And So it Begins ...November 22, 1963

Depending on the circumstances it is always interesting to me , not just what events we remember from our childhood but how we remember them. Often its our feelings around a certain event that helps to create the lasting images. Seemingly unrelated, smaller incidents and or gestures  can make a more lasting impression when attached to what would seem to be " A main event".  

It has taken me years to unravel why The Way of Saint James was SO important to me and it wasn't until i truly set my intention to do it that the choices in both my spiritual and my physical preparation began providing those answers. It took on a rather mystical quality all it's own. In fact I often said " I am no longer driving this bus "  I said it so much I swear I could see the bus. Turns out it was a school bus.  

Friday November 22, 1963 at 12:30 pm i was where i always was on Friday afternoons, school. 

Saint Richards School Omaha Nebraska. I probably don't need to spell it out for most of you reading this : That date changed the way many of us looked at our world and for those of us too young to intellectually grasp all the ramifications of President Kennedy's assassination it was the images and the feelings around that day that remain. Until that day our occasional school drills of  *"Stop, Duck and Cover" were the only indicator that there existed even a flicker of Danger somewhere.  Besides with all those drills, we were surely prepared, weren't we? 

To truly understand , you have to have some memory of it, as it happened, My memories of that day are still pretty clear along with how I felt about it. 

Before that particular hour of that particular day , it was just Friday, a day of the week that like most school age children i looked forward to and for me it was not just because cartoons & favorite serial shows followed on Saturdays mornings.  Fridays in my class at Saint Richards meant " Reading Day" and whatever "Catholic Reader" we were on that week would be read aloud not just by each of us but by our teacher, our nun.  i always looked forward to. I loved it . I'm not sure if that day we were in a Faith and Freedom Reader or the ever popular Cathedral Reader, what i do remember is that we were finishing the story from the previous week of two best friends separated by the settlement of St Augustine Florida by the Spanish. the ending of that story had the cry of one friend to the other of something like , "Remember St James! and Spain" . My having just left Arizona to " re-settle " in Omaha, i had a year and a half earlier learned for the first time, what it felt like to be separated from a best friend, when Lala left our small town to accompany her parents and "resettle"  in the foreign land otherwise known as Tucson . Aside from the fact that neither Lala or I ever exclaimed some loud and dramatic farewell. ( " Remember Chatty Cathy! and Ft Huachuca" doesn't provide nearly the same impact) I related. My teacher ( sister) had a great flare for *imagery ,a great story teller. She would always include  bits of historical and liturgical details about the importance of each of those bits to each story. In this case St James importance to Spain and about what a Pilgrimage was and  ..Oh wait , did she just mention France? as a pilgrims route ? Did she just talk about Joan of Arc ? And Orleans !!  Hey I was born there!" .. I met my friend there". That sister called me " The girl with 100 questions" i always wanted more information, especially if something sparked my interest.   As that awful news came in the door that our president had been shot , i didn't want anymore information. I ,along with all my classmates,spent the rest of the time till dismissal on our knees by our desks , staring up at the portrait of our President that always hung above the blackboard. Even our otherwise unflappable , sometimes stern nuns suddenly seemed tender and vulnerable. 

 While trying to navigate the sad & confusing weeks that followed I continued to play out that story in my imagination, along with various other stories i liked , along with my Barbie and what ever else i could use to distract myself from the awful grainy black & white images the TV produced over and over again. Disrupting our Saturday morning routine, but more important upsetting our parents and seemingly every adult we depended on and looked to to feel safe and secure. Not to mention the nuns. I remember seeing several of the sisters trying to hide what were clearly tears as they organized our exit from school that day. The world didnt look quite the same. It is nearly impossible for anyone who wasn't there or was too young to remember ,including trying to explain to the children in today's world ( of instant and sensationalized media output everywhere ) the impact that horrible event had on everyone in 1963. 

