From comfortable distanc.., p.41
From Comfortable Distances, page 41
It seemed to Tess that she had a lot to think about: the prospect of Neal leaving, becoming a yoga teacher, whether or not she wanted to spend the rest of her days as a realtor, and now, did she want to sell her childhood home? She wished for a moment that someone could tell her what she was supposed to do regarding everything.
“Sure,” Tess said. “Something to think about.”
“I haven’t upset you, have I, Tess?” Luke said.
“No, not at all. I’ll think about it.”
“That’s all I can ask for,” Luke said. “You take care, Tess. Namaste.”
“Namaste,” she said.
The moment she hung up there was a knock at her door and then the door opened and Michael was in her doorway.
“You look like you saw a ghost,” he said.
“Usually people wait for a ‘come in’ before they open a door,” she said.
“Yeah, well I’m not ‘people.’”
Tess swiveled her chair around to face the window and then back to face her desk again. Michael made himself comfortable in the plush leather reclining chair off to the side of her desk, nestling his head in the headrest. Tess thought of it as her counseling chair—no clients ever sat in it—it was generally reserved for agents having a rough day or for Tess when she wanted to get away from herself. She couldn’t remember Michael ever sitting there. He generally sat in the chair across from her and put his feet up on her desk, which tended to remind her of the way he used to put his feet up on her living room coffee table and how he didn’t see anything gross about it. Once he had told her that his feet, which she now found offensive, were the same feet that were in bed with her each night beside her own feet.
“Isn’t life supposed to get dull at some point?” Tess said.
“The mother threatening you again?” Michael asked.
“An old friend from Woodstock. He wanted to know if I plan to sell my mother’s home.”
“What’d you tell him?” Michael said.
“That I hadn’t thought it through yet,” Tess said.
“You know what I think?” Michael said.
“What?” Tess said.
“I was expecting you to say you didn’t care what I thought,” Michael said.
“What do you think, Michael?” Tess said.
“You sell it. Those people are attached to that house in a way that’s a bit nutty if you ask me, but you and I know that in this business, it takes all kinds. People love houses. People hate houses. But that house, those folks up there love that house. That was pretty clear to me when we were up there for the funeral.”
“What if I want to keep it?” Tess said.
“As a souvenir of your life?” Michael said.
“To live in,” Tess said.
“Tess, you living in Woodstock is like…it’s like me joining the Peace Corps.”
Tess laughed and bowed her head down to her chest so that her curls sprung forward. Michael’s idea of charity was writing a check.
“Exactly. Laughable,” Michael said.
“People change their lives all the time, Michael. You never know. I could become a yoga teacher; invite people into the house to meditate in the mornings. Teach some yoga classes.”
“You’re scaring me, Tess.”
She laughed again. “I’m going to hold onto it for now. My mother’s crew is not going anywhere and I don’t need the money,” she said.
“They could be in there using it, keeping the spirit of your mother alive,” Michael said.
“The spirit of my mother is alive of its own free will for your information and your desire for me to sell that house is enough reason for me to keep it for now,” she said. “And I know what you’re thinking—that I’m a piece of work—but don’t you dare say it,” she said.
“I was actually coming in to tell you that I’m planning to go out to San Francisco to visit my step-son,” Michael said.
“Really?” she said, massaging her temple. “Let me guess, you’re joining him out there to devise a plot to separate the monk and me?” Tess said.
“You’re a real sleuth, Tessy. Tell you a way to foil our plan.”
“I’m on the edge of my seat,” Tess said.
“Join me, us,” Michael said.
“Michael, I think I have a bit too much going on for a holiday at the moment.”
“He’s your son. It’s a plane ride away,” he said.
Tess bit her bottom lip and took him in. She was too tired to play his games.
“You’ve gone to see Prakash, mmm….never in the past few years. What’s this all about?” Tess said.
