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| You and me...England - a long time ago! |
The first few years that I worked at the Ackland, I had to pay for daily parking. I remember, with clarity, calculating the cost of working on one pay day: $7.00 to park; $2.54 for Starbucks coffee; and some days, many days, lunch out at a whopping $10.00 a day! So, for every day I worked I was spending close to $20. (Did we spend much more than that a day to tour and tool around England?) In response: I gave up Starbucks. I gave up lunch out. And I stayed long enough to get an official parking pass - which, of course, I pay for with pre-tax dollars on a sliding scale (based on my salary). I refuse to calculate what it costs per day. I have keys to the building. A ridiculous number of emails to answer everyday and a list of things I must do that is longer than the day. I manage the list with a 4x6 index card. Every morning, after coffee, prayers, and an hour at the drawing table in my studio, I make a list of the things I need to do - work things - another card must address grocery lists and bills and such...another list on another card. I date stamp the card, with an old fashioned stamp and ink pad, put a star next to what MUST be done, and head on in. Park. Pull my keys from the key watcher and head in, hopeful, optimistic, and a little worried. The work load is bigger than at any other time in my life. By lunch time, I know that I will only get a few things done...there are new demands in every direction. And somehow, I raise the money - by hook or by crook - and the days turn to weeks, to months, to years... and here we are.
But then, I remember England. Is it the breeze? Or a certain smell? Is it anything at all that prompts this remembering? Memories seem to well up like tides, don't they? Like seasons of the moon they simply come round to us again.
I think I could be a traveler. One of those people always going, ever wandering. It is all I can do not to get into the car and drive back to see you. Putting only one thing on the list: Go, Amanda, go. I suppose that what I remember most of all about our time in England is only this: we had a short list and we met its demands, everyday. One good meal. One church and prayers. Two open hearts with stories to tell.
And then I recall the marvelous things I learned from you on that trip:
1. THINK LEFT! turning corners and navigating the "wrong" side of the street! A YouTube History Lesson on Why the British drive on the left!
2. Leave a little money in your pockets every day. At the end of the trip, look through every pocket and (like a magician pulling a rabbit out of his hat or releasing a dove from a silk scarf - hallelujah...) you will have enough for a little something special at the end.
3. Be careful about that room for the last night. Do you remember it as I do? We were trying to get close to the airport and ended up staying on a farm. It was a lousy room, and we were very tired, but in the morning, the farmer took this picture. Later, when we got to the airport, we were asked if we had been on a farm - and of course we had, and then the dogs came round and both of us were more than a little nervous that we had some terrible contraband dirt on our shoes! Even now I don't fully understand this question on reentry forms.
4. Carry your own silverware.
5. Be wary of unripe fruit...most things are unlikely to ripen in your car! Life long friendships are the only exception. And even that is suspect. Like unripe fruit, road trips are not the best way to cement a friendship...but it worked terribly well for us.
I am glad for the days when I remember England. I think of that trip as the beginning of a whole new season of my life - rapidly followed by two years to finish my undergraduate program, the work for the church, the master's degree, and on and on. Everything slowly opened up...and refreshed itself. And here I am now, so many years later. All grown up. All of us. All grown up.
I have not been back - and neither have you. I have been to Paris (several times), Ireland (several times), to Rome and Northern Italy, to Germany. Hell, I have been to Disneyland three or four times...but I have not gone back to England. Like an old movie that you love in memory, I suspect I resist out of an absolute assurance that England can never be as excellent as it was on that trip.
Oh how blessed we have been...
Thinking of you - always with love and admiration. You are my hero (Yep, just like the song says).
I love you - time to pull the pork chops from the grill....
Amanda
PS I like the women in this picture. Both of them. You and me, then and now... no matter what limits our age puts on us, no matter the strains of health and life, of aging and all the losses that go with living long enough - I take some strange comfort in knowing that the people we were then (on a farm in England) are the people we are now. Only now we are more so....
