Tag: adventure
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God vs. the color blue
I really miss travelling. It’s been a year since I’ve been anywhere international and also since I stepped foot on an air plane. In a year of so many deaths, both big and small, I am keenly aware that this is a lesser suffering. But still. I’ve started going through journals, pulling out small jewels…
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Hamsa, or The Time I Almost Got Blown Up By A Possible Terrorist
Hilde and I took a train back to Madrid from Italy that summer. We had just walked five hundred miles across northern Spain as peregrinas on the pilgrim trail of Santiago de Compostela with many of our siblings and several friends and decided to treat ourselves to a week of recuperation on the beaches of…
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Third Person Love
Self-care can become a whole new world (cue Aladdin, please) when we think of ourselves in the third person. As in “I’ll bet Naomi would really love it if someone washed this three-week pile-up of dishes here in the sink for her.” Invariably, I’m willing to do an act of loving service for a friend…
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Three Shots of Rum
Other than having a clever name, I wasn’t quite sure how or when I’d begin this story. I didn’t know if I’d have anything interesting to say until we got up into the hills and started seeing 19 year old moms with 5 kids already, dads with machete wounds and small brown children with bellies…
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On Turning 38
One week before my 38th birthday, I came home from my 38th international trip. I wanted it to mean something important. Two days before, I’d been sitting after a breakfast of mie goreng – Balinese fried rice, watching fitful, dirty morning waves on the Indian Ocean under a thick and heavy sky, annoyed that my…
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Love in the Time of Ceramics
Najib was our waiter at the dingy, ill-lit shawarma place right inside the New Gate of Old City Jerusalem. He arrived at our table with twinkly light brown eyes, curly hair pulled into a pony tail at the nape of his neck and a tattoo peeking out from under his short-sleeve shirt. When we asked…
Behind the Blue Door 