The Nougat

I came back from Italy to cooler temperatures, crunchy leaves, and days that feel golden when you're out in them. A palpable change happened while I was away, and I've tried to slow down the pace of my life and simply enjoy the Fall. I started the weekend out with a party, which would usually make me shutter, but instead seemed like a fun alternative on a Friday night. For someone who is more comfortable in small groups than large crowds, I was surprised at both the ease and energy I brought to the night, introducing my friend and I to many new people. I balanced out this night of genuine socializing with a rainy Saturday soccer game, some low key friend time on Saturday night, and a Sunday afternoon of experimental pumpkin pancakes and a big helping of Netflix streaming el solo.

As I sat in my car late Saturday night, a nine-minute song finishing on my iPod and my windshield wipers sweeping water in sync with the music, I realized that I was truly in the thick of my own unique life. I felt a strong ownership over every dumb thing I've done, every banal or flat moment that I've waded through, every moment that turned out not quite like I'd planned. I smiled that I am eating canned beans heated on the stove because I spent too much money on a pair of Italian shoes. I accepted my nights curled up in my leather chair watching a movie alone. I honored the big questions, the great kisses, the sometimes sad mornings, and the long Sunday afternoons. I embrace them because they are mine. Despite it all and because of it all, I am living in the nougat of my own life.

So here is to being in the thick of it, whether it involves living in someone's basement, cheerios in a car seat, or too many baked beans for one week. Here is to our own beautiful existence, whatever it brings. Here's to our nougat.

Italia

Two weeks' worth of Italy makes it hard to know where to begin and end. There's just too much. Instead, here is a random collection of moments that hopefully give a small flavor of my trip. Italy is beautiful, humid, and delicious, but it was the people I met that made it.

1. Waiting to see the David in Florence, I slyly took pictures of the people standing in line around me. This young Swiss guy with incredibly shiny hair leaned over and asked me if I was paparazzi and if I was going to sell the pictures. I said it depended on whether or not he was famous. He laughed and then bought me a bottle of water.

2. Ado, a 60-something-German man who knew no English, stopped me on our first day of cycling to give me a piece of fruit. It was filled with a seeded jam, and he laughed when he saw how much I loved it. It was a fresh fig! He picked me over 20 during our week of riding.

3. Kathy and I stopped to help Magda, the loveliest Brazilian woman I've ever met, with a leg cramp on the side of the road. A 6"5 young Italian guy from another tour company came over to see if we needed help. Kathy couldn't stop staring at him and after he left, she said she signed up with the wrong company. From a few people back, I hear Kathy's husband say, "Down, girl."

4. The climb (there were many) into Assisi was steep and windy. We were going so slow up the narrow streets that my handlebars would wobble back and forth (never a good sign). The tourists stood on the sides of the road and watched us climb, looking both shocked and impressed.

5. Eating dinner in Umbria in a small stone restaurant behind a church. Oil-soaked cabbage salad; breads with cheese, beans, and garlic; pasta covered with truffle sauce. This place is known for its mushrooms, and each course melted with flavors both thick and earthy.

6. Riding on a dirt road to Spello, I saw an old woman walking through her olive orchard early in the morning. Her dress was the color of eggplant; her hair as white as flour.

7. An old grandma hotel owner telling Judith, who is from Australia, to speak better English because she couldn't understand her. Judith, her eyes darting back and forth said, "But this is only English I know!" I laughed so hard, I had to sit down.

8. A cab driver in Rome driving so fast I felt the flesh on my cheeks stretch backwards. The song on the radio was Johnny Cash's "A Boy Named Sue."

9. It rained on my Sunday in Rome, and everyone whipped out umbrellas, all colored. As I walked to the Spanish steps, my shoes completely filled with water, I felt like I was walking through a batch of colored balloons.

 

10. Standing in line my last day in Rome for a tour of the Vatican, I felt someone give me a hug from behind. I turned around to see Judith and Sandra from biking who had randomly scheduled the same tour time as me. The three of us stood like ducks in a row under the Sistine Chapel, our necks craned and mouths open, both out of admiration and awkward angle of viewing.

 

11. Sitting in Campo de Fiori, a flower and food market, for breakfast my last two mornings. I would watch the vendors set up their booths, eating my cream-filled something or other, and then I would buy plums and figs to eat as snacks throughout the day.

A New Road

The more I live, the more I realize that the word courage isn't always as bombs-blazing glorious as it seems. Really, it just means you are about to do something hard. But anytime you muster up courage, you also know you are about to do something important, something that might end up defining your life. And so today, for more reason than one, I am hoping for a little courage to face a few new roads. I want, more than anything, for them to lead me to where I was meant to be.

In two days, I will fly over a big ocean and land in a country where I don't speak a lick of the language. My planned communication tactic is to flamboyantly use my hands when I talk and pray that others understand this universal language (if basic hand gestures don't work, I will resort to full-on charades). For two weeks, I will ride a most-likely-sketchy bicycle across Italy in hopes that I find happiness and hope and good feelings for my future in the small towns I visit, the plates of pasta I ingest, and the foreign people I meet. Maybe in being away from my house, I will start to feel a little bit more at home—namely, in my own skin.

 There's nothing more to say this week than this...Wish me luck, my friends.

My Digging Day

With a few weeks under my belt, I am feeling settled into my new place. I am acquainted with each room; the walls now have something of "me" on them; and the smells that greet me when I walk in the door are, thankfully, familiar (three candles and a "birthday cake" air freshener later). I have picked up some old routines (wheat thins with cheese at my desk after work), and I have started some new ones (spending time in my kitchen making too much food for just one person). In short, I am starting to believe I am home.

