Relative Something

I know that I indicated I would write about the next day in Kathmandu, but bear with me. As much as I would love to pour this all out instantly, I am discovering I can’t do it that fast. Since I arrived home on Wednesday morning, the days have sped by at an incredible pace for me. I have done a fair job of reclaiming my regular routine of diet and sleep pattern and even some of my activities like playing soccer in the morning, but days later I’m still noticing a subtle feeling of being out of whack that can probably be attributed to jet-lag. I am also discovering an interesting level of what feels like shock over the conflicting emotions of intensely missing the people I met and trekked with and the places in Nepal where we shared our adventures, and the onslaught of home comforts of foods and bed and family and friends who are so excited to learn how it went for me. I am so happy to be home, but part of me is resisting it as well, and would like to still be back in the dreamland from which I have just returned.

Yesterday, I drove my car for the first time in three weeks. That was freaky. I had joked many times in Kathmandu that when I got home I was sure that I would beep my horn all the while I was driving. It didn’t happen. I stumbled a bit managing my manual transmission. I found I had difficulty pushing up to the speed limit. I wanted to just move along at a slower pace. I didn’t want to make decisions as quickly as is really required to flow with traffic.

It’s an interesting phenomenon for me, to be experiencing the things I have described, but probably understandable given my limited travel experience and the momentous scope of a trip such as this.

I do want to share one tidbit from the time-line I was on previously. In the early morning hours of sleep during that first overnight in Kathmandu, I had a dream. One that I felt was a real gift and I’m hoping that my siblings might particularly appreciate.

I received a visit from our mother in a dream…

I recall giving her a hand to help her walk up an uneven, unpaved driveway (a lot like the walk surfaces here in Kathmandu), and as she lost balance and was falling, I let her flail, but hung on to her hand –kind of made me think of a rag doll– which I felt must look bad to others, but I knew was ok because she’s already dead and it wasn’t her living physical body I was holding up. I was just guiding her. We stepped into a field of tall, soft growth like clover –but blue– and about waist high and waded through a few steps, then stepped around, and up to come to rest against a cushion of some sort and I chose to ask –feeling the gift of Mom’s presence– if she’d met anyone yet, like past relatives, I was mostly thinking. She said, “No.” But it was so much more than a one word answer… along the lines of saying, “No, not really…” without actually saying the extra words, in a sing-song way that was so classically our mother. It was the most dramatic part of the dream for its familiarity of her voice. I felt, “how lonely! and sad that might be.” I think I asked about something else and she told me that she had been to a show (either Sweet Adelines or of something of Elliott and Wendy’s, I sensed).

The focus became distracted at that point, I think toward something about someone being in Elliott’s show (Timmy?) and then the dream was interrupted, but it left a powerful and lasting impression of a visit from our mother. I was in a very pleasant and warm afterglow and found myself re-telling the dream later at breakfast downstairs in the Yak & Yeti hotel, but mostly, I longed to share it with my siblings.

I truly felt like Mom was with me on my epic mountain adventure.