I Shouldn't Be Here

No seriously. I really shouldn’t be here.

To be honest, this last week has been a flood of highly unexpected emotions as I am soon going to be in Italy and I’ll soon be back in Naples with some people that I love so, so much. I'll explain.

Though I’ve had an ongoing relationship with my favorite Neopolitans for years, I haven’t been back since one of my dearest ones left this earth in 2012. (Again, I'll explain.)

And then there’s the fact that 3 weeks ago I should have died. Please forgive the rambling that’s about to ensue, but I promise it eventually has a point. Also, please forgive the raw honestly of this post. It's not really very pretty.

On May 24^th I was in Oregon with my family. I had flown in to surprise my mom for a few days and all of us sisters were in one place for a few days—a very rare thing. We went on a hike that Sunday afternoon and enjoyed some Oregon (terrain and) waterfalls and exhausted ourselves over the course of 6 miles. A dinner later we were on our way home.

Dad was driving us home and the rest of were talking while also living up to our millennial stereotype on our phones. Dad is asthmatic, though nothing too abnormal. He started coughing and asked for one of us to pass him his inhaler as usual. His beloved Jeep was happily loaded with gear and women. I think we were all just really enjoying the rare occasion to be together and the beautiful day we’d had.

But in a moment I heard my sisters yelling at my father and I looked up from the back passenger’s seat to the realization that we were on the wrong side of the road and a vehicle was coming toward us. Providentially, we didn’t hit them but then apparently in the next few moments we hit about 5 mailboxes, nose dove into a ditch which caused us to flip, hitting a telephone pole so hard it was irreparably splintered and then we landed sideways into a ditch. (In the interest of full disclosure, the events happened so fast that I can’t say definitively that what I just described was really what happened. No one knows, we've just tried to put it all together.)

The pictures are really hard to look at. I remember sitting in the back passenger’s seat and wondering if my mother had just died sitting right next to me. I’ll never forget hearing my sister’s voice—the first to break through the deafening split-second of silence and watching her pull my dad out of his daze and shouting at us all to “get out of the car!” And then I heard my other sister and then my mom and watched my dad crawl out the mysteriously broken (though none of us got cut) and available sunroof and then followed suit. We then struggled to get my mom out because she had been injured--we later found out it was her clavicle. Thank God, there were so many people that stopped to help. One man checked my ashen mother over to for injuries and called an ambulance. Somehow I had enough consciousness to call my brothers. It’s all kind of hazy, but we rode the he hospital in an ambulance. Seeing my mom in a stretcher wasn’t something I’d ever really imagined before. You just don’t think about that kind of thing until it happens. I hope it never does again.

But replaying this whole thing over and over again grows in me an increasing sense of recognition that there’s no way I should be here right now. Much less all five of us walked away from the scene. I was not only spared my life, but 4 of the most important people to me are also still in my life. There's no non-Divine explanation. None.

Dad's doctor said that what probably happened was that when he took his inhaler, due to the big meal he had just eaten his blood pressure probably dropped drastically after his medication dosed and he blacked out. My Dad has no memory of what happened, and the circumstances that brought about the accident were in no way a result of negligence on anyone's part. This was the definition of a freak accident.

A couple of days later my dad when to retrieve our belongings from the vehicle. He brought back pictures and there a couple of them I can’t get out of my head.

First, my sister Jami who was in the front seat was clearly protected by the airbag, because the windshield was caved in on her side, though not completely broken through. Thank God that windshield didn't go any further.

Then there’s this picture of my seat. I remember leaning forward and the flash of a story went through my mind. I remembered hearing a boy tell a story once of a car crash he’d been in and how it stuck in his mind that the last word he heard his mother say was “Jesus.” I remember thinking that I wanted that to be my last word but also I remember—almost against my will—uttering further…”Jesus save us” and my mother right next to me responding “Yes, Lord, protect us.”

I had curled up forward into a ball while praying, leaning toward the front seat when the car finally stopped flipping. It turns out it was that fetal position that made the moment not fatal. It seems that the telephone pole impact was right above my head, and it caved in the body of the Jeep. Literally inches from the back of my head.

I think until now I didn’t really understand what people meant when they described things they experienced as “chilling.” Now I get it. It was (and still is, kind of) really hard to look at that picture. I actually got cold when I first saw it.