That was pretty much the last happy time on "Reader Friday" at that school before we moved again ,which was shortly after that and before the school year had even ended. Later in my new School in South Carolina and in all our subsequent moves and new schools after that I apparently developed a pension for "Daydreaming" every teacher that followed said i had a particular talent for it.  Its right there on every report card ,in black & white. I know now it was my own way of saying  "Please do not interrupt my regularly scheduled & otherwise happy childhood with any more scary or unhappy events." I also think I was beginning to be very aware that all the moving with new places and new schools , nearly every year , were going to be quite enough for me. 

Even with all that I was relating too in that book before the "bad news" came & all the various elements that spoke to me and helped to project me right into that story , I may never have remembered , had it not been for the bigger, sadder events that surrounded that day.  Who knows, but all of those feelings are part if it now. They never faded.  And St James and his story in Spain? They would call to me again and again over the years and often in the most unexpected ways.  I was already on that bus.  

                                      On My Way to Santiago de Compostela 

                   49 years 8 months and about Twenty Days before I begin to walk 

                               The Camino also known as The Way of Saint James 

* Stop, Duck & Cover: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_and_cover

* As everything in life has a potential for a shadow side , my nun's talent for imagery & storytelling was no different. This same nun painted such a clear description of " The Fiery Waters of Hell" for me that those images kept me (and in so doing ,my parents) awake for weeks. Though i remember that i liked her she was over all what we might refer to now as " tightly wound" i only found out years later that it was after she recieved the news that President Kennedy had been shot that she came back into the room and finished our story before delivering the news to us. She seemed softer to me more accessible and took great pains to try ,as best she could , to explain the events with much thought and care especially given the age of her young charges. I remember that very clearly because I remember being scared and confused.   Up until then it would have been harder to imagine  her dispensing all of those comforting hugs so freely. I remember that feeling of being comforted completely enveloped by her habit as her arms surrounded me.  She showed great patience ,and concern for each of us as we left that day. I never attended a Catholic or a Parochial school again. I missed the nuns. My nun .  I missed the stature of Mary in front of that school that greeted me each day as I arrived. In times of great uncertainty & unhappiness I suppose I've been searching for them ever since. 

Woman Plans God Laughs

If It's Friday it must be Hong Kong
April 21,2013 or is it ?

Through the double doors and just on the other side of passport clearence and
baggage claim I go. Feeling pretty good that I made it. Feeling pretty good that the flight crew arranged for a wheel chair and someone who could help me get straight to the loo. Feeling pretty good that I sailed through the temperature check.*  and feeling really good that inspite of the fact that my bags didn't make it , I am currently $800HK richer as a result, and with not only much apology but narry a bit of paper work to boot. I am also surprisingly not worried ,not sure if thats a result of being SO damn happy to be on the ground or jet lag kicking in but they do have an idea where the bags might be (still in LA) and so long as I can get to Lala's; shower & sleep, I'm happy to deal with it later before my flight to Japan with Lala.
I need to note here what got me on a plane to Asia in the first place.
 When I asked Lala to come with me on my journey to Santiago , The Camino, and to walk "The Way of Saint James"  with me, her response was , at first " Whats that?" and then after as a brief an explanation as I could give, without missing a beat, she said  " Sure lets do it"
A few months later she called me to say that if she was going to walk with me, I should come teach for her in Hong Kong. " It will be fun.." An after school Shakespeare program , Mideaval Studies and a Renaissance Faire with a play you can direct"  ....... Elizabeth ( Lala,Jadis) Blurton , is also now know as Dr Jadis or rather Elizabeth Blurton PHD. Clinical Developmental Phycologist.  She owns and operates The Blurton Family Development Center in Hong Kong.  When she is not doing that in her copious free time she also founded ,owns and operates The Harbour School a thriving innovative International School grades PreK-8. Oh yeah and she has also raised 6 kids, and helping to raise more (including her grandchildren but who's counting?:)  So I too didn't hesitate to say "Yes!"  (I mean, seriously, what was I going to say " I'm too busy ?!" ) and after much switching of tickets, i started wrapping my brain around leaving the states 2 months early for The Camino. I also had to start trying to figure out how to pack not only for the Walk but teaching and 3 different countries with different weather and requirements...my head was spinning. At least I thought it was until she called back two weeks later and threw in Japan. Seems her middle school students had just finished a five week study of Japananese history ,which would culminate as a trip hiking The Historic Nakesendo Trail . The curriculum for this trip would include stays along the route in authentic mediaeval Samuari Inns. " Come on, she assured me ,the km are short and easy and it will help keep us in shape for walking The Camino. As great as this all sounded it took another entire day for me to wrap my head around that one. Ok I thought, as I started unpacking AGAIN.....and preparing to push my leaving back two more weeks, you have had a whole lot of other really big problems in your life, this is not one of them.
I remember looking at my bags before i left for the airport in LA
I began to feel stronger more confident, proud of myself.
If I could do this, Logic stands that I should be able to get organized enough to prepare for anything. 

