Coping with Worry from Afar

By Lillie
Catch more of her adventures at http://lmarshallworld.blogspot.com

I am writing this on the three hour ferry ride from Ko Tao to Chumpon so I don't throw up.
"Did you say something to upset my girlfriend, man?" asked the red-cheeked Brit, leaning dangerously into Daniel's face. "You looking to fight?"
"IS-RAY-ELLL!!" hollered Daniel, throwing his dreadlocked head back. All of a sudden, thirty bare-chested Israeli former soldiers surrounded him, arms crossed in bodyguard stance.
The shaking Brit extended his hand tremulously. "Sorry, mate. Have a good night."
Daniel was recounting this story from last night to me as we sat with Dov on his bungalow porch. The rain smashed down behind our drying laundry, the smell of the cheap detergent mixing with the muddy dogs and ocean. "This shows you," Daniel declared, "How Israelis will always be there for each other. The army trains us to protect each other, and we always will." He gestured towards his golden-skinned, tattooed friend to his side. "I didn't even know this man, but when I got shot in Gaza during a patrol, Dov didn't think twice; he lifted my heavy body over his shoulder and dragged me all the way to safety. I owe him my life."
"No problem," said Dov, grinning angelically. "Now give me one of your cigarettes."

I was feeling awfully glum the past few days, and was thankful as heck for the kindness of my ancestral people this night. Ko Tao, paradise that it is, turns out to be Couple Zone during low season, and I have a bit of a hard spot (is that the opposite of soft spot?) for Couple Zones. Basically, from Wednesday to Thursday I didn't talk to a single soul, barring the masseuse who gave me the most lovely first Thai Massage of my life possible, the woman who sold me Henry Miller's freaking fantastic "Tropic of Cancer", and two or three waitresses. I need my alone time, hardcore, but after two days, you want a chat.
On top of this, I had managed to freak out several loved ones at home with an article I published about wandering the Thai jungle. Let this be known loud and clear: I exaggerate to high heaven, and I am-- I promise-- smart, even including Jungle Smart smart. There was TRULY no need for my dearies to fret, but they did. Being an extremely empathetic person, the long-distance worry directed my way was making me feel sick to my stomach, and I cradled my Diet Coke like a stuffed animal as I looked up at my Israeli support system. "I just feel so sad that I made my Mother worry," I mumbled. "I'm fine, and I am taking care of myself, and I want her to be fine, too!"

Dov took a puff of his cigarette. "I don't know what to tell you about that, because my Mother had to worry for three years while I was forced to be in the army." "Mine too," said Daniel. "Eventually they just have to get over it and trust."
"When I was a child," Dov mused, "My parents used to tell me, 'Don't worry-- by the time you are eighteen the war will be over and you won't have to go in the army.' It was a lie. I had to fight. We all did. It was a black spot in my life, and I wish it didn't happen. And yet, though now we know the war will go on at least forty more years, we have to maintain hope. I will also tell my own children: 'Don't worry-- by the time you are eighteen the war will be over and you won't have to go in the army.' I will lie to maintain hope."

Daniel was staring out at the lights through the rain. "She shouldn't worry anyway. This is NOTHING compared to India. This is so plastic and easy and developed."
Daniel had just emerged from a life-alteringly (mind-alteringly?) phenomenal five months around India, and was furious to be in silk-smooth Thailand. "In India," he growled, "when we have electricity, it is like 'Oh happy day!' "
His eyes became even more distant. "I had a rabbit in India. An angora rabbit. I called her Shiva. Her body was maybe the size of my fist, but with her hair she was the size of beach ball. I carried her everywhere and she loved me."

I started laughing, deep and warm, at the image of the giant fluffball cradled serenely in Daniel's giant, dark-skinned hands, being carted for five months from Kashmir to Bombay and all points between.
"I go in six months to South Africa to sell hummus at the World Cup," continued Daniel, ignoring my hysterical laughing. "I think I make maybe $20,000 in three months, easy. Hummus with egg will be more expensive. Maybe then I get a new pet to help me."
"What happened to the rabbit?" I asked between breathless giggles. My mood was lifting, buoyed by the cosy porch and the puffball white image.

"I met a bunch of kids when I volunteered at a school at the end of my time in India. When I saw them with Shiva, I knew I would leave her with them and she would be well cared for."
"Do you worry about her?" I asked, concerned myself.
"No," he said confidently, "She is happy."