I guess the hardest part is: the acceptance of grace in the fact that I’m still here. That God has some reason for that. Or is it grace? A part of me would have been really glad to go Home. A huge part of me, actually. But, WHY? 

And here's the hardest question right now: Why am I still here and Marco Gemma isn’t???

Marco was one of those people that grabbed you. There was something about him that saw to the core of who you were and still loved you. He was an incredible, extraordinarily special individual. To this day I cannot put my finger on any other solid reason for this but his immense and lifestyle permeating love for God. I spent a solid summer with him in 2005 at the Mulino camp in Caserta, Italy, where I stayed with the Pund family, my aunt, uncle and a few cousins for about 3 months to help renovate a normally bustling summer camp that had been flooded the winter before. Marco came to help because he wanted to “serve God” with his summer. For as much as I love and use words, I don’t really have any to describe the unique little spot that Marco carved for himself in my American heart. It’s really hard to write this. It was Marco that helped my Italian get off the ground. It was Marco that made me think about my dreams and what I really wanted in my life—according to how God made me—and it was really probably Marco that made me consider that the gifting God gave me would not permanently keep me in the States. (Which, I guess, still remains to be seen.)

I was in Italy a couple of times after that summer, and was always missed each other by moments, it seemed. I never got to hear his English, apparently it was impressive.

It was 3 years ago in May. A car accident. I remember getting the news while I was at work and they sent me home—I was a mess. Frankly, I don’t usually have a problem expressing emotions and I really thought that I had properly grieved this terrible thing. But it sure comes in waves, doesn’t it?

I find it interesting that this car accident at home happened right before I’m about to go back to Italy.

I promised all of this has a point. So here it is, though it’s not a very satisfying one: 

I’m struggling with the reasoning behind the fact that I’m still here and Marco isn’t. Facially, it makes exactly no sense at all. I don't get it.

Furthermore, in yet another moment of rawness (please bear with this vulnerable confession), to be honest a lot of the answers that my faith brings to the situation just feel shallow and cliché at the moment, though I know they’re true.

God is good.

God knows why but He doesn’t always tell us.

God sees the whole picture and we don’t.

The list goes on.

A part of me feels guilty that I’m here—even though I have exactly nothing to do with that fact.

It’s funny how you can know all of the things you’re supposed to in your head but still have a terrible war going on in your heart over these questions of fact. It’s astonishing how the heart is so often a much more difficult conquest than the mind.

I get it. In the sense that I get these things in my head. But I’m not gonna lie, I’ve had a lot of tears and trouble sleeping this week. 

I’ll get there. But I’m not there yet. I don't get it yet. I still hear the sound of the car hitting the ground, the mailboxes, the pole…and I can still see Marco sitting in front of me asking what my dream was for my life someday.

It will be good to be back in Italy. I guess I need to go more than I realized.

Romeward Bound

Last year in April, before I headed down to the Lower 48 for law school, I visited my sister and dear friends in France thinking that I would not be able to head back to Europe before this helluva undertaking called the juris doctorate would be finished. I am incredibly delighted that I was wrong!

This beautiful person and I are bound for Rome together, and I don't know who is more excited. This is Bianca and she and I have swiftly bonded this year over law school and biblical knowledge. We'll be taking 6 credits through a study abroad program at our school over 6 weeks and hopefully managing to become tan and travel a bit as well.

I'll be going to France for a couple of weeks before assuming studies in Rome. We found ridiculously well priced flights yesterday and I'm a little incredulous at how this has come together, but I may or may not have mentioned it already: I'm very excited. I'm brushing up on my Italian and I've been going through old pictures of Italy over and over.

That's all.

The Metro: “Normal”?