                         On My Way to Santiago de Compostela by way of Asia 

                              Approx. 3 months 21 days before I start to Walk 

                            The Camino also know as The Way of Saint James 

Woman Plans God Laughs

April 22, 2013 

There just through the doors is Lala's husband Craig Blurton. Leaning on the railing grinning with his camera slung around his neck. I am giddy.
"So do you want the good News first or the bad news " ,At least thats what I think I'm
hearing ,as my ears are still plugged up from the flight , and he is practically yelling from 4 feet away. 
I am wheeled around the barrier to get closer and as he leans down to give me a hug he says. " Welcome to Hong Kong, The flight to Japan leaves in 1 hour. " Knowing Craig's pension for a good joke, I am laughing when I ask: " A day early?"  He looks at me funny "Sage, he asks laughing , Do you know what day it is ?"  im doing the math in my head ( something I am not really good at) ......Well yeah lets see i left on the 19th , lost a day in flight and .....O M G ..... it suddenly dawns on me... the delays in my departure and my leaving at 1 am meant I actually left the states early the morning of the 20th!! It is NOT June 21st , It is June 22nd!! Ive lost almost two days. He doesn't flinch ...when he says: "The good news is you haven't missed them "Jadis (Lala) and the kids are upstairs at departures, they are checking in now"........O......k.......
I am suddenly struggling with a whole different kind of "Fight or Flight"
But there is no time and as our general conversation, catching up & questions for each other overlap , i am out of the wheel chair ,stiif & sore , Craig is helping me as we are already moving up the escalator to departures ..." What do you want to do?", "Where are your bags?", "How much time do I have again?", "Sorry , Sorry :( " We were here to get you yesterday, Welcome to HK signs,  a driver etc.:) " , again me "Sorry, Sorry :(" We still manage to laugh as we pick up speed ..."DO NOT feel bad" Craig is reassuring me. in an effort to assuage my guilt and embarrassment he is relaying his own experience with " Time Zone and Flight confusion" ,about how when they first moved to Hong Kong 18 years ago, he had arrived 24hours too late for their wedding anniversary dinner, and had NO idea. It did take a bit of the sting out.
Then it's on to the pressing issue " Are you sure you wanna do this?, maybe you can catch up later?"  " Just stay here in Hong Kong get settled in" Suddenly I feel my adrenalin this is NOT an opportunity i am going to miss and good news occurs to both of us ..... I might actually be able to do this as
 1. I could make it in time as I've no bags I have to check 2 hours prior to the flight .
2. In my small carry on I have all my medications with me, as well as my rain jacket, & small basic toiletries,
3. I'm wearing comfortable practical clothes, including a light weight hoody and very light wieght thin down vest things I  had already planned to take on the trek for the colder and often wet weather in Japan.
 ("If" I  had slept on the flight I would have used my vest as a pillow)
Well now wasn't I just Miss Smartie pants.... Everything I had organized so perfectly were in my bags ... my backpacks, poles and most important my already broken in boots , ALL of it , in my delayed luggage. As much as I am concerned about that and ..well all kind of issues, as much as Id like to flogg myself right now for not wearing all my hiking gear on he plane......I tell myself there are stores in Japan, Ill figure it out.  Suddenly the decision is made for me , we round the corner to the airline counter and there stands Lala. Happy as ever to see me . No recriminations, No, " What the hell happened?" (they had already figured it out) Just a great big hug. She leans away enough to level her gaze and asks, " What do you think?", my response? ,same  as it always been when she ask me anything.... "Lets do this!"  Then just as quickly Craig is taking my baggage claim tickets and promising to keep us posted as he waves us off  Lala and I link arms and head to our gate.
Five hours later from Hong Kong by way of Taiwan , Fourteen hours from San Fransisco, a hour from LA prior to that ,a total of almost 21 hours of flying, no sleep, beginning to hallucinate from Jet lag, I land in Nagoya Japan.

