Oh. They’re different things – some of them are dreams. Many of them are emotions. Some of them are memories. Some of them are joy, too.

 I can see some of the ways I’ve kept the messies bottled up: other-focus, codependence, addiction, busyness, distraction, rule-following, being nice, staying quiet.

 I have to loosen the lid if I need to stuff another messie into the jar. They resist, and they try to escape whenever I open it. I’m pretty good at keeping them contained. But now, here on the Camino, as I walk mile after mile, the lid has loosened enough that they’ve popped it off and they’ve escaped.

 Tonight, in the albergue, someone will say, “Hola, Martha! How was your Way today?”

 My answer, if I wanted to tell the truth, would be, “Today on the Camino I discovered that in my heart I keep a jar full of everything I don’t want to know – the messy things – the inconvenient truths of my life. The sadness I don’t want to feel. The unkept promises and failures. The losses and the rage. The dreams I’ve let languish. The pain and the betrayals I didn’t want to see. All the stuff I didn’t want to do but I did anyway. All the things that didn’t fit with being perfect. And the joy it wasn’t safe to express. Now they’re out. And they’re crawling all over me, inside and out. And I can’t put them back in.

Martha walks, smiling and weeping. She’s beginning to suspect there will be many tears on this Camino. Every pilgrim she meets, she sees their jar of messies. We all have them, she sees. We all have our sequestered messies.

The jar is very old. It was given to me when I was a little girl: “Here’s your jar. Please put into it everything about you that we don’t like. Don’t ask questions. Just do it. No messies allowed. Or aloud. Either one. Your job is to sequester your messies so they don’t bother us. We only want to see the smart, pretty, nice bits. Thank you in advance for your cooperation in this matter. We’ll teach you how to identify, capture, and contain said messies, since you’re just a girl. Before you know it, you’ll be so good at it you can do it without thinking. Expect to feel listless and depressed at times. That just means you’re doing it right. Anytime you want to do something irrational or have a feeling we don’t like – catch that messy and STUFF IT INTO YOUR JAR. And NEVER let them out.”

 “Oh, and by the way, a little joy goes into the jar with each messy. That’s normal. Pay no attention. Not a cause for concern.”

 It takes a lot of energy to keep the lid on. That’s why I can’t commit to anything else. I have to hold back some energy at all times so I can contain the messies. Don’t ask too much of me. I have to keep the messies in. “Don’t let loose, don’t let down your guard, or the messies will get out.” So no going flat out and giving something all I’ve got. Never let myself get too hungry or tired or enthusiastic or passionate, or carried away with ANYTHING. If I do, the messies will erupt.

For additional Camino information, please click here. 🙂

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