2019 Holiday Letter

Recently, as I was taking my daily mental stroll through my thoughts in search of inspiration to write, it occurred to me that it wouldn't be a bad idea to write a holiday letter on my blog. So much happened in 2019 that picking one thread to follow is extremely difficult, as many are woven into deeper fabrics that I just don't have the strength to put into words yet. Or maybe ever. And as I've noted before, writing about the mundane feels like a betrayal of these bigger experiences that take up much more room in my head. So a holiday letter feels like a nice compromise--I'm tasked with recounting the year but must do so with brevity, coherence, and chronological order. I was inspired by my grand aunt Toot, 89, who sent me a Christmas letter right on time last month. Of course, I started in on this and then had to turn my computer in for a 3-week long keyboard replacement (island time), so please excuse my belated reflections in a moment when everyone has shifted back to looking forward.

Coincidentally (or maybe not), I began writing this letter exactly one year from the day my dad was diagnosed with terminal cancer. It's been a full year since I've known a world without that pain. I'm sad of course, but also strangely relieved that I've managed to survive the first year. Of course I'll have to start preparing for the anniversary landmines, but I hope and believe I'm correct in thinking that things will continue to get a bit easier rather than harder. I really have noticed change for the better recently--my bouts of sadness are shorter and the time between them is longer. When I first got back to Spain and settled in, I was an emotional werewolf, transforming every two to three weeks for at least a few days. Poor Oscar bore the brunt of it and lived to tell the tale.

January 2019 started with me at home, making an unplanned visit to see my family. At the moment the clock struck midnight, I had my arm around my dad as we swayed and listened to Auld Lang Syne playing from the television. It felt kind of like staring down a really long, dark tunnel and knowing that you had to start walking through it. I made no resolutions.

After the first week of the year had passed, I flew back to Spain. It was not what I thought I would do, and it was actually not my decision, but my parents insisted I go back. I had a life on the island: an apartment, a job, loved ones, and happiness. Staying home would have afforded me more time with my dad, but there would have been a cost. I really can't say what my mental state would have been if I had stayed in the cold, gray Mid-Ohio Valley indefinitely, awaiting the bitter end. Instead, I returned to sunshine and my students, and lived relatively happily (all things considered) in that bubble for a couple of months. I went for a lot of walks as I let my ankle heal from a bad November sprain. Oscar started bringing me a fresh papaya/orange/ginger juice at school every day. We woke up at 4:30 one morning and climbed the stairs to my roof to see a blood moon.

In February, I slowly started running again. I eased back in with just minute-long intervals, and very gradually worked my way up to 10 and 15 minutes at a time. Exercise combined with lengthening days helped me quite a bit. I also got to visit the peninsula for Fulbright's mid-year seminar, which was held in Valencia. The trip was 5 days of paella, wine, cool art and architecture, and connection with other Americans (something I hadn't realized I missed so much).

Madrid's Parque El Retiro

L'Albufera, Valencia

Las Fallas exhibit

March is perhaps the blurriest month of them all, and seemed like an entire year on its own. It started with a visit from my dear intrepid Elizabeth, which happened to coincide with Carnaval in Tenerife (the second largest Carnaval celebration in the world!). 

Unfortunately, at the end of her visit, bad news from home got worse, and once again, I found myself booking last-minute tickets to Ohio. I was disconsolate for many reasons, but especially because Oscar and I had just bought tickets home for June, when we thought he'd get to meet my dad. On the day before my departure, we were eating breakfast when I asked him if there was any chance at all that he could find coverage for his business and come home with me for a week. He paused for a second, and then said "¿por qué no?" The next thing I knew, we were on our way, following the sunset across the Atlantic. I can't possibly describe how much it helped me to have him there by my side, whether I was using him as a pillow or just feeling the comfort of his presence. And best of all, when Oscar walked through the door, it was a total surprise for my dad, who thought he'd never get to meet him. Their meeting will forever be one of the most heart-bursting moments of my life. 

