The rain fell a little more lightly on my way back to our apartment. Trudging to the store each drop was thick and heavy, exploding onto my shoulders, hands, hair, and face.
In my head I was bitching.
“Why does it have to cold-rain on me the one time I go to the store to get the ingredients for our apartment’s dinner? Are the Euro’s trying to drive their G.D clown cars in the gutter? My feet hurt. My shoes are getting wet. I don’t have enough shoes. My roommate is sleeping and I’m walking in the rain to get food that he’ll eat. “
And as I bitched my anger went from soft orange to violent violet as I realized that:
“I’ve only gotten the groceries once, and yet I’ve eaten at least twenty meals. Europe rules. I didn’t even buy the shoes that I have. And it’s probably a little unfair to categorize sleeping as selfish. “
But it wasn’t raining in the store, and I looked so dumb trying to execute the list that I’d been given that the security guard all but held my hand as he led me to each of the items on my list.
All but one.
The ice-cream goes with the lava cakes which are a fan favorite and a bad thing to screw up. I forgot the ice-cream because the security guard had to check the security of the parking deck, so I didn’t have a dad, and because:
A curly blonde with watercolor-blue eyes asked me if I speak English. In my head I knew to answer “yes”, but my when my mouth dropped 4 sentences in one exhale, and the watercolors seemed confused by my gargling, I tried again: “Yyyeeesss”. We then small talked about where we’re living, how she’s from Germany, and how lucky I am to have ladies to cook for me. (During the conversation I realized that in situations of small talk I am literally the most generic person. If my name was Gary no one would ever remember me). We shook hands, said “goodbye”, and then awkwardly ran into each other next to the chocolates, then the butter, and lastly at the beer. I was out of things to say by the butter. No phone number, no facebook, nothing but gratitude that the security guard didn’t know enough English to be embarrassed by me. The hero working at the check-out line said that I needed my passport to pay, which has never happened anywhere, and so I said, “Lo siento”, which means “I’m sorry”. So he said, “ Spanish Spanish Spanish Spanish no Spanish Spanish Spanish passport Spanish Spanish”. So I thought, gestured artfully, and said, “lo siento”. He let me pay and go. (I wish I were as dumb in English as I am in Spanish. I bet “I’m sorry” has a higher success rate than “your occupation is silly.”)
This is going somewhere.
The rain fell a little more lightly on my way back to our apartment. Halfway through the half-mile walk I “took a knee”. I sat against a green wooden door, gaining some refuge from the doorframe, and lit one of my precious cloves. (If you feel convicted I can give you an address to send some to.) Of course the quiet, as it always seems to be, was a miracle. I don’t want to basterdize what I saw, but the rain was waving like sheets in the wind, most visible in the tunnels of the car lights and in front of the ancient towers in front of our apartment.
The rain reminded me of the four-day walk some friends and I went on for the first part of Spring Break. The walk is called The Camino de Santiago . I’ll leave describing the walk for another day, or I won’t, but the brief of it is that we walked 110 kilometers across northwest Spain—stopping to eat apples and nuts, and resting at cheap communal hostels. On the way to the bus station, which is located a mile from our apartment, my back was already hurting, my shoe broke (Nike Shocks generally have 4 shocks, mine had 3), and I realized that I didn’t know anyone that I’d be spending 5 days of misery with. My mood remained similar through the first day of walking: It rained all day, as it would each of the next three, unless of course it was haling. My feet swelled into marsh-mellows, and then my left ankle, and because I couldn’t help but limp to spare the left, my right knee ached. Again, I bitched in my head. And I really was a touch miserable. And the oppression of knowing that the next day would be almost twice as long as the current one, was mentally crippling. So I was limping in all senses.
But just as quiet is often a miracle, so too is everything else. And that’s what I learned.
The pain we all felt was galvanizing. And now I know about the old loves, parents, dreams, favorite movies, mistakes, and authenticities of a few who can say, “We walked together”. And I love them for seeing me. Thomas Merton says, “The Desert Fathers believed that the wilderness had been created as supremely valuable in the eyes of God precisely because it had no value to men. The wasteland was the land that could never be wasted by men because it offered them nothing. There was nothing to attract them. There was nothing to exploit…God’s plan was that they should learn to love Him in the wilderness and that they should always look back upon the time in the desert as the idyllic time of their life with Him alone.” And it is. The People could have gotten to what was promised in only a few days, just as a car could have gone to Santiago in an hour, keeping us free of pain, rain, and smelliness, but both We and The People may have in exchange lost everything.
And that’s what I remembered when my back was against the green door. And that’s when I reconsidered The Beauty. And I realized that I could walk in the rain because I’ve walked in the rain. I’ve had the rain in my socks, under my shirts, and falling from my hair to my nose to my chest. I’ve known the rain so intimately that my skin changed and the invisible strings from my shoulders to my boots were tight, and I’ve become heavy. But the rain isn’t against me. The rain is the rain and in life we have rain and what I’ve learned is that I thank God for the rain because the rain falls on my face and I feel it. I thank God because—even though it makes things slippery, and messes up hair, and makes me use my wipers (which make awful noises)—it is part of what we’ve been given. And the rain is sometimes loneliness, and sometimes fear, and sometimes anxiety, and sometimes cancer, and sometimes a lie, and sometimes distance, and sometimes memory, and sometimes it’s water droplets; but I know it.
So when it rains, I’ll dance.
And if I can’t dance, then I’ll watch.
And if I can’t watch, then I’ll feel each drop that lands on my shoulders, hands, hair, and face.
And if you get too heavy, or the strings get too tight, then I’ll say, “I know the rain and I love you.” And I’ll remind you that it’s rained before, but that it’s always stopped.
I walked home in the rain. Dinner was great.
After The Camino we went to the Canary Islands and drank colorful drinks on the black-sand beaches.
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