by Patrick Gray
The humming rhythm of Justin’s wheels pulls me into an almost trancelike state, and I gradually begin to see images. Random moments play on a million tiny television screens behind my eyes—frustration with my kids, dismissive words, instances of being quick to anger, times when I have failed my wife with my words, my actions, and my selfishness. Soon I can see every time I’ve let down my wife, every time I’ve disappointed my children.
My wife calls to ask when I’ll be home; I tell her, “Soon,” but don’t make it home for several hours.
My kids ask to go to the park; I tell them, “As soon as I am done with . . .” But we never make it.
My daughter snuggles up next to me while I’m answering e-mails on my phone. I can’t focus with her jostling my arm, so I get up to minimize the distraction. She looks at me, but I avoid eye contact.
I have my phone at the table and answer calls from physicians late into the evening. “That phone is keeping you from your family!” my wife says to me. “This phone is helping put food on the table!” I reply in anger.
Normal brother-and-sister squabbles among my kids are met with angst and a raised voice instead of with love and a desire to understand how they’re feeling.
Expectant eyes look to me for hugs or even just a smile, but I walk by, pretending not to see them. I pretend I don’t see the hurt because I don’t have the time or patience to deal with it.
“I miss you, Daddy!” I hear over and over, but I don’t make any change.
Now, every moment I wish I could take back is staring me in the face as if to say, This is who you are! What are you going to do about it? Taking all of this in at once, absorbing all my failings as a father and as a husband, brings me to silent tears as I push Justin down the path ahead of us.
I don’t know what to make of this, but I don’t like what I see and I don’t like who I’ve been in each of these moments. I’ve never been abusive or cruel, but I’ve been so neglectful and dismissive. I haven’t led in love, and I have given my children and my wife reasons to question how much I value them, reasons to doubt how much I love them. I haven’t spent time in Sabbath with them. I haven’t pursued them.
When we arrive in the next town, I am desperate to speak to my family. We find a coffee shop with wi-fi and I place a Skype call, hoping they’ll all be awake. When Donna answers, surrounded by our kids, the words pour from my aching heart.
“Cambria, Joshua, and Olivia, I love you all so much,” I say as my voice cracks. I have told them I love them a million times, but never quite like this.
Cambria smiles and asks, “Why are you crying?”
“Because I haven’t shown you how much I love you. I am so sorry for all the times I have let you down.”
Joshua and Olivia tell me they love me and miss me, but Cambria, my oldest, says to me, “I forgive you, Daddy, and I love you, too.”
After some time with my kids, I ask them for a few moments to speak to their mother alone. As Donna sits in the quiet of our office with the door closed, halfway across the world, I tell her, “I am sorry for every time I have broken your heart, and I know there have been many.” At this point, I am crying almost uncontrollably.
Donna just smiles as she takes a moment to respond. Her voice is tender but deliberate as she says, “If you never broke my heart, how would I learn to love you more?”
These words strike me in a way I’m not expecting. The confession of my failings has given my wife an opportunity to love me or hate me for what I have done, for who I have been. Her choice to forgive me, to look past my faults and continue to take my hand, strips my failures of any power in my life. This never could have happened if I didn’t trust her with all of me.
As weird as it may seem, being entirely accountable offers others an opportunity to show the depth of their love. It gives them the opportunity to demonstrate how there are no conditions to their love.
Though Donna said it only once, I keep replaying her words in my head.
If you never broke my heart, how would I learn to love you more?
19WE’RE NOT ALONE IN HERE
— JUSTIN —
WHILE THE MESETA CONTINUES to challenge us mentally and emotionally, the past few days have taken a physical toll on Patrick. The constant day in, day out of pushing the chair has affected his legs, and he now has significant pain and cramping in his calves that no amount of stretching seems to alleviate. We had planned to take a rest day here in the city of León, but Patrick’s discomfort now has us questioning whether we should take two days to allow him more time to recuperate. With nineteen days and 280 miles behind us, he has more than earned an extra day of rest.
We opt for beds in a quaint hotel with rooms large enough to accommodate my wheelchair. Our room overlooks a large city square that is surprisingly empty for a Sunday afternoon. Adjacent to the hotel is the albergue where many pilgrims are staying, including Christie. Having decided to stay two nights in León, we let Christie know, but we haven’t seen Lynda or John, who have opted for another albergue. Once settled, we set out to explore the city. After dinner, both full and satisfied, we return to our room for showers and a good night’s sleep.
Unfamiliar voices invade my dreams, and as they get louder and louder, I wake. Eyes open in the dark room, I realize the voices aren’t just in my head. Apparently Patrick can hear them, too, because he’s standing at the window looking down at the square below.
“There must be a couple hundred people down there,” he says when he sees I’m awake.
“What time is it?”
“Two in the morning”
“What are they doing?”
“Singing. Dancing. Having a good ol’ time!”
