#32

(With apologies if you know this story)

When I was 8, our family, and a group of other Catholics, mostly strangers, went on a trip to Medjugorje, in the former Yugoslavia (I think it falls into Bosnia now, but it may be Herzegovina). I suppose that for most of the adults it was a pilgrimage, but when you’re in Primary 3, the spiritual gains are incidental, and the primary force that hits you in a place like that is wonder. I had been to Europe, of course, but I think this was the first time in my life I felt like I was going someplace truly foreign: somewhere rural, somewhere with a polysyllabic name, somewhere where other the kids in school had never gone or even contemplated going.

We were put up, with a few other people, by a Bosnian family who spoke precious little English. My room had no adjoining bathroom, and every morning I had to scurry out with bare feet on the freezing cold ceramic tiles of the balcony outside so I could brush my teeth and get ready for the day. We always had to get up early – breakfast was served and cleared away punctually and remorselessly, and daily Mass dictated the schedule for the morning. We went in summer, and I remember the weather being gorgeous, day after day, riotous amounts of sunshine beaming through cool, unsullied air. On the way to church, we picked hawthorn berries, and ate them, first delicately, being city-slickers, then with more gusto when by the second day no one had keeled over. On the way back, the roadside food stalls would have opened, selling their hybrid Italian-Eastern European cuisine – lots of tomato dishes and pizza with an entire garden on it. And at night, our host family cooked for us – we always began with chicken noodle soup and unbelievably fresh bread, followed by an entrée – fish, or pasta – and a simple sweet. The meal was wholesome, and good, and very communal: lots of talk and laugher, or beaming from the parties who didn’t speak the language.

Mass, as I said, was daily, and the services at St. James not truncated like what we’re used to, but full-blown affairs. Some days we even went twice. It’s funny, but the more time I spend in church, the less impatient I am to leave it – or maybe it was because at the time there was nothing much to leave it to, except for my books and word searches (there certainly weren’t any other kids along on the trip). We climbed Mount Podbrdo – where the apparitions of the Virgin Mary reportedly occurred – and Mount Krizevac, where villagers had erected an impressive twenty-foot concrete cross. There was nothing else up those hills but treacherous terrain and the offerings of pilgrims, silence, and an aura of the sacrosanct. Climbing them was tough-going for an eight-year-old, but being at the top, even amidst all that nothingness, was strangely worth the ascent.

I’ve written all of this down because Medjugorje is one of the places I go in my mind when I need a bit of solace. It’s odd – I can’t be confident that I was happy while I was there – in fact I have rather little recollection of my emotional experience of the pilgrimage – and yet revisiting the place in memory does give me a sense of profound well-being. So – it gets to be #32, and as a bonus, I’ll tell you that #33 was this other, more recent trip to Redang, which I often think about, particularly things like SAFETY IS AT YOUR OWN RISK, and kayaking with the Other Brother on the most perfect day imaginable