Final Vignettes from Tournai

Heading Definitively South

 

Dawn crept slowly into the gray skies over northern France as I made my way south by train. This was the beginning of some 40+ hours of travel, including a 4 hour layover in Bahrain, 13 in Bangkok, which would transport me the other side of the world to arrive in Sydney, Australia on December 13^th. Behind me I have left cold, tempestuous rains, squalling winds, homes which are shuttered tight each night, insulating them from the outside world in ways which I found increasingly oppressive toward the end of my stay. I also left a world luminously decorated for Christmas; white and colored lights adorning La Grande Place, the Belfry and streets throughout Tournai. Special breads for the celebration of St Nicholas have been sold at discounted prices clearing the way for bûche de Noëls. It feels a distinctly more organic marriage than that I have witnessed between Christmas and the land down under; adorned with festive garlands and plastic conifers, the 25^th of December often spent languishing in the heat. It was 104 degrees the last time I spent Christmas there in Brisbane in 1998.

Again this year I will return to the home of my cousins Susan & Rex Addison, who now live in a new home designed by Rex situated on Mt Crosby, 45 minutes outside of Brisbane. Their home was my first port of call after a year and half in Nepal. Their daughter Alice has become a very dear friend over the past many years. We have shared multiple road trip adventures out the Olympic Peninsula in order to appease her predilection for the quintessential American diner and requisite pie. But all that is another story and continent, and now I mean to write of my final days in Europe.

European Christmas Market

Of my last week in Tournai much time was spent helping Caddy prepare goods for the Scleroderma Association stall at the annual Christmas market. A small number of devoted people pour weeks, months into preparation of hand made jams, syrups, cookies, cakes, marzipan sweets, hand sewn bags, scarves, pillow cases, and collection of donated items from friends; from earrings to flower arrangements, shawls brought back from someone who holidayed in Turkey, hand crafted Brazilian games of chess, lace napkins someone found on sale in Brugge. Last year they made about 2000 euros, approx $3500.

I was struck by a number of elements in the process of preparation. Having worked, both as a volunteer and an employee, for a variety of non-profits over my life, I have witnessed so much effort and energy poured into such organizations. Perhaps just as universally, regardless of the cause, there seems to be an intrinsic and continuous struggle to acquire what is needed, the desired resources to create infrastructure, for direct services, to fund research, to continue fundraising. This is certainly the case for the Belgian Association of Scleroderma patients. http://www.sclerodermie.be/ (note this site is in French). While noting the struggle, I simultaneously found my heart warmed to see so much help and participation from the community which support Caddy in her work; some dear old friends, others who have had someone important in their own lives diagnosed and often severely incapacitated.

Caddy articulated her concurrent frustration with the lack of patient participation, the absence of patients actively investing of themselves in the effort, however they are able. She devotes an enormous amount of her life energy, at times I’m sure at the cost to her own health, to supporting & maintaining the work of this organization; providing resources and support for patients with Scleroderma, communicating with physicians conducting clinical research, and involvement in other organizations within Belgium and the larger European community devoted to other connective tissue and auto-immune disorders.

Preparation and unloading for the market was done in good spirits despite very soggy weather. Being the youngest of the set up crew by several decades, I totted the lion’s share of the items up the polished stone steps of the Hotel De Ville, one of many buildings assumedly rebuilt after La Grande Place was demolished during WWII. Over the course of a weekend, the hall is filled with several dozen vendors who sell their wares for the holidays; handmade puzzles and toys, candy, jewelry, hats, baskets of prepared meats, olives, alcohol etc.

During our set up, a gentleman with a rather shiny bald head and an aspiring to be handlebar moustache arrived with an additional folding table, the legs of which I promptly unfolded and made ready to turn upright. “Ey, bien alors!” he responded a bit taken a back (hmmm…how to translate…let’s just say an exclamation) to which Caddy responded, “She’s an American,” as if that should explain everything. We are well reputed in this world, for our ‘volonte’, that rather distinct American verve which wins us both praise for its dynamic initiative and disdain for its arrogance, its potential for recklessness. The market weekend was marked by stormy skies, heavy winds, and torrential rains. Many people in Beglium are struggling with recently increased heating prices and are prioritizing necessary utilities and food to the understandable detriment of holiday purchases. Still, Caddy and their booth did well, netting the same amount of money they did last year despite the sluggish economy which has been the subject of much conversation with the arrival of winter weather in recent weeks.