Like Burgos, León is a large city, but it has a different feel. The streets are quieter during the day, and the nightlife is definitely more vibrant and celebratory—at least tonight. We do our best to block out the noise, but there is so much laughter drifting up to our window, we find it difficult not to smile as we drift to sleep. Somehow, in spite of the sounds and voices, we get some much-needed rest and wake to the sun shining through our window. As morning draws closer to noon, we finally get dressed for the day, and Patrick stuffs our filthy, sweat-stained clothes into his backpack. We desperately need to do laundry.
Once again, the city is quiet as we navigate our way to the nearest Laundromat. We wash our clothes, and while we wait for them to dry, the streets gradually get busier.
Christie has also decided to spend the day in León, and she joins us now in our exploration of the city. Well into the afternoon, we wander through town and chat with many of the locals. My wheelchair is a bit of an anomaly, and people are curious about why I’m here. When Patrick and I explain our journey and mention that we’ve come all the way from St. Jean Pied de Port, many people simply refuse to believe us. That a man in a wheelchair could have traveled this far is beyond their comprehension.
Outside a coffee shop, a man asks us in broken English if we are doing the Camino.
“Yes, we are!”
“Where did you start?” he asks.
“St. Jean,” Patrick replies as he lifts a cup of coffee to my lips.
“How was the bike route on your chair?”
“We didn’t take the bike route. We went over the top, on the Napoleon Route.”
The gentleman laughs and says, “No, you didn’t.”
We talk with him for a few more minutes before we leave the café, but he remains unconvinced.
The afternoon turns to evening, and with the setting sun comes hunger. We pick up some food to take back to the room, and when we reach the courtyard outside our hotel, we have to navigate our way through an even bigger crowd than last night. We wonder what’s going on, but we’re more tired than curious, so we turn in.
I haven’t had my eyes closed nearly long enough before screaming and yelling erupts from just below our window. Two nights in a row, we’ve been awakened at 2:00 a.m. Tonight, however, the celebration is ten times louder
, and I can see the dancing flicker of flames reflected on the window from a bonfire below. Even though I’m exhausted, the laughter rising up to our window makes me smile, just like last night. Lying here in the middle of the night, with Patrick at the window, I am reminded of a very different set of circumstances when he and I were pulled from sleep in the wee hours of the morning.
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Growing up, my family had a 1950s cabin in Donnelly, Idaho, about 120 miles northeast of Ontario, near McCall. Patrick frequently accompanied my family on weekend excursions, and he and I would explore the woods, shoot BB guns, and walk down to the lake to fish (though I don’t think we ever caught anything).
When I proposed to Kirstin, she and I were staying at the cabin with my family. I still remember asking Patrick to come up to Donnelly without Kirstin knowing. He took a camera and hid in the bushes across a narrow stretch of a nearby lake. When I popped the question, he captured the moment on film.
After we’d been married for several years, Kirstin and I had officially established the habit of taking a trip with Patrick and Donna every year. One particular year, when money was tighter than usual, we extended the length of our visit to Ontario to allow us to spend several days with Patrick and Donna at my family’s cabin. They had recently moved to a town near Boise, so the trip to Donnelly was a short drive for all of us.
The small red-and-white A-frame was nothing to speak of, but we had so many memories associated with the tiny living space. Downstairs boasted a family room with a wood stove, a small dining area, a kitchen, and one bathroom. Up a narrow set of stairs were two bedrooms connected by a small hallway. As boys, Patrick and I had always slept in tents on the property, but that night—the first time the four of us had ever stayed at the cabin together as couples—we were looking forward to the comfort of the queen-size beds.
An evening of barbecued burgers, snacks, and board games kept us up late, laughing. Midnight came sooner than we expected, and we finally decided to turn in. By this point in my life, stairs had become difficult for me, but with the support from my leg braces, I was still able to make the ascent. At the top of the stairs, Kirstin and I turned right and headed into the back bedroom while Patrick and Donna turned left.
As we crawled into bed, the pale moonlight shining through the Juliet balcony in Patrick and Donna’s room offered a faint light into ours.
I had been asleep for maybe an hour when I felt something brush my face, followed by a rustling sound somewhere in the room. Confused, I peered through the darkness, hoping to figure out what was happening. When I heard the rustling again, I nudged Kirstin.
“Honey, I think there’s something in here.”
Annoyed and not fully awake, she said, “No, there’s not. Go back to sleep.”
I closed my eyes again, but not a minute later I felt the same sensation on my face. Brushing at it wildly while shaking my head, I felt the wings of something flap as it flew away.
“Kirstin! Turn on the light! I think there’s a bird in here!”
Irritated at me for waking her again, she reluctantly reached for the bedside lamp. As soon as the light came on, I saw a black winged shadow dart across our room and out into the hallway leading to Patrick and Donna’s side of the cabin.
“Crap! It’s a bat!”
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— PATRICK —
Sometime after we had all gone to bed that night, I awoke to the sound of Justin and Kirstin whispering loudly in their bedroom, but nothing was clear enough to register until the soft light from the bedside lamp in their room dully illuminated ours. With eyes now open, I saw a black shadow dart across our room as Justin yelled, “Crap! It’s a bat!”
