The Road Before the Road

There’s a saying on the Camino, “the road doesn’t really start until you get home”. I’ll be getting ready for my Camino in these next four months. Yet somehow, these past couple years have felt as though I’ve been walking on soles too thin for my feet and I’ve been feeling the sharpness of every stone I have stepped on. I am left to question, if the road before El Camino has worn me down so, what will the road after bring?

Today, January 1, 2019, I feel gratitude for the many roads it has taken for me to be here.

On a Wednesday months ago, I found myself lecturing my mom about life. The irony. I was telling her that life is not fixed. We carry this cross thinking that the life we were “given” is as good as it’s going to get. She told me it was fate and that, that was how it was supposed to be. My objection was that life is nothing but freewill. I agree that we attract certain situations into our lives to learn from them, but just as you wouldn’t walk into a house and bring the door in with you, they are not meant to be folded up neatly and stuffed into an already heavy backpack of life lessons and experiences. This behavior only promotes us to go in circles and cry out, “this is my cross to bear”.  Life is made up of opportunity costs. We may think certain things are not meant for us, that there is a divine being that will make everything just right and then we will know. We believe that the heavens will part, and a beam of white light will shine upon us and drench us with enlightenment. As I was telling her this, I realized that I was a hypocrite. This whole time I had been judging someone for not taking an opportunity, yet that same opportunity was sitting across from me, starring me dead in the eye with a wicked smile asking, “so what are YOU going to do?”

Impulsively and without a moment of rational thinking I told her I would go to San Miguel de Allende and take this person’s place in a retreat meant to heal past traumas. I booked my flight that night and the next day I was driving to Denver where I’d catch my flight the next morning. It only dawned on me as I was getting onto the plane, still half asleep, that I was traveling by myself. The rush of adrenaline had since passed, and I found myself sitting there strapped onto a metal chair that would soon go up thousands of feet into the air and deposit me in a foreign land without caring if someone was there waiting for me. How easy I thought, it would be to just disappear. Panic began to set in. What if someone realized I was alone? Deep breathes muted my inner drama and I made a quick prayer, something I had not done since I was a child. Angelito de mi guardia, de mi dulce compañía, no me desampares ni de noche ni de día… I asked for guidance and company.

I landed in Leon and took a bus to San Miguel. Years ago I had read about the little mountain town that was known as the heart of Mexico, I declared those many years ago that one day I would get to visit San Miguel. This trip was my second time there. I walked the streets pretending to know where I was going, scrambling through memories from the previous year, reading street names as if I’d recognize them. I came to the center of town and stood before La Parroquia de San Miguel Arcángel. That was my pin point, but where to go from there? I didn’t have service, so I couldn’t get ahold of the people that were organizing the retreat, I went into a shop and a woman helped me find a place to eat and shared the Wi-Fi password. I felt so useless without my phone, I had become so dependent on the little device in my hand that asking people for directions nearly threw me into an anxiety attack.

After dinner, I managed to get a cab heading to my final destination, the problem was, I wasn’t sure where that was. The driver left me at the entrance of a town in front of a hotel that wasn’t mine. I was given directions by a woman who worked there, she said the place I was looking for was no more than four blocks away. A lie. I walked the cobblestone streets weaving from lamp post to lamp post like a moth looking for light. I had to cross underneath a bridge that made me think of my mom. She used to say, “parece boca de lobo,” it’s as dark as a wolf's mouth. I was Little Red Riding Hood on my first journey through the dead of night. I saw a dog who seemed uncertain, I whistled and called it over to me, it wagged its tail and licked my hand. A pair of headlights illuminated the blackness. I could only see a glimmering smile before I saw that it belonged the woman driving the small truck. She whistled loud and with her arm sticking out the window, she waved and the dog chased after her. Two little red lights in the distance and the dark was back.

I made it into town, I was looking for El Santuario de Atotonilco, but someone had said something about Los Silos. I walked into a ghost town. It looked uninhabited, as if people had gathered their things in a hurry and scurried into their homes. There it was, El Santuario, gloriously white, standing in its ruins. My chest felt like it was caving in, was this a scam? I followed the road past the sanctuary and saw a taco stand with a single light bulb hanging from a wire as a heavyset woman and two men cooked for the empty streets as if it were rush hour. I asked them if I was in the right place, they said the only place that held retreats was in the sanctuary, but if I was looking for Los Silos, I just needed to walk a few more meters. My brain tried to convert miles into meters to no avail. I walked in the direction they had pointed me to, I came across another dog, she licked my hand too. My body eased in her company, I kept walking, all the houses were guarded like fortresses. Everything began to look the same, so I turned back not knowing where I was going.

I approached a generation of women. Grandmother, mother, daughters and I asked them for help but they sent me back to where I had come from. I stood in front of the sanctuary looking at it as if it were the answer. There was nothing around me. I saw a payphone and thought I’d make a call only to remember I didn’t know how to use it. I walked around aimlessly feeling unwelcome, like every closed door was a personal response to my presence. I walked around the sanctuary but jolted myself to a stop realizing that I had not seen night as dark as what I would be walking into. I walked away and stood in the middle of the road trying to decide where to go. Would I be spending the night on the steps of this church? Suddenly as if the sky had answered my desperate call I heard signing, a choir coming from behind the white walls. The only way to the angelic voices was going through the blackness that had sent me whimpering just moments ago. A cat crossed the road and stood on top of a thin trail looking back at me, I followed it with a naive assurance that I’d be safe.

Past the bushes it led me through, I saw a giant metal gate with a flood of warm light spilling through the bottom slit. I knocked on the door and an old man slid a small metal window that uncovered only his eyes and forehead. I asked him if he was Don Gabi (the man I was told would help me). This old man was rude and only gave short answers. “Who are you, who are you with?” he’d ask and peer over my shoulder. I told him I was lost and needed help, I asked for a phone, but he wouldn’t help me. “Who are you with?” he demanded yet again. I looked into his eyes, and wondered if this an initiation of sorts. Was it a test? Was there a password I was supposed to know? Irritated, I replied I was alone, I repeated that I was lost and in need of help. He told me I needed to knock on the wooden door of the church and if an old man opened he would help me. He asked me again who I was with, I felt anger rise from the pit of my stomach up my throat. “No one!” I half yelled, “I wouldn’t be so sure,” said the old man looking past me. My shoulders contracted, and my spine curved like that of the cat I had followed. Was someone behind me?  I quickly turned around and shone the light of my phone around me. He still wasn’t convinced I was alone, and like a smack to the face I remembered… Angelito de mi guardia, de mi dulce compañía, no me desampares ni de noche ni de día. Guide me day and night. The old man was right, I wasn’t alone. Whether I truly believed in guardian angels or not I felt less afraid of the dark.

Crest fallen, I walked back down the same road and stood before the white church. What the hell was I supposed to learn from this? I looked to the sky and cursed it and a deep sob emerged from within my bones. I felt like a child, my feet were blistered from walking the uneven ground, my back ached from the weight of the backpack. I began to knock on every door like a refugee seeking asylum. The one thing I’ve feared the most throughout my life is being left alone, yet there I was, in a world that didn’t recognize me. I remembered the conversation between Alice and the Cheshire Cat, when she asked him which way she should go, and his simple response, “If you don't know where you're going, any road'll take you there."

Whether I’d like to admit it or not, I am responsible and aware that every circumstance in my life has been a manifestation of what I have asked for, whether I perceive it to be good or bad, whether I’ve been conscious of it or not. I was found that night by a man with a beautiful birthmark that took a little less than half his face. His eyes, full of worry reminded me of my dad. His wife stalled and they stayed with me until I figured out where to go. The old man did open the wooden door of the church but slammed it back shut as soon as he opened it. That weekend I ripped my heart open and got to see the shards and broken pieces that I had tried for so many years to protect. I felt grateful for kind strangers, paved roads and hot showers.