The gypsies of Bohemia? My lineage? I try to tell her I am not our family gypsy. He died.
“My husband was half Hungarian. A lot of gypsies are Hungarian, aren’t they?”
She smiles at me. “Well, yes, but a lot of gypsies are Bohemian.”
The next morning the skies are even bluer but the roadways are narrow, icy, slippery. I tell the desk clerk, “I didn’t expect the storm or imagine that the airport would be shut down so long. I didn’t bring enough medicine for an extra week. I’m usually very careful in my packing, but this time, well, I had some problems . . .”
“Easy,” she says. “The hotel driver will take you in our van to the pharmacy. It’ll be an exciting ride maybe, but the snow is really beautiful.”
I have heard those words before, on a train ride. I ask the driver if I can sit up front. I want to see it all.
LATE that night, I sit in a corner of the coffee shop, revising my Rules again. I add, “bring really large flashlight, extra meds, emergency charger . . .” and a rule from Rudy: “‘Relax. Kind strangers will appear.’”
MARY’S RULES
FOR
TRAVEL
1. REMAIN ALERT. ALWAYS.
2. EXPECT THE WORST.
Pack door locks, emergency charger, antibiotic wipes, insect repellent, large flashlights, protein bars, face masks, toilet seat covers, water purifier, mosquito netting, emergency phone numbers for doctors, bankers, the U.S. embassy.
3. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A FREE LUNCH. (AND) YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR.
There is a reason that hotel has the best price and the café a seafood special.
4. IN PARTICULAR, DO NOT SKIMP ON TRANSPORTATION.
There is no National Transportation Safety Board where you are going. Unobtrusively, inspect tires on buses, vans, and rickshaws. If you can find a casual way to bring this up, ask how the brakes are doing.
5. PREPARE FOR MEDICAL EMERGENCIES.
Pack a case of prescription and over-the-counter remedies for any ailment you have had in the last five years, as well as for any disease you know to be hereditary. Add megadose vitamins, antibiotics, rescue inhaler, GI-tract remedies for either extreme, bandages, knee and ankle braces. Purchase evacuation insurance.
6. PREPARE FOR THEFT.
Carry a list of credit card numbers, leaving out segments of the numbers in case that list is stolen. Leave another copy with a family member at home, unless that member causes concern.
7. RELAX. KIND STRANGERS WILL APPEAR.
EPILOGUE
RUDY’S RULE 14:
DON’T LET DEATH KEEP YOU
FROM TRAVELING
TODAY I WILL GO TO A FUNERAL, THE FIRST SINCE RUDY’S death several months ago. I will honor Alta Mae, one of his cherished colleagues. I put on a fitted black jacket and look in the hall mirror. My staring, reddened eyes say it all: I am in no shape to go anywhere, let alone a funeral. There will not be enough Kleenex.
Slipping off the jacket and kicking off my shoes, I head to the laundry room. In the months since Rudy died, washing towels has been a central part of my day. I know just how much detergent to add, in which cycle, then just how long to set the dryer. There is hardly anything else I have mastered since his death.
The decision is easy now. I must stay home because I have to watch the laundry. Changed into sweat pants and shirt, I go to gather the mail. Apparently I have not been at my box for many days. Amidst the tangled, tall stack of envelopes and catalogs, a letter from the Salvation Army gets my attention. It must not be another solicitation; it is addressed to me by hand. Inside is a letter of apology.
We sincerely regret the delay in this notification. Several weeks ago, a donor, Alta Mae Talbot, made a very generous gift to us in loving memory of your husband, Rudy Jensen. We apologize for not notifying you in a timely manner. Please accept our sincere condolences.
The funeral is half over when I arrive, but friends wave and point to the seat they have saved for me. I have a few words with Rudy before I move toward the mourners.
“I admit I needed a bit of a nudge, but you—you’ve got to be less controlling now that you’re gone.”
