by Kim Dinan
The strangest sensation settled over me. I believed her. Suddenly I knew that I was cherished and that everything, including me, was perfect, and I had nothing to worry about at all. Wendy had asked, “Who do you need to be?” And, inexplicably, I felt an answer rising up from the truest part of me. I was already everything I needed to be.
Chapter 13
Five days later Wendy and I arrived in Hampi, an ancient city, historical and sacred, settled among boulders in the bright-green Indian state of Karnataka.
On the day of our arrival, we dropped our backpacks at our guesthouse and sat down cross-legged in an empty restaurant. Cows sauntered past the gate outside. Monkeys jumped around in trees.
An amazing thing had happened since we’d left Delhi. The deliberations in my head had suddenly, mercifully, silenced. In their place a feeling of peace had settled. Mentally I felt like I’d traveled from Times Square to some silent cave at the edge of the world. It was such a relief to be free of the maddening chatter of my own looping brain.
We had three days in Hampi, and we spent them wandering around crumbling ruins beneath the relentless sun. In the evenings, when the town cooled, Wendy and I would sit on the rooftop of a restaurant called Ganesh’s, drink chai, and talk about our lives. I hadn’t felt so happy in months, in years, actually. Somehow, a feeling of contentment had arranged itself inside of me in the same space that all of the questions had so recently occupied.
“I feel so weird,” I said to Wendy.
“How so?”
“I don’t know. I feel clearheaded, I guess. I feel happy. I feel whole.” I took a sip of chai. “For years I’ve been worried that Brian held me back. Like, there was someone I wanted to be, and I wasn’t her, so I blamed Brian because it was easier than blaming myself. God, that makes me sound like a terrible person.”
Wendy shook her head. “Kim, a lot of us have been there in one form or another.”
“This weird thing happened to me when I was doing the Rickshaw Run. While I was zoning out, watching the world pass by, I had this vision of Brian. He was standing across from me in a field, and I had to choose whether to run toward him or not. I had a choice. And I chose to embrace him. We’ve been together for ten years, but until that moment I don’t think I’d fully committed to him. I’d always kept the door cracked just a little, so that I’d have enough space to squeeze through and make my escape if I wanted to.”
Wendy picked at the pakora in front of her, listening.
“When we split up during the Rickshaw Run I told myself I could leave if I wanted to. But I didn’t want to. Actually, I realized that I’d never wanted to leave. I’d only wanted to know that I was the driver of my life and not just a passenger along for the ride. I’m ashamed to admit that, but it’s true.” I took a deep breath. “With Brian, I needed to know that I stayed with him out of choice and not just convenience or habit. And for myself, I needed to become someone I took pride in being. It sounds crazy, but I feel like, all of a sudden, both of those things happened. But how?”
Wendy shrugged. “Sometimes change happens really fast.”
“We’ve been traveling for nine months, and they’ve been the hardest months of my life. This was not what I expected when we left Portland. But they’ve been the most important months of my life too. I’m a different person now. I don’t even know how to explain it.”
“Nine months,” said Wendy. “That’s funny.”
“It is? Why?”
“Because it’s our gestational period. We grow for nine months, and then we’re born.”
“Huh.” I looked out over the rooftops of Hampi and down at the empty street below. A lone stray dog pawed at a pile of garbage. The evening seemed to let out a deep sigh. Goose bumps formed on my arms, and the slightest breeze blew at the nape of my neck. “I never thought about it like that before.”
• • •
The following day, our final day in Hampi, we crossed the Tungabhadra River where we met the rickshaw driver whose windshield shattered. I’d given him yellow envelope money, and he’d thanked me, and then Wendy and I had climbed back into a boat to cross the river once again.
As we walked back to our guesthouse, Wendy spoke. “That rickshaw driver loved you,” she said. “Even though you haggled him to death in the beginning. Even before you gave him the yellow envelope money.”
