Back when I had made the reservation, I was going through a rough stretch. We had recently been through a difficult relocation. Our oldest daughter had rejected the host country completely for the first six months with refusal to eat as one of the consequences. That, together with a new language and a husband that was away most of the time, I was feeling pretty low. This safari had seemed like the perfect remedy! Some of my friends asked if I wasn’t scared of doing something like that alone. I didn’t really feel it was such a big deal. However, now it was just around the corner and I was coming to the full realization of what I was about to do. Help!

On my way!

At the day of departure, I was actually the calmest I had been in a long time. No turning back now! I waved goodbye to my husband and kids at the train station where I headed off for Schiphol Airport. With a short stop in a thunderstorm covered Paris, I landed in sunny Johannesburg the morning after. For all of you who have lived in Africa at one point, you will know the feeling of being back on its soil. I just couldn’t stop smiling as I walked through the airport that was so familiar to me. I was finally here!

When I arrived at the lodge five hours later, I was greeted by one of the lodge managers who showed me to my room. Unfortunately due to the traffic on the way I had missed the afternoon ride, so I would be driven to the location of the evening’s “sundowners”. It was at the owner’s private lodge where everyday they would feed the rhino’s living in the reserve to keep them close by as a safety measure. As most of you know rhinos are under severe threat from poachers, so large measures are being taken to keep these incredible animals safe.

When I arrived I was amazed by how close to the rhinos we were. Seeing how they interacted amongst each other was absolutely remarkable! I was still a bit hazy from my pills I take for flying, so it felt almost unreal to witness these magnificent animals from so close!

After getting over the initial astonishment, I got acquainted with the other guests. There were four other ladies there, another solo traveller who was in for just one night, a lady from a tour operator plus two lifelong friends who were traveling together. They were both expats in their respective country and we soon clicked and I ended up third wheeling them for most of the trip! The ladies had just come back from a ride and I couldn’t wait until the next day when I would finally get to go out there on horseback!

Unwanted welcoming

We were taken back to the lodge to freshen up before dinner and I was showed to my room. While getting ready, I scouted the room for bugs. I have an irrational fear of insects, which frankly is about the most useless thing you can have in Africa!

I saw a big fly sitting on the lamp and I had the brilliant idea of swatting it with a towel. BAM! Suddenly from under the lamp, huge African wasps start flying around! What the fruit!! I start doing the least useful thing at this point which is screaming while bolting for the door. A man coming out of the kitchen asks me if I’m ok. Not really!! He grabs a can of Doom  (a pesticide true to its name) and heads into the room to rescue me from these nightmare creatures. He comes out and I thankful but still frightened demand to see the dead bodies before I head back in. By now I’m knackered and after a delicious dinner and some wine to calm my nerves, I fall into bed and I think I was asleep before my head hit the pillow.

The safari

The next day after breakfast, we were taken to our horses that were waiting for us for the first ride of the day. I had been paired up with Tala, a furry little mare with curious eyes and ears constantly forward. The horses at Ant’s come from different backgrounds, some being ex race horses and all really well schooled. Since there is no dangerous game in the reserve, the horses roam free when not being fed or ridden. It must be the perfect life for a horse! Tala was beautiful to ride, forward going but really soft mouthed and I trusted her almost instantly. She was really curious and would spot the wildlife before anyone else!

Every day on our horse riding safari we would ride different routes and the guides would ask us what animals we would like to see or that we hadn’t seen yet. We would jokingly offer to groom their horses if they would find the ones we hadn’t managed to spot so far. They would almost always succeed! The morning ride was a longer one of around three hours, and the afternoon ride would be almost two hours. In the mornings we would always see more animals as they would get less active as the day got warmer.

During my 5 day stay we spotted giraffe, wildebeest, warthog, zebra, baboon, eland, red hartebeest, rhino, kudu, buffalo, blesbok and countless impala. The animals would smell the horses before the humans and I was amazed by how close we could get to the animals and how they would stay so relaxed in our presence. The horses were the real heroes in this whole venture, as they would walk right up to a giraffe without flinching.

So much to learn!