One place I hadn't tinkered with too much yet was my front yard (a liberal term for a very small piece of grass). So with a few Saturday hours to spare this weekend, I started washing windows and squirting down shutters; and despite their not looking much different after, it still felt good to work on something that looked like it needed my help. The last thing I left for myself was my very sad-looking flower garden, which hadn't been remembered by anyone for more than a year. So, on my hands and knees and with my untied shoe laces soaking in the wet dirt, I dug around every weed I could for more than two hours. And surprisingly, in the middle of my fingernails becoming marinated in mud, I realized that my insides were smiling, and smiling wide. I couldn't help but feel like I was preparing for something with all of my digging and changing and creating, and that perhaps something good, something fulfilling, something magnificent was soon coming my way.

This hopeful, almost magical feeling stayed with me all weekend. And I welcomed it with a kid-sized hug. I am grateful for any moment in life when instead of wanting to pull the covers over my head in the morning, I have the urge to rip them off with great enthusiasm for the day. I am grateful that my very center is telling me that all of my work and effort, the digging and pulling, are about to lead to something great.

After all, flowers grow from where dirt used to be.

The Art of Resting

Last night during one of my sporadic stints of yoga going, my inner voice was being particularly snarky with me about having to go to positions like "crescent pose" and "warrior 1, 3, 2, and reverse." I silently cursed all of the stretching and reaching and breathing as I stood there with shaking muscles, wondering if I would have been better off riding my bike instead. But then the instructor said the blessed words, "Go to child's pose," and I remembered why I started to believe that there really is something to all this. With my body whispering a thank you, I knelt down on my mat and rested my forehead flat on the ground, my arms limp beside me. In that moment, every pressure and expectation that had been perfectly perched on my back and shoulders throughout the week had no choice but to roll forward and away from me. And my forehead, which so rarely makes contact with anything, slowly melted into the ground along with my thoughts.

As I drove home after the class, I thought more and more about stretching, breathing, and meditating. We so often praise the person who runs the longest or the fastest and less the person who can bear to sit still for an hour and stretch. Even with my own exercising, I stick a bigger gold star on my long bike rides and hard lifting sessions than I ever do on my yoga classes. Yet, when I think about it, it is a bigger accomplishment for me to sit silently for an hour and just "be" than it is for me to stay in constant motion. And it is often while sitting still, my forehead to the floor, that I receive much needed emotional refueling and a quietness of spirit that I can then carry with me for the rest of the week.

Maybe there is something to the art of reaching instead of running, stretching instead of sprinting. And maybe, despite our mad dashing to different goals and destinations, the rest really is as important as the race.

Ripples

I saw a movie this week, "Beasts of the Southern Wild," that left an indelible on me as a person, so much so that at one point in the movie, I was holding in audible (and embarrassing) sobs. I felt so deeply and thickly the poverty some people live with their entire lives, that they can never seem to escape. And while we often use the cliché saying that "there are starving kids in Africa," this film showed that it is as much the case in our own city and country as it is halfway around the world. In truth, people are starving all around us, not just for food, but for affection, safety, attention, and education, to only name a few. And yet, some of the most unlikely of people face it all with bravery and a magnanimous spirit.

Sometimes when I am in bed at night and can't sleep, I started to wonder what my purpose and contribution will be (or even more haunting, what it was meant to be and if I missed it). Sometimes the most I accomplish after work is to go for a bike ride, cook dinner for one person (i.e., myself), and paint my toenails. But in those silent moments in bed, I often dream that I could one day be as big as to touch the world with a feel-better wand, that something I could do or say would travel far enough to make a difference. I have to remind myself though of the story of a group of people who were trying to safely move a piano. After much discussing and measuring, someone finally said to the group, "Just lift where you stand." 

As much as I would like to leave behind a legacy of humanity or compassion, I may have to accept my influence in a smaller sphere. I can simply believe, as someone once said, that I am responsible for the energy I bring into a space. So maybe the smile I gave a stranger in the grocery store parking lot, or the tone I took with a coworker, or even my own laugh floating across a room will unintentionally raise the spirits of someone I don't see. Maybe the ripples of these small things alone will circle wide enough to collide with the ripples someone else creates by lifting where they stand.

And if they do, then the world is covered.

Decisions

A week ago, someone I very much respect was talking to a group of people about what motivates us to make decisions. He asked everyone if we are the kind of person who makes decisions based on consequence or makes decisions based on our identity. At first, my mind glossed over what he said, deciding that I was not ready to look at my "identity" at 2:00 in the afternoon (in the summer, no less). But as I went home and mulled over what he said, it sank in—deeply. Do I make decisions because of what will happen to me if I do or don't? Or do I make decisions because, despite the consequence, it is in line with who I am?

When we were young, I feel like we learned right from wrong through a series of rewards and punishments. If you did something right, you were given praise, a treat, or a privilege. When you did something wrong, you were grounded, put in time out, or you lost something you wanted. As an adult, the rewards and punishments have changed slightly, but we often operate under the same principle. If I do well at work, I will be promoted and will earn more money. If I launder money from my work, I will go to prison (hopefully).

After thinking about this idea throughout the week, I decided to take the time to look at the decisions I make in my own life. Instead of doing a good job at work because I want my boss to notice, I will do well because I am a hard, honest worker, whether someone sees it or not. Instead of making good spiritual decisions because of what will happen to me if I don't, I will make them because I am a person who wants God to know that I honor Him. And instead of loving and serving someone because I hope they will do it back, I will do it because I am a person with an immeasurable capacity to love, despite its returns.

In the words of the Disney creator, "When your values are clear to you, making decisions becomes easier." So here is to clearer values, and the courage to make decisions from my core.