I’d noticed our connection too. “It’s weird, but giving him yellow envelope money felt different than it has in the past. I didn’t feel awkward or worry about what he would think. Back in South America I overthought it so much that giving felt burdensome. But it doesn’t feel that way in India.”
“I wonder why?”
“I think the only difference is that I feel more comfortable now.”
A dog trotted at my feet, and I bent down to pet it. I’d kept up the habit of carrying pineapple biscuits in my purse, and I fed one to him.
“I’ve noticed something,” said Wendy. “People in India are attracted to you.” She nodded toward the dog. “Even the animals are attracted to you. I think they sense that you’re open, that you’re willing to let them in.”
I thought about the man on the plane, the woman in the restaurant. What had changed?
“Do you think so?”
“Yeah,” said Wendy. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
That evening we took the overnight bus home again, wedging our bodies into our sleeper compartment, happy to let the cool breeze blow in through the window. The bus bumped away overnight, stopping at intervals so that passengers could pee. Wendy and I filed out and squatted by the side of the road under the moon’s unblinking eye, laughing at the pure Indianness of it all.
We were dropped at an intersection on the outskirts of Colomb Bay in the quiet hours before sunrise. We walked back to my apartment through the empty streets, and the dogs barked in the distance.
“India sleeps!” said Wendy. “I didn’t think it was possible.”
It was a magical time to be awake. Everything around us zinged with energy. It felt like I walked the roads back to our apartment for the very first time. I noticed a colorful one-story house set back in the field where the water buffalo grazed, and banana trees, whole groves of them, next to a beaten path that wound behind a white and red temple. Those things had always been there! But I had never seen them. The same was true of everything in my life. I’d upturned so many rocks, scavenged like the starving for the missing pieces of myself, just to learn that I’d held them all along.
Wendy and I crept into the apartment, and I crawled into bed beside Brian’s sleeping body. Tucking my frame against the outline of him, I intertwined our fingers. Brian hardly stirred. “I love you,” I whispered into the darkness. I was speaking to us both.
When we woke later that morning, the heat throbbed oppressively. Wendy and I headed to the ocean in the late afternoon, bought Tuborgs, and chatted on recliners. As the sun made her daily departure from the sky, we swam out into the ocean and dove beneath the waves, feeling as free and as playful as dolphins.
The setting sun glowed a brilliant pink, and its light reflected on the water. I floated in the rose-colored afterglow. Wendy bobbed next to me in the Arabian Sea. “You seem happy,” she said. “Lighter.”
The last blazing moments of sunlight were skipping across the water. I called out over the turning of the waves, “I am.”
The following morning, we caught a taxi back up to the airport. As I encircled Wendy in my arms, I told her that I’d miss her. She waved good-bye at the security gate, and Brian and I waved back, watching her go. And then we turned to find a ride back to our apartment. We were alone in India again.
• • •
Well, we were not completely alone.
One of the dogs that spent his time curled up at the base of the palm tree outside our apartment door, a black mutt of about forty pounds that we
named Stewie, had charmed us so much that he now had both a water and food bowl on permanent residence in our apartment. We let him in for long naps under the couch or short ones spread-eagle on our tile floor, dozing in a strip of sunlight that shone in through the patio door. Our neighbors, Indian women who spent an inordinate amount of time sweeping their porches so that they could watch us interact with the dogs, were horrified that we allowed an animal inside of our apartment. But it felt great to have a dog curled up at our feet.
On the afternoon that Wendy left, I sat Brian down and told him about my revelation. I apologized, not because I felt wrong for doing what I had to do, but because I felt terrible for hurting him.
“It’s been a shitty year, Kim,” he said. “But it’s also been the most incredible year of my life. I’m not going to lie and tell you that I don’t feel some hurt and resentment, but I know that whatever you were struggling with was going on inside of you. It was you, not me.”
“What other choice did I have?” I asked him, feeling a bit defensive. “Did you just want me to ignore it? In a perfect world I’d have worked through all of this before meeting you. But we met too young. I never had the chance.”
