Bath, UK

Dave Eggers wrote in You Shall Know Our Velocity that, “You see the rest of the world and then you come back.”  I had written that quote down and put it on my vision board.  Vision boards were new in my life, mine was supposed to help me realize my dreams and goals and bring them to fruition.  However, in the fall of 2010 a trip to England with my best friend Brandi beckoned; sure I had once lived there but all the pieces fell perfectly into place and so I found myself breaking Eggers’ cardinal rule by returning to a place I’d already been before seeing the rest of the world.  Thankfully, our hostess and good friend, Janet lived in a part of England that I had not gotten the chance to explore previously, and so the three of us made a pact that we would only go places that none of us had been. 

            On the latter half of our trip, it became clear that there was one place that was calling my name and I just couldn’t resist visiting once more:  Bath.  I knew I would regret it if I came all the way to England and didn’t visit my favorite city in the world.  We picked a day that we hadn’t filled with an agenda, loaded up the car early in the morning, and were on our way.  Janet, living in Cambridgeshire was a little further from Bath than I had been living in Oxfordshire, so I had stayed up the night before making the most amazing mix albums that would make the time pass on our long drive.  I decided it was time for these girls to be exposed to Laura Marling, a British folk singer-songwriter that I had discovered, oddly enough, once I was back in the States.  Marling had won me over, with the line, “I throw creation to my kin.”  I didn’t know what those words meant to Miss Marling, but to me they were my world. 

The year 2008 had been a big year for me, I had moved back to the States from this beautiful country, survived a divorce, and was told that I would probably never be able to have children of my own.  Depression settled in and needless to say, in 2008 I found it a miracle that I even woke up every morning to face another day.  Granted, when I did, I was usually in an Ambien induced haze and I usually spent the morning cleaning up the trail of margarita salt that had followed me around the house the night before.  In 2009 I finally learned how to push down the overwhelming feelings that threatened to take me over and I learned how to function again… until, I had a seizure! Tests were run and the only conclusion they could come to was that I was bottling things up inside too much and that I should see a therapist.  So in a therapists’ room, on a couch, under a quote painted on the wall that said, “You will either step forward into growth or you will step backward into safety,” I unpacked the fact that my husband had decided to divorce me over the phone and that I would never see him again.  I unpacked the hospital stay when I had surgery on my ovaries--- the stay that I couldn’t believe he wasn’t actually going to be there for, the stay where I had to change my emergency contact information from my husband to my mother, the stay where I stood naked in a shower with tears streaming down as my mom washed my body telling me I was going to feel better once I had a shower, the stay where I had to walk past a window full of newborn babies in order to be discharged from the hospital.  I unpacked in that therapists’ room, on that couch, under that quote.

            So here we were, in 2010, on a road to my past.  As we drove those winding roads, the windows down, I started to panic… Was going back a mistake?  What kind of issues was this going to bring to the surface?  Would I have an anxiety attack?  A seizure?  Was I strong enough?  I took a deep breath, and told myself, “You are going to be ok.”  Bath had managed to remain my favorite city simply because of the fact that it was pretty neutral; I knew I wouldn’t be dodging as many emotional landmines as other places, namely Oxford.  My memories of Bath were mostly filled with other characters from my past, not the ghost that had been following me around the past couple years. 

As we got closer to Bath, the hills became an even more brilliant shade of green; the hedges stretched across the landscapes as far as the eye could see; and the stonewalls with moss growing in every crevice raced along the road beside us.  We rounded a corner only to see the most beautiful hot air balloon perched in the bluest of clear skies, Brandi gasped and it reminded me of how I had felt the first time I ever saw the Eiffel Tower.  Unfortunately there was nowhere to pull over for her to take photos, but I could hear her snapping frantically from the back seat having thrown off her seat belt and propped herself up in the window. 

            In my own photos of Bath, in my photo album back home, it was clear that England was always portraying its typical weather for my visitors and friends; but one thing you learn when you live in England is that if you have plans and it’s raining-- you go anyways!  There were pictures of my sister looking glum in front of the Roman baths as a dark sky threatened another rainstorm (turns out my sister wasn’t the biggest fan of England and its weather, but I was so happy to have her there), pictures of Janet and her husband Thomas bundled in winter clothes sitting on a bench in front of the abbey from when they had come to visit, it was November and you could practically see their breath in the photo (they had loved it so much, however, that they decided to apply for an assignment overseas as soon as they got back home), photos of the Christmas market and my friends drinking hot cocoa or standing in the French Brasserie warming their mittens on the radiator.  Turning into the city and seeing all the uniformed cream colored limestone buildings, it was abundantly clear that one thing about this trip was extremely different than all the other times that I had visited: the sun was shining gloriously over everything!  