Lynn buzzed in over the intercom just then: “Prakash called, wants you to call him back.” “Thanks,” Tess said.
“Shall I ring him back so that he can fill me in?” Tess said.
“Prakash wants us to partner with him on a new property he’s designing. Part residential, some office buildings. He’d like Best to take on the sales and rental aspect of it—get an agent onsite in San Fran. I told him I’d take a look. Of course we’d like you to be there, too.”
“One big, happy family,” Tess said. She smiled. “You go and tell me all about it. Send pictures. As my trusted adviser, I’ll take your word for it.”
“We could go over the weekend, take in some sights, have some fun?” Michael said.
“I’m busy with teacher training. Only a few weeks to go,” Tess said.
“Right. How could I forget,” Michael said.
“Be sure to let him know I’m still planning on visiting him around Christmas time,” Tess said.
“I take it I’m dismissed,” Michael said.
Tess’s eyes followed him to the door. He about faced once he reached it. “Tess,” he said.
“Michael?”
“Please don’t move to Woodstock. Really. I like having you here.”
“I’m certainly not going anywhere today,” she said, her eyes holding Michael’s for a moment longer than was comfortable. She knew that he was waiting for her to say something more definite to him. Nothing was definite, though. He nodded and closed the door behind him.
Tess swiveled to face the window again. Outside, the birds continued to coast—they made it look so easy to be free, to float, to move on, away. They certainly didn’t seem worried about where to live, what to do next. There were moments, like now, when the not knowing was torturous to Tess. Only no, that wasn’t true, it wasn’t torturous. She smiled at her melodramatic mind. She just wished she knew what the future held although she knew that the wish was in vain. For that’s what living was, the not knowing, the not being sure what was next. She wondered what her life would be like if she could once and for all let go, live, coast with the birds in the sky. Her intercom was buzzing but she didn’t have the strength to turn around.
She wondered if her life was an act of free will, or if her course was already predetermined and someone up above was laughing at her struggling, trying in vain to figure it all out. Her mother had often spoken of “getting into the flow of one’s life” as if it was a lane on the highway that one could move into. Her mother believed that if you were living, there was no need to worry or wonder about what would come next as life was unfolding one moment at a time. It wasn’t that Tess wanted to preoccupy herself with what to do next in her life; it was that she didn’t know how to let go. After a lifetime of clinging, of trying to create her outcomes, control them, she didn’t know how to go with the flow. She believed that with a few words, her mother would help Tess to make sense of everything right now. Loss, regardless of what the spiritual said, was tangible. But maybe, just maybe, she didn’t need anyone to guide her. Maybe it was about listening to herself. Maybe she had all the answers to the questions she faced and to all that lie ahead, if she tapped into Tess.
In Your Own Garden
From Here to There: May 1980—Getting There
The flight from JFK Airport to Minneapolis that May was uneventful. I was still caught up in college graduation and the fact that I wouldn’t be going back in the fall, that classes were over, exams all past. I wasn’t sure what I had learned those four years as a math major. How to solve equations and manipulate numbers, I suppose. So while I wasn’t sure about my past at that point, I did feel strongly that my vocation was to devote my life to God. That last year of college the feeling, the knowing, as I believed it, was intensified, until I knew that I would act on it. I wasn’t afraid to be on my way. After landing in Minnesota, there was the flight to Saskatoon, Canada. I remember becoming a bit uneasy boarding that flight as mostly fathers and sons were in line. They all carried packed up rifles and fishing gear. I began to feel dispirited—why wasn’t my father with me? How was it that we never did father and son things? I thought about calling him then and there and asking him if we could spend more time together but then I realized that didn’t fit in to the life I was discerning. Amongst all those fathers and sons, I wondered if my father viewed me as a failure if I didn’t take a wife, didn’t have children—if he would think me unmanly. My stern, distant father who believed in hard work, in discipline. I wondered if I were an embarrassment to him, and if he would ever embrace those terms, admit that truth to himself, or go on resenting me, disapproving of me, silently.