“I know, I know. I’m not saying you didn’t do what you needed to do. I’m just saying that you can’t expect me to be completely okay that you held our relationship hostage while you did it.”
A part of me wanted to argue, to defend my actions and myself once again. Instead, I took a deep breath and said, “I understand. I would be mad too.”
A strange energy rose up between us. From my seat on the couch I stared out of the window into the green of the palm fronds beyond. Brian had given me the room I needed. A lesser person would have jumped ship months ago. I owed it to him to give him the room to feel however he needed to feel.
“Just know that I love you,” I told him. “That was not a question.”
“I know,” he said. “I love you too.”
• • •
All of the things I’d stopped doing in South America I began to do again. Each morning I’d wake early and go running. In the afternoons I’d read and write. Brian made friends and went off on adventures, driving our rented motorbike to distant beaches and climbing through canyons in the jungle. In the evenings we’d reconnect to eat dinner at the thatched roof restaurants on the beach, feeding pieces of naan to the begging dogs and talking idly about our days.
It felt so good to run again, my heart pounding and my breath finding its rhythm, my legs stretched out and carrying me past the smells and sounds and bright colors of India.
My favorite running route took me on a single-lane road that wound through our small village, past a colorful temple, and up a jungle highway. On this highway, next to the garbage dump, was the crumbling green building that housed the local Animal Rescue Center.
The first day I ran past the rescue center I’d been alarmed as a dozen mangy dogs sprinted from the building toward me. “Whoa!” I’d screamed and frozen in place as the group yelped and barked around me.
From that day on, each morning when I ran past the rescue center, the pack of dogs would join me. Some of them would playfully race ahead of me, while others would trot at my side. We were a total freak show: a Western woman and a pack of misfit, disfigured dogs, dodging manure and motorcycles and water buffalo.
Many of the dogs had terrible ailments. Some were missing limbs. Some had been beaten or starved down to just the bones. All of their hips were rubbed bare from the time they spent pent up on their haunches. But when they ran with me they were happy and free, and I was happy and free, my laughter rising up out of the click of their nails and the pounding of my own feet on the pavement.
For six weeks we lived in the peace of simple routine. Rise, run, and work. I wrote and wrote and wrote, happy because I could finally focus on what I loved and commit my time and energy where I wanted. My contentment was so encompassing that I could have stayed in Colomb Bay forever. But the oppressive heat and stifling rains of monsoon season were on the horizon. One afternoon, while riding on our moped, we were caught in the first of the torrential rains. Water poured from the sky with such intensity that my face stung and I had to close my eyes against it. In a matter of seconds every part of me was drenched. I grabbed tight to Brian’s waist as he steered us toward safety.
As the tourist season came to a close, the little shops and restaurants on the beach were being deconstructed one by one. Another disappeared every day. It was time for us to go too.
One afternoon as I typed away at the computer, hidden in the relative coolness of our apartment and making plans to leave India, an email from Michele arrived in my inbox.
Hey you guys! So we wanted to plant an idea as you are planning your extended adventures.
Bicycling through Vietnam is on my bucket list, and there is a trip that Glenn and I have been thinking of doing for several years. It is a two-week bicycling trip from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi. It is an organized adventure trip… So, there are guides, hotels, meals, bikes, support vehicles, etc., all included. You sort of show up on day one… Along with other folks who booked the trip…and you don’t have to worry about anything else until the end of the trip.
Glenn and I would love to take you guys on this trip. And, by that, we mean pay for it. We have some money put away for just this purpose…and without giving you the sordid details, it isn’t money that we have worked for and saved, but rather money we have been lucky enough to acquire that is intended for our amusement. And we can’t imagine anything more amusing than bicycling through the rice paddies and hot jungles of Vietnam. Right??!