MONTHS later, I tell the counselor, “I’m not the type, not the type to claim visions or form friendships with ghosts. I don’t read books about the paranormal or go to séances. I’m what you would call a ‘skeptic.’ You’ll notice that my eyebrows are in a semi-permanent raised position.
“Yes, things have changed a bit over time, just as you said they might. He’s not so much involved in life at the house any more . . . but I have to tell you, he seems to have begun traveling again.”
THE small commuter plane linking California’s central valley to San Francisco is supposed to fly me away from my memories. Instead it reminds me of flights around the globe. I want to ask Rudy if he, too, sees the resemblance between this pilot and one in the Costa Rica jungle who, once up in the air, explained why our four-passenger craft needed to return to base. (“Down, down, plane down.”) We got it. Free drinks in the bar he conveniently owned helped pass the time while we watched him replace three parts.
Today I have the aisle seat I want, one close to the front for easy escape. (Smaller planes are known to have higher crash rates.) The window seat next to me stays vacant. I start to spread out my carry-on bags when I realize that the cabin door is being reopened and more passengers boarded. I don’t bother to condense my belongings—there are plenty of free spaces. But a tall, thin young man stops, sees the empty seat, rechecks his ticket.
He looks at me and says softly, “I belong with you.”
He must have seen me startle—that was a familiar phrase in our house. Recovering, I gather my carry-ons and stand to let him take the window seat. He takes off a heavy jacket to reveal his pullover sweater is white, emblazoned with the green and yellow University of Oregon emblem. Rudy’s school, his team.
I need more information. “So, you’re a student at the university in Eugene?”
“I am. Do you know that school? Not many Californians do.”
“Yes, I know it well. My husband and I lived there for several years while I was in grad school, some time ago. But he died.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say.”
He is young; he thinks he must say something.
“Did he just love the place? It’s only my first year but already I do.”
“He most loved the environment, the natural beauty everywhere—and the Ducks football. He even loved the rain.”
“That’s funny, that’s just what I love.”
I am taking the early-morning train home from San Jose. Escaping the crowded Amtrak lobby, I find the track, but I must be early. A young man and I are alone in the darkness, on the benches. For a long time, he looks down, but when finally he raises his head and looks at me, he and his blue eyes are familiar. So is his Oregon Duck shirt. There are nine hundred seats on this commuter train, and he sits opposite me. He does not talk, just sits and reads an American history text.
THE day before my niece Diane and I are to begin a road trip north to Seattle for a wedding, the manager at the cemetery calls me. The headstone for Rudy’s grave has arrived and been placed. They would like me to see it, so we arrange to spend time there on our way home.
I had struggled for weeks over the wording of the stone. How could I describe this force in twenty characters? I had settled on “Beloved, Kind Warrior.”
I know how impatient Rudy can get. As we approach the freeway exit to the cemetery, I roll down our windows and call to him.
“We’ll be back, honey. We’re on our way to Emily’s wedding. We’ll have lots of time when—”
Diane’s scream interrupts my sentence. “Look, look to the right.”
There is either a mirage or a large, shiny new green and yellow carrier truck in the next lane, pulling ahead of us, the Duck mascot emblazoned on all sides of the University of Oregon vehicle, here, hundreds of miles from its campus.
Diane r
eadies her camera and shouts directions. “Nobody’s going to believe us. Pick up speed and pass the truck. Pull off at the first exit and I’ll jump out and get the picture.”
It takes time for a mirage to appear. We stand a long time in the midst of an offramp up the road, camera at the ready, and no Duck truck in sight. Just when we begin to believe we have had some sort of shared hallucination, the truck appears on the highway next to us, its driver looking confused when we wave, scream, and take his picture.
The wedding venue in Seattle is beautiful. A newly restored hotel down the street houses the whole family, and when Diane and I arrive we have a warm welcome, our younger nieces and nephews showing us to our rooms. In my room, I notice they exchange whispers and look a little anxious.
When I open the room’s heavy drapes, I understand. Across the narrow street is a barber shop with a large neon sign facing directly into my bedroom.
“Rudy’s,” it says.
