Lessons from travel

“Piano, piano,” our tour guide Giacomo advised our group of ten as we navigated the cobblestone streets of medieval towns in Tuscany and Umbria. “Piano, piano,” he repeated as we climbed stone steps that have been worn down by centuries of use and had no handrails to steady us.

Piano, piano means slowly, slowly in Italian.

Good advice, I thought. Not just for traversing medieval towns in Italy, but for me, good advice for daily life, because I tend to move too fast, rushing as though I was always running late.

Travel makes me slow down, because I am aware of how dangerous rushing across cobblestones can be.

Traveling with a group makes me slow down because I sometimes need to wait for those who can’t move as quickly as I do.

It is good for me to slow down, and every time I had to stop and wait for someone to catch up, I felt invited to look up and take in the sights around me (walking on cobblestones requires lots of looking down). Those moments of waiting were invitations to notice what was in front of me, like little carvings in walls or unique shapes of doorknockers.

Slowly, slowly invites me to appreciate the here and now.

Travel also shakes things up. It is like a snow globe where I am tossed around a bit and when the snow settles, everything looks different. The people, places and food are unfamiliar, and my equilibrium is off. I join Dorothy in saying, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.

A man at church recently toured the Holy Land. Before he left, he told me he had been nervous about traveling to such a potentially dangerous place until he learned they were staying in a Westin Hotel and then he thought, “If I didn’t know any different, I could still be at home.”

“Then what is the point of going?” I asked.

When I travel, I want to be shaken up and to experience what is different. I want to know how it is for people who live in that place and to have my assumptions and stereotypes challenged. I want to be changed by my experiences, to learn something about another people and place—and about myself.

One of the features of touring with Overseas Adventure Travel (O.A.T.) is that we visit people in their homes. On this tour, our group was split up among three homes in Carrera (after a tour of the nearby marble quarry). My small group had lunch with a couple and one of their sons.

Later in the tour, we visited Spello and were entertained by an Umbrian folk music group in the home of one of the musicians.

Massimo Liberatori & La Società dei Musici

During my two weeks in Italy, slowly, slowly became my go-to gear, and I pledged to myself that when I got home, I would try harder to stay in slow gear, to remind myself every day (and even multiple times a day), piano, piano.

Our Overseas Adventure Travel Group Tour Leader, Giacomo, aka Captain America

Making plans

My childhood was somewhat chaotic, and I learned early on that planning something did not necessarily mean it would happen. There were too many moving parts and too many things that were beyond my mother’s control. My takeaway was, don’t bother to plan because whatever I plan is unlikely to happen.

I took that belief into adulthood, and it wasn’t until my mid-thirties that I planned my first vacation—a windjammer cruise in Maine. I made the initial deposit in January, for a trip that was to happen in August, and then I waited for whatever was going to go wrong to go wrong.

Everything went according to plan, though, until the day my friend and I were driving north on I-95 and an overturned truck somewhere in Connecticut closed the expressway for five hours. Fortunately, I had planned an extra day, so we still had plenty of time to get to Maine, board the Schooner J & E Riggin and have a wonderful week of sailing along the coast.

Schooner J&E Riggin

My childhood belief was shattered by that trip. It turned out I could plan a vacation and it would happen.

Since then, I have planned and taken many trips. Sometimes there are hitches (like the time I miscalculated the twenty-four-hour clock conversion and almost missed my plane to Poland), but I take the attitude that everything that happens is part of the adventure (like the time I missed a connection in Heathrow and was invited to stay for afternoon prayer in the chapel).

Fast forward to the year I was to turn sixty and began to plan how I would celebrate that milestone birthday. I decided on two things—a return trip to Poland and a thirty-day silent retreat (something I had wanted to do for about fifteen years but having the time and money had not coincided).

I spent a few months of that year exploring options, and then, about four months before my birthday, my best friend was diagnosed with a very aggressive form of a non-curable brain cancer. Suddenly, my plans seemed inconsequential and were set aside.

Jim and I celebrated my sixtieth birthday at a friend’s condo overlooking the Jersey Shore, and when the dolphins appeared mid-afternoon, Jim said, “They are singing happy birthday to you.” It was the last birthday I celebrated with him.

Ten years have passed, and I have still not returned to Poland nor gone on a thirty-day retreat; I have done other travel but neither of those.

Now I am looking forward to turning seventy in the fall and thinking how I will celebrate this milestone. I am planning to go to Europe for an extended time in 2022 and am enjoying the researching and planning, fully aware that there are many moving parts and things that are beyond my control.

Cancer and COVID have taught me to live life to the full. It is good to make plans—and to remember to let go of control and enjoy the adventure.

Rhythm of my heart

(Originally published in Red Tent Living on the theme Woman in Red)

Learning about Spanish culture was one part of my college summer school program in Madrid, Spain, and that meant churches, museums, bullfights, and flamenco dances. There were also many visits to nightclubs—called discotecas—but I don’t think my professors considered those part of my cultural education.

I thoroughly enjoyed every museum and would gladly return to Spain to see more art, but I could have done without the bullfights (they were quite gory) and after about ten churches, I was pretty much churched-out. Flamenco dancing was in its own category though.

Those women in red, flounced dresses, spinning and stomping their feet, touched something deep inside me.

While I sat still in rapt attention, seemingly quite contained, everything inside me was exploding, and I was joining in the dance. I could imagine myself dressed in a flamboyant red dress, flipping the hem back and forth, creating the impression that I was in perpetual motion.

My love of dance goes back to my childhood when I took tap and ballet classes at the local community center. I was the self-conscious child during recitals whose movements were restrained. On the outside, I was timid and shy, afraid of drawing attention to myself for fear of being criticized. Deep down, I was tapping up a storm and my ballet moves were swanlike, but that movement stayed inside.

Neither tap nor ballet lasted long. I didn’t know how to explain what was happening on the inside, how the dancing was giving me the opportunity to be free, how those tiny movements of my body were amplified on the inside. My mother thought it was a waste of money since I did not seem to be having fun.

In her thirties, a friend took tap dancing lessons, and I went to her recital. She wore a Carmen Miranda hat and danced her heart out. She inspired me to take belly dancing classes, which I did for several years. I thought of it more as exercise than dance, but I did buy a red hip scarf with gold coins dangling from it.

Fortunately, these classes were in a room with no mirrors, so the only image I had was the one in my mind, and in my mind, I was one great belly dancer! The teacher encouraged us to make dramatic movements—hips swaying from side to side with a little oomph for emphasis. It was tremendous fun, and it helped free me to let what was inside out.

A few years ago, I saw Riverdance in Dublin, Ireland, which included flamenco dance. My reaction was the same as it had been thirty-some years ago. I was swept up in the movement and could imagine myself dressed in red, swaying rhythmically.

Dance has always touched something deep inside me. Whether I am distressed, sad, or even happy, I find that dance can help me express my emotions. At home, I often turn on music and dance. It is a great stress reliever, and it helps me get in touch with my body. When I can let go of my inhibitions and let my body move freely, I can also let go of tears. Dance is cathartic.