A bounty of photos means that Africa is still on my mind.
I imagine the roads at dusk, red soil, the shadows lengthening. A river beside the road, or maybe still water, a small pond.
Ancient rhythms, still alive.
(Photo by Katie Esselburn)
The human heart is a funny thing, what it withstands, what it does not. I’ve long since accustomed myself to Suzanne’s absence. She’s been in Africa well over a year now. She’s busy, happy, completely at home.
But last night, the worlds collided. Suzanne’s friend Katie came to visit “bearing gifts” from her recent trip to see Suzanne in Benin. Things Suzanne had bought and wanted us to have:
There was a leather wallet, a small wall hanging of a woman carrying a jug on her head and a set of hand-cast ladles made of an indeterminate metal (maybe aluminum?).
For some reason now, I can hardly look at these gifts without a tissue nearby. That Suzanne chose them with her own hands, arranged for their passage here — well, it just got to me.
It’s always that way, isn’t it? The small, thoughtful detail; a glimpse of the eternal within the everyday.
(Photo: Katie Esselburn)
It’s a pit stop, a place to get gas on I-64, a hilltop station with rocking chairs on a little front porch that provides this view as respite for white-line fever.
Well, almost this view. To snap this shot I walked down the road a few feet while filling up the van. But still, this is more or less what you would see if you had a few minutes to while away.
I paused only long enough to take this picture. An impatient driver, I allow myself no more than 10 minutes at a stop — and I don’t spend them sitting!
This photo reminds me of the journey not the destination. It reminds me of all the places in between.
Yesterday I had the pleasure of going through airport security twice for the same flight. I’d left something in the car. Later in the day, while waiting for a connection in another airport, I walked past an even busier security checkpoint, people rushing to lace up their shoes, stuff toiletries in bags, zip laptops into cases.
That flying is an exhausting, dehumanizing experience is news to no one. But you forget just how exhausting and dehumanizing when most of your trips are by car.
In exchange for the miracle of flight, we have the humiliation of full-body scans, the inconvenience of unpacking what we just packed and stuffing it into gray bins, the thrill of padding barefoot along the airport floor.
A reminder that even though we soar through clouds, our fears and troubles usually keep us earthbound.
Every month at work I receive an inbox full of away messages courtesy of an e-newsletter my office sends out. While I typically think of these as an annoyance and delete them without a second glance, the last time I decided to read some.
I decided that there’s an art to the away message. Some are terse, no nonsense: I am away from the office until August 19. I will answer emails when I return.
Others offer a ray of hope: I will be away until August 19 with limited access to email. “Limited” is not defined, of course. Does this mean a response later in the week? the day? the hour? I’ve had all three experiences.
Many propose alternate forms of assistance: If you need immediate help, please contact … Often these substitutes are obvious ones, the colleagues anyone who’s in touch with you would already know. But listing them in the away message provides some coverage, some control.
The best away messages are the ones that already carry some of that devil-may-care vacation spirit. “I’m in Bora Bora till the cows come home. Deal with it, wage slave!”
These are the messages that can cause a contagion of sick days. They are not polite, not corporate. And they don’t end with “Thanks” or “Best” but with “Ciao” or “Later.”
The away message of my dreams.
Yesterday I haunted the Air France website, checking first to see that Celia’s flight to Paris had arrived, then to see if her flight to Africa had taken off and, finally, to be sure that it had landed.
It did! She arrived in Cotonou, Benin, on Beninese Independence Day. Her big sister was waiting for her. What seemed preposterous two years ago — that I would have even one daughter in Africa — is now even more so. I have two!
Two girls on an adventure, two girls buzzing around on the backs of motorcycles (trying not to think about that part), two (girls) for the road.
Luckily, I also have a daughter who travels more conservatively, who even as a toddler would ask, “How we get home, Mama?” when we were on vacation.
We need both types: the micro and the macro. The ones on the road and the ones waiting for them back at home.
It’s summer vacation season, and I’m remembering trips from the past. This photo is from the last big trip we all took together, four years ago now.
The scenery was magnificent. We drove down long valleys and past snow-topped mountains. We sampled once again from the riches of this continent, reminded ourselves how big the world is, how impossibly grand.
One of the times a family is most intensely a family is when all its members are crammed into a single vehicle. Sometimes too intensely a family. Which is why we haven’t taken another family vacation since then.
But the scenery, and the memories, remain.
I just started reading a book by this title. It’s written by Graham Greene, whose work I usually enjoy, although not sure about this one. Still, you can’t beat the title.
In fact, the title itself has me thinking. “Journey without maps” sounds so exotic, so adventurous — traveling to a place beyond civilization, where rivers have not been charted, roads not cleared. How many places can we go now that are unexplored, mysterious, limitless in possibility? How many of those places would we want to visit?
Like many titles, this one doesn’t work anymore. Now we would call it “Journey Without A Phone.”
As the map — like the land line, the address book, (heck, the book itself) — joins the slide rule and the 8-track player on the road to oblivion, we who remember and cherish these items are embarking on our own journeys. And they, too, are journeys without maps.
Suzanne left for Africa a year ago today. She packed a large bag and a small bag and slipped out by rail to Philadelpia. (“That was a very emotional goodbye for a trip from Washington to Philadelphia,” another passenger said as they were boarding the train.)
From Philly she went to New York, Belgium and Benin. For the last ten months she’s made her home in a small village on the edge of the Sahel. She teaches school, and this summer is working in a girls’ camp and at a health clinic. She is completely immersed in village life. She loves the people and they love her. She’s the happiest person I know.
The months that led up to her departure crept by in slow motion, like time does on a roller coaster inching up that first hill. Now we’re on the downward slope. It hardly seems possible that Year One has passed. It now seems entirely possible to make it through Year Two.
Still, I seem to miss her more and more. Thanksgiving, Christmas, birthdays and, ten days ago, a graduation — all without her. The phone keeps us together, a family of the air, and that will have to do. But now that she’s almost halfway done, I’m allowing myself to dream of a time when we’ll all be together again. Even being on the same continent will do.
This is what, long
ago, made him fall in love with photography, the paying of attention, the
capturing of time. He had forgotten exactly this. … Pay attention, he thinks.
Not to the grand gesture, but to the passing breath.