The horse riding safari guides we had were amazing and they would always find something new to teach us along the way. As we were walking with the horses they would tell us both facts and stories about the different plants and trees. They would also teach us how to recognize the tracks on the ground. Sometimes they would quiz us on something we had learned earlier so better stay alert! When I arrived I was only really looking straight ahead while riding through the bush. Slowly you start getting used to looking around as well as up and down. That was how we spotted a dead impala up in a tree, a recent kill by the allusive leopard.

During the week we learned so much about the animals and their behavior. Most of us have a preconception that animals in the wild are always dangerous. Actually many times the opposite is true if you know how to act around them. A lot of their behavior revolves around conserving energy and only spending it when necessary. For example, a leopard will not attack a horse because it is too heavy to drag up into the tree. Therefore it doesn’t pose a threat as you ride out. Even the rhinos will not charge unless you get in their way or between a mother and her baby. Some animals, like lions, will even fake charge as a warning before attacking unless they are hunting.

To further enlighten us, they gave a presentation about snakes. One of the guides brought different specimen to teach us about their behaviour. It turns out most will give you lots of warning when threatened, rather than attacking. He demonstrated this by putting his shoe over one of them and it still didn’t bite, just hissed very loudly. In the end, animals are just much more rational than humans, that was my conclusion.

The food

Lunch would be served at different spots around the reserve each day. We would simply untack the horses and they would walk off into the reserve. It was wonderful to see the horses just roam free like that!

The same would happen after our afternoon ride, where instead of lunch, drinks and snacks would be served. The setting would be somewhere in the reserve where we could truly appreciate the beauty of the African sunset. The light is just magical and to experience it with an Amarula in hand is just the perfect ending to a day in the saddle!

We would always have dinner at the lodge. We would begin with drinks around a bon fire where jokes would be told and myths debunked! After we would have a delicious three course meal with all drinks included. Most meals were prepared based on local game caught in the reserve. During my stay I for example both kudu and eland as well as ostrich carpaccio.

The takeaways

I met some really great people during my stay at Ant’s. It is truly fascinating to have strangers from all over the globe meet in a small slice of the world and share some wonderful memories together. During dinner we would talk about what we had experienced during the day or share stories. With my fellow expat ladies we sometimes fell into deep discussions about the world and our experiences. With other people the conversation would gravitate towards other things we would have in common. Isn’t it amazing how you will almost always find a way to connect to other people, if you just keep an open mind?

During our last breakfast, one of the guests requested that we’d go swimming with the horses. The guide asked me if I wanted to do that as well. I hesitated. “Really?” said the other guest. “You don’t seem as someone who would be scared of anything” she said. My brain stood still for a minute, as that sunk in. For a moment I saw myself through her eyes. What she was seeing was not the way I saw myself. She was seeing a relaxed, energetic, adventures person that used to be me, before I had chosen to carry around every worry and responsibility in the world. Needless to say, I did get in that water with the horse and it was a blast!

As I got ready to leave Ant’s and South Africa, I found myself getting very emotional. The staff was probably a bit confused about my overly dramatic goodbye! However I had come to realize, that even though I had thought I was going there to find wildlife, what I actually found was a part of myself that had become an endangered species. That part which holds the spark, the passion and the joy. Not the responsible mom, or the ever supporting wife, the overwhelmed solo entrepreneur, … no, just me. I had tapped into the feeling of just being relaxed, at ease, playful and curious. Basically how it felt to be without that stick that was stuck in my behind. And it was marvelous.

Moving on

Since then I promised myself that I would do everything in my power to not let that fade away again. It is the battery that supplies all other parts of life and needs to be recharged every now and then. Maybe not always necessarily with such grand gestures! Instead by making sure we make time to feed our souls with the things that nourish us.

What is your soul food? What things do you do to stay centered and connected? Maybe you have found something that will also inspire others. Me, I’m already booking my next safari!

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Where we know what everyone really intends

Where we can walk around without clothes on.

–from Rumi’s Let’s Go Home

The space between arriving and departing can be rich and profound, but be warned: if still waters run deep then diving down there swirls the sludge around. What was lodged and decaying may surface. It can be disruptive.  Be ready!

