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To Be In Benin

To Be In Benin

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Today Suzanne visits the town of Toura, Benin, West Africa, for the first time. It’s in the far north of the country, in the Alibori region near Banikoara and close to an elephant migration route. She’ll be teaching English to middle-school students there for the next two years. It’s the first time a Peace Corps volunteer has served at this school.

The purpose of the visit is to meet people, visit her hut and see what she’ll need to order or buy to make herself at home in Africa.  Then she’ll return to Porto Novo for more language study and training before she starts teaching in September.

One of the big questions on Suzanne’s mind is how far the well pump is from her hut. She’ll have no electricity or running water so this is not an insignificant question. Already I’ve been turning on the tap less often, reusing sudsy water, thinking more about what goes down the drain. There’s no way to ship it to her, of course. It’s purely sympathetic. A futile attempt to be in Benin with her.

When I do a Google image search on Toura, what comes up most are pictures of wells (water portals) like this one. Image: watsanportal.org.

ISO Map

ISO Map

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August 1. A new month. And by any measure, the last month of summer. It hasn’t been much of one for me. All work and little play. No mountains, no shore. The creative juices barely flowing.

I find myself studying maps of the country, looking for the best route to North Dakota. I could go through Chicago into Wisconsin and then up 94 into Minnesota. Or drive straight across Kansas to 29 and follow the Missouri River north.

It’s armchair travel at this point, and the only map I could locate last night showed me just half the country — the eastern half. But there are other maps out there.

Even imaginary adventures require a little graphic inspiration.

Map: Info Please

Red and Blue

Red and Blue

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It’s the middle of the summer, with mountains of work to do and no relief from the heat. My Metro car was offloaded before 7 a.m. to fill the platform at Ballston with even more perspiring bodies clinging valiantly to some semblance of morning cool.

It’s time for . . . a virtual vacation.  What will be, I imagine, the first in a series.

My brother- and sister-in-law are visiting Tom’s cousin Dan and his wife, Ann-Katrin, in Sweden now. So I’m taking myself there today, to their lakeside bungalow with the terraced yard and the charming little guest house in blue and red. To the back porch with the deck chairs and lake view, to the pansies and the pumpkin plants, and, in the distance, the cuckoo bird — the real thing, not our loud clock replica — sounding faintly, faithfully, through the woods.

On a walk from their house the first day there we came across these two boats moored companionably next to each other. I snapped a shot. It’s still one of my favorite pictures.

Benin Bound

Benin Bound

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When we moved to Virginia, Suzanne was a six-month old baby. Today she flies to Benin, West Africa, to begin two-plus years of Peace Corps service. The room into which she’s crammed two decades worth of books and photos, dreams and plans — that room is preternaturally tidy now.

I made myself go in it late yesterday, though I would just as soon have left the door closed. But as she begins her adventure overseas, we begin the adventure of living without her.

It’s what you do as a parent and as a human being, learn to live without the ones you love.  This time the sadness has a fullness to it, though, a sense of life renewing itself. And that makes me grateful for it, in the same way that I’m glad for much-needed rain or the first crisp days of fall.

I don’t know where Suzanne will be stationed in this strange new country. Will it be in the south, near the water, or in the north, near the Sahel? More likely somewhere in the middle.

All I know is that the map of Benin that Suzanne studied for months is now in my possession. I’m the one studying its towns and rivers; I’m the one dreaming about the day when I can visit this faraway place.

 

A Change of Screen

A Change of Screen

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A change of scene is not always possible, so in its place, a change of screen. I choose a photo of a hike we took in the Czech Republic, high above the town of Czesky Krumlov. The Vltava River flows below, out of view in this photograph. And the hills that rise in blue infinity, those are the Sumava Mountains of Bohemia, in the heart of Europe.

When I stare at my computer’s desktop screen now, I remember the breathlessness of that walk, the little shrines we stopped at along the way, the snails that clung to the dew-wet grass, the view that awaited us at the top. Limitless. 

Sleight of Hand

Sleight of Hand

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A month from today Suzanne flies to Benin, West Africa, to begin her Peace Corps assignment. We’ve known about this for months, but now that we’re down to the final weeks it’s becoming more and more a reality. The map of Africa isn’t the only thing swinging into high relief these days. So is the map of parenthood, the map of life even, if that isn’t too melodramatic.