Even though I have not in the 7 months so far learned to full on “love” the Metro here in Paris--or public transport for that matter--I’ve come to at least appreciate the importance and fact that the Metro takes considerable part in Parisian culture and daily life. I also have to say that frequenting the rail-like animal (indeed depending on it) has given me different perspectives on a lot, as well as prime people watching. :)

The “Metro” consists of 14 main lines within just the city itself, a couple of shorter off-shoots ("bis" lines) and then the “RER” trains that run in both Paris central and the “banlieues”--the immediate area outside and surrounding Paris proper. Also, there are a few peripheral “trams” that have begun to spring up (which I like because they are above ground) and then some other banlieue trains that have letters that I haven’t figured out yet.... Anyway, all of this ends up looking something like this:



Then, across the Channel, London, England has it’s own counterpart to the Metro known as the “Tube”. (This might seem a random statement, but please bear with):



My point: I particularly enjoy the contrast between the two systems. I find that these two maps are prime examples of A) an Anglophone approach and way of thinking (the camp to which, come to realize, I most decidedly belong) vs. B) the Francophone approach and/or way of thinking. Or the other way around if you so wish. In sum: if Anglophones are a “grid” the Francophones are a “web”.

I find this fascinating. There has been so much about this culture that I has taken me by surprise and I’ve found myself “judging” it in a way, almost immediately. “That’s weird” I’ve thought, so often. It's painful to admit.

I remember saying once, it kind of popping out of my mouth (coming from who-knows-where) that there was “No such thing as 'weird' or 'normal'. Only ‘customary’ and ‘uncustomary’ according to what one is ‘accustomed’ to.” I said this and then thought about it for a long time! I really think this is true.

There have been so many times when I’ve experienced situations or happenings or interactions here across the pond after which I’ve struggled in my "Anglophone" or more precisely American mind to not write off as “weird”. Even though I think it will take a long time to erase the word from my vocabulary, I am beginning to wonder if the word “weird” isn’t often a slightly (or not so slightly) arrogant judgment call. To call something “weird” and i.e.“not normal” is so alarmingly subjective.

I look at these Metro maps and smile. Indeed, both are effective. I’ve experienced and used both of them. I know they both work, and well. In just about every way they behave according to the same principles and both accomplish the same thing--just through completely different approaches and each with their own particular nuances. Both approaches work, they're just different.

I love this these graphics because they put so succinctly something I’ve learned a lot about this year: if I think that something is “weird” it’s probably because it’s different than what I’m used to and outside of either 1) my comfort zone or 2) my realm of experience or 3) my cultural paradigms. I’ve also found that I learn so much more and appreciate my circumstances here and this deep run culture more if I stop and take the time to appreciate how the “weird” thing might just be “different” and “uncustomary” to me instead of just stopping at “weird”. And sometimes I find out I actually prefer the "weird" way. Interesting. :)

This is an approach I want to take home with me. It's not as easy as the former approach. I think it'll be a life-long journey integrating this mentality into life, but it's a good one, methinks. Indeed, the approach I’ll take with me, but I’ll be excited to see my car too. Me and the Metro are OK with each other now, but I love my Subaru. I’m looking forward to sleeping in the back of it out in the woods. :)

Update: May :)

I took a look at my “France” blog yesterday and remarked two things about my last entry: first, that it was over a month ago, and second that it was about some philosophical/emotional parallel about tears and rain. Uh, I remember very well what I felt like when I wrote it, but I decided that maybe it was time to update for both of the above aspects mentioned. My disposition has changed a lot, even in the last week.

For Easter vacation at mid-end of April Jake and Lydia Larson were here in Paris for a few days (we had a BLAST) and Abby joined up with us and then she and I took off to Italy and Greece for a 10 day cruise. Being over here in Europe has truly afforded me some really cool opportunities to see the continent, and I feel that I’ve been able to take decent advantage of that. I love that part so much. I made sure to post pictures of all of said adventures, though there are many of them--I ended up taking about 800 pictures in two weeks! I’m LOVING my new camera and figuring it out. :) Here are just a few:











Also, the cruise was apparently just what I needed as far as rest. I slept so much. I have never been one to nap, and I napped every day, slept in every day....apparently I was more exhausted that I thought. As a result, in coming back to Paris, I have felt so much better physically, and even mentally! I say mentally, because another thing I’ve noticed coming back to Paris this time, is that my French has very much improved. It has been coming to my mind and tongue so much easier and I’m feeling, really, really rewarded by that. (After all, that was what this whole experience was supposed to be about in the first place!) I had a French friend compliment me the other day, saying I had almost “no more accent”. This was an overstatement, but still made my week, even if she exaggerated. :) Anyway, I was trying to imagine why all of the sudden something had clicked, and I think that, once again, it was just a matter of rest. Wow, I’ll never understate the power of “repos” again!