A word on mosquito bites and family as a way to sum up the Mayan Empire

By Karla

Four days into my trip to my father’s homeland, Guatemala, we go to the most beautiful terrain I have ever seen. A mix between jungle and forest, parrots flying past me, butterfly’s the size of your hand, and the buzzing of insects. At some point we stop in what can only be described as a Lychee forest, huge lychee everywhere in tons of different colors, lots of yellows, reds, red with green spindles, and oranges. There it is – the entire world’s beauty there for me to enjoy.
I get to our family’s home and realize I have been massively bitten by mosquitoes. Now a few bad mosquito bites is a blip on my travel radar. My father, a man who always praised toughening up, looks obscenely worried.
His reaction surprises me. The father that I know and love has always been slightly apathetic. That night, I am up writing in my journal and about to slather on menthol. My father comes in the room and asks me if he can put the menthol on my legs for me. I look at the worry lines creasing his forehead and ease myself back on my uncle’s couch and make room for him to sit as I think "Let him be your dad right now". For the next 30 minutes my dad sits on the couch and rubs menthol on each of my mosquito bites. He shakes his head as he looks and thoroughly rubs the cool balm into each of the bites. It dawns on me then, 1 am, sitting on the couch of an uncle I've only known for days, in a tiny tropical and rural port town in the south east of Guatemala, just how much my dad loves me. It hurts him to see my mosquito bites. Where as I was fully willing to brush them off as inconvenience and take a minimal 5 minutes to care for them, my dad thinks it’s worth 30 minutes of his time to try and make it better.

Now, my father isn't the most expressive man. He has a gruff exterior and his expression in the states is usually one that verges on scowl. I am quite the emotional and expressive woman, I was a toughy for him to handle. That night, and many other moments on the trip, I was struck by how in our baggage as father and daughter, I had not ever truly understood just how much my dad loves me, even if its hard for him to say it. I am loved. There it is – the entire world’s beauty there for me to enjoy.
My family in Guatemala relates to each other so powerfully. When one family member hurts the whole family does, when one family member has joy the whole family rejoices. My dad, I discovered, was pulled from all this love at a very young age and put in orphanages until coming to the United States, this is where his base was created. Everything he learned about being a dad got packed into the first 8 to 9 years of his life. A nine year old boy soaked in family and all the bruises and trauma that followed created the man who sat at my legs and dedicated 30 minutes every night for 5 nights to provide his daughter with comfort.
I heard so many rich stories in those three weeks. Stories about my revolutionary great-grandmother "La Abuela", that hid propaganda in tortillas to help Pancho Villa, the Mexican revolutionary. Stories about her exile from her mother country. Stories about the loss of her 13 children and her raising all her grandchildren in their absence. Stories that are full of immense pain and tremendous pride at what each of them had to do to guarantee survival for the rest.
I understand now, perhaps better than at any time in my life, that I am Guatemalan, Mexican, and American. This visit was not a visit to a foreign land but a return to another home. I am fundamentally tied to my culture. To a people whose ruins remain more amazing than any modern day building I have seen. Linked to traditions and values created out of struggle and hope. I am loved by them. I was loved by them before I ever was even born. And they fought for themselves, each other and my future. Now I get the distinct honor of being their historian; making sure that my kids, my students, and my friends know where they come from.

When the Going Gets Tough...

By Erica

End of April, 2007: the end of the shittiest semester of my life. In the past four months, I've practically given myself Generalized Anxiety Disorder, lost one of my best friends, jeopardized my relationship with my partner, cried myself to sleep in the evenings, been unable to sleep through the night, and dealt with the seemingly constant onslaught of questions. Where will I go after graduation in a year? What do I want to do with my life? Where will I be this summer? What will I be doing for work? How will I pay rent? How will I get anywhere? How do I expect to survive if I don't go for a Master's degree? When am I going to visit everyone I've ever promised to visit, in spite of my financial limitations? I've reached the point where every day is horrible, every night is worse, and I don't see how it can possibly end. What I need is a break, a chance to run away and start it all over again.
I grew up traveling, really. My parents ensured that I was used to flying, driving, and busing at an early age- my first "vacation" on a plane happened when I was 10 months old- and when Dad's conferences and trainings took him around the world, he took the rest of us with him. Other kids grew up dreaming about visiting far-off or exotic lands; I grew up actually going to them. My first transatlantic flight took me to Australia at age 7, where I trekked through a tropical rainforest, BBQed under the stars in the Great Australian Desert, and learned to play the didgeridoo. Each time I stepped into the airport, lugged my stuff onto a plane, or even snapped a luggage tag neatly around my bag handle was the beginning of an exciting adventure. To this day, the prospect of traveling, especially on a plane, is irresistible. The moment the plane's wheels leave the ground and we begin the steep climb up into the atmosphere, something inside me changes and loosens and is left on the ground below. In high school, bored with the rural area I lived in, I dreamed about putting a few necessities- contact lenses, toothbrush, change of underwear- into a bag, climbing in the car, and then just driving. Going somewhere, anywhere, that was far away and where I could start over.

This spring, all I want to do is fulfill that old fantasy. I want to fuck school, fuck obligations, and fuck emotional ties and just get the hell away.

