Did I Mention I Studied Abroad Yet?
Surprise! I’m back! And in the time I’ve been gone, I survived a pandemic, didn’t edit my manuscript, and enrolled in a graduate level creative writing certificate program.
The program has been great for me because a) I need the credits to renew my teaching license and b) it is the perfect incentive to write even when I’m exhausted because grades are probably too important to me. Not only did it lead to the start of a new novel that I am very excited about, but it also led to the following piece, which, while it isn’t totally about writing, is about creating adventures. And isn’t writing just creating adventures with words?
Upon first meeting my friends from my semester in Wales, my husband remarked that we are a walking improv troupe–not because we are particularly funny, but because we live and die by the “yes, and” rule.
No idea too crazy, no suggestion too ridiculous, no parody too outlandish. Yes, we would compose and choreograph a song entitled “Alone in a Train Car in Rome,” when we were–you guessed it–alone in a train car in Rome. Yes, we would stage and document scenes of our corpses in a particularly creepy London hostel. Yes, we would have an all out sword fight in a Welsh living history museum after hearing that there may have been a battle there once. And yes, we would go to the apartment of the mysterious Greek hostel owner for a steak and egg breakfast after spending half the night hearing his life story.
One weekend, we had the bright idea to skip our Friday classes and catch a last minute flight to Ireland, where we were determined to find the beautiful landscapes from that late 2000s movie, P.S. I Love You. After walking for a good two miles with no Gerard Butler in sight, we determined that, as usual, we were lost. I was busy predicting everyone’s future love lives, but hunger and exhaustion were setting in and my predictions were turning a little dark–Christine’s future husband was going to be the type of guy who wears socks with his Birkenstocks.
We were leaving “yes, and” territory and rapidly approaching “maybe, but.”
After a few more labored yards, we turned and saw shiny black and white coach bus in the distance. Someone, who we couldn’t quite make out yet, was washing the bus, and the sunlight was hitting the water in just the right way to cast the graceful arch of a rainbow. As we approached, the figure holding the hose came into sight.
It was a man. A short man. At the end of a rainbow. In Ireland.
Now, you can think what you want, but what I’ll tell you is this–this small rainbow-powered man in Ireland offered to take us on a free tour of the local area and dropped us off at what he considered a little-known treasure of Ireland: the village of Howth.
It was in Howth that we, revived from our tour, went on a spontaneous hike to find a cairn, and as we hiked, I lost all of the buttons on my coat. And yet, at the top of the hill, the Irish countryside laid out before us, I realized that I hadn’t actually lost any of my buttons. I’m not exactly sure what happened–whether I had somehow missed them as I tried to button my coat or whether they had truly been lost and returned by yet another bout of Irish magic.
If this was fiction, I would say the author had included this moment as a metaphor for my adventures. I was often lost–from the moment I landed and realized I had no food or even toilet paper, which led to a whole lot of wandering around the neighborhood in desperate search of anything, to walking into the wrong flat because Welsh elevator numbers are confusing, to walking too far and managing to leave the ruins of Pompeii and end up in someone’s farm, to our trek through Ireland. But when you’re lost with the “yes, and” crowd, being lost often leads to finding. A perfect apple, a new friend, a magical town, a full set of purple buttons.
The purple coat, photographed by my good friend and fellow improv-er, Mr. Steven Difbia.