by
Elizabeth Tobey
It
is late July, a sunny summer morning already hinting at the hot day to come. I
am flipping through a blue spiral-bound notebook, looking back at some of my
old writing. Around me the room is full of cardboard boxes, some empty, some
partially full. Frank, my partner of four years is getting ready to move out.
It feels like my whole world is shifting. I am reading through my writing,
looking for something to help me understand. Writing is good for this. It helps
me see patterns, and brings up the stories that still need to be told.
One
of these is a story I want to tell you now. It is about how I got here, to this
farm in Southern Oregon, to this place in my life. It is about being young and
carefree. It is about choices and chapters and decisions that we make. It is
about traveling and cobblestone streets wet from spring rain. It is about
finding a teacher and learning lessons and living life.
Let
me set the stage: I am 21, traveling alone through southern France. I have a
pair of pink tennis shoes and a pale green backpack loaded with everything I
think I will need for several months abroad. I’m doing work-trade on a farm. It
is a bed and breakfast owned by a couple with a young son. The couple are angry
at each other. Whether they know it yet or not, they are going to get a divorce
soon. They yell a lot and I take care of the house and the boy. I am unhappy
with their relationship dynamic, but trying to enjoy the beauty of the place. I
have recently dedicated myself to yoga. Amidst the chaos of their lives I make
time to practice every day.
One
evening I go out for a walk, to get some fresh air and escape their craziness.
As I am walking along the path a man and a dog approach me from the other
direction. The dog runs up to greet me. The man says Bonjour, but when I
respond in French he hears my accent and switches to English. He speaks with an
English accent. He introduces himself as Paul, and tells me he lives next door
to the bed and breakfast. We exchange brief pleasantries and go our separate
ways.
Two
days later I am again out walking, this time back from town along the road and
Paul passes in his car and stops to offer me a ride. On the short drive back I
ask him what he does. He tells me he is a yoga instructor, he teaches classes
at his home. I cannot believe my luck. I start going to his classes whenever I
can. Sometimes he offers me tea afterwards and we sit and talk. His house
becomes a refuge from the drama at the bed and breakfast. After a while he
invites me to come and stay with him, to practice yoga and help on his farm.
So
the story begins. I am 21, traveling through southern France and I find myself
apprenticed to a yogi farmer, living with him in an old whitewashed farmhouse
with a terracotta tile floor. From the front yard I can see a crumbling castle
in the distance. It is surrounded by hills of emerald green grass and old stone
terraces. I settle into a routine: I rise early in the morning, water trays of
seedlings I have started and carry them outside to soak up the warmth and light
of the sun all day. I come back inside, make tea and sweep the floor. I push
the big off-white couch back away from the fireplace, move the kitchen table
aside, and open up space in the room.
In
a little while, students arrive one by one and roll out their yoga mats. Paul
teaches class here, in what is usually the living room. He stands in front of
the fireplace, and the mats form neat lines facing him. Deep voice radiating
through the room, he guides us through a practice. I set my mat at the edge of
the group and step in with them. Although he is English he teaches in French,
the language of this green land. I speak some French, and can understand the
basics of his instructions. I am becoming familiar with the words for left
and right, up and down, stretch, reach, and rooted.
Still I am grateful that when he has a specific critique for me, he says it in
English. The names of the asanas, the yoga poses, he says in Sanskrit,
the language of yoga, so we all understand.
After
the morning class I make us lunch, and then most days accompany him to another
class that he teaches at a studio in the nearby town of Sauve. I practice
again, feeling my strength grow with each day. In the afternoons I spend time
in the fields, preparing the soil and laying rows of seeds in the ground in
long straight lines. In the evening I water the trays of seedlings again and
bring them inside for the night. We make dinner. He opens a bottle of wine. We
push the heavy off-white couch back in front of the fireplace and he starts a
fire. We sit in front of it and sip our glasses of wine, refilling them for
each other as need be, and he teaches me, in the form of long flowing
conversations, everything he knows about yoga, the sutras, life, breath, and
the way of the practice.
On
the days that he doesn’t teach classes, we lay our mats side by side on the
terracotta tiles in front of the fireplace. There is space enough for just the
two of us without moving the couch. We practice in silence, breath carrying us,
connecting the poses into one moving meditation.
Some
days I work out in the peach orchard, removing the Scotch Broom plants that are
threatening to take over the trees, or I prune the grapes in the vineyard, or
weed around the chestnut trees. My hands get coarse and calloused. My long
brown hair is highlighted blond from all the time in the sun. The clothes I
have with me that aren’t for yoga are stained brown at the knees from working.