Children are supposed to leave their parents, start lives of their own. This is the natural order of things. I always believed this when I was the child, and I believed it as a parent, too — when my kids were young.  Now I’m having to put my money where my mouth is.

To stave off nervousness I’m concentrating not on how I’ll feel when Suzanne takes off and am trying to imagine how she’ll feel. It’s a parental sleight-of-hand that many of us do unconsciously all the time. It’s why we can smile through our tears.

I remember exactly the way I felt when I walked on the tarmac toward the plane that would fly me to Europe for two months backpacking with friends. I had just turned 20 and my whole life — and Europe! — were ahead of me. I felt like I was bouncing off the pavement. I was floating. That’s the feeling I’ll be trying to conjure up as Suzanne strides toward her future.

On Broadway

On Broadway

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The tune has been in my head the last few days. The tune is there because I was there. On Broadway, that is. Not the part George Benson sings about, not the place where “the neon lights are bright.” Not Times Square Broadway.

I’m talking Upper West Side Broadway. Corner grocers, vacuum cleaner stores, coffee shops. There was a time when I lived there that if I ran out of paper and had to run down to the tiny stationary store to buy some, I hesitated. I would have been on deadline then (I was always on deadline that year) and I knew I would run into at least a couple of people I knew on the way there and back. Could I afford the time to buy the paper and chat with the friends?

The answer, always, was yes.  I had lived there for a few months. And when I walked down Broadway I knew people. I didn’t need neon lights.

Saturday, during my 21-hour visit to Manhattan, I had time to walk from 114th to 77th Street. The sun was bright, the air was warm, the pedestrians were of every size, shape and color.  I didn’t know people to talk to along the way. But I had left one good friend at 113th Street and met another at 77th. My feet flew down the pavement. There was energy and street life. It was good to be back on Broadway.

A Walk in Ireland

A Walk in Ireland

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The walks we took in Ireland: along Grafton Street in Dublin, through the arch in Galway City, to the ends of the earth at the Cliffs of Moher.

The walk I remember most: An ordinary one in Donegal, fuchsia hanging along the hedgerows. The fuchsia surprised me. I thought of it as a hothouse plant, something to be coddled. But in Ireland it thrived on neglect — along with rain, mist and the soft Irish air.

This walk I remember with the fuchsia was down a small lane. The sun seemed never to set, and our summer would never end. This was a long time ago.

Google Travel

Google Travel

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Last night we had a full house, and before dinner we talked about the Occoquan Reservoir and the roads and bridges and houses around it. Claire’s boyfriend, Stevie, grew up a stone’s throw from the water. He fishes it all summer and knows ever cove and inlet. My brother Drew, who is moving back to Northern Virginia after almost two years in St. Louis, wouldn’t mind living in a house near the reservoir.

So commenced one of those delightful (modern) conversations that is part talk and part Google maps. We found the house, looked at the terrain around it, figured out how wide the creek would be that flows beside it. Then we looked at Facebook photos of fish Claire and Stevie have caught and released back into the lake, largemouth bass and catfish.

There are things we couldn’t have done a few years ago; so, in a way, we plumbed the place more. But, I also wonder, did I see just enough to make me less likely to see it — for real — for myself?

Photo: Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries

A Place Apart

A Place Apart

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I’ve been re-reading the memoirs of Niall Williams and Christine Breen, who in 1985 moved from Manhattan to Kiltumper, County Clare, Ireland to write, paint and live a simple life. Their first two summers were some of the rainiest on record and tested their resolve. But in 1987 the sun shone and the turf dried and the hay was made before the rains came again.

It was then that they wrote, “Days and nights in Kiltumper are perfect countryside settings for the quiet contemplation of a career, a love, a life. In this green isolation, whole chunks of life can suddenly seem unimportant. A walk across fields in the evening light can change philosophies forever.”

Like many writers they found that a change of scene created a change of heart. “Kiltumper had come to seem a sort of relief post, quite literally a place apart, a place to come to in which to draw breath and look outwards over the fields, to find the direction of your life.”

Reading this, losing myself in their fantasy, I wonder: Can I ever do the same thing by staying put in the suburbs? Can I walk my way into an epiphany? I must admit, when I’m reading about the west of Ireland, I think not.