March 18, 2017
During this time, I find myself aching for English skies.
I look out of the window of my second story classroom on cloudy days, the skies unfolding with a promise of light drizzle and the murmur of a sleepy afternoon. I wish for the pattering of rain on the windowpane, and the fogging of the glass, drawing figures in the condensation. The listlessness accompanying the deep ache of wanderlust causes me to space out on bad afternoons which leak into the blackening evenings, and I sometimes wonder when I will next step onto foreign soil. With everything going on in the world today, it seems like wishful thinking to believe that I’ll travel again so soon.
It seems like a lifetime ago that I lived abroad–I sometimes feel odd, embarrassed, perhaps, that I so loved it and know that I am beyond privileged to travel. But I miss it, the soft light of the rare sunny days, the mist over the dewy hills, the lush green of the pastures bracketed by lines of trees with branches towering above the winding roads. I sometimes wish I would wake up in the foggy morning in Norfolk and look outside into the quiet stillness.
I even miss the radiator and the finnicky shower.
But now, in the quiet hours of the morning, I miss the feeling of unbridled freedom, a separation from what I had been, both physically and emotionally in the Spring of that year. I was halfway across the world, and I didn’t yet know who I wanted to be until she had the space to breathe. I miss those moments in the chaos of another year in a pandemic. I miss those moments of uncertainty. Of discomfort. Of a yearning.
But I know that those memories are now a part of my mythos, built into me in the same way that I have grown more into the person I have always wanted to be.
Canterbury Tales
I remember our mentor driving the three of us interns from the small little town of Feltwell all the way to Dover, a west side coastal city bordering the English Channel. The drive was long and arduous, but I felt it funny that what our English friends considered a long drive couldn’t have been longer than a one-way trip to Dallas. I watched as the countryside passed us by–instead of the long lines of wheat and corn fields of the farms from back home, the country was lush with greenery, bright and lively, something rarely spotted in a sprawling prairieland.
Traveling through London and then into the countryside of southwestern England, we crossed over boundaries I only had thought about in passing. I studied the places we were about to visit through an academic lens, but never considered the possibility that reality would differ so much from my own assumptions.
But that is the case, isn’t it?
It seems silly to have come to that revelation only after leaving the comfort of my own homeland, my own hometown, and feeling a sense of displacement in a new country.
We wandered Canterbury for lunch, stopping by shops and stepping through the cobblestone streets of the downtown corridor. I often think about how I only knew of these distant places through the written word–through the photographs of these places from another side of the world. I never thought I would be in a place to actually visit, and so was swept away by the novelty of it all. Surrounded by people, I felt out of place in a way I hadn’t before–but it was neither concerning nor a comfort. My companions and I were one of only many tourists, crowding around the streets and general bustle of the day.
The Cliffs of Dover
The whole purpose to our trip to Dover was to see the cliffs plunging into the English Channel below, where the docks harbored the ships coming to a fro from the mainland. We parked and wandered, for the most part, watching as the Castle of Dover emerged from the wooded paths we took instead of the main road (we were definitely lost). Ashton and Kody, the two other interns that Spring, took to wandering from the trail to find some secluded entrance, though at one point we gave up and headed for the cliffs.
I don’t know what I expected.
Sometimes, it hits you in the chest, the gravity of your own experience, knocking the wind out of you completely.
Before us, the trail led onto the edge of the cliffs, the rocky white of the edges a stark contrast to the darkened and choppy channel water below. The wind whipped around us, my hair a mess even though it was well acquainted with Oklahoman gust, and I remember the sharp bite of air tinged with salt water. I breathed in deeply, and closed my eyes against the sight for a moment before following the others, who had walked a bit ahead. The trail sprawled through the underbrush bordering the edge of the cliffs, and while we weren’t the only ones on the trail, we were just as enraptured by the view laid out before us.
We walked, the four of us, through the trail, stopping to just stare into the horizon, to take in the view. I felt content, then, even when we walked to the end of the trail just to find out that the cafe at the end closed long before we arrived. Ashton and Kody spent time swapping dramatic photos. We laughed, and sun shone It was bittersweet, too, I think. I felt a longing for home, coupled with the thought that I was just a very small part of a larger world, dwarfed by the landscape, by nature, and by design.
I long for that simplicity again in such a complex time.
Looking back at this now with a sense of whimsy, of rosy retrospection, I am under no illusion that my time spent wandering the English countryside, traveling by train or cab or foot was in any way earth-shattering. For me, however, perhaps it was. I think I am more apt to call it an uncovering, a discovery of sorts, rather than a revelation. I am in no way the person I used to be five years ago, and while I mourn for her loss, I can finally see into the future with clearer vision.
But this past year has taught me much.
I am so often afraid of change.
I am deep set in my habits and find it difficult to break from them, especially when I feel vulnerable, but I know that growth, that living, is uncomfortable, is messy and difficult. There is no easy route here, no path forward without pitfalls.
Sam