No Worries

When I took my writing to the Iowa writing program one summer, the piece I was working on began like this:  "All journeys are threaded with trouble."

Then I went on to talk about Odysseus and Moses, one on his way home, the other to the Promised Land.  As the camera girl, panning the wide screen, I recalled a few road blocks, detours, dangers, and rascals encountered along the way.

Then I zoomed in closer: Dorothy on the Road to Oz, the poor wretched orphans abandoned in the woods with only bread crumbs to guide them home....

So far, my troubles on this journey have been minor: an inflatable bed that deflated in the middle of the night;  a motel with no water, a broken door, carpet cleaners pounding on the ceiling at midnight....
But no tragedies, not one.  Just tiny reminders that things do not always go according to plan, just like at home.

My friend Betty and I still laugh about the time we rented a cheap room in Cuba, New Mexico--everything patched together with duct tape, the AC with no temperature control,  the beds lumpy, the door lock broken, the toilet stopped up....As cold and dirty and strange as that night was, we got us a story that is, in some ways, better than those of the nights spent in perfect places.

Every journey begins with someone setting out.
And they end (or there would be no story) with Getting There in Spite of Everything.