The heartbreak of the goodbye at the end of that visit isn't something I'd wish on my worst enemy, but we survived it. A week later, my dad left the Earth. 

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To be honest, I really don't remember much of April or May. I think I was numb for quite a bit of that span, although a major bright spot was a solo trip I took to Toledo, Spain during Semana Santa (Holy Week). I spent four days wandering through the streets, smelling lilacs, eating marzipan, and revelling in how every corner I turned afforded me another beautiful eyeful. No bad angle in that city. 

Near the end of the month, my dear friend and Bowdoin/Fulbright comrade Lillian came to visit from Madrid. We rented a car so she (and I!) could see more of the island, and had a blast. 

Why yes, we are holding a Fulbright bandana at this scenic overlook!!

Unfortunately, life delivered another wallop on the last day of her visit, when I found out my grandmother Elsa had passed away in a house fire, exactly two months to the hour after my dad took his leave. The sense of loss I felt and continue to feel is tremendous. Not only did I lose my loving, supportive grandmother, but also the entire house in which I spent a large chunk of my youth. I'm still very puzzled by the cruelty of it all. I guess I thought I'd earned immunity for a while, but that's just not how life works. 

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June marched right through the door and there was little I could do to stop it. I ended my Fulbright year by planning for another, as I found out I was to be the mentor for the Canarias contingent the next year. I got to know this group of superhumans who would be working with me from across the country, and felt so thankful to have another year ahead of me. 

Mid-month, I packed up all of my things, dropped them off in a new apartment, and flew home once again with Oscar for that June trip we'd been planning. We stopped one night in Lisbon before the transatlantic leg, and then headed straight from Boston to Maine so that I could show him a little more of where I came from. 

The cheapest flight I'd found back home was actually from Portland, ME to Pittsburgh, which thrilled me beyond belief because it meant I could take Oscar to his first baseball game!! It felt like the perfect way to honor my dad. Our dear friend at the Pirates, Greg Brown, made sure it was an extra-special visit, and I got to meet the announcers I've been listening to on the radio my whole life. More heart-bursting moments. 

After all that excitement, summer at home was a dream filled with flowers, birds, our new dog Curtis, and my mom's cooking. I spent much of it working on materials for our Fulbright Orientation, bursting out of the house around 5 to hit the country roads on my bike. There's really no place I feel more at peace than under Appalachian summer skies. 

Photo by the wonderful Amy Parrish

Toward the end of summer, Liam and I took a fantastic sibling's trip to Chicago, where we ate all the foods we'd always admired from afar (deep-dish pizza, bubble tea, authentic ramen, authentic tacos, etc) and laughed a LOT. Here's hoping it was the first of many such trips!

Soon after that, I was invited to spend a week in Bermuda with Elizabeth and her family, which was such a wonderful and relaxing experience. It was fun to visit a totally different kind of island, and even better to reconnect with my best friend out from underneath the shadow that had been with me in March. 

After a quick turnaround, I was back in Spain again and ready to take on the year. I met all of my wonderful grantees at Orientation, and just loved being the person that got to introduce them to the region and job through conversations and presentations. 

Equipazo canario!!

Once I was back on La Gomera, I settled into my new home with Oscar and his American Staffordshire Terrier, Aráfo. I have to admit, I was pretty apprehensive about living with Aráfo. I was used to dogs of a more delicate size, and was worried I wouldn't even be able to walk him. But my mom armed me with a good harness, and Aráfo worked the magic that all dogs have, and now we're the best of friends. It helps me SO much to have a dog around that I'm fairly certain I'll never live without one again. 

Celebrating 1 year in October!