I’m back to school and I’m back to nannying, but one thing that has changed at home is that the woman in whose home I reside has left for the summer. She left on Saturday. I’ve mentioned her before and have probably characterized her as a little eccentric and quite particular. Overall, something that I’ve learned about French culture is that it is not particularly encouraging and verbally affirmative--but I didn’t realize how much of a presence she was for me until she left. Until now, home has been more stressful than I was aware because I was rather living on tiptoes and in fear of getting scolded by her. Now I can use the oven and microwave to my heart’s content and do as much laundry as I desire and even leave my computer plugged into the wall when I’m gone. This dynamic too, surprisingly, has added to my state of feeling a lit bit more relaxed and rested. Amazing. It’s just me and Nicolas now, and we get along great. :)

Also, I think I’ve mentioned it before but, if I didn’t already know that I’m a relationally oriented individual, this experience has confirmed it. The hardest part of this experience is being so far away at such a time difference from everyone I love. What’s really cool about these last couple of months here, is that I’m now beginning to enjoy some relationships that it’s taken a bit to build and it just makes me smile to look at my calendar and see it fill up with my old friends that are coming and my new friend’s incredibly kind and increasingly ubiquitous invitations. I’m loving this stage. And this home stretch is going to be busy. In a good way.

On Sunday I spent a really wonderful day with a friend from school and her family. She and her husband had just gotten back from New York City over Easter break and surprised me by bringing out these treats, which I hadn’t seen in a long time! :D


Also, here are some pics that me and the kids that I babysit took one day when we were goofing off with my computer. They make me smile.




Oh yeah! One more thing. Today I got a new pair of shoes. And it feels really good to be smiling. Here’s to May!

To My Sister

Sometimes in Paris it’s a relief when it rains.

Spring often means a tempestuously emotional season for the “Sacré Bleu” above. C’est vrai. Even in Paris.

The clouds move in and out, here and away with such swift agility that it takes but a veritable blink of an eye to witness a change in immediate climate. Morning to afternoon to evening a springtime day may bear witness to an entire--though unique all the same--gamut of manifest and seasonal “emotion”.

Sometimes it seems just a relief when the sky lets down after a duration of weighty and cloudy disposition. As if he were trying so hard to hold it back, but in the end some kind of aquatic catharsis was due him as well.

“To furnish symbols for spiritual experiences may be one of the functions of the mineral and vegetable worlds” (C.S. Lewis The Problem of Pain) Perhaps that big blue wonder covering us takes part in that metaphor too. I tend to think so.

This remembered, I can gaze upward in empathy at the rain, rather than dread. An unspoken understanding between my own journey and the season that written in they sky during the Spring--indeed a resounding and empathetic nod might be all to express. I do understand, and he me. "I know how you feel."

Today, Paris, I begrudge not--rather appreciate your light deluge. Cry on, friend, I need it too sometimes....

To Shelli, often the catcher of my tears. This came to me today. :)

Soul Boxes

Soul boxes. That’s the sum of us. Our corporeal dimension anyway....We’re souls held captive by the bodies that surround them.

Lately, Michelangelo’s renowned "The Captive Slave” which and whom I find utterly riveting has been on my mind. It itself is not here in Paris, however his accompaniments, the other Captive Slaves, are actually here at the Louvre:



Michelangelo’s approach to “sculpting”--his preferred medium of expressing the art within himself--was that he was merely the vessel and means by which the sculpture inside the marble with which he worked with was to be released and revealed. “The Captive Slave” was one of his favorites and one with which he most identified as he felt too that he was a soul stuck inside his body. He empathized with the captive slave that wanted to be released from the marble case that housed him....

The sculpture is considered to be unfinished. But then, aren’t we all? Michelangelo knew he was a Soul encased. A Soul inside a Box. It’s easy for me to lose perspective and sight of this principle.

This "Soul Box" comes to mind when, out amongst the busy and ever milling public in Paris I find myself once again and occasionally squeezing my eyes shut for an instant trying to maintain perspective on the depth--or shall I say extent--of human interaction going on around me. I suppose there isn’t always a lot of “depth” going on, but certainly a lot of extent. It’s hard not to become calloused to it. It takes effort. People are infinitely more that what we see of them. I see the cover, a case, but the housed and intangible entity inside is what is most beautiful and relevant.