* For those of you who have never traveled to the land of Bird Flu & Dingy fever before. Most Asia country's trying to head of even minor epidemics by greeting visitors and returning residents alike by posting someone (usually a pretty official looking individual with a mask on, (think Michael Jackson)  just as you enter the area for passport clearance. There is no getting around this person. As you approach they point what looks like a fazer from Star Trek at your forehead and voila. You've just had your temperture taken.

Oops Correction:          On My Way to Santiago de Compestela by way of Japan 
                                           Approx. 3 Months and 20 Days befor I start to walk 

                                          The Camino also known as The Way of Saint James 

OoooLaLa France 1955

Taken in Elizabeth's front yard 1962
Meadowlark Drive Sierra Vista ,Arizona
.Our second posting together after France
Her bedroom was the window right behind us  and looked directly across the street into mine
She is on the Right I am on the Left 

Elizabeth June Ullman was born March 3,1955 , Ft Lewis Tacoma Washington. Being “in route” to their posting in France with the US Military her parents gave their permanent address on her birth certificate as “ The Circle K-O Motel. Washington State. Her maternal grandparents home.

I came along 6 months later Susan Nedra Parker August 4 1955. Orleans France. My parents having lived in France just a short time gave their permanent address as 4824 Montgomery Lane Bethesda MD.  My maternal grandparents home.

Both of these seemingly insignificant facts have served as double metaphors

1. We have spent most of our lives feeling as if we were just passing through ” On our way to somewhere else”.  

and

2. Whatever anchored us in our parent’s various military postings & our own wandering has been , “The mother line” and with that has come a decidedly feminine point of view long before that phrase  “feminist” was ever coined.

Our moms met and became the best of friends shortly after the Ullmans arrived in France. and we (Elizabeth and Susie) got two moms in the bargain.  One my mother, Caroline,  the elegant and somewhat shy sweetheart , an Artist , consummate wife, and homemaker. A  lover of all things beautiful both in nature and man made. introduced me to everything from the names of flowers and birds to the world of Art, theater, music and dance.  She gave me a deep appreciation of literature and of History both Global and personal. She taught me that letter writing, meant staying connected to people and what mattered (even through all our moves)  and to never underestimate the power of a heartfelt Thank-you Note. The other, Elizabeth’s mother ,Doris or Didi , a woman who could hold an entire room in the palm of her hand talking about, well, anything ….a, poet,  ex marine , air traffic controller , screen writer, a political activist. with an inexhaustible sense of righteous indignation on behalf of the underdog , and who eventually introduced me to my first martini.   Didi could always make my mom laugh, and Didi liked to say my mom made her “behave” except that Didi not “behaving” was the very thing that made my mom laugh.  It should also be noted that on paying my mother what she considered to be the highest of compliments ( lest anyone think her friend was a “pushover”) Didi once said  “ That Caroline is always a such a lady but she is also about as helpless as a Cobra “

I know that Elizabeth shares the sentiment that we were blessed in those earliest years to have our first impressions of what it meant to be a women ,shaped by these two remarkable friends. So different in style but not in substance.  Not where it matter, not where their families were concerned , especially their girls.   

Elizabeth soon became “Lala”  as her first words in France were..... “ oooLala”  I stayed “Susie” until years later when my career choice necessitated that I legally change my name and take my college nickname.

Lala has since changed her name to Jadis...(I’ve yet to ask why or what it means for that matter)  and since one name change was enough for me well....

