A Trip Down Memory Lane, and, To Belgium

As I continue this new adventure of writing, I’ve been reading How To Tell A Story, a book written by The Moth, an organization that has award-winning radio programs and podcasts “dedicated to the art and craft of storytelling.” I just finished a section on how imperfect and biased our memories are, and how to steer around those faulty recollections to try and generate past details as accurately as possible.

It reminded me of the most extreme case of this I’ve ever seen. When I was a junior in college, I had a semester abroad and was living in London. I was with my 4 roommates in a laundromat where the whole front of the building was glass, and one of my roommates casually mentioned he’d just seen a woman pass by on the sidewalk who looked kind of like the singer Sade. That’s it. That’s all that happened, plus some folding of clothes. This occurred early in the semester, and I heard him tell this story multiple times. It was a wonder to behold its evolution.

The first time I heard him relate this incident, the woman he saw was definitely Sade. Then, he layered on how excited he’d been to spot her, because Sade was his favorite singer. Then, the timing became providential because he’d been listening to a Sade cassette on his Walkman when he saw her walk by. The final time I heard him share his account, he had been listening to a Sade tape, saw her walk by, ran out onto the sidewalk, put his headphones over her ears so she could hear that he was listening to her, and they had a meaningful conversation. I didn’t really hang out with him much after that semester, so I don’t know if he continued telling people this tale, but if he did, I have to assume he and Sade got married and had children together.

Hopefully, my brain will never take me so far astray as I excavate it for memories. I “cheat” by the way, using photographs, old emails and letters, travel diaries, journals, and a whole file folder of various scraps of papers with random snippets of things I want to remember on them to help me keep my musings as accurate as possible.

Without the travel journal I kept during that semester abroad, for example, I wouldn’t be able to do justice to the story of the day I went to Belgium:

After my semester ended, my grandmother flew over and we toured Europe together for six weeks. This was fabulous for a number of reasons. First and foremost, I was crazy about her, and our senses of humor meshed together perfectly, frequently leaving us laughing hysterically. Second, I was solidly stuck in “the architecture zone.” I worked for an architect in London, but I also received college credit for creating a photo essay of buildings, handing in a sketchbook of buildings, and writing a long paper on…buildings. My grandmother helped me see the bigger picture, literally saying things like, “Stop. Look down. Look at that flower. We don’t have flowers like that in America. Look how pretty it is. Let’s find someone to tell us what it is.” My jaw dropped when she later did the same thing with cows as we passed by them on a train trip. I knew MomMom was well-rounded, but I had no idea cow aficionado was on her list of talents. She was right though; she’d spotted some breed we don’t have in the US. Third, and believe me, I couldn’t be more appreciative, she paid for everything.

We went to multiple places in England and Scotland on our own, but we’d signed up with a tour company to tackle other parts of Europe. The first day of this tour was to take us from London to Brussels. To achieve this, we had to get up at 5:00 AM to take a bus to Dover, where we’d catch a ferry across the English Channel to Ostend, Belgium, and then get on another bus to Brussels. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? What could go wrong? Well, I’ll tell you.

The bus to pick us up arrived an hour late. The driver had only been hired the night before and he couldn’t find the bus. Then, instead of driving directly to Dover, we made a random stop in some small town to pick up additional passengers. That was strange since we’d all been told the tour officially started at the hotel they made us stay at the night before. It went from strange to bad when we stopped a second time for additional passengers. Not because of the further time delay, but because there were no more available seats on the bus. People were annoyed to have to stand the rest of the way, then livid when we were informed it was “illegal” to stand on the bus, so we couldn’t proceed. That’s when the screaming started. After what felt like a very long time, it was decided to get a taxi for the overflow. But instead of getting a taxi from the town we were in, they ordered a cab from London, which was almost an hour away at that point, and we were all made to wait together.

I’m sure you won’t be surprised to hear we missed our ferry. Catching the next one was a two-hour wait. Through all that, it wasn’t until a truck driver started hitting on my grandmother that she expressed annoyance. “I sure hope God is watching over us, because this tour company sure isn’t.” Although I can’t blame the tour company for the ferry strike, which somehow made the boat ride take 4 ½ hours instead of 3, and caused MomMom’s luggage to get left behind.

When MomMom was informed her luggage would not be arriving until they could get it on a later ferry, she very seriously told the guide “My medication is in that suitcase.” She was met with “Oh! Mrs. Chambers, you should always keep your medications with you!” My heart sank. I didn’t know she was taking any important medications. I didn’t know what condition she had, or what ill effects might come from missing a dose. When I asked her, she said “I’m not on any medications. But I bet they look for my bag faster now.” “MomMom!” “Fluoride’s a drug. My toothpaste was in the suitcase.”

Because of all the mixups and delays, the bus that picked us up in Ostend had passengers from multiple different tours offered by this company. At that point, I was frankly relieved there was a bus waiting for us. I can’t blame them for the massive traffic jam we got stuck in, but I can blame them for making us stop at multiple hotels once we arrived in Belgium because of the different tour groups on board, and I can super blame them for dropping us off at the wrong hotel. I don’t want you to think, oh, silly Barb, she got off at the wrong spot due to a language barrier. No, we were following our tour guide. A tour guide I thought I needed to prevent, well, situations like that.

By the time we got to our hotel, it was about 10 hours past our original ETA and late enough that the hotel restaurant had closed for the night. God bless the porter who made us sandwiches and brought them to our room. We were asleep when there was a knock on our door at 11:45 pm. I guess the day took a bigger toll on me than I realized because I sprang out of bed, went to the door and knocked back. Once I remembered how doors work, I opened it and was happy to see MomMom’s bag.

We left first thing in the morning for Germany, so everything I’ve seen of Belgium, I’ve seen from a bus window.

My grandmother wrote to my grandfather every day of our trip, and I wound up in possession of those letters. Curiosity got the better of me and I found her letter from that day. She put 10:30 PM on the top and was eating her sandwich as she wrote “Better not tell you about today or you’ll come to get me.” Luckily, she must have realized that would have made for a very short letter and fully recounted the day. She captured some details I didn’t, and vice versa, but all my recollections were confirmed by her. Now I’ve gone from just using my travel diary to independent verification. The Moth would be proud.