AT home, I postpone cleaning his closet as long as I can. As winter weather approaches again, I try not to notice his warm coats, jackets, fur hat. Someone needs these things, I finally tell myself, and if I listen carefully another voice says it is time. A friend and I bundle the clothes: in each stack, garments in yellow and green form an entire wardrobe of tribute to the University of Oregon Ducks football team.
Shelter residents help me unload my car trunk, thanking me over and over for warmth. This winter when I walk downtown, I startle each time I come face to face with a familiar Oregon Ducks vest or sweater. One homeless man in yellow and green camps in front of my favorite store, greets me like he knows me. We exchange our anthem: “Go Ducks.”
I need to talk to that counselor again. It has been nearly four years since Rudy died and he is still testing the theory that time will fade the intensity of his presence. I admit, though, that he has been more quiet lately—no dramatic coincidences, no sense he has something to say or anyplace to go— until this week.
My family gathers in Seattle, staying in a venerable bed and breakfast west of the city. It is rare that we can all be in one place at one time and we are relishing that. As we walk into the inn to register, a recording of Louis Armstrong proclaims “It’s a Wonderful World,” a Rudy-favorite tune that was the theme at his memorial. One niece reminds us that we have not all been together since that memorial.
“Uncle Rudy would have loved this reunion,” she says. “Think of all he went through on the train to get to his last party here.”
I wonder to myself if that party here four years ago was really Rudy’s last. I can’t imagine him ever having a last party.
A celebration is planned for tonight. It is my brother’s birthday. It was my brother’s birthday that four years ago brought Rudy to Seattle on his triumphant train ride through avalanche country.
Now, in keeping with family tradition, it is time for naps before the party. Each of the room doors closes quietly. I go to my room, kick off my shoes, climb into the high bed, and place my iPhone on the pillow next to me as I always do. But this time, as I set it down it blasts music. I have never used my phone for music; I come from the generation that says phones are for making and receiving phone calls. I have never even spoken to Siri. Yet here at this family reunion, the phone chooses “Hail, Hail, the Gang’s All Here” and it chooses to play it louder and louder and louder.
The bedroom doors open and my nieces follow the blaring, blasting sounds to my room. I have been unable to turn the music off or even down. My hands are shaking and that is part of the problem, but it seems not to be the whole explanation, for even our tech guru Cindy labors to control the sound. Finally, the phone submits, quiets, but when she looks at the screen he announces himself.
“From Rudy Jensen’s iPod Playlist,” it says.
It takes awhile for hearts to settle down to normal rhythms, and hands to stop shaking, but just as we calm, the phone begins to play Mozart’s “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” (“A Little Night Music”), Rudy’s favorite classical piece. Just to be sure she has identified the messenger, Cindy turns the phone over and reads once again on the screen: “From Rudy Jensen’s iPod Playlist.”
Somehow she quiets the phone, is able to turn it off, and this time it stays quiet. Messages received. She attempts a theory about how Rudy’s playlist from four years ago could have migrated now from his small computer to his Cloud, then jumped somehow onto my Cloud, but she has no explanation for the musical choice, the perfectly timed message, nor the independence of a time traveler who never misses a Seattle party.
I am just pleased to know he has made it to The Cloud. Wherever that is.
SOMETIMES I understand things by knowing what they are not. I am in the audience when Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky reads “An Old Man.” The old man is not Rudy. He is definitely not Rudy.
AN OLD MAN
After Cavafy
Back in a corner, alone in the clatter and babble An old man sits with his head bent over a table And his newspaper in front of him, in the café.
Sour with old age, he ponders a dreary truth—How little he enjoyed the years when he had youth, Good looks and strength and clever things to say.
He knows he’s quite old now: he feels it, he sees it, And yet the time when he was young seems—was it? Yesterday. How quickly, how quickly it slipped away.
Now he sees how Discretion has betrayed him, And how stupidly he let the liar persuade him With phrases: Tomorrow. There’s plenty of time. Some day.