It’s summer, you’re on vacation. There you are, doing the backstroke, eyes closed, sun on your face, when BAM! You run right into a smelly mass of floating tires and rotting logs. It’s not pretty.

Arriving Home Part I

Though I attended five different elementary schools, two middle schools, and lived in six dwellings, four cities, and two states before seventh grade, I am an Oly Girl.  My parents were both born and raised in Olympia, Washington and my father’s family goes back a few generations.  Despite having bounced from coast to coast seven times, knowing my heritage grounded me in the years before I left for love.

We have Oly Girl t-shirts and bumper stickers, and some even strut their Oly pride on their license plates. We are spirited and rowdy feminists who wave the rainbow flag.  We swim in the bay, drink coffee, shop local and organic, and know how to build a campfire, drive a boat, and change a tire.  We are artists, environmentalists, educators and lobbyists.  We are active mothers and animal lovers.  We get involved.  We march when it’s right.  We donate to what matters.  We love kitschy cool, vintage chic.  We’re all funny as hell if you hang around long enough to know us and finally, we don’t leave.

So, imagine my alarm when I see Mount Rainier and the flat, wooded islands below the descending plane and I feel…nothing.  No excitement, no anxiety, no butterflies, no sense of calm.  Am I no longer connected here? Don’t I belong here? What’s wrong with me?? I panic, momentarily.

Luckily, I have a coach’s brain and see the opportunity in just about any situation.  I chose to see this lack of enthusiasm as just another milestone in my expat journey.  After 14 years abroad, I’m finally feeling rooted in my little Italian house on the hill.  I was in the middle of things when we departed.  I had lavender to harvest, yoga to practice, workshops to create and work to do, but it was time to come home.

It took some time to warm up to the American lifestyle after being gone a year and a half.  I felt like I was peering in from behind a one way mirror or waiting for the perfect turn to jump back into the rhythm of things.

But, after a week or so, the salt air began to corrode my blase’ attitude and my heart and lungs swelled at the sight of placid inlet waters, the omnipresent mountain, ferry boats and the Space Needle.  There was the smell of the sun on salted mudflats, and sounds of seagulls and ship horns.  And in my mouth…oysters and clams, eggs benedict with crab and talk of the infamous geoduck. My senses awoke and I was home again.

When Past Meets Present

This trip was a series of hellos and goodbyes, unexpected reconnections and losses, and both internal and external “stuff” to sift through.  

There was an old musty camp trunk, an unintentional time capsule. Everything my mom had saved from kindergarten on. Elementary school report cards and standardized test scores. Art projects and fifth grade valentines from people I still see on Facebook.

There were handwritten journals beginning in 1982. Letters to God (clearly written after reading Judy Bloom’s classic Are You There God?  It’s Me Margaret). Records of my adolescent and young adult activities, observations, heartbreaks and thoughts.  There were copies of letters typed on an old word processor and dialogues penned, sure to last an eternity when they no longer held space in my memory.  Proof that he said what I no longer remembered.

After long conversations with old friends who “knew me then,” and hours pouring over the details of my young lovelife, I thought about how I got to the place where leaving Olympia or later, my entire country, was an acceptable decision, especially for love.  

“Stay on the surface,” I tell myself determinedly.   “Backstroke, remember??? Sun on the face?  Sound of your own breath? ”  But the days that followed filled with the proof of who I’d been and evidence of my much more vulnerable and authentic young self began swirling up from the depths.  Let’s go home…Where we can walk around without clothes on.  

My adolescent self craved and demanded authenticity.  She had a coach’s brain and intuition, organic and unadulterated, still analytical, but with more access to her heart.  There were moments reading, when I felt for her and worried about her vulnerability.

Scattered through the passing days, there were dinner parties with highschool friends and a class reunion, coffee with childhood teachers, a bedside visit and final goodbye, acknowledgment of past hurts and forgiveness. Then came the passing down of family silver, jewelry, crocheted afghans I remember my grandma making while watching her favorite evening shows in the 1980s.