Since then, I've just been living my life, which (aside from the island location) is remarkably normal. I wake up, go to work, come home, cook, clean, exercise, and fall asleep in the middle of movies. Sometimes I forget I'm 23. It feels like I've lived a lot more life than that, and that I should really be something more like 35. But hey, sometimes I escape the island and travel a bit. This fall, I finally ventured north of Madrid to Asturias and Barcelona. Each trip deserves its own write up, but there's already a subpar Toledo post rotting in my drafts, so they may well remain in my 2019 memory box. That's okay. Fresh slate. 

My Asturian mentor counterpart and all-around shining star Carinna!!

La Sagrada Familia

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It sounds weird to say, but if I had to hand out superlatives, 2019 wouldn't win Worst Year Of My Life. Certainly Hardest Year Of My Life, but not Worst. Too much good happened in between the awful that it somehow tipped the scales. Living in the moment was the key (and still is), as any step outside of that took me somewhere I probably didn't want to be and robbed me of the joy I desperately needed to embrace. Does that mean I'm still clueless about my future? Yep. But did I survive 2019 and come out far more intact than I should have? Yes. And that's what is really important to me now and moving forward. 

So this is my attempt to wipe my mental slate clean by acknowledging (however briefly) the major events of the last year. We'll see if it works to clear this long-standing writer's block and helps me return to the present moment. I'm hopeful it will. Regardless, if you're reading this, thanks for sticking with me. 

Love,

Phoebe

Saturdays in Arure

*decides to restart blog* *writes and uploads post* *promptly stops any blog-related activity for almost two months*

Woof. Yeah, it's been a while. Coming back to the island and re-settling into the culture, work environment, and daily routine has consumed my time and energy, leaving me with a lot of thoughts and not much time to sit down and write them out. This also happened to me last year as a new arrival, of course, but a key difference was that I was seeing it all with new eyes and felt much more of a call to record it in some formal manner. I also had lived a lot less life at that point, and didn't have the feeling that writing casually was somehow betraying all of the deeper things that deserve to be brought to the light, too. Literally every time I've tried to start a post, I write one mega-paragraph about the swirling cocktail of emotions and thoughts in my head and why it's so damn hard for me to write about them, and then I get tired and/or distracted, and step away for long enough that the cycle begins again.

So I am CUTTING myself OFF here, and forcing myself to write about something inane and beautiful!

A couple of weeks ago, fueled by boredom and a touch of claustrophobia, I decided I'd hop on the guagua (bus) to visit Arure, the town at the top of the valley. It's a 15-20 minute ride up, which is about all I can stomach these days. After one too many 1.5 hour bus rides to the capital last year, I've decided I'm no longer willing to put myself through the hairpin turns and mountain switchbacks unless absolutely necessary. Now I wake up earlier and spend the extra euros for a boat ticket, and save myself the nausea. Worth it.

(taken while extremely nauseated)

I came to know Arure last year in October when my dear Fulbright/soul friend Sarah came to visit from Tenerife. I was already wary of the bus, and didn't want to put us through a long ride prior to a hike, but definitely wanted to show her the incredibly varied landscape of the island, and what it looked like from atop the cliffs that tower over my town. So we braided our hair, hopped on the bus, and got off with no plans other than to eat at a restaurant known for its comida típica. 

This was really only my third time venturing into the "interior" of the island, and my first time visiting a pueblo, so I wasn't quite sure what to expect. When we stepped off the bus, we were taken aback by the silence, which was punctuated only by goat bells and the occasional raven calling.

As we walked up the narrow street, Sarah spotted a tree loaded with ripe figs, and we stared at it longingly, wondering how we could get a taste. We must have looked pretty desperate, because an old woman appeared on the rooftop across the street, and yelled "¡¡CÓJANLOS, CÓJANLOS!!" ("Take them! Take them!"). She motioned for us to climb the stairs next to the tree for better access, and we began picking. I had never had a real fig before (yep, just Fig Newtons), so I had no idea what I was in for. But the minute I tasted my first, I almost cried. They are so delicious! We loaded our stomachs and then our backpacks, and as we picked, a parade of goats ran down the street below us, bells clanging. To this day, I think it was one of my favorite moments of the grant year.

