I’m trying to work a lot of overtime. This has resulted, so far, in a very mean grumpy nurse. Not to my patients… more towards everyone else around me. Or just the health care system. The little bothersome things that fill a workplace. I need the money, though… I need it for the garden, for my brand new car’s broken mirror, and for traveling. Oh, and don’t forget, my piano lessons that cost me $150 a month.
I take hour long piano lessons now. I had the first hour-long lesson yesterday… we got a lot more done, and still went over! And my teacher! She plays like a magician! Shouldn’t there just be a USB port in her, and I could just hook up to her and download a little, tiny bit of her talent??? I love lessons. I love the challenge, I love the progress I see in myself, I love connecting to my childhood (teenage-hood). It’s ME. It’s a part of me that is NOT a grieving mother, a part of me that is NOT disappointed in life, in the world, in the universe.
The other part… is traveling. I know I’m obsessed, but what can I say? I’m obsessed! The only other time I feel totally free is when I’m traveling. Abroad. I have to go far, far away for it to count. But when I read my diaries of past trips, look at the photos, or read other traveler’s blogs, I get a small taste of what it felt like. Free. Like a bird spreading its wings and flying high over the world, leaving the pain, the boredom, the drudgery of everyday life behind.
I’ve said it to people before, I’ll say it again. I’m not ME when I’m traveling. I’m someone else. And that someone else is somehow MORE me than me. I also can change a lot while traveling, too. I can be someone on the outside completely, kind of like acting, to blend in with the society… while living this other inner world at the exact same time. It’s the ultimate in multi-tasking. I feel spiritual, and poetic, dreadfully daring and brave (not in the practical sense, but in the emotional, spiritual sense. I promise I’m safer when traveling abroad than I ever am in my home country or town.).
Beware. I’m about to wax poetic!
Walking the streets of Istanbul, the lovely winding alleys near Galata Tower and Istaklal Cadesi. Just say the words “Istaklal Cadesi”. How can you not be in love??? The moonscape of the Syrian desert, its rolling hills made of white rock. The other-worldy landscape of Cappadocia, its chimney fairies casting long shadows at twilight, the call to prayer bellowing from the crackly speaker of the nearest minaret.
The thrill of spying Kabul below my plane’s shadow. Then spying the Himalayas, at eye level, and practically lying over people’s laps to get a good view. The strangers on airplanes, their stories, the uncanny intimate connection between us that lasts only minutes, or hours.
The smell of Kathmandu as you step off the plane. Flying through the streets on the back of a bike, weaving through traffic. Ringing bells at sunset for pujaa, eating daal bhaat with messy fingers. Chiya in the morning.
Yes, for a few moments at least, one cannot forget that they had a baby who is dead, but one can almost remember what it was like to be alive before that happened.
Mother of All Things 
Have you ever though about doing nursing overseas? Perhaps in a desperate environment? I guess, from reading your blog, and I hope I’m not overstepping because I’m trying not to, maybe you need a change of scene and you could have one and earn money at the same time? You could go somewhere exotic and fabulous…somewhere where they would love a totally skilled nurse like you. What about Doctors without Borders? I’m sure they would need nurses too…
PS I have been gaining weight since my mother died – I think it is some kind of stress hormone kicking in. TOTALLY unfair!!!
Beautiful. I’m so sorry for your pain. I’m wide awake in the middle of the night, drifting through the Internet and feeling my own pain (different than yours, but grief all the same) knock at my body.
I also play the piano. Your analogy is lovely. I played my entire life, but have now moved across the country and had to give up my piano. A keyboard is just not the same. Im dreaming for a Steinway…someday…
Your love of travel and soaring above rings true with me, too. It’s music and language that pull me above the pain. I used to teach a foreign language. You should study one (or a new one!). It also gives you the gift of being free, being able to feel differently, even think and dream differently, changed my life.