He recalls the pull of impulses he suppressed, The joy he sacrificed. Every chance he lost Ridicules his brainless prudence a different way.
But all these thoughts and memories have made The old man dizzy. He falls asleep, his head Resting on the table in the noisy café.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
After Rudy’s death, Tales and Memories, his account of his young years, sat on my bookshelf, trying its best to move me to action. I had promised him I would someday add the story of our marriage and our journeys, but for a time illness and grieving were not compatible with writing. My Irish mother taught me the value of superstition, and I developed a mighty one that said, “If only I am in a structured writing class, I will be structured. I will write.”
I came early one fall day to register at Chico State’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, only to learn that the writing class was already filled by people who obviously didn’t need its structure as much as I did. I approached the instructor, Jim Smith, just as Martha Roggli, a woman I had never seen before and whose name I knew only from her name tag, took my arm and pleaded with him. “This is my dear, dear friend (she looks at my name tag)—Mary—and we both have to have this class. We have major projects underway. You’ll need to open a new section.”
I have a major project underway? Two classes a week for Jim?
“Wait till you see how well behaved we’ll be,” Martha insists. And Jim, warm-hearted soul, capitulates.
I owe Jim and Martha for the gifts of structure and faith, and each of our Wednesday Morning Writers for their faithful editing and loving encouragement. I thank Rudy for leaving his words and Cheri Taylor for steady, calm technical support.
I am grateful for She Writes Press, particularly Brooke Warner, Cait Levin, and Stacey Aaronson who so generously shared their expertise and inspiration.
My friends and family have been tireless in encouraging me. They were my anchors.
I owe you all so much.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MARY K. JENSEN is a recovering grants writer and professor who, in her retirement from California State University, Chico, ventured into her attic and pulled out boxes of trip diaries, raw material for her memoir, Rudy’s Rules for Travel. Mary is a survivor, of cancer two times, and of decades of travel with her risk-taking spouse. She earned her Ph.D. at the University of Oregon where she was an analyst and writer for a federal research clearinghouse. Prior to her doctoral training, she worked in California schools, in an array of roles: teaching, school psychology, and adminis
tration. She co-authored numerous educational studies and the text, Games Children Should Play: Sequential Lessons for Teaching Communication. She is a member of California Writers Club and is published in North State Writers’ 2017 anthology. Mary lives now in northern California where she relishes her writing class, book clubs, poetry group, walks, and friendships.
Visit Mary at www.marykjensen.com
SELECTED TITLES FROM SHE WRITES PRESS
She Writes Press is an independent publishing company
founded to serve women writers everywhere.
Visit us at www.shewritespress.com.
Gap Year Girl by Marianne Bohr. $16.95, 978-1-63152-820-0. Thirty-plus years after first backpacking through Europe, Marianne Bohr and her husband leave their lives behind and take off on a yearlong quest for adventure.
Peanut Butter and Naan: Stories of an American Mother in The Far East by Jennifer Magnuson. $16.95, 978-1-63152-911-5. The hilarious tale of what happened when Jennifer Magnuson moved her family of seven from Nashville to India in an effort to shake things up—and got more than she bargained for.
This is Mexico: Tales of Culture and Other Complications by Carol M. Merchasin. $16.95, 978-1-63152-962-7. Merchasin chronicles her attempts to understand Mexico, her adopted country, through improbable situations and small moments that keep the reader moving between laughter and tears.
Flip-Flops After Fifty: And Other Thoughts on Aging I Remembered to Write Down by Cindy Eastman. $16.95, 978-1-938314-68-1. A collection of frank and funny essays about turning fifty—and all the emotional ups and downs that come with it.
Renewable: One Woman’s Search for Simplicity, Faithfulness, and Hope by Eileen Flanagan. $16.95, 978-1-63152-968-9. At age forty-nine, Eileen Flanagan had an aching feeling that she wasn’t living up to her youthful ideals or potential, so she started trying to change the world—and in doing so, she found the courage to change her life.
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