Ineke Spoorenberg
I look like Little Thumb. I'm losing everything. My slippers from Breda are somewhere in Northern France; I haven't seen my pedometer in ages and I left my spare socks on the clothesline in Choye. In this way I leave a very own trail along the Via Francigena.
What's going through your mind right now? That's one of the many questions I found among the comments on my blog. I think that question is on the minds of more people: how do you really experience it? I'd be curious about it myself.
I will try to outline my state of mind. Every morning I get up at seven thirty. I have breakfast around eight o'clock, by nine I am already on the road. Regularly – especially with this gray weather – I ask myself what the hell I'm doing, but that consideration seems to occur regularly with pilgrims. If I suffer from homesickness, I think of all the disasters that are happening in the world and of which I am now, far away from the news images, not witnessing.
Flow
But last week, when the country was so sunny and I was walking through a wonderful environment, I felt a kind of 'flow' coming from: here I walk anyway. The majority of Dutch people are now standing at the coffee machine or having a meeting.
When I walk like this all day, part of my mind goes to practical matters, such as: where can I sit down and eat a sandwich? Am I still on the right track? Or… and above all: how many kilometers do I still have to go? Meanwhile, I force myself to consciously look around at the beauty of the landscape, at the flowers along the road. I have to, because I easily walk five kilometers completely lost in thought without a single bit of the landscape sinking in.
Of course I mostly think about my years with Cor. Both in a positive and negative sense. Good memories, but also the pain of the end and then I still wonder if I did it all right. I personally think that this is the essence of my journey: that I can give the loss of Cor a place, make peace with the situation and pick up my life again.
Being alone
Being alone is fine with me. Of course I have dozens of superficial conversations. Every now and then a meeting goes a little further. In Chateauvillain, for example, I got into conversation with one Hervé, a big clumsy man, who forced himself on me in Maggie and Steve's bar. At one point he took my hand to see if I was married and saw Cor's two rings. I told my story.
Then he came up with a terrible pile of misery: married, divorced, five children, one of whom is autistic. He also wanted to do something special, he said. When I inquired further, it turned out that he had never been with his autistic son, who was in an institution. I said that if he wanted something special, he should do something for his son, maybe he could make himself useful in that institution. He responded enthusiastically.
The next morning Maggie told me that Hervé had already called; he wanted my phone number. But I definitely didn't want to give that to him. I thought: soon it will be in front of me again twenty kilometers further tonight. At Maggie's insistence, I gave my email address. Hervé needed a push to get out of the misery, she said. If my action would inspire him to do so, that would of course be very nice. I haven't heard anything more from Hervé. Frankly, he didn't seem like the type for e-mailing.
Longing for Italy
In the meantime, I have not yet met any other pilgrim to Rome. Joost may know where they are hiding. Maybe soon on the Sint-Berhardpass? I also can't seem to get rid of the Netherlands. I think this will change in Italy. France is just not my country. It's gray. It doesn't sparkle; I haven't laughed so hard in ages. Well, that doesn't happen to you in Italy, even if you don't speak the language; the Italian has, in my opinion, much more zest for life and self-mockery.
By the way, I read that a whole group of pilgrims who smuggled drugs from Colombia were arrested in the pilgrim's hospital in Piacenza. Those nuns didn't notice. And hand out soup. If that's not humor...
To be continued…
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