With what little room we had left in our stomachs, we ate a delicious cheese-heavy meal, and continued wandering around.

At the edge of town, we had spotted something that looked like a bridge, and wanted to investigate. On our way over, we saw signs for a mirador (lookout point/vista), and started half-running out of excitement. Turns out the bridge was just an aqueduct, but as we crossed under it and looked ahead, we both teared up as the view took the breath from our lungs.

Most lookout points are beautiful, sure, but I swear on my life I've never seen one as incredible as this. On the left, a sharp razorback cliff juts forward, mirrored by a slightly softer cliff on the right. Between the two is a green valley which holds the town of Taguluche. The buildings of Taguluche are just sprinkled down the valley, surrounded by palm groves and a road that looks like a fallen ribbon. At the bottom, the ocean crashes dramatically against the basalt cliffs, leaving stains of white foam on the deep blue water. On the horizon, puffy white clouds buffer the dark blue masses of La Gomera's neighbors La Palma and El Hierro. The air smells of sweet juniper, and sound of goat bells is accompanied by kestrels calling and the distant roar of the ocean. As if it didn't already have my heart, Arure took it and ran.

So, in my second year on La Gomera, I've resolved to get up here a lot more frequently. October is prime time because the weather is still sure to be good (in "winter" it can be very blustery and even cold and rainy), and the figs are ripe for the picking. On my first trip up this year, I snagged a couple from trees in town, but felt weird doing it without the permission of a benevolent abuela, even though all of the trees are loaded down and the ripe fruits are bursting open and falling to the ground because no locals eat them. So I focused my energy on taking a hike up into the laurel forest, which marks the beginning of Parque Nacional Garajonay. When my best friend Elizabeth came to visit back in March, we took a similar route and had an excellent time until I received very bad news about my dad's outlook, at which point everything came crashing down. I'll be honest: taking this route again brought back a lot of traumatic memories, but it felt good to retrace the beautiful trail in a stable frame of mind. It just feels so good to get into green woods from time to time--as much as the ocean calls me, the woods are really where I feel most at home.

Mysterious berries--if you know what these are PLEASE TELL ME

After a couple hours of hiking through the silent, misty, decently spooky forest, I popped out into the sun and decided to take a side road back into town. It was, of course, gorgeous and peaceful, and gave me some awesome vistas that reminded me a bit of North Dakota (but with, ya know, the ocean).

As I was strolling along, a sweet smell flooded my nose, and I whirled around. A FIG TREE! In the middle of nowhere! Oh baby, this was the jackpot!! Unfortunately, most of the figs were still little and green, but I found a few ripe ones and memorized the location for my return.

So, of course, yesterday I found myself in Arure again, having given my precious fruits two weeks to ripen. I went up with two goals: to eat figs and to find a shady place where I could finally write. As soon as I stepped off the bus, I made tracks for the tree in town across from the nice lady's house. I lingered for a few minutes and stared longingly, but alas, she did not appear to bless me. Well, that's okay! I practically ran up the hill to the side road, and as I was on my way to my oasis tree, I caught the scent of another more hedge-like tree that had somehow evaded detection last time. So I pulled on my fig-picking pants and filled a container with them, then did the same just a few hundred meters up the road at the original tree. I could not possibly describe how good they taste, especially when eaten in the blue-sky sunshine and sweet breeze. Just imagine the best thing you've ever tasted, but better.

After a very successful harvest, I slowly made my way back down to the mirador for a final sensory indulgence. I took one of those paths across the landscape that is clearly not meant to be a path, but where enough people have uncertainly made their way in the same direction that it kind of is a path. I scared up a bunch of common quail and watched kestrels and ravens glide overhead as the town sprawled out below me. I finally made it to the overlook and found a shady corner where I wrote undisturbed for an hour. These days feel like a balm, like exactly what I've been needing. I can't wait to have more.