My first pair of glasses were called Cinderella
Gumdrops. I was three when I picked out my first frames and I'm pretty
sure in the world of Disney, Cinderella neither wore glasses nor did she have a
panache for gumdrops that I can Google. Yet what's important to note is
that even at that young of age, I was a sucker for an evocative title--I was
drawn to metaphors.
I'm also certain that had I been born at a
different era, I would have been eaten alive before even reaching age three due
to my +9 prescription. Basically, plus
nine means I'm farsighted, really far sighted. I’ve often
preferred the Greek term, hyperopic,
or even the British, long sighted, along with the more metaphorical term,
soothsayer to define my lack of sight.
But no matter how you say it, I cannot read an illuminated clock at
night and I memorize hallways by touch so I can find a bathroom in the
dark.
How my family first caught on was ironically during
Sunday Disney night. We had two channels growing up, PBS consistently and
ABC, erratically, but thankfully Disney would usually seem to be just clear
enough. We'd all gather, all five
of us, with a bowl of popcorn and squeeze in on our couch. And I would
slowly inch my way up to the television to get at least five inches away from the
screen. I can recall my mother asking me, "What are you doing up
there, Emily?" to which I replied, "seeing less fuzz."
When I got my glasses they rested heavily on my
face, but then I could join the gang on the couch. Other than Disney night, our family rarely watched television, not because we only
had two channels, but because when you live at the end of Old Mission peninsula
in Northern Michigan adventure was right out your door. Hard to compete with Mr. Rogers's
Neighborhood of Make -Believe when you could explore cherry orchards, climb
trees, swim in the lake and listen to peepers at the pond.
So it comes as no surprise that I have spent the
last four decades of my life exploring both near and far. And I adjust with my eyesight. I’ve
learned to take out my contacts with frozen hands to wait out a snowstorm in a
tent, scale the bow of a sailboat in the pitch dark and haul and anchor
completely by touch and even lost one contact in Tasmania and bushwalked out
with “one eye.” But what might
come as a surprise for those who didn’t know me in my early years is that I even
wear glasses. Actually, don’t be
surprise; I’ve even dated people who have never seen me in glasses. Sure, I’d love to say by 40 I am so
confident that I don’t care that my glasses enlarge my eyes to be equal size to
my ears. I mean, embrace it right,
isn’t that part of turning older. You just don't care? Truth is, I don’t feel pretty in my glasses. Never have.
So when I met the non-fiction writer and avid
traveler, Jaime Stathis, she confessed to have a -10.5 prescription, I
thought I hadn’t just met a new friend as much as an other self. Jaime, who I call Soph, (actually we both
refer to each other as Soph for reasons I will explain another time) was headed
on her way out of Missoula to finish her memoir in a cabin in Taos, New
Mexico. And me, I was new to just
leaving my house. At that time I
was freshly divorce and beginning what Soph lovingly calls, “the years I spent
fighting the revolution.”
We didn’t have a lot of time together in Missoula,
but where we became close was on the page. What started couldn’t just be claimed as pen paling. No, we wrote to each other everyday.
That’s right, Every. Day. Everyday for the past two years. In the world of instant texting and
phone calls, we like to write.
Sure, we send photos and quick notes and have good convoys on the phone,
but it’s through what each of us love the most did we become so close.
Besides our love of words, we also share the same
birthday month. Technically, we
were born just four days apart on the same year, May 13th and May 17th
1974, so that meant this past May, we turned 40. I don’t recall whose idea it was to celebrate big (but Soph
would know, she’s far better at facts than I am) but this is what we did know: we
wanted to turn 40 travelling.
Soph was going to take the whole month of May to
travel and said I should pick the destination for the two weeks I had to join
her. I wanted to travel in Europe
since I had spent six years of my 20s living there, but wanted to explore
someplace I hadn’t been before. I
narrowed it down to Croatia, Turkey and Portugal. Soph said any worked for her, she’s great like that, always
open to adventure, so I selected Portugal.
The pragmatic reasons in selecting Portugal were
based on fantastic food, good beaches and the quote I found while researching
all three potential destinations that read, “Portugal is like going to Europe
30 years ago.” I wanted slow
Europe. And the metaphorical or poetic
reason was Sagres, a small sleepy coastal village once referred to as the End
of the World. I wanted to stand
out on the rocky cliffs and turn 40 in just wind, water and horizon. I wanted to walk out onto a tiny
peninsula similar to the spit of land I grew up on and walk to the watery edge and
celebrate the fact that 40 well, isn’t really the end…of the world.