It was a small plane, a jet, with no more than 90 or so seats. I sat in a window seat and during the flight, I didn’t think. I focused on the world outside the window: fields, dry and parched; acres and acres of fields that spanned in every direction. I remember that I didn’t want the plane to land, and then it did just that, and there I was, in Canada, walking off the plane, the men and boys around me laughing and carrying on. There was the urge to call my father again, perhaps tell him that I’d changed my mind—that I wasn’t going to devote my life to religion after all. I was desperate for him to love me, accept me, only if I did make that call, I’d be lying to myself and I believed back then that living a lie was a harsher fate than feeling unloved. Besides, I believed that God was calling me and in the end, I feared disappointing him more than I feared disappointing my father, my own flesh and blood.
I claimed my luggage and made my way to customs, feeling isolated and afraid—it was my first time in a foreign county. The customs officer detained me. He didn’t buy my story about going to the monastery, said he’d never heard of some monastery out in Muenster. Asked me why I was really there and then when he opened up my bag and saw all my books and journals, my Bible all marked up with my notes, I could see he was starting to wonder if maybe I wasn’t telling the truth. It was then that another customs officer gave him a look, pushed him aside, stamped my passport and waved me on. I guess I had been holding my breath, because when I walked, I felt dizzy and weak. I suppose that a part of me had wanted them to hold me back, to ask me to return to Minnesota where I’d get a flight back to New York.
None of the taxi drivers at the airport knew where Muenster was, let alone the monastery. There was a woman taxi driver—I guess she sensed that I was near tears because she approached me and asked me where I was going and when I told her St. Peter’s Abbey in Muenster, she nodded and told me to get in her car. It wasn’t until we were driving away from the airport that she told me she didn’t know where the monastery was, but that Muenster was about two hours away. She asked me why I was going to the monastery and I told her that I was discerning taking monastic vows and she nodded at me, and then when we reached a stop sign, she turned to look back at me and said, “You are becoming a priest,” with a slight smile on her face. Her accent was thick and deep, so that her words slurred a bit. I didn’t bother to tell her that I was considering becoming a brother, which was different than a priest, far less learned, and that becoming a priest was something that I would consider later. She, Dora, seemed content to think of me as a priest and I was content to watch her wispy chestnut-brown shoulder length hair blow in the wind and the way she focused on the road, her eyes squinting as if it was all too much to take in. When we reached a traffic light, she studied me in the rearview mirror with her black eyes, and asked if it was okay if she stopped to pick up her husband—he was home as it was his day off—so that he could drive with us as she wasn’t a hundred percent sure of the way. That made me feel a bit uncomfortable—my imagination was already on overdrive and I envisioned the two of them kidnapping me or something of the sort. Things like that happened in foreign countries.
Dora was in her house for about five minutes when she emerged with a stocky, short, balding man, who made his way into the driver’s seat. He, Alex, didn’t say much at first although he smiled at me solemnly in the rear view mirror at times, so that I couldn’t tell if he felt sorry for me going off to a monastery or if he felt sorry for himself that he had to drive so far on his day off. During the ride across barren, deserted roads, the dry, penetrating heat rushing in through the open windows, Dora told me about her life in Romania and her two children. Alex warmed up to me during the ride and told me about how they had come to Canada and how they had managed to make a life for themselves. Endless miles of sun-parched land loomed out the window. It seemed absurd to me that people in Brooklyn lived so close together, practically on top of one another, while all these miles of desolate land existed. There came a point in the journey as I listened quietly to Alex and Dora going on about their families—both in Romania and the one they had in Canada— that I felt a change of heart. I wanted to ask Alex and Dora to take me back home with them, let me stay with them for a few days, meet their children, give secular life another try. I craved space and time away from God, from my family, from myself. I wanted to be amidst these people, who I believed were sent to save me from a mistake I was about to make.