About half way through the vacation, our apartment in Italy was robbed.  Our landlord sent us pictures of my jewelry boxes scattered all over the bed with bits and pieces of my memory strewn from one end to the other.  I could see the open and empty, tiny leather box given to me by my grandmother for high school graduation five months before she died.  

It had been given to her by my grandfather when his ship docked in India in 1944. Inside the box was a bracelet of aquamarine stones.  My mother’s mother had given it to me along with the letter he’d written her, still in its envelope.  “I still have the letter,” I told myself as I felt my stomach creep up to my throat, trying not to show my panic.

Also inside that box was the pendent I’d had made out of my other grandmother’s wedding rings.  I’d added an aquamarine stone when I got married so I could wear the two pieces together, a way to keep the gumption of my two grandmothers close to inspire me as I journeyed into married life in a foreign country.

The final piece that had been in that box was my great-aunt’s pearl and jade bracelet she’d bought during her time in Alaska.  She’d worn it always and with everything. I’d asked for that after she died because it triggered such a strong visual memory of her when I put it on.  It reminded me of her vive d’esprit.

I had no idea the value of any of these pieces. It really didn’t matter that we had no renters insurance because there could be no reimbursement of these memories.  Again, my coach brain kicked in and I knew that I didn’t need the things to remember the love.

I spent days after the robbery letting go emotionally.

In the trunk of things in my parents storage, I’d just happened to come across the card my grandmother had given me nearly 30 years ago in which she explained the reason she was passing her precious gift on to me. I hadn’t even remembered I still had that card, but there it was: her wild handwriting I’d always struggled to read, as if to say, “It’s not the thing that ties us together.”  

Almost a week after the burglary, a piece of my tooth broke off as chomped down on a cashew. A broken tooth during a vacation may sound like a dental emergency nightmare, yet after the initial alarm (“Oh no!!  I just broke my tooth in a foreign country!!!” I apparently screeched.), the chronic ache I’d experienced for 13 years instantly disappeared.  I’ve been pain free since.

The irony and emerging themes baffled and  intrigued me.  What was all this surfacing?  My past mingling with my present?  Lost and Found.  New and Old.   Before and After.  Release of suffering.  A softening border between my two lives. It felt delicious, unifying, and disorienting.

Holding On and Letting Go

As internationals, we are used to letting go.  If we acquire too much it becomes a burden when it’s time to leave again, but what about those precious things? What about the people?

Lately, I’ve come to the conclusion that for me, home is where, and with whom, I feel most like my true self.  It’s where I continue to grow and where the people around me grow, too.

We keep what reflects the best version of ourselves or pushes us to evolve.  We keep what evokes joy without needing to ask how or why.  We let go of things and relationships where the burden outweighs the value.

There is this liminal space between here and there. I’m not talking about the flight time, but that invisible dimension between who we were before we left and who we are when we return.  Deep satisfaction comes to those of us who find a way to integrate the two; and be able to tease out what is worth keeping about who we were and knowing what we MUST release in order to embrace who, and where, we are today.

Ironically, after days of mindfully letting go pieces of my history, it was my grandfather’s cufflinks (a wedding gift from my mother to my husband) and my husband’s grandfather’s watch that were taken. But, the aquamarine set and everything else of mine was still there, and I’m still selfishly savoring the relief.  

Six Practices for a Meaningful Visit “Home”

As a coach, I practice what I hope to inspire.  Before I left for this vacation, I set an intention about what I wanted to experience and what I wanted to bring to the table.  This one small effort changed the game. We must be clear about what we want to experience and what we are willing to contribute when visiting friends and family.

Though the outcome may be different for everyone, it’s important to know that you get to decide whether you become bogged down by the past or uplifted in your present.  Personally, the following practices have served me well on family vacations and life, in general.

