Taking a Left When Everyone Else is Taking a Right

I just had a most encouraging and serendipitous experience!

Way back in July by the river in Heidelberg, Germany we met a lively, talkative American, Tom, and a smiling and kind Polish doctor, Agneiszka. They were recumbent biking across Europe. I felt like a lazy slob in comparison to our "eat raw, live long" fellow English speakers, but we were desperate for a little English banter. We chatted, wished each other well in the morning, and never thought we'd see them again.

Today as we stumbled over Florence, Italy's narrow and beautiful streets, we saw two familiar faces on recumbent bikes. Two months later, we chatted again--this time for much longer to share some very funny and similar stories and experiences. As we talked, people openly stood right beside us and gawked at their bikes. I would have felt horrified earlier on in our trip to be so obviously conspicuous as tourists, but today I gloried in our loud English conversation in the middle of the piatza. English conversation has become a truly delicious treat after four months on the road.

We laughed about the wacky Europeans and just how quirky they can be. We commiserated on desperately searching for a camping spot as the dark quickly approaches, while you're lost, and hungry, and tired, and fighting over whether to spend more time looking or spend a few more Euros and stay inside where it's cosy and easy. But the best was being able to relate to other weary, but addicted to freedom, travelers on the experience of the whole abandoning your whole life back at home gig. Very encouraging. Tom firmly told us that we all get so afraid and to be able to make a huge change and take the risk was courageous.

That was what I needed to hear.

In a week, we say goodbye to the roaming, the freedom, the outside and fly back to London for a few days visit before Zambia. (Then back to St. Andrew's for a 10 day baby viewing, ogling, squeezing). And then home. As the whole Matt and Sandra gong show on wheels nears to its end, I am feeling sadness. I am excited to see people again, to be able to communicate again, but I will miss this life. It has been sweet sweet sweet. The last two weeks we hid out on a terrassed mountainside just outside Monaco. We stared at the olive, almond, and cypress trees. We swam every day in a big pool--just us. We listened to Soren--our beloved and talkative donkey who shared our agony so poignantly. We sat, we looked, we listened--from the porch of our charming little bungalow with the best view. It was truly blissful. I cried when we left. So we went back for another week!

Despite the sweetness, that pesky human nature rises up and reminds you that this will all be over very soon--traded in for homelessness and rainy Vancouver days trying to find an apt and jobs. As we've begun to contemplate life back home, I've wondered whether this was all the "right thing to do". Others would have saved the zillion dollars we've spent for their mortgages. Others wouldn't have "run away to find themselves" at an age when it's less cute to do such things. But we took the left... Doubt creeps like a devil into my dolce vita loving heart.

But Tom, the recumbent cyclist from Florida, lifted my heart. We have been courageous, not foolish. We have done what most will only dream about. Yes! It's true. A little truth was far more impacting than the grand, imposing cathedral we stood right beside. It was impressive, sure, 4th biggest in Europe, the world--I can't even remember. But the beauty that people share and give when they connect and encourage each other--even if just strangers--is the only beauty that matters. The only beauty that will survive. This is the real la dolce vita.

So when I feel a little gloomy as I am wont to do, I will remember Tom and Agnieszka and their smiles. When I am overwelmed by all the decisions to be made upon our return, I will relish in the fact that we've a ton of smiles and encouragement waiting for us at home. I sing of true beauty in Michelangelo's hometown.


"if the too obvious, too straight branches of Truth and Good are crushed or amputated and cannot reach the light," then "perhaps the whimsical, unpredictable, unexpected branches of Beauty will make their way through and soar up to that very place and in this way perform the work of all three."
--Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn