When The Road Takes An Unexpected Turn

You know how some people say, “Don’t just weather the storm,  learn how to dance in the rain.”? Personally, I feel it should be OK to punch them in the face.

The idea of dancing in the rain as a solution to dealing with real difficulties comes from the same book of practical advice as, “This is a terrible party, so I'll just drink my way through it.”  It’s messy.

There’s nothing wrong with acknowledging difficulty. The idea that when something is hard we have to pretend it isn’t, is stupid. And it takes a ridiculous amount of effort. Informing people who are weathering storms that they ought to also find something to dance about is like punishing them twice.

In my day job of story wrangling, I’m forever saying that a story - any story - is just a sequence of events laid out along a timeline. Some of these events are positive and some are negative. If all the events are positive, or all of them are negative, the story won’t ring clear, because real life doesn’t work like that.

Real life has ups and downs. You breathe in, you breathe out. You get light, you get dark. You get happy, you get sad and get happy again. When it’s scariest is when you’re not really clear on where you are, and you're a bit lost. And that’s not the time when you ought to feel obliged to go fucking dancing.

Not long after I met Mark, we decided to go on vacation. It was part of that couples thing: “Do I like you enough to spend 14 full days with you and nobody else?”

So, we booked flights and, without too much of a plan, decided to conquer Italy. Over the course of two weeks, we dined in Rome, we barfed in Florence – a story for another day – and we rented a house in Tuscany.

Before we had kids, Mark and I liked to just pick up a map of wherever we were, and pick a place and go there. And that is how we discovered that there’s a village in Italy called Bastardo.

Oh, how we laughed. We thought of the photos we could take there:  Mark could stand in front of the town sign smiling, with the word “Bastardo” emblazoned behind him.  I could stand in front of the sign, pointing off camera to some unknown ‘Bastardo” out of frame. Maybe we could get a passer-by to take our photograph together, and use it as a party invitation?

Possibilities were discussed, and wine was drunk, and much hilarity ensued. And the next morning, we packed up our little hire car and set off to discover the little town with the big name.

Although when I say morning, what I really mean is early afternoon because neither of us were particularly morning people before kids. And when I say we packed up our little car, what that really meant was we took a couple of bottles of water and a pack of potato chips. And although we were dressed for the weather, it was hot and sunny, so that meant we had shorts and T-shirts on.

Technically the journey should have taken about an hour, but once you’ve stopped to have coffee and admire glorious Italian scenery, you can find a couple of hours passes incredibly quickly.

And, I don’t know if you know this, but Italy is surprisingly hilly. Soon we were driving further and further above sea level on tiny little Italian country roads,  and I noticed our phones no longer had signal. On top of that, for a little town with such a hilarious name, Bastardo was surprisingly hard to find.

Still, we’d be fine, right? Just round the corner we’d find Bastardo or some charming little Italian hamlet and we’d be fine.

Wrong. Just around the corner was yet more single-track road leading us further and further from the coast, with no sign of humankind, and also no sign of Bastardo.

Of course, we could have just used this as an opportunity to enjoy the scenery. But nothing quite dampens the mood of a country drive in the middle of nowhere, as when the red light on the dashboard of a hire car signals that the gas tank is almost empty. And though the charming little winding Italian roads are adorable in the daylight, they take on a slightly different feel when dusk starts to fall.

Our journey had started out with possibility