So, before you listen to that little voice in your head that says “We can’t let Glenn and Michele pay for us to travel through Vietnam, they have already done so much for us,” please understand that we would get far more out of this than you. We think it would be a blast and would be absolutely thrilled to make it happen. Truly and honestly. We wouldn’t offer if we weren’t 100 percent sure it wasn’t something we wanted to do.
Everything I have read about Vietnam makes it sound like an amazing place to visit. I have no idea if riding a bicycle as a means of travel is even remotely on your list of things to try. Although, after some of your epic bus rides and the rickshaw, it might seem like a pleasure…sore butt and all!
So think about it. We were thinking maybe November or December. Some of the timing might depend on Glenn’s ability to get enough time off (vacation, etc.). He doesn’t get much and used it all recently, so he needs to build it back up again. Ahh…remember those days?
We totally understand if (1) you aren’t interested in visiting Vietnam, (2) you aren’t interested in riding a bicycle every day for long distances (ten to seventy-five miles) in hot weather, (3) the timing isn’t right, or (4) you aren’t excited by the idea of traveling with strangers (much less us) for a couple of weeks. (Admittedly, there are always some interesting/challenging personalities.)
We would still plan to come visit you on your travels…so it isn’t like we are saying it’s “biking through Vietnam or nothing.” It was just an idea we had and wanted to toss it your way to think about as you ponder where your journey takes you next.
Cheers!
Michele (and Glenn)
Brian and I hemmed and hawed over the decision for a few days. It felt wrong to allow them to do this for us when they had already done so much. But when I told a friend about it she said, “Give Michele the gift of accepting her offer with grace.” Giving yellow envelope money had taught me how scary it could be to extend a gift and how nice it felt when that gift was accepted with an open heart. I didn’t want to bat down Michele and Glenn’s generosity. And there was no question about wanting to go, it sounded like an amazing experience. So we said yes. Suddenly, Vietnam appeared on our radar.
• • •
We had train tickets booked out of Colomb Bay and plans to trave
l a few more weeks around India. But the idea exhausted us. A few months ago we would have just stuck with our plans, but we were more in tune with what we wanted now. We canceled our train tickets and developed a new plan. We’d fly to Nepal and trek through the Himalayan Mountains, fulfilling one of Brian’s biggest dreams.
The day we left India, a driver picked us up at our apartment. “Before we head to the airport we have to make one final stop,” I told him.
He steered the car along my running route, through the windy village roads and past the colorful temple, up the jungle hill, and around the forested bend to the Animal Rescue Center. Earlier in the morning we’d said good-bye to Juan, Stewie, and Sheera. We fed them extra biscuits and rubbed behind their ears. “Hold down the fort until we can get back here,” Brian told Stewie. Stewie rolled on his back, looking for a belly rub.
Our taxi stopped in front of the crumbling old building. The dogs were out in the yard running about. They barked when we approached. “I can’t go running today,” I told them. “Sorry guys.”
Inside, a volunteer fed liquid food to a starving dog through an eyedropper. “He’s eating,” she told me, “but he isn’t gaining weight.” I thought about the dozens of starving dogs I’d fed pineapple biscuits to over the past few months and the dogs that begged at our beachside tables each evening. Outside of the window, my eyes fell on my wild pack of mangy dogs out playing in the yard. I wanted to save them all.
“We want to make a donation to the shelter,” I told the volunteer. She nodded and put down the eyedropper, walked to a tiny wooden desk in the corner of the room, and pulled out a small receipt book. When I filled out the donation form I wrote “Michele and Glenn Crim” in the donor box.
The volunteer looked down at the receipt and then back up at us. “Thank you, Michele,” she said to me. She turned to Brian. “Thank you, Glenn.” We nodded and smiled and thanked her for the work she did. She handed me a pink slip of carbon paper and I folded it into quarters and slipped it into my wallet. The receipt was the first definitive proof I’d have to show Michele and Glenn of their kindness. The rest was only in pictures and in the stories that I would one day tell.