Reminiscing in Reykjavik

I am constructed and colored in by the adventures I've taken.

In a darkened by blackout curtains, chilly hotel room in Reykjavik, I pick up my cup of tea with two fingers on my right hand. A flash memory briefly crosses my mind and I chuckle silently remembering pouring a whole cup of boiling hot tea into my lap at the zen spa in Mullimbimbi, Australia after hours relaxing in the saunas and steam baths.  The kangaroos and koalas probably bolted from nearby fields when they heard my howl of pain. Now it's just a light scar and a funny story.

 
The memory fades away as I touch my teacup to my lips, which curl into a smile again as I smell the tea which triggers a scent memory of the tea I sipped between meditations high in the Buddhist monk riddled mountains of Dharamshala India where I took ten days of silence and learned Tibetan Buddhism from the ground up.

   

As the hot tea slides down my throat my eyes lightly close and my mind travels back, slowly, trepidatiously, to Cheltenham, England. I am sitting at my mother-in-law's kitchen table mindlessly gazing out into the quintessential English countryside garden through a wet, raindrop blurred pane of glass.  My husband plays guitar in the little room off the kitchen and the familiar chord progressions seem to lift me and carry me through the moment.

It's best I don't dwell in this memory too long or that sick, wringing of my heart feeling will consume my chest and I won't escape it for a while- and I want to be here- in Iceland right now.

I flutter my eyes open and my gaze calls upon the tattoo scribed on the inside of my left ankle, as my feet are up on the hotel room desk and crossed so the tattooed ankle faces the ceiling.  I smile from the corner of my mouth as I immediately fall back into a late fall afternoon in Venice Beach, the light was golden as Nate, the tattoo artist and I sat on the front stoop of my house.  A house I shared with a group of friends who at the time I believed were my soul mates and best friends and would be an intricate part of my life for eternity. A house I found while riding bikes with Mikey and Erin, searching for a new place to live. I had just returned from my first trip to Southeast Asia - where I visited Togat Nusa, the island retreat that, unbeknownst to me, would become my home later that year, only to find out that I was being kicked out of the home my husband and I had called ours for the 3 years between moving back from England and our split and subsequent divorce.

I have to get out of this place, this mind place that I feel myself teetering over... This abyss of hurt, of memories bold, vivid and raw that open up a sore every time I go there.

I make a choice.

I sip my tea and again and this time take strength from it. I taste my mother and her optimism rushes through me. My mom loves tea time, and she loves being happy. She loves sunlight and painting in the garden. She advocates for looking on the bright side and rising above it.

Illigitemus Non Carborundum.

Her father had a framed placard of that quote on his wall when she was a little girl.

Don't let the bastards grind you down.

 I reel my mind back in, like gathering the slack of a fishing line that has been pulled all the way out to sea and then the fish got away.

I rewind.  Pull myself together and look at where I am. 

Reykjavik, Iceland.

A family I love and have become a part of- although I am technically working- I am working my way through school and en route to be a doctor- and still somehow in Iceland- a place I've always dreamed of going in a wild, interested but unsure, fascinated kind of way.

Today we'll explore more of this wild skied country of fire and ice.

And like clockwork the 9 yr old wakes up and says my name.

My birth certificate was a winning lottery ticket.