• Pay attention.  Notice themes.  What keeps coming up?  What needs to be resolved?  Where do you feel blocked when you are there?
• Keep assumptions in check.  Just because it was that way in the past doesn’t mean it’s that way now.  Leave assumptions and one-sided interpretations on the plane.
• Stay open and curious.  Wonder more, judge less.
• Say yes to the offers that resonate with your intentions.  The people that reach out to you are probably keepers.
• Invite authentic communication and meaningful conversations.  Don’t be afraid of the ugly and uncomfortable.  
• Be present where you are.  You may not be able to see everyone, but your days will be longer (in a good way) and less hectic.  Start fresh with people.  Listen to them. They’ve changed too. Maybe you’ll actually relax.

Arriving Home Part II

On the way back to Italy, the customs officer in Amsterdam looks at my passport and carta di soggiorno.  “You returning home?” he asks.  My son and I were bumped up in line thanks to his EU passport, a definite bonus in July when the customs lines for American passport holders are spilling out into the corridors with American tourists in Europe.  

I pause, subtly, maybe only I notice it, maybe it was only in my brain but indiscernible in my response time. “Am I returning home?” I ask myself.  

“Yes,” I nodded. “We are.”  

We must integrate what happens between arriving and departing in that other dimension; slowly and consciously fold it into our “other” life, abroad.  These are not separate lives: before and after, past and present, here and there.  We are the constant, the common denominator, in every space in between.  Don’t look away from the re-emerging themes.  Lean in and start stitching yourself whole again.

The post The Space Between: Arriving and Departing appeared first on I am a Triangle.

Barry was interested in who we were, and how we found ourselves living in Europe and how my German living American kids sounded like Brits. We told him a short version of our story and how we were conquering our bucket list of EU destinations. He was extremely interested in travel, specifically one aspect: recording the tail numbers of planes during takeoffs and landings at the airports he visited. He showed me his log book of hundreds of tail numbers, times and cities.

Prior to retirement, Barry was a double decker bus driver. He drove the tippy-looking red ones we had excitedly rode all weekend as we took in the sights. I told him that I couldn’t believe how those buses moved so well across the dense, bustling city. “It must have been a hard job,” I said.

“Ah, it was easy!”, he laughed. Before driving London buses, he was a butcher. “THAT was hard work. What is your favorite meat?” he asked my son. “Sausage.” Of course, I thought. After all, his young years were being spent at biergartens.

Barry told me he had been to the states just last year; but only to the airports; he had been too busy with his work to take in any sights. “Wait. You don’t actually leave the airport?” I asked, a bit horrified at the idea of staying in a stale, cold air for days. “Not really; my friends and I stay at the airport hotel and log as many takeoffs and landings as we can. In Dubai I recorded twenty-six” I squinted my eyes and tilted my head, trying to make sure I was hearing all of this correctly.

“I guess you could say I am a tail chaser.”

“So, you just record… the takeoff’s and landings? And… you did not get out and see Dubai?” I asked.

“That’s right.”

I sat, mouth agape.

When we landed, Barry asked me to kindly pass his crutches from the overhead compartment and I carried his bag down the stairs to the tarmac. He was really unsteady, and I offered my arm so he wouldn’t fall since his friends were sitting many rows behind us. Airports are hard enough for mobile people to walk back and forth across and I wondered how he did it; why he would choose to? After all, there are hundreds of hobbies to chose from in this world. But there was a certain charm in this simple, curious pleasure of his.

We parted ways and I wished him happy tail chasing in Munich.

After meeting Barry, whenever I board a plane with the rush of irritated, impatient travelers, hitting my heels with their wheels (as if the plane will actually take off as we are walking on), pushing and stressing and huffing at delays and cancellations, I stop to wonder if Barry is near. If so, I am sure he is peacefully watching, writing my plane’s tail number in his notebook when we finally take off into the night sky.

Perhaps he will be watching other times, when we touch down from a long, bumpy trip, relaxed inside, eating a soft pretzel and beer, while my face is flushed, knuckles white inside my tin tube. Somehow, I will feel like someone is watching over me, someone cares to see me take off and land as most people race to exit the airport or hurry to board their flight. Of course I will never know if Barry chased one of our tails, as we came or went, but I like to imagine he has, at least once.

Barry reminded me that there are so many unique, fascinating people to meet on this planet, who simply want nothing more than to observe this life, to witness the takeoffs and landings, expecting nothing in return.

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