On
alternate weeks his three sons come to stay with him, and I help to care for
them. Leo, Luke, and Aiden. Eleven, 9 and 5. They are rambunctious and funny
and fluent in English and French. They switch back and forth effortlessly and I
am envious. Paul reprimands them when they slide into French while I’m around,
requesting that they speak English so I can understand and don’t feel left out.
When I do attempt French they giggle and correct me. Aiden, the youngest,
showers me with kisses and hugs. The older two laugh at him, but I know they
love me too. We have a raucous good time, and I feel the closest glimpse at
parenthood that I have ever experienced.
On
the weeks when they boys aren’t there I am often alone. Paul works in Sauve
some days on a house he is helping to remodel and re-landscape. Sometimes he takes
me with him to help, but mostly I stay behind and work on his land, or write,
or read from his collection of yoga books. Sometimes I walk the 15 minutes into
town, but I do not know anyone there. There is a post office with a computer
where I can use the Internet. I buy a few postcards and send them to people
back home in the states, in what feels like another world, another life.
Sometimes I go to the bakery and treat myself to a baguette or a croissant, or
buy a loaf of bread to take home for dinner. There’s not much more than that.
The town is an intersection with a stop sign, the bakery, a little grocer’s
market, the post office, and a big old stone church with a water fountain out
front. Cobbled stone streets connect it all and there is a footpath that winds
up the hillside between the homes and yards. Many days a shepherd guides his
flock up the footpath to pastures in the surrounding hills. The jingle of his
bell ricochets off the valley walls, a tin tinkle that bubbles through the
spring air.
My
spirit sings in this place. I love the rhythm of tending to the seedlings,
working in the garden, caring for the home. I do laundry and hang it on the
clothesline in the crisp sunlight, his heavy wool sweaters, my colorful
corduroy pants. I wash dishes, cook food, and sweep the floor. I practice yoga
at least once, sometimes twice a day. I write in my journal. I stand outside
and look out at the emerald hills with the crumbling castle in the distance. I
feel wild and green and alive. I feel perfectly content. Life is very simple,
very quiet. It is the first time I realize how happy I can be with that
simplicity.
But
there is more to this story. One of those nights, on one of the weeks when the
boys are at their mother’s and Paul and I are sitting on the off-white couch
with the thick cushions in front of the fireplace, drinking red wine and
talking about life, he leans forward and kisses me. His face is warm and
scratchy. His body is firm and strong. I kiss him back. We have a love affair,
he and I. At 42 he is exactly twice my age, flecks of gray shining among the
dark brown hair on his head and in his beard when he does not shave for a few
days. He is a mountain man with a lilting English accent and silky French. He
left England twelve years before and settled down in these lush hills with his
young wife. He bought the farmhouse, fixed it up from disrepair, put a roof on
it, planted the orchards and the vineyard, plowed the fields for the gardens,
and started a family. Now he and his wife are separated. She lives somewhere in
town. I never meet her. The boys go back and forth between them.
He
does not want to tell the boys about us. He says it will be too confusing for
them. They so want him to find a girlfriend. And they already like me so much.
They would not understand why I am leaving. How do you explain a month-long
love affair to three young boys, he asks? I do not know. How do we even explain
it to ourselves?
When
I look back on it, I am still amazed at the depth with which he touched my
life. After all, in reality I was with him, living in his house, for only a few
weeks. And yet I had vivid dreams for months after, years actually. Dreams of
returning to France, dreams where I was walking on the road to his house and
would suddenly realize where I was and be overcome with happiness, so excited
to crest the hill and see the house, to walk down the drive, to meet him again.
Dreams of hugging him, so vivid and real that I could smell his skin, feel the
scratch of his wool sweater against my cheek. And here I am, almost eight years
later, still writing about him. Ask me about traveling, or France, or yoga, or
teachers I’ve had, or lovers, or farming, or how I got where I am and he, and
the time I spent with him, will inevitably be part of the story. As I flip
through my notebook on this late-July day I see his name come up time and time
again.
Why
am I still writing about him?