And that’s what we did. Early on the 17th we waited for a local bus to head west after a few days spent
in the coastal town of Lagos. We
headed as far west as the continental Europe reaches to be dropped off on the
side of the road. While we were
waiting at the bus station, Soph ran to grab cups of coffee (travel note: Portugal has the hottest coffee known to man. Seriously, even the Nescafe) and two fried codfish balls. Yup, Bolinhos de Bacalhau or dried salted cod with potatoes and fresh herbs and then
breaded and fried. It was the best
kind of birthday cake. Soph knows
me so well.
Now despite all these similarities between us, Soph
and I are very different. She’s the only child and has been living in NYC for the past 8 months cooking and taking care of her
grandmother. I'm the youngest of three and teach the good people of Missoula how to make pasta and other culinary treats. She can make a best friend at a bus stop. Me, I wait for someone to even smile first. The title of her memoir, BOOK
OF LIES: A TRUE STORY is all about the art of learning how to tell the truth. My collection of poems is called A Vague Prairie. I also teach poetry, otherwise known as the
art and craft of sometimes making things up for the sake of a poem. Soph likes to tell the facts hard and straight.
But put us together on a tiny spit of land at the
End of the World and we’re laughing, no we’re making the best of it. When the only thing we can find is a
pizzaria, we claim, “We love pizza!” When we were caught in a rainstorm walking
home from the beach, we shout, “we love walking!” And when the wind brought
over 11 foot swells keeping even the hardiest of surfers at bay, we claimed, “we
love the elements.”
So when we rode our rented bikes in Sagres into
the wind to see Henry the Navigator’s giant compass where he taught the likes
of Magellan and Sir Francis Drake the craft and determination of sailing beyond
the rocky coastline and temperamental wind currents, we walked straight to the
edge of the cliffs and never once thought about jumping. Giving our Thelma and Louise-esque
adventure a different kind of ending, a different view into the future.
You see, both Jaime and I are divorced, 40 and
without kids. And sure, we are
both incredibly lucky to be able to go to Portugal for our birthdays, but
here’s the thing: we chose it. Sometimes we've chosen well and sometimes poorly. But through our friendship, we've learned to lean not in or on each other, but rather be a witness to each other's process in making choices. Just like we choose to write to each other everyday. And sure it sounds glamorous to spend weeks on a beach, but
really it’s just a choice. The real
challenge isn’t the choosing as it is being grateful for what results your
choices bring.
And really, I can tell you that if you go to the
end of the world, you will find the horizon, the sun and the salted wind and
you will hopefully find the silence in your heart as well. But what I didn’t think I would find at the edge, was love. Not to bring Disney back, but sadly, I didn't find a surfer nor a sailor on those shores to either whisk me away or keep me there. And no, Jaime
Stathis and I are not lesbians or lovers, just really good friends. I like to think we're just different
versions of ourselves, just like our own eyesight, different strengths and weakness in our prescriptions. What we both saw from that viewpoint was something
neither of us could have expected by going to the edge, alone. What we found in that sleepy surf town walking on the saged soaked cliffs was love in the form of grace, which for me is just a word for gratitude in action.
Sure, I probably didn’t have to go the Sagres to find
it, but thankfully Jaime/Soph was game.
Thankfully, the loneliness of these past years spent "fighting the
revolution" in myself was something I could finally let go of and give to the sea. For now. For now, my gratitude is for a friend who shows up for me everyday. Sure, we both hope for relationships of
our own and have the opportunity to rewrite our hearts and maybe even have a family. We'll see what we choose. But for now, now we give each other the
strength to see our choices and process the possible implications of those choices both individual and collective, with a bit more
clarity. We try our best, from both near and far.
Here's a new poem, dedicated to Soph, of course.
Volta do Mar (A Turn in the Sea)
A sparrow I only see as crow cuts the horizon.
Here, the winds set west or is it east
at the end of the world, another way
of saying window, eye lash or lower
lip that cups the hand that pulls
the sails tight in Palladian light.
I cannot hold all of the light that enters
a day, but I can sail a wooden skiff
which translates as merely hours of reading
waves. Even
still, I could not read
you, could not navigate the worlds
I would have to travel to the end
to only find another ledge.
When my body decided to end,
I took it to Sagres and let it rise
in the morning, to walk into
saged rock,
past ruins of compass
and stone and head straight to the edge
to wait and say, not today, not my birthday.