Fully awake now, I scrambled out of bed to grab my boxers. As I pulled them on, Justin came into the room, using the walls to steady himself as he walked.
“Pat! There’s a bat in here! It just flew into your room!”
“I know. I think it’s on the floor on Donna’s side of the bed.”
“What!” Donna yelled as she pulled the covers over her face to shield herself from our unwanted guest. Only her long brown ponytail stuck out from under the covers. As I crept around the end of the bed to her side, I could see the bat lying on the floor with its wings spread flat against the carpet.
“What do we do?” I asked Justin.
“Use your T-shirt,” he suggested, pointing to my shirt on the floor. “See if you can throw it on him and scoop him up, then throw him out the window.”
As I leaned down to retrieve my shirt, Justin grabbed a decorative pillow at the end of the bed to use as a shield—or a weapon.
“If that thing flies up,” he said, “I’m gonna whack it with this pillow!”
Somehow, we both felt equipped for the job.
I squatted a few feet away from the furry creature so I had some distance in case it flew at me. Slowly, so as not to frighten the bat, I leaned as far forward as possible and tossed my shirt onto our unwelcome visitor.
Nothing happened. The bat lay motionless.
Feeling a little braver, I started to scoop up the T-shirt while gathering it around the bat’s body, but a series of loud squeaks erupted from beneath my hands.
“IT MAKES NOISE?!?” Kirstin yelled from the other room. “IT MAKES NOISE?!?”
Donna just let out a loud, “EEEW!” as she kicked her legs under the covers in disgust.
Determined to get rid of this thing as quickly as possible and return to bed, I tried to pick up the bundle of T-shirt and winged intruder, but somehow he worked his way free and flew directly at me—waist high. What happened next, I never could have imagined.
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— JUSTIN —
The pillow I picked up was filled with some kind of stuffing that gave it some weight. Setting a wide stance to keep my balance, I stood at the ready as Patrick bent down to gather up the bat. When we heard the squeaks, I saw Patrick’s eyes grow wide with fear as he shouted, “OH NO!” and began dancing out of the way of the black missile flying toward him. As Patrick tried to avoid the oncoming threat, his boxers shifted and he was left completely . . . unprotected.
At the very last second, the bat veered away from Patrick and flew directly at me. Without hesitation, I took a swing that would have made Babe Ruth proud. As the pillow connected with it, the bat pinwheeled through the air and landed on the front of Patrick’s boxers.
As the unwanted visitor latched onto the fabric of Patrick’s underwear and began flapping its wings against his skin, Patrick shouted, “IT’S ON MY JUNK! IT’S ON MY JUNK!”
The sensation of furry wings in a place they should never be had caused Patrick to completely lose his mind.
By now, both Donna and Kirstin were laughing hysterically from the safety of their respective hiding places, and I stood, pillow in hand, ready to swing again at a moment’s notice.
Filled with absolute terror, Patrick raised a closed left fist and swung toward the winged creature, hoping to dislodge it from his boxers. But in his panic, he was a little off target. Instead of striking the bat with a force meant to stun—if not kill—the animal, Patrick delivered the deathblow directly to his own manhood.
I laughed so hard I could barely stand up. Lying at my feet was a completely dazed bat, and a few feet away Patrick was writhing on the floor, groaning and cupping himself in an attempt to ease the self-inflicted pain.
After several minutes, he recovered, threw his shirt over the still-bewildered bat, and launched the entire wad of cotton fabric and fuzzy wings out the balcony window.
Problem solved, Patrick and I just looked at each other in disbelief. Not sure what to do next, I simply shrugged and said, “Well, good night.”
We all had a hard time getting back to sleep as we kept breaking out in spontaneous laughter.
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— PATRICK —
It’s 5:00 a.m., and the party in the square has finally ended. Justin and I embrace the quiet and choose to sleep in a little later than usual. But soon
the sun shining through our window is too bright, so we get up, get ready, and head out for breakfast. Our curiosity gets the best of us, and we ask around about the previous night, which was so much louder than the night before. It turns out that today, June 24, marks the Feast of St. John the Baptist. Last night’s ruckus was the annual celebration of St. John’s Eve, the most festive of several nights leading up to the day honoring the birth of John the Baptist.
Being awakened by a party celebrating the birth of a saint and being dragged from sleep by a wayward bat are hardly comparable stories, but neither one would have happened if not for the intentional nature of our friendship. So many memories have been made—and are being made here on the Camino—because of our commitment to one another.
We know people who choose isolation over relationship but then are jealous of the stories and memories others share about their spouses, siblings, parents, and friends. There is a longing for connection, yet something keeps them from fully engaging in their relationships. This desire for human connection is what has many pilgrims on the Camino. But intentional, purposeful commitment can be difficult.
Many of us commit to spending time with friends and family on holidays like Christmas (or the celebration of St. John last night). After all, holidays require our attention only a few times a year. But the quality of the memories made is often determined by the depth of our relationships. This depth comes only by sacrificing time and effort, and by fully engaging in relational living. A depth that is the result of bearing witness to one another’s lives.