Just a taste...

It’s been two weeks.  And still, I can hardly believe I’m here—that this is my life.  So many moments squeezed into these two weeks that at once stretch beyond the 14 days on the calendar and also seem to have been compressed into barely half the time. 

But the moments when you can pause and just be in the moment—those are the ones when you know.  Those are the moments when you live—those are the ones that make every other moment you’ve lived truly and fully and completely and wonderfully alive.

Breathe in and give breathe to the minutes, hours, days that have made these two weeks two incredible weeks.

Yesterday, I had such a moment—where I just sat in a café and tried to capture everything that was happening in that moment, everything that made that moment.  With paper and pen, at a small table in a small café in a small square in the middle of Chalandri, I tried my best to chase and grab hold of the winged words that could make it all real and last beyond just that moment in time.  What follows are the words that I managed to take hold of (or perhaps more accurately: the words that managed to take hold of me).  It’s just a taste. 

But now, even if you don’t particularly care for coffee, come sit with me a moment, and have just a taste….

~Set the scene: a light breeze lifts its soft hand. every so often whispering through the café to caress the small hairs on your skin and gently tug on your curls (well, assuming you have curls—which I do anyway J). 

Pause to sip your coffee through the slightly crooked black bendy straw, the slightly bitter brew quickly chased by the sweetness that makes it a freddo espresso metrio (that is, an iced espresso being of medium sweetness)—your new drink of choice.

Hear this.  You’re far enough away from the main thoroughfare that the hustle and bustle of cars is just a distant, rumbling hum, though every now and then a motorbike will rev its engine at the corner of the small side street that runs close. 

Crescendos of conversation mount around you: from that table over yonder and this couple over there walking their dog and the waiter asking the grumpy old Greek man, sporting his blue sneakers with a bright green Nike swoop, if that’ll be all (well, actually, it’s all Greek to you, so maybe that’s not what the waiter said—a good guess, though…).

All this against the murmured background of a radio paying inside alongside the clanking of glasses being washed and the whirring of the coffee machine.

And on top of it all, the happy sound of children laughing and playing at the playground next door makes it a melody sweet.

And even the clanging of the bells from the church that sits at the center of the plateia (square), the carefully timed, rhythmic tolls to which that group of teenage girls is jamming on the sidewalk—well, even those bells seem a perfect and integral part to the score of this wonderfully, perfectly, pleasantly peaceful evening.

Pause.  Pick up the pen.  And know.  Know in the depths of your soul: this is where you are supposed to be.

Glance up.  White clouds dot the pale blue sky—wispy, not quite Toy Story clouds.  The sun sits low in the sky and seems to cast its shine at a level perfectly suited to highlight all the life that surrounds you.

Breathe in and turn your head and reevaluate.  Maybe that grumpy old man isn’t so grumpy after all.  He sits and watches and sips.  And the creases of his face are not in a frown after all.  Though it’s not your typical smile, maybe it’s his.  He munches on a cookie and leans back in his chair (so maybe that conversation earlier between him and the waiter was actually the waiter taking his order).  Now, they’re not the same and their noses are quite different, the one you look at now slopes out further, curving out and hanging over his mouth.  But something about his hands and the something about the way he chews and the way his smile is not a smile but it’s his—it reminds you of someone you haven’t seen for quite some time.  And in the missing, you smile a smile that’s not really a typical smile but it’s your own quiet thoughtful smile, because you’ve just been given a glimpse of them, a gift.

Across the table, spot the furrowed brow of concentration as you share in the quiet camaraderie of writing.  And although words fly all around you—from the moving lips of the people sitting at the table adjacent, from the miscellaneous groupings of old and young and male and female across the street, from the speakers of the TV screen inside trumpeting the latest victory of the beloved sports team; and across the small circular table, blazing tiny black trails on her laptop screen, and even right below your nose, in soft, gray scribbles on your page—yet there is a peace in a quiet that is laden with words…

It’s been two weeks already.  And think now on what you have done; look forward to what you’ve yet to do.  But in this very moment be thankful for now.  Be thankful for the moments alone when you’ve been able to reflect and recharge.  Be thankful for the mornings and afternoons and evenings spent getting to know new friends who are on this adventure of a lifetime, too; rasie a glass and toast to many more such days and nights spent in friendship. Be thankful for the moments of catching up in doorways, for conversations that carry you over the crooked cobblestones and cracked pavement of the almost treacherous paths that make up the “sidewalks” of Greece (though ‘sidewalks’ may be a bit too generous of a term).  Be thankful for a run that showed you more of this beautiful city—one that testified to the strengthening of your body’s endurance, a refreshing reward for all the miles you’ve put in over the months. 

Be thankful for putting down the pen when more friends join.  Close the book to hold these words here, as more come to life apart from the page, carried away now on the cool breeze that carries you through another wonderful evening among new friends in this new place filled with grand new adventures. 

Be thankful.

For this is just a taste…