Two inspirational women

My camera broke yesterday, so I'll take advantage of this unfortunate situation for a text-heavy post I've been meaning to write.

In my first two days here I met two women that gave me a lot to think about.

The second was a gregarious woman from Pennsylvania here with her birder husband. She was going bonkers over the Red River cereal Chris brought up (they apparently can't get it in the US and the cook loves the stuff - as do I). The woman actually found it on amazon.com and will be ordering six boxes for $49 when she gets home. Chris and I are considering an import-export business...

Anyway, though this demonstrates her good taste for things Canadian, it is not at all why she was inspirational.

The day before yesterday, she was wearing a shirt covered in drawings of birds. Not a remarkable thing - all the nutty birders do it - but hers were the birds of the Galapagos. I asked her if she had been and she told me that she went with her husband after she was diagnosed with breast cancer. The doctors had to inject blue dye in her breast and she told her husband - "Now you have your own blue-footed booby!" When she was well enough, they decided to plan a trip - something she was able to look forward to during all the scary unpleasantness. She was determined to go wherever the boobies were, which turned out to the the Galapagos. The trip was meaningful enough for her and her husband that they took out a home equity loan to do it. This method of financing is tinged with stigma, I realize, but as she bubbled away to her birding tour I had lump in my throat. She found a way to struggle through cancer and live to laugh about it. Puts my fears of the next big transition in my life in perspective.

The first woman I met the day before was really interesting. She sat beside us lowly volunteers at lunch and immediately struck up a conversation, asking what our stories and backgrounds were. She exuded optimism and told us of her dream to be a virtuoso organist. When this was clearly not going to happen, she travelled - living in Lebanon, being evacuated to Paris and teaching music there for a year, hitchhiking around the US - working just to keep travelling. She then stumbled into a career as a piano tuner in Las Vegas. She had to fight sexist perceptions that she would never being able to learn how to use a wrench and worked hard with little support to be the best in her field despite this. Meanwhile, she takes off for several months a year and keeps travelling. She married at 49 ("Plenty early enough" she said, laughing) and though she doesn't have children, takes in travellers and guests at her home with open arms. In fact, we are invited and are considering the Vegasian detour on our return trip.

Recounting this, I realize it's hard to get across the effect she had on me. The inspirational thing was that, like the Red River lady, she was living just the way she wanted and was not afraid to take chances. I was also touched by her openness to us and her clear desire to be good to others and to herself.

Now that I have an increasingly clearer idea of what my own aspirations are, it was nice to have the timely reminder to go and do the things I need to do now with an open heart. And be a nice and generous person as often as possible.