Gaspard, my now 5 month old host nephew, was with us during the work day both Tuesday and Wednesday this week. Much to the amusement of Caddy and Jean, I engineered a two scarf sling arrangement à la Nepal or Asia or Africa, or the majority of the world where infants are kept close to the human body. For stretches of time when he was fussier I continued with Christmas market preparations or time at this keyboard with Gaspard soothed by the presence of a warm body close by. And I was in turn soothed by his tender presence. Portions of this past week were fraught with the challenges of long distance communication in relationships with some of those most intimate in my life. Palpable in these interchanges were the limitations of the telephone as a vehicle for dialogue as well as the acrid taste of poorly communicated words and concurrent misunderstanding which must then await requisite time zone delay. In the midst of this relatively brief tumult, the immediacy and simplicity of Gaspard’s presence, his gaze, tiny fingers, and soft head felt distinctly precious.

Approaching the Health of the Body

Daily at the breakfast table, I have observed Caddy and Jean each take half dozen or more different pharmaceutical medications. Originally I inquired about the action of each. We discussed them, some of the specific details I’ve forgotten, there were also a lot of not very specific details. While I’m not sure they would use these words, it’s my impression they have both surrendered their bodies to the care of western medicine.

Caddy has felt relief from a variety of symptoms as well as a dramatic slowing of the progression of her Scleroderma with medical treatment. Having retired early with severe hypertension, has a susceptibility to stress induced arrhythmia, and a heart murmur, Jean has struggled more with the efficacy and side effects of medications. He has found a fine line exists between guarding the hyperactivity of his heart without completing robbing him of vital energy to live his life. The day after I returned home from the Hague, he explained he had been experiencing severe pain radiating down his left arm, but repeatedly refused to consult his cardiologist or go to the doctor. He rested much of the week, depleted of his normal vim & vigor. Decades of poor choices regarding nutrition, alcohol, stress, and activity level were certainly not going to be influenced by a few needles, which I offered anyway to little affect. I attentively observed my dear friend and father all week, inquired about the presence or absence of sublingual nitroglycerin or an appropriate equivalent in the home, and reviewed CPR protocol in my head.

I sensed the strong emotional impact of his diminished energy and capabilities. He is accustomed to helping whoever, whenever, with whatever needs to be done, evidently his nature is a contributing factor in the equation. Finally the day before my departure he went in to see his doc and learned that although his hypertension was still reasonably controlled, the peripheral edema in his left leg, which he didn’t mention, was severe and his murmur is much more pronounced indicating significant cardiac fatigue. Translating these recent encounters, I recognize the need to work on my French medical vocabulary. It was a delicate dance to articulate what felt like an appropriate level of concern recognizing all the while that, at the age of 60, Jean seems unlikely to make significant life style changes. He is now being more attentively followed by those into whose hands he has trusted his care.

Threads of Intimacy

Intimacy, while often hijacked to more poetically imply the sexual in our culture, is a phenomenon which I both revere and actively seek out in life. One can intimately experience a gleaming planet in the dawning eastern sky, the late afternoon light in the dangling tendrils of a weeping birch, the feel and texture of hair atop an infant’s head. I also discoverer intimacy in a variety of more formal human interchanges; market interactions such as the care observed by a vendor in selecting and packaging vegetables or fruit, the standard kiss on the cheek greeting in Belgium once, in France two, and in Holland I don’t remember how many. And further in friendship, there are so many levels on which intimacy is shared.