Once we had parked and made our way on foot to the square out front of the abbey, Brandi had tears in her eyes and she told us that this place was so beautiful it was making her well up.  It may sound cliché, but it truly is that breathtakingly beautiful!  We walked all around and inside the abbey; I pointed out the sculpted angels climbing ladders towards the sky on the outside, they had always been my favorite part.  We walked around the outside of the Roman Baths and debated paying the steep price to go in, but since I had seen them multiple times and Janet had seen them we left it up to Brandi.  She was more into staying off the tourist path so she could take pictures of the architecture and the locals, so we gave her a quick overview.  Janet reminded me of the fact that Queen Mary (not the Queen Mary that everyone first wants to think of… this was a Mary that came much later) had visited the baths hoping the magical waters would cure her infertility, and it did!  I couldn’t help but remember taking a tour of the baths with my husband and him daring me to touch the water despite all of the many signs and guards warning visitors to not do that very thing.  Of course I had done it, and as Janet explained more facts to Brandi, I couldn’t help but wonder why the water hadn’t cured my infertility issues?  That time I had visited the baths and had touched the water I hadn’t verbally acknowledged the fact that there was an issue, but multiple negative pregnancy tests had been weighing on my mind.

            Deciding to skip the tour of the baths, the three of us girls headed up the streets to the Jane Austen museum, I had begun collecting a set of Austen books that I could only find the particular edition of at that museum.  Unlucky for me, they still hadn’t released the edition of Mansfield Park that I needed to complete my collection, and sadly enough there was no publication date in sight.  We made our way through the museum and decided to walk back down the cobblestoned street to the squares around the abbey and find a nearby pub.  As we walked past a bookstore, I stopped in my tracks; in the window was a book with Jack Kerouac on the cover looking right at me with his mouth wide open.  I went inside to examine the book closer; it was called Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg, I remembered reading about the release of this book earlier that year.  Reading Kerouac for the first time had been an experience I will never forget, it had been like an alarm telling me that I had been living life all wrong and that there was another me longing to be set free.  Seeing him on the streets of Bath was like a sign that I was finally heading in the right direction.  I put down the book and we pressed on. 

Walking anywhere new with Brandi is a process because she sees the world in little glimpses that she needs to capture, she sees a photo opportunity around every corner, between every human transaction; yet she insists we don’t wait for her, so we end up moseying and it’s ok because I am able to soak in every step, and I know that later she will give me copies of her pictures and seeing Bath through her lens will make me wonder if we had even been on the same trip, she has such an authentic way of viewing the world. 

We eventually stumbled across a pub that I happened to know had the most fabulous chips and mushy peas (I’ve never understood why everyone puts all the emphasis on fish and chips, when what is really delicious is dipping your chips in the side of mushy peas that inevitably comes with most fish and chips plates).  Oh how I had missed the mushy peas!  As we sat in a pub I’d been to before, in a city I’d visited many times; I couldn’t help but acknowledge how different it felt being there because I was different.

            Feeling content now that we’d had something to eat; we decided to go enjoy the musician in the square before we’d have to get back in the car if we were going to make it back to Cambridge at a decent hour.  As we were walking past a fudge shop Brandi told us to go on without her; she would be able to find us in the square, which was just ahead.  Janet and I sat down on a bench and listened silently to a man in the center of the square playing a Spanish guitar.  Tourists sat leisurely around listening and taking pictures, pigeons flew all over the square, and locals went about their usual business bustling through the crowd with determined looks on their faces.  The sun was in a spot where the abbey’s shadow covered most of the square but we were sitting on one of the few benches left in the sunlight; I remember Janet putting her hand above her brow to shield her eyes and turning to smile at me.  I adore her, I love the way she has a genuine kindness to every person she meets, and the way she sees the world simply, never over analyzing every little thing like Brandi and I do.  As I look at Janet I hear bells on a door chime and see Brandi come out of the fudge shop on the corner of the square.  She comes skipping towards us; her long blonde hair looks like spun gold glistening in the sun, her hands are cupped and they are filled to the brim with strawberries that had been previously dipped in chocolate and had now hardened; she looks like a little kid on Christmas morning, her smile stretched across her face. 

           

In therapy I was later asked, “What do you think living at a “10” looks like?”

            I looked at my therapist, smiled, and was instantly filled with warmth.

Literary Inklings

        When I was a little girl I could always be found reading a book; while my siblings were out leading the neighborhood in street hockey games of epic proportions; I would be curled up in a chair somewhere reading stories that took me to far away places.  Every Christmas my favorite gifts were the ones that I had identified under the tree as books; they sat there so delicately wrapped in paper that shined under the twinkling of the colored lights laced throughout the tree branches.  When Christmas morning finally came, and after the big unwrapping event had ceased; I would take my little treasures to my room and line them along the bookshelf that my dad and grandpa had made me, and then I would begin the process of choosing which one I should read first.  When I was a teenager I found myself spending my money from my part time job on Oprah’s latest picks for her larger than life book club.  Lastly, when I was married and in my twenties I joined my first intimate book club; a group of women, American ex-pats, all brought together in England because of our husbands jobs.  We shared the duty of hosting book club once a month, rotating between each other’s homes in our little cozy town in Oxfordshire, England. 

I came to discover that I was not only involved in a book club that exposed me to cultures and writers I had never explored before, but that right in the heart of this beautiful county was a literary trove of writers and stories so historically vast that I spent my days wandering in and out of their worlds; all of us linked through time through a lovely university town called: Oxford. 