We have always in whatever "incarnation" we have found each other in our times together excepted it all just knowing we are always there for each other has been a sustaining thing in our lives,and part of our "Army Brat adaptability means we try to go with the flow" So you would think accommodating her name change(s) and she mine would be easy ( after all a Rose by any other name :) ,But no matter how hard we've tried and how little patience we have for anyone else calling us “Susie” or “Lala” , we still slip in and out of our current incarnations with each other, and then settle back into who we "

were". It is clear ,this is who we will always be to each other.

Approx. A Year and 1/2 before I'd ever heard of Saint James or Spain 

A Slight Detour April 21,2013

Dawn over the Pacific 

 Like many moments of any importance in my life,  I often marvel at my own participation in them. What is my own tenacity and hard work and what is fate ? I begin to review the overall process that brought me to whatever it is I am in the middle of then I start to second guess how I got there at all....  How much of one or the other that comes into play at any moment is the Mystery to me. Which in some ways that very appreciation and sense of gratitude I am feeling or the "marvel factor"  sometimes keeps me at a distance from the whole experience.   .....Confused yet!?  Yeah well you're not alone. At this moment , however, I can't distance myself.  I don't have the luxury of a review, and the whole second guessing of how I got here? Forget it. I am 3000 feet in the air somewhere over the Pacific &  I haven't slept a wink in 14 hours . I hate to fly so the only review I am doing is an “observation game” of my surroundings to keep myself from jumping up out of my seat and yelling “We are all going to Die!” because the storm the pilot is trying to maneuver above seems to be dogging us with his every attempt to gain more altitude.  If I hold on to every fact of what I can actually “see” instead of my imaginings of a cockpit in chaos I might get through this flight without embarrassing myself.The seats in Economy are comfortable ,wider than most, with the individual screen that most airlines provide but with an adjustable headrest and footrest that I, sadly, have not discovered until this moment. The stewardesses on Singapore Air are as pretty as I remember from a business flight I took to Malaysia years ago .They seem to float down the aisle in very feminine outfits that don't look like a uniform at all but more like beautiful native costumes. None of them have that harried pinched look of so many other stewardesses that seem to say "Ask me one more question as to why we are out of your overpriced food selection or about the pillows we no longer provide and I’m gonna blow quicker than you can say “Flight Marshall".  Speaking of food... I have had more free food being automatically served to me at regular intervals on this one flight than all the domestic flights I took in the last two years so I'm thinking another reason ,for my partial paralytic mental state besides total abject fear , is most likely a food coma. That and the sudden awareness that I haven't left my seat once in the entire flight. Did I mention it was a 14 hour flight ?  The only thing that makes the inability to feel my legs at the moment bearable is the distraction of the extreme pain in my lower back because I have to pee and I have been trapped in my window seat by the “fasten seatbelt” sign since the turbulence began nearly 45 minutes ago.  Even though we are making our descent ,that sense of gratitude and relief that I always feel when the plane, any plane I'm on lands safely, anywhere is now totally eclipsed by this fact,  SO here I am bargaining with God to prevent an accident of a different kind.  My two seat mates, fast asleep ,and in their own version of a food coma, remain blissfully unaware that at any moment we could all be underwater even if the plane is not.

Then suddenly ,I  feel the landing gear go down ....The missed flight out of LA in spite of being 3 hours early? The two hour pat down through security before boarding that caused the missed flight ? Barely making the connection in San Francisco at 1 am? Even the pain in my back?

None of that matters any more ... I am landing in Asia.

"Howdy Pilgrim" March 2013

1. Pilgrim. from the Latin peregrinus, a wanderer, a traveler in foreign parts , a foreigner

2. Pilgrim ( from the latin peregrinus) is a traveler (Literally)one who has come from afar) who is on a journey to a holy place. Typically, this is a physical journeying (often on foot) to some place of special significance. In Spiritual literature, the concept of pilgrim and pilgrimage may refer to the experience of life in the world ( considered as a period of exile) or to the inner path of the spiritual aspirant from a state of Wretchedness to a state of beatitude.

