motor home – Travel stories

(See the house out on the edge of the cliff?)

We’re still in the place near the sea with the funny name – Foz. We’ve had our walk, I’m considering starting the couch to 5km running program again but I think it’s only because Denis is catching up on my walking steps. I might be more competitive than I realise. I’m no longer winning at the steps app and I seem to be putting a bit too much effort into thinking up a new strategy. Running might just be it. He doesn’t like running. I could win at running. I might well be losing my mind here in the Spanish rain.

(Close-up of some Lovely Lichen)

I can see a teeny tiny bit of blue sky so all will be well. In fact it was lovely and sunny this morning, only 7 degrees and a wind from the north or whichever direction the cold one comes from but still, the sun was nice.

(View of the mountains on our way here)

It’s something I don’t do enough of, look at the sky I mean. I was talking to my friend who doesn’t love reading. I, on the other hand, do love reading. I read all the time, even during meals if I can get away with it.

(Lots of cloud happenings)

She does something different in the times when I would be reading. So she was describing sitting in a deck chair with a cup of tea and a blanket around her shoulders looking at the clouds in the sky. And not just the clouds, she notices the birds, the trees waving in the breeze, the sounds, the smells and even the plants growing as she watches. Ok so she can’t see the plants growing but they do grow ever so slowly regardless.

(Big sky over the village with the narrow lanes)

Sometimes when she’s at work she finds herself thinking about nature carrying on with its work and it makes her feel good and at the same time long to be back outside just being in it. I was mesmerised.

(A few lovely clouds over Mont Saint Michel)

While we are away I spend far more time outside than I do while at home. It’s just the way it works out. I walk because I don’t have a car. I sit outside because our inside space is so small. And yet I don’t really see what’s right in front of my eyes. It’s like I’m so immersed in it I can’t see it. The practice of noticing nature seems so simple and so meditative and a perfect antidote to the competitive behaviour I seem to be practicing instead at the moment! When the rain stops I’m going outside (with my blanket) to just notice. Until then I can notice through the window.

Communing with nature, Mairead.

(I don’t know where I am…)

We’re on the high seas somewhere between Rosslare in Ireland and Cherbourg in France. Possibly already in the English Channel but can’t be sure. So we’re between places, in transition, not there yet, not started and yet begun.

(Blue is my favorite color, lots on this ship)

It is my joy to know lots of people who are waaay younger than me. I think I like younger people because I never wanted to grow up, to be an adult, to have that haggard oppressed air all adults seemed to have when I was a child. Or it could be that I know how difficult it was for me to make the transition across the space between before-adult and acting-adult, actually I might still be in that space. Or… maybe it’s possibility.

Really young children know possibility. They usually get it knocked out of them when they’ve been in school a couple of years though. But you can re-learn possibility and when you re-learn it you can see it in yourself and in others. It’s a yummy feeling, kinda of sparkly with little pops of joy!

(It’s a bit scary down there…)

I know two waaay younger people who are about to start third level education and I am awash with sparkle and poppy for them! I know their journey might be rocky and messy and scary but it’s also exciting and wonderful and interesting but mainly it’s incredibly beautiful. Because they are incredibly beautiful…

It’s something I learned from standing on the path cheering bus loads of women who had been in Magdalene Laundries… no matter what people say about you, or what you think about yourself, or what you’ve done that seems like a mistake, or what you can’t do that seems like a failure or what you’re afraid you can’t do because you’re not capable, there is at the center of you, an essence, that is pure and white and beautiful and it touches everything you do and all of your journeys.

I wasn’t so sparkly, poppy when it was me… noooo, I was more scared shirtless. I’m sure you’re sick of me telling you I failed third level education, didn’t get the marks, had to leave, no piece of paper, no graduation day. If I had known that failing was just part of my incredibly beautiful journey I might have been kinder, less angry, more patient, less ashamed of myself. It’s very, very difficult to feel sparkly poppy and shame, simultaneously. One kinda pushes the other away and shame is better at pushing.

(The coffee on board may not be great but the cups are an inspiration!)

For today, for me and for you and for those starting new journeys I’m going to give lots of attention to sparkly poppy… because I want it to push stronger.

How about you? Mairead.