I think this has been the most challenging part for me, living in a true “city” (besides the inordinate amount of NOISE). And Paris is a city of cities to be sure....She boasts of--for whatever duration of time, each and every one--circa 5,000,000 persons, Soul Boxes in a moment.

I’m not used to that, so I still feel like a little girl sometimes, staring around me wide-eyed at all there is to see and the juxtaposition of just about everything around me. It’s fascinating, but exhausting too. Yet another juxtaposition to be noted. But however far my mind may wander exploring the "nouveauté" around me, I come back to Michelangelo. There's something to that slave wanting ever since his Renaissance origin to come out of that marble, to which we can all perhaps relate. And I don't ever want to lose sight of the priority that the intangible has over what is seen in the arena of humanity. For we are not but the sum of our corporeal makeup. We are so much more.

It’s beautiful, powerful, oppressive and invigorating all at once. Depending on what mood I’m in I guess....

Holland

In December, before my trek home to Oregon for weddings and holidays my friend Kellie came to visit me in Paris for an all too short weekend from Amsterdam, where she’s working/living as a nanny.

Last weekend, it was my turn to repay her the visit. :)

On Friday afternoon I hopped on a train again and bypassed Belgium to arrive at Amsterdam Centraal Station...

...to then get on another train to Hilversum, Holland, the lovely suburb where Kellie abides and looks after 2 little Dutch boys of 8 and 4 years old. Her host family was incredibly welcoming and warm, and very kind to let me crash the futon in Kellie’s adorable loft of a bedroom for the weekend.

Friday evening we had the privilege of dining with the boys’ parents and passed the evening comparing notes on Dutch, American and French cultures. It was fascinating and Kellie’s African soup was wonderful to boot!

The next morning we braved the cold but clear weather and headed to Amsterdam itself to do all sorts of tourist things. First we navigated a couple of downtown markets, purchasing bread and cheese to supplement leftover soup:





And admired the canals and bicycles, both of which quintessentially Dutch:




And then ate Dutch Apple Pie at Cafe Winkel, which is supposed to be the best in Amsterdam. It was packed, but the taste certainly delivered. We ate it standing and scrunched up in the corner against other customer’s coats and scarves. And, true to Traci form I was not successful in avoiding dropping a few ungraceful morsels on the floor of the establishment....so me, unfortunately. :(


Next, as I was very anxious to do so, we visited the long-awaited Van Gogh Museum--which lived up to every expectation and was absolutely wonderful, and perfectly informative.

We headed home fairly early that evening as Kellie in particular was FREEZING and we dined...

...and retired early to get up and repeat our regime the next day. :) This time we decided to hit up the museum first, taking the route through the Bloommarkt and Dam Square to see the city centre properly and then finally the Rijksmuseum--

--wherein is on display many Northern Renaissance paintings and other Dutch treasures. I do love museums.... *nerdy sigh*

After immersing ourselves in the rather moralistically didactic Dutch Renaissance (yet another nerdy *snicker*) I had an intense thirst that could only be sated by a quality brew and we ended up spending a few hours over a couple of drinks at a lovely pub that a apparently many ex-pats of Holland tend to frequent. The libation and conversation was not to be surpassed. I love you, Kellie Marie Jones. :)

On the way back, we admired the city at night, the lights reflecting off the watery canals:

We had every intention of watching a French film that evening, one that we vowed in Paris that we’d watch together, but we were both tired girls and fell asleep pretty much at the beginning of it! Desolée, Améle Poulain!

The next morning, as the boys did not have school, we all went for a bicycle tour of the neighborhood. I loved it, but unfortunately Mr. 4 years old was not as keen on it and we turned around. We’d planned on finding a windmill, but it will have to wait for next time! That afternoon I left Kellie in Hilversum, after a little bit of unplanned sale shopping and headed back to Paris. Funny how just 4 hours later I was back in my bedroom in France, two completely different worlds--even so geographically close. It was a wonderful weekend and wonderful company.

Hopefully Kellie will soon be coming back to Paris to visit again...je l’attend avec impatience.... :)