This autumn I have shared a longer period of time with Caddy & Jean than since I first lived in their home 16 years ago, and intimacy has been a very precious part of this chapter. This has manifested in many shared meals after which we have lingered a long while at the kitchen table. Many of our discussions have involved deep matters of the heart, how we live and learn in companionship, how we learn to open our hearts and share our lives with another human being. We have also spoken at length of family, learning, health, spirituality, cultural differences, languages & communication, differences between men and women, suffering present in the world and how we hold it. These leisurely conversations have unfolded in an unhurried manner, and we have returned to many of them over our shared time, peeling away layers of the onion to share more and more deeply.

On a regular, almost daily basis I have massaged Caddy’s legs and feet. This ritual began during one of my visits neither of us remember how many years ago, long before I ever considered entering into a healing profession. Sitting and taking into my hands the feet of another human being is something I have found opens the most intimate of doorways to dialogue, to sharing and it always feels to me like a truly sacred exchange.

These two people are deeply important in my life. While parents in a sense, ours is a friendship not perhaps as encumbered by some of the dynamics present in normal parent-child relations. This is the case not just for me, but for them as well as relates to their own children. Not being blood family, our relationships are less fraught with the deeply engrained and not always so deeply beneficial patterns that evolve, almost inevitably, within families. We can meet and engage as adults. They offer their thoughts and even counsel about my life choices quite honestly while honoring that I’ve managed to make it around the earth a couple times, in a broad proverbial as well as literal sense. At times, we candidly disagree. At other times, I am more easily able to receive insight and thoughts from them than I might from my own parents, who it feels important to note have supported me to soar with fierce independence throughout my life and with whom I also have a very intimate and loving relationship.

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Shifting of the Winds

When I chose Tournai as my first port of call on this journey, I believe I was directed by a rather intuitive wisdom. There I knew I might rest more deeply than I could ever grant myself permission to do had I remained in Seattle or even elsewhere in the US. The heavy, dark circles that I’ve been carrying beneath my eyes intermittently through grad school have disappeared. This initial chapter of my journey has been a beautiful balance of rest and nourishment along with fresh adventures, particularly during my time in Israel.

My experiences these past two months have also influenced the horizon I see ahead, and one likely alteration of my itinerary. Before leaving the US, I only purchased my tickets as far as India, assured that inter-Asian travel costs remain relatively static within reason. From the beginning of this journey, I have included a theoretical stop in Nepal thinking ‘how could I return to this corner of the world for the first time since my departure and not go?’ And yet it has also remained the biggest unknown. I am unclear what I would find there and how it would feel to return. The health related social service program I worked with discontinued some years ago due to Maoist insurgent activity. Since my departure in ’98, I have had no contact with my Nepali friends aside from the exchange of a single letter. That letter, and its response, were carried by the hands of a friend who happened to be trekking en route to the Rowaling through Simigaun, a village 2 days walk from the nearest road to which I traveled to half a dozen times.  It will likely be a destination when I do make it back to the country.

Just before leaving Tournai, a wave of thought arose, ‘how would it look if Nepal fell off the itinerary?’ I had realized that Nepal is not currently where my heart is. It hasn’t been there since I left almost a decade ago. My heart has been recently quite occupied in the nurturing of a new relationship. Additionally, a portion of my heart is still quite passionately preoccupied with the idea of studying Chinese. And there is a sense inside me, ‘well you’re more rested now, let’s get on with it’.

I have watched myself over these past weeks, the normal stresses of travel on the body and mind, fluctuations in stamina and motive force. I have considered how much energy will be involved in the journey in India. On top of that to add an undetermined period in Nepal feels like looking at a manuscript in need of editing, one too many chapters. If and when I return to Nepal, I would rather it be an intentional, discrete journey, rather than tagged on to this odyssey of mine. And such a journey would be more vital and rich if I could share that extraordinary Himalayan kingdom with Ewan and even additional friends. This adjustment feels like a natural gesture manifesting the consideration of not only my own needs, but of ‘us’. In the simple act of mentally removing Nepal from my itinerary, a great spaciousness has opened up inside. In that opening I feel more energy freed up to carry into Taiwan to explore what is there or not there for me. The horizon will evidently remain dynamic, as it always is; shifting in appearance as we approach closer to a given destination.