When we pulled off of a deserted road into the monastery grounds, Dora turned to me, smiling. We were there, St. Peter’s Abbey. The road leading in was about half a mile long and the grounds were covered with burnt grass and weeds that were four-feet high. It seemed deserted and I began to question if we were headed in the right direction. We crossed over railroad tracks and then there was the entrance—a gravel drive with a solid oak tree that had a tinny St. Peter’s Abbey plaque nailed to it. It felt as if we were riding horseback as the car maneuvered its way on the gravel, following the signs to the main chapel. Dora was searching in her bag, facing me still, and then handed me a card with her phone number and Alex’s work phone number in case I needed to reach them and taking it from her, I felt calmer. There was a way out if I needed it.
Alex was taking my bag from the trunk and then I was out of the car, my body damp and sticky beneath my khakis and button down, so that my pants stuck to the back of my knees. The ride had taken a little less than two hours. The sun was still burning strong. The sky was a vibrant periwinkle blue and then a peaceful breeze swept by so that I felt some relief. I heard the birds chirping and the hum of the crickets—Dora had told me it was crickets—and all around, there were tall, thick Evergreens. The prairie, the first I had ever been on, was flat and seemed to go on forever. It was in those moments of taking it all in that I knew it was going to be fine. I saw the Abbey’s college in the distance, and that made me feel better, too, as my parents thought that teaching at the college on the grounds would at least make my four years of college studies worthwhile. There was also a press building and a farm and a sign for a gym with an arrow pointing in the distance. After only a few moments standing on the grounds, I began to imagine starting a life there.
Father Demitrius, the guest master, thanked Dora and Alex for driving me, asked them if they wouldn’t come in for something to drink or eat, but they assured Father Demitrius that they had a long ride back and should leave before it grew dark. Together, we waved them off. Following Father Demetrius into the building in his flowing brown robe, I wondered if he was hot and if it was difficult for him to move around in his garb. He was tall, over six feet, slightly overweight and mostly bald and I smiled when I saw that he was wearing sandals. There was something sad to his movements, slow, methodical, and yet his presence was warm and inviting—I felt safe with him immediately. Father Demetrius showed me around the grounds a bit before he left me at my room. I was to stay in the guest quarters while I was discerning my interest. My room was a white-walled square with white and black speckled linoleum tiles that were reminiscent of the floor of a dentist’s office. There was a window with white tinny blinds through which the sun beamed, casting a shadow on the floor and walls, and above the window was a cross. The cot was dead center of the room, and beside it was a small desk with a lamp on it and a Bible off to the left. There was a closet with hangers and a spare blanket folded up on the top shelf—he told me that it grew surprisingly cool at night. Then he opened another door, which exposed a bathroom with a shower —I hadn’t expected that and was pleased. My quarters reminded me of a hospital room with its disinfectant smell and its cold, bare feel. Down the hall was a kitchen and a common area where he told me guests often sat to read and talk amongst themselves. I asked him if there were many guests and learned that there were a few nuns on retreat from other parts of Canada and a few like me, discerning their monastic interest and some lay folks who were there taking a break from life. He left it at that and then excused himself. He promised that he would give me a tour of the preserves in the basement and the apiary and potato farm in the next few days, and that I should make myself at home in my surroundings for the time being, and that he would see me in the chapel when the church bells rang.
That first night, after supper with the other guests, during which we all sat quietly as we ate the salad and soup that was given to us—I had learned that the heartiest meal of the day was eaten at lunch time—I went for a walk with the guests around the five-mile trail that bordered the monastery grounds. It was my first real experience of the prairie, in which objects appeared much closer than they were. There were a few times during the walk when I was sure the massive church bells adorning the chapel were just a few feet away, only to realize that they were miles beyond. None of us said much. For me, there didn’t seem to be anything to say once I was there. When we returned to the grounds, the church bells began to ring and we made our way in to Vespers.
