New Start Friday

Credit: Refinery29

Hi, friends and readers!!! I’m back. I’ve missed you, and writing the Adulting-Second Half blog, so, so much. But I just came back from a wonderful trip to London and other parts of England. (My husband and I just had to check up on our daughter who is studying there this summer. We knew that she missed us. Ha!) I had never been to England before, and I was so utterly pleased with what I experienced. I am not a city dweller. I love nature. I like to call myself “Snow White.” But if I had to live in a city, London is the most liveable city that I have ever travelled to, and I have been fortunate enough to have visited many cities in our own country, and abroad.

But before I bore you to death with my trip details, I do realize that this is Friday and it is a good one!! It’s the New Moon. We are officially, fresh-starting the second half of the year. What do you want for the rest of this year? It’s a perfect time to reflect, get your thoughts down in writing, and start taking steps towards what you want. My first half of the year has been amazing – chock full of adventures, travel, visits with family and friends, weddings, the birthday clump of our family members, holidays etc. etc. Honestly, it’s been delightful, but it’s also been a lot. I like the second half of the year because things don’t get too drummed up for our family, until the holidays at the end of the year. Things in my life never seem as frenzied during the second half of the year. I like spontaneity and the second half of the year seems to allow for more of it. But, I digress. . . . today is Favorite Things Friday on the blog!! Today my favorite is packing cubes. I had never used these before in my travels, but my daughter insisted that they make a huge difference in utilizing space in your luggage. I purchased a soft set of about seven packing cubes for this trip, and while I’ve never been good about rolling up my stuff like little sushi rolls (my husband, being a long-time military brat, is a master at this), I loved how organized these cubes kept my stuff. My tops were with my tops. My bottoms were with my bottoms. My hair stuff was all together and easily found. My suitcase was no longer the jack-in-the-box jumble that it usually is, when I am travelling. If you have never tried packing cubes, I highly recommend giving them a try.

Okay, for those of you who want my reflections on London and other parts of England, here they are, in no particular order:

+ England has excellent food. It is a mistaken thought that the only thing good to eat in England is fish and chips. (although, I had fish and chips and it was yummy) I had incredible food including delicious steak ale pies, delectable sandwiches, fantastic Indian food, superfresh and colorful greens and fruits and desserts from Borough Market . . . now you may think, “Well yes, you were in a major city in the world. There is competition and variety,” but I will tell you that the best food that I had on my trip was in a tiny pub, out in the country, near Salisbury, England. We had “Sunday Roast” there which was like a fabulous Thanksgiving meal. You could choose beef or chicken or steak pie, and then on top of each of these was a huge Yorkshire Pudding. Yorkshire Pudding was maybe my favorite item that I ate the whole time I was in England. Yorkshire Pudding is a delightful, doughy cloud that you dip in gravy. I adore it!

+ I kept describing London as the most “wholesome” city I have ever been to, and we went all over London. My husband and I averaged walking about 20,000 steps a day. (my kids were never a fan of our style of vacationing. “Some people like to relax on vacation,” was something which we often heard muttered by one, or by all four of our children, on our various vacations) London has wide streets, lower buildings, less traffic (the London Underground is safe, easy to navigate, quiet, and reliable – we took it everywhere), and lots of green spaces. The people are reserved, but kind and polite and eager to help you. It’s a wonderful place for “eye candy”: beautiful historic cathedrals and buildings, colorful flowers outside of every pub, gorgeous, multicultural people with smart, dressed-up, intriguing style. In short, London is everything it’s cracked up to be.

+ My husband and I saw King Charles being driven out of Buckingham Palace, quite by chance. We noticed that the gates to the palace had been opened, and a crowd was gathering around the road by the gates. My husband and I were curious, but having it be our first day in London, we instead decided to meander over to the fountain in front of the palace to see it more closely. The next thing we knew, a police officer stopped traffic on the road, just a few feet away from us, and a luxurious black car drove by with the white-haired king sitting in the back, his fingers in front of his body, held in a position, much like when you were a kid and you were playing, “Here is the church, Here is the steeple”. His fingers were in “steeple position.”

+ We toured St. Paul’s Cathedral, The British Museum, Southwark Cathedral, The Tower of London and Westminster Abbey. All were interesting. I particularly liked the smaller Southwark Cathedral where Shakespeare is said to have spent a lot of time and I delighted in having the proper English afternoon tea experience (with a three stack tower of treats) at The British Museum while my husband satiated himself in Egyptian history. While all of the buildings and their historical significance were incredible, it struck me that Westminster Abbey was essentially an extremely enormous fancy mausoleum. And having spent most of our time in The British Museum staring at mummies and sarcophaguses from Egyptian tombs, it struck me that it is kind of sad and egotistical that many of the wealthy humans of our past were so fixated on the afterlife, and of being remembered by future people. (other than major historical figures and writers buried in Westminster Abbey, I knew very few of the names nor the significance of the people buried there) I honestly found the experience to be an excellent reminder that life on earth is NOW. And as happens on all of my travels, I was sincerely amazed how many millions of different people I was witnessing every day, all over just one city, on our great big Earth. (and as happens on all of my travels, there were plenty of Americans afoot. You just can’t escape us. There is a line from a song, whose band and name escapes me now, where the singer dejectedly and flatly states, “Oh, you’re all still here.” That line played in my mind a few times on this trip.) Anyway, what I felt deeply reminded of, when I reflected on all of the carefully planned, and elaborately and expensively made “death artifacts” is that our life’s experience is really mostly just consequential to ourselves, and to the few people in our inner circle. This realization is freeing. Stop focusing on making an impression on other people. Just be yourself, and be kind, and live each precious moment of your life fully and consciously. Don’t fear death. Focus on living your life.

+ My favorite part of the trip was being with family whom we don’t get to see often at all. (it’s hard, living across the pond, and all) They live by the sea in England, and we took a train out to see them, and even though we hadn’t seen each other in years, the love flowed fervently. We even met children that we had never met before and by the end of the night, we were all hugging and professing our love for each other. We “saw” each other. There is something so special and uncanny about “the family bond.” We even all went to Stonehenge together and I had honestly expected that to be the most spiritual experience of my trip. But it wasn’t. The most spiritual part of the trip wasn’t the cathedrals, nor the choirs singing in chapels, nor the mysterious giant rocks of Stonehenge. The most spiritual part of my trip was a reminder of just how beautiful and strong the elastic bonds of love, hold us all together. Great, loving arms enfold us all. This I know.

It’s great to be back. I love you. I missed you. See you tomorrow!!

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

1488. Do you prefer sporty or academic members of the opposite sex? (Lucky for me, my husband is both.)