Note: This series has a post from Lindsay and a post from Elaine each telling their perspective on the same trip. You can check out Elaine's Via Francigena 2018 here.
Mom: “Let’s go for a walk”
Me: “Ok. How far? Where?”
Mom: “200 miles. In Italy. The Via Francigena.”
Me:
She had tried before to get me to go on an unreasonably long walk. (Camino de Santiago in Spain in 2015). That time I opted for the pre-walk Paris trip only. That was a great 5 days and a story for another time.
We had the route (technically Canterbury to Rome). We had help moving our bags. As mom would say “I’m in it for the experience of the walk. Not to suffer.” We even got friends – another mother/daughter to go with us. I knew the mother very well (Liz) and was excited to get to know her daughter (Brenna).
I arrived in Sienna. After So. Many. Transfers. A flight from DC to Rome, a train from Rome to Florence, another train from Florence to Sienna having missed the last bus, and then an 12am walk up a huge hill in Sienna. Our buddies had arrived the day before. Mom arrived the next day. 200 miles left to go.
Now. The Camino de Santiago is well traveled and clearly marked with scallop shells. The Via Francigena is more of a suggestion. The book we had did a D- job of describing the mileage and markers. We followed the spray painted signs along the way. Brenna and I would trade who took point on finding the next marker. Each twist and turn was a gamble that we sometimes won and sometimes lost. The days were a combination of agony, beautiful sights, being lost, being found, and wine.
Brenna is a trained professional dancer. Her body has been a vehicle for stress and pushing and amazing feats since before she was admitted to Juilliard at 17. You’ll be surprised to hear that the rest of us were not. I had trained for this. Walks with friends. Walks with my boyfriend. Walks on my own. Walks with Liz. Walks with mom. So. Many. Walks. And it turns out that those training walks were helpful. Not so helpful that my body didn’t groan every morning that it was once again morning and we were once again about to walk between 6 and 21 miles. Liz had also trained for this.
Mom had not really trained for this. She brought a pair of broken in shoes and a pair of new shoes that were the same kind. She wore the new shoes by mistake the first day. And so, just like on the Camino, she got blisters. So. Many. Blisters. After the second day her blisters had blisters. 180 miles left to go.
Each night I would play the song “Navaho Rug” by Jerry Jeff Walker, mom would lay face down on the bed, and I would lance her blisters.
When we could walk together, we would talk about everything, sing at the top of our lungs to lift our spirits when we felt we couldn’t go on, and I would distract her by making jokes and non sequitur.
The fourth day, I got a call from the people who were keeping my dog, Sterling. He had ruptured a disk in his back, had lost all feeling from his middle back down, couldn’t walk and would need surgery. The news actually came in over a few days. 160 miles to go. 140 miles to go. 4,400 miles away from my dog who was in pain, couldn’t walk, didn’t know what was going on, and who I couldn’t hold or comfort. Deciding whether to do the surgery was agony based on conflicting prognosis'. I even reached out to my ex husband (who was my co-adopter when we got him) to discuss the decisions. Liz, Brenna, and my mom were all there for me. They supported me at each decision point. Held me for each tear. Filled my wine glass. Left me alone to wander off. Smiled at my return.
Sterling got surgery and started recovery. I got pictures of him with what looked like a zipper down his back [not pictured here] and he still couldn’t walk. He had caretakers. My heart broke and healed everyday. I walked on. 120 miles to go.
Mom’s blisters continued to make friends. They were epic. She couldn’t walk every other day and we would figure out how to get her from one town to the next. It seemed like the choices were to admit defeat and go home early (not a Texan’s choice) or go to Rome and wait for the rest of us to get there in a week (not an extrovert’s choice).
As we neared the halfway point I realized mom might want to go to our friend Lisa’s house in Germany and stay with her family for the last week. Then she could fly back to Rome and out on her original ticket. I asked if that was something she would like. Her face lit up for the first time in days. She was so excited.
Mom: “Lisa would love to have us! I’ll text her right now.”
Me: “I’m not going to go with you, mama. If you go to Germany, I’m going to fly back to DC and care for Sterling.”
Her face fell again but was immediately replaced with one of the best mom faces of all. The one where your mom knows you’re making a hard choice and supports you completely knowing the pain you are experiencing, even when she’s sad for her not getting to spend time with you.
So the decision was made. We would walk one more day, have a days at the halfway point and then get a taxi from Viterbo to Rome – a weeks worth of walking done in 1 hour. 100 miles to go. Thanks highways and technology!!! I would fly through Casablanca and mom would fly to Germany. We had made friends with a mother/son duo out of Chicago and Liz and Brenna would walk on with them. That relieved the sense of abandoning our friends and helped us focus on caring for ourselves and what we knew we needed.
The last day in Viterbo we found our way to an Etruscan museum. There was a display of Persephone and Demeter, a mother and daughter who were separated for half the year and the myth for explaining the seasons. It was actually an archeological find and a full temple separated from the rocks it had settled in for centuries. The temple had been where people came to pray for fertility, crops, family and more. The four of us, Brenna and Liz, Elaine and me, all connected through our lives and journeys, separate and together, giving thanks for each other and our own strengths.
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