            I remember the first time that I had gotten off the bus in Oxford, I decided to get off somewhere along St. Giles only to promptly come to a group of pedestrians standing outside a pub called, The Eagle and Child, I came to find out that this pub had been frequented by none other than the literary greats, J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.  Tolkien and Lewis had been a part of a literary discussion group called: The Inklings.  This group would mostly meet at Magdalen College, the school in which Lewis lived, but occasionally the group would meet at the pub.  First readings of The Lord of the Rings were given here.  

            I stepped inside and took a seat at a table; I ordered a diet coke, and in true American style said, “no lemon, and with ice, please”.  I wondered if they had sat at these very tables?  By this time The Lord of the Rings had already been made into a movie trilogy that had taken the movie world by storm.  Accumulatively nominated for 30 Academy awards and winning 17, it could arguably be named the best trilogy in the history of film.  Sitting in this pub I wondered if Tolkien could have ever imagined the heights that his works would reach?  I had worked at Barnes & Noble in the states one Christmas as boxed sets of the beloved novels flew off the shelves. 

            After my soda, I decided to hit the pavement.  I wasn’t quite sure where I was going but my motto has always been:  if I don’t know what exactly it is that I want to see and I’ve never seen any of it, then it doesn’t exactly matter where I wander, does it?  So with that philosophy in mind, I walked out of the pub and turned right seeing as how to the left looked like nothing but boring houses and motor vehicles while to the right I could see the beginnings of some shops, and more people on foot.  I came to a corner with a Waterstone’s bookstore, which was a chain bookstore in England.  In the window was a flier announcing a night with Ian McEwan coming soon.  I jotted down the date and time in my moleskin notebook in my purse.  I didn’t go into Waterstone’s but was reminded of another bookstore that a friend had told me I must visit when I made it into town.  The store was called Blackwell’s and it was an institution in Oxford.  I asked a passerby the whereabouts and lucky for me it was just off the main road I had been traveling by a few blocks or so.  While Blackwell’s didn’t turn out to be the journey for me that it had been for my neighbor, I thought it was a nice bookstore overall with a rich history.  Apparently they had been the publisher of one of Tolkien’s first poems.  I imagine my neighbor felt about the store the way I would feel if I ever got the chance to visit City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco. 

After perusing the shelves I headed back down the road in the direction I had came to put me back to the main street that I wanted to continue to explore further.  I pressed on past many British chains all the while remembering how my favorite United States President had attended Oxford.  At this point, President Clinton had already released his book, My Life.  I had listened to an audio version of it in the car for months and had eventually bought a hard copy when I met him at a book signing event in Washington D.C.  It made me wonder; were great people drawn to Oxford, or did those same people only become great once they’d been to Oxford?

College students were everywhere; female students pranced through town in their ballet flats and with colorful scarves wrapped repeatedly around their necks; walking along with their friends and laughing.  I heard a group of them behind me, “He just doesn’t like me because I’m soft!”  I loved that, again, I made a note in my moleskin; how much more flattering it sounded in England than in America when one feels turned down because of their weight.  Male students looked studious in their peacoats and glasses, zipping through the market street on their old fashioned looking bicycles. 

I walked on and eventually found myself at Christ Church College, I paid a small fee to enter and before I knew it I was standing on the same staircase that Professor McGonagall stands on when she greets the students to their very first meal at Hogwarts in the children’s movie, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone; based on the beloved children’s book of the same title.  I couldn’t believe it, for years I had been obsessed with this series; reading every book upon its midnight release, flying my sisters all over the world to go see the movies with me.  I could not wait to come back to this spot with them when they came to town to visit me.  Ahead of me at the top of the stairs was some ruckus as large amounts of people gathered at an entrance waiting for their turn to enter into the dining hall of the college, also used as the famous dining hall in the Harry Potter franchise. 

As I walked around the room, people pointed out the stained glass windows inspired by Alice in Wonderland.  Professor Lewis Carroll had been inspired and written the book from Christ Church College.  I couldn’t believe that students dined here, beneath these windows in this great hall.  When I’d had enough of battling with tourists through the hall, I left the building and just off the grounds and across the street from the college I came to the smallest shop called, “Alice’s Shop.”  It has become history that Carroll wrote his story for the Dean of Christ Church’s daughter, Alice Liddell.  Alice and her sisters had loved to visit this hundreds of years old shop, and so in the sequel to Alice, Professor Carroll wrote the shop into Through the Looking Glass.  The shop nowadays sells little trinkets dedicated to the novels: tea sets, books, and dolls. 

As I left the tiny souvenir shop I thought about my day; I had really only traveled the length of a really long street.  But this street was not your average street, it was bookended by two literary masters:  Tolkien and Carroll.  If Hollywood is home to the stars then Oxford could easily be home to the greatest writers of literature; sprawling throughout time Oxford has housed some of the greatest minds that have come up with some of the most enchanting stories.

I made my way back to the bus stop in front of The Eagle and Child, thinking about my day.  Because of the people that had once haunted these streets, I not only got to visit Oxford, but I’ve been to Wonderland, Narnia, and Middle Earth.