He
was once in a lifetime. Everything about him was. Everything about us was. Only
once in a lifetime are you 21 years old, single and carefree, with a pale green
backpack, a pair of pink tennis shoes and nothing to hold you down. Only once
in your lifetime do you buy a one-way ticket to Europe and board a plane in New
York City early on Christmas morning while people everywhere else are gathered
with their families, and fly across the ocean to a strange new place. Only once
in your lifetime do you find a guru (something you didn’t even think existed
anymore), a real teacher. Only once in your lifetime does your path actually,
literally, cross one day while you’re out for an evening walk, with exactly the
teacher that you need to meet, and only once in your lifetime does your new
teacher invite you to come live with him, to study with him exactly what you
want with all your heart to be studying. And on top of all of that, only once
in your lifetime do you have a love affair with that teacher, a man twice your
age with three beautiful children and a home so sweet you could easily see
calling it your own.
It
was one of the first times in my life when I became distinctly aware of a fork
in the road, of a decision made, and of the alternate reality that could have
been if I had decided the other way. The option was tangible. I could almost
touch it. I could have stayed there with him. I could have married him. I could
have helped him raise his children. We both knew it was on our minds during
those weeks. But as clearly as the option was there, there was also the answer:
I was never going to stay. It was only part of my journey, a stop along the way.
When he asked, the one time that we spoke about it, if I could be happy there I
said yes, absolutely yes. Except, I said, that I needed to earn it for myself.
He asked what I meant. “This is everything I want,” I told him, “but I want it
to be mine. I have to do the work you’ve done to get here.” Somehow I knew I
couldn’t just move in to his life, though it showed me so much of what I
wanted. I knew I needed to go through the process, to find the land, to buy the
house, to fix it up, to plant the gardens and the fruit trees, to make the
family.
But
I still wonder what that alternate life would have been, if I had stayed. I
could be an ex-pat now. I could be the stepmother to three boys. I could live
in a whitewashed farmhouse, and teach yoga, and run an organic CSA. By now, if
I had stayed, my French would be fluent. What would that life be like? Green
and simple I imagine. Full of its own challenges and struggles I am sure. It is
easy to idealize but nothing is perfect. I know that.
But
I do not live there. That is not my story. A couple years after I left he met a
young American woman (older than me, closer to his age), a yoga instructor
named Joy and they got married. She lives there now with him, in that farmhouse
with the terracotta tile floor and the off-white couch with the thick cushions.
I have seen pictures of them curled up on it in front of the fireplace
together. They teach yoga. She is stepmother to his sons.
When
I found this out I told him, sincerely, but pun intended, that I was glad he had
found Joy.
Three
years ago I bought my own land, three acres in southern Oregon, with a
sprawling farmhouse and views of rolling hills. I am fixing it up, planting
gardens and fruit trees, practicing yoga on the big wooden deck. Today I take a
break from writing and look up his address on Google maps, something I have
never done before. I can see the little shapes of the farmhouse, and on the
neighboring property the bed and breakfast where I worked so briefly. It has
been years and yet, as I look at the shapes on the screen, I find myself in
tears. The feeling of being there comes back again, so strong and palpable.
Always there will be the question, what would have happened if I went the other
way?
That
is how it goes. Some people come into our lives and leave a lasting impact, a
presence that lingers long after they are gone, in thoughts, in dreams, in our
writing. How do we know who those people will be? Paul was one of them. There
are a few in my life, a few of those stories that I can’t seem to stop telling.
Nahko. Sleepy. David. Emily. Kevin. Sara. Will Frank be one of them? Even now,
new stories are forming. So much of our life is determined by two people
meeting for a moment and a spark flying between them, however fleeting and
brief. Love flickers like fireflies lighting up the night sky of our lives,
each flash illuminating a connection, a path taken or left untraveled.
I
sit here now in my house in southern Oregon, surrounded by cardboard boxes. It
is the end of July, the middle of the summer, 2015. I am eating golden plums
and flipping through a blue notebook while Frank, the man I have been with for
the last four years, packs his belongings and gets ready to leave. It is time
for our paths to diverge. Do I still love him? Yes, I absolutely do. Does it
feel different now than it used to? Yes, this is also true. Is this the right
decision? I don’t know, but I think so. It is a decision, one way or another.
Our story unfolds. We write the next chapter. This is what I do know: these
human connections are the gems that we live for. They are the gifts of life.
Love flickers like fireflies on a warm summer evening. Life is a collection of
connections, a series of decisions. None are right or wrong they are just
choices, guiding us to the next phase. We are here to uncover the story. Of
course we will always wonder what would have happened if we had gone the other
way. We will always wonder and we will never know.