Pilgrim? Yep that is pretty much me , my whole life. Never more than now and a specific pilgrimage sounds pretty good to me cause anything that will “aspirant” me from this current state of wretchedness is exactly what I welcome, But then most of us feel this way at some point in our lives many without even leaving home. We wake up one day and the whole world looks different, no real warning ,no easy explanation and we find ourselves strangers to our families , our spouses or our lovers , co-workers or our children, even ourselves. We are all of us on our own Pilgrimages , everyday. We are moving towards something, away from something in familiar surrounding as well as new

As for me I never needed to look very far, It has been there all along waiting for its own timing, waiting for me to let go so it could find a way back in.      

What is Crazy ? What is Faith? March 2013

At the risk of starting out with an apology ….. Let me just say …...My apologies..  :)
To all those who have made the many declarations, posed the million questions and expressed concern for both my physical health and my mental state. I could never properly address you all.

" You are out of your mind." “Are you out of your mind?”

“ You can’t possibly do this!” “Please don’t do this ! ”

"Why are you doing this ?” " Seriously?, What makes you think you can do this?"

" I'll believe it when I see it"  
" Go, ahead nothing would make me happier, prove me wrong" 

" Your Dreaming!"

“ I have always wanted to do that" " I could never do it"

“ I hope you are writing this down”

“I want to read what you have written down ”

“ Do you think you could help me figure out how to do it? ”  

" I want to come with you!" " I'm coming with you"

“You should write a Blog”

“ Please write a Blog!”

" I have never been prouder of anyone in my whole life"

" I see nothing bad coming out of this, I know you will be just fine"

" This will change your life, it already has."

and then finally one of the last things I heard before I left ....

“You should have a camera crew go with you and document it”

So this Blog is for all of you, My Champions and my Challengers . And all my Challengers who became my Champions :)

….And for me because I want to remember and honour what got me here. I don’t want to forget any of this, not a single moment.

Much of what is in this Blog is actually what I transferred from my Journal that is specific to this pilgrimage. Some of it especially in regard to the “back story” is from old Journals and all manner of papers I have saved over the years. All of which has become the “Map back to myself.

I have included everything from Spiritual & Physical struggles to little things that I discovered worked or didn’t work for my packing and my training. Including many things I changed my mind on more than once.  This is not a “Linear Blog” and some of it won’t even be in real time. For that I can make no apology because things are happening faster than I can write them down. Just know there will be no editor with me on this journey and certainly not on The Camino. M

ost of the time there will be no internet , there will most certainly be mis-spelled words questionable grammar , and an abundance of run on sentences with little time for punctuation , ( Sorry Cate!)
while I am Posting “On the fly” ( If I am lucky enough) ... I may also ,God forbid, repeat myself .
Not always being able to find my glasses won't help.

  

It is also likely that you might find I will have gone back and added things to various posts I have already written. Trust me I’m not doing this to mess with you. It will only be that I may suddenly remember or need to correct a date or timeline  , add names worth noting , or some revelation I feel I’ve had. Some of it I may even have to correct when I get home. Who knows, I may not even be able to finish this till I get home.

Like this Blog I am a work in progress.

I would never say to anyone “ If I can do it You can do it” To me that is the height of Spiritual Arrogance” I don’t pretend to know what will work for anyone else.  I do know that in reading about others experiences with their own Pilgrimages and specifically The Camino , it has helped me figure out ways to adapt to better to suit my own personal strengths and weaknesses. The stories have inspired me and informed me and challenged me and I am so very grateful to all those that have shared their journey.

Finally I am grateful to my mother who along with my father modeled a strong faith of their own, remaining curious, open, respectful  and even inclusive to the basic truths and tenents of all faiths. They never once pretended to have all the answers, which allowed my siblings and I to  keep asking questions.  

Whether for you it is The Camino or Jerusalem,  India, or Rome ,Mecca , Lourdes, or Graceland

I hope there will be one or two things here to help someone else along The Way.

I am in Competition with no one.

I run my own race. I have no

desire to play the game of being

better than anyone, in any way,

shape or form. I just aim to

improve, to be better than I was 4 Months and about 20 Days

before. That’s me and I’m free. Before beginning to Walk 

The Camino also known as The Way of Saint James

                                   unknown