Serendipity strikes one day, just as I'm packing up to head home for the unplanned, terrifyingly uncommitted summer ahead. I get a message from my old supervisor, offering me a temporary job at her organization, and it doesn't start until June. At the same time, a request comes in from a collective in Toronto. They want me to come and participate on a panel about social change and engagement, at the end of May. Suddenly, the next three weeks begin to take shape.

When I get home at the beginning of May, I start calling people all over the eastern part of the US and Canada. Hannah in Philly; Gayle in Plainfield; Liz in NYC; Jocelyn in Toronto; Lisa in Schenectady; Emma in Saratoga Springs. "Remember how I planned to visit?" I say. "How about I actually do it?" I'm still quite financially limited; all I can afford is the $50 plane ticket to Philadelphia. But that's enough to get me on the road. It's enough to get me the hell away.

I only carry two small shoulderbags, somehow managing to fit three weeks' worth of clothes and supplies therein, and two skeins of yarn that I want to use to expand my knitting knowledge. My passport, for the trip to Toronto, is tucked into a side pocket, and my near-worthless debit card is in my jeans. For the first time in my life, I'll be traveling without family and without heading to university. On one hand, that feels wrong: I feel like I'm too young for this. At the same time, however, I'm 20. I'm going to university in a foreign country. And, for the first time in my life, the one thing I need and crave more than anything is to be completely unfettered and alone.

My first stop is to visit my sister at her college. Mom gives me lots of hugs and kisses, hands me a bag of cookies to give Hannah when I land, and gives me that look that says that she's a little jealous. "Be safe," she says, "and say hi to Hannah for us!" Because at this point, we all know that Hannah's stressed. In spite of everything- finishing her first year, about to start finals, and living with the roommate from Hell- but she's got an air mattress and extra food on her meal plan, and she wants to see me, so we spend a couple of days banging around Philadelphia together. We goof off in a mosaic-tiled house called the Magic Garden, meet up with an aunt and uncle for delicious Italian food, and celebrate May Day on her campus. She introduces me to the Dean of Admissions at her school's graduate social work program. By the time I've decided to head to upstate New York, I've also decided that having any sort of buffer in my savings account is useless. Since airfare's out of the question, in spite of that leaving-the-ground good feeling, I start checking out Amtrak.

The next three weeks are absolutely liberating. I've got an idea of when I'm traveling to where- a few days in Schenectady, a few more in Toronto, then five in Plainfield, and so on- but the means are never certain until a few days before. Everyone's patient with me and my uncertain arrival times, and the fact that I look a little like a hobo. With no razors allowed on the airplane and no checked bag, I have no razors. My hair- chopped to baby-dyke length in the fall- is scraggly and threatening to mullet, I have no makeup, and the only shoes I brought are a phenomenally smelly pair of Birkenstocks. Every night I write in my journal, as I've been doing since I was sixteen, and every day my knitting grows more and more on the circular needles I bought in Philly. I have no homework, no employment demands, and no one's asking me anything about my future. In Schenectady I play with a four-year-old who's practicing her letters and teach her to make dandelion chains, and in the evenings, Lisa and I tell stories and decompress each other. Emma, in Saratoga Springs, is finishing her finals, so we spend sixteen hours a day at the computer lab. She makes graphics on the screens, I play B'loons until my eyes sting, and we break only to go to Coldstone for ice cream. In Toronto, it's 80F- somehow the spring is slipping by- and Jocelyn takes me around the University of Toronto's campus until I can hardly walk. Liz and I spend our time in New York City watching Scrubs; when she has a job interview, I walk around and around Central Park, watching the joggers and letting my mind drift. Finally, I go to Plainfield, and Gayle and I spend five days in the house my mother grew up in- a house I haven't been to in the seven years since my grandfather died. Gayle has to help pay for my bus ticket home when it's all over, because three weeks of Amtrak and Greyhound takes its toll on the student bank account, and before I leave she lets me use her washing machine and drier. And when I get home to New Hampshire, about to start work for the summer and register for the GREs and start grad school applications and research my thesis topic and all the billions of things I'd been weighed down by just a few weeks before, I feel better.

Obviously, the vacation isn't a magic pill. The things that were wrong before I left are still wrong. My friend and I never really speak again, I'm still under a lot of pressure to figure out my future, and my partner and I still have problems to work out. Going away for a few weeks doesn't really change anything you go back to, if all the things you left are depending on you to make them happen. But being gone for that time, being untethered and on my own, has been a literal lifesaver. For the first time since January, I'm sleeping consistently and without the soporific effect of tears. I can think about the future without panicking, and I'm even feeling comfortable with the idea of making decisions about graduate school and career options. Instead of waking up and hoping to cope with the day, I'm waking up and somewhat excited about what the day may bring. The trip's given me a chance to regroup, collect my thoughts, and restart.

For the first time in four months, I'm ready.