My Pipe Dream

Two years ago I traveled to Spain to walk the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage.  I'd first heard about this pilgrimage while watching the movie "The Way, directed by Emilio Estevez and starring his father, Martin Sheen.  I didn't know why, but the Camino immediately compelled me, called me to go, so I went. In the two years that have passed, this journey continues to teach me and bless me.

I kept a daily journal on my six week walk, and after returning home I continued to write, filling in every detail of every day.  After a year and a half I was finally ready to published my journal; an account of the spiritual and physical journey that started with the Camino but continues even today.  I didn't set out to write a book only to document every blessed moment of the Camino, but the story took on a life of its own and I realized it was one that needed to be told.

It was on Wednesday, December 18, 2013, that I received the first 100 copies of my book.  I was excited to open the boxes and hold it in my hand for the first time.  It had been a labor of love. There is nothing that compares to witnessing raw ink on a page that transforms itself into a story unless it is your own story, and that night I held mine.

I quickly pulled out 25 or so copies and began inscribing them for those people who had been such an important part of my journey; my dear neighbors, my children, brothers and sisters, coworkers, old friends and new Camino friends, all of whom had become my life-blood, my touchstones, and all of whom I love.  Inscribing them was a gift I gave to myself, for each message I wrote reminded me how blessed I was to have each and every one of these people in my life.  The Camino taught me many lessons, but I believe this was the most important.


Two days later on that Friday evening, after having hand delivered the books to each of those people, I stood at my kitchen sink reflecting on the Camino and the journey that led me to this moment, and as I stood there I realized that now I was no longer a writer.  Somewhere along the way I had become an author, and I knew there was much more to this journey that I hadn't realized until that moment.

When I was young my mother and I would spend hours looking through her cedar chest where she kept her "treasures"; memorabilia of her life.  Mother's Day cards, baby shoes, old family photos, her wedding dress, newspapers clippings all mingled together.  Her life, her most precious possessions, she shared with me.

I loved spending long afternoons removing each item, one by one, and listening to my mother tell its story.  Once we had emptied the chest, we would carefully placed each item back in for safe-keeping until the next time.  And while each of her treasures was unique and special, there was one that stood out to me and became the first thing I would reach for on those afternoons we spent sifting through the chest.  It was a small, burgundy leather-bound book of poetry written by my great uncle, William Earl McMahon.  In my family he was known as Uncle Earl.  He had written the poems, my mother told me, when he was hospitalized after being injured in World War I and had them published into a book; only seven copies, one for each of his brothers and sisters.

I can still remember the first time I held that book in my hands, listening to its story, feeling the velvety leather with the gold-embossed words "Pipe Dreams by W.E.M" on the front cover.  Opening it, I would carefully turn the translucent onion-skinned page that protected the title page on which was written the same "Pipe Dreams".  I placed it close to my side as my mother and I removed the other items, but it was the book that continued to seduce me until one day when I decided, "Some day I want to write a book for my brothers and sisters." And so it was, because of that book of poetry, that my ten-year-old heart knew what it wanted to do; write.  Uncle Earl's "Pipe Dreams" had become my pipe dream, my "fantastic hope".

Throughout my life I have done all types of writing for school, work, and pleasure. I love to write anything; to feel the pen in my hand, see the ink on the paper.  Lists, stories, song lyrics, grant proposals, poetry, research papers, lesson plans, I love it all because I am writing.   Yet in spite of all the writing I have done over the years, that book that I'd hoped for, that gift to my brothers and sisters that I had set my heart on so many years before, still eluded me.  So I continued to pray, "God, if you give me the story, I will write it."  For forty-five years, since those first days when I held that precious velvety-covered book in my hand, I prayed that prayer.

And so it was on that Friday night on December 20, 2013, as I stood at my kitchen sink, that I realized that God had answered my prayer.  It was he who had sent me to the Camino, and it was the Camino that became the story that he gave to me.

So many times since learning of the Camino and answering it's call I've asked God, "Why? Why me?  Why the Camino?"  But now I know.  It is because God is faithful.  Even when we have forgotten our hopes, our dreams, our prayers, he hasn't.  And his answers are so much more than we could ever dream.

And so begins again another "pipe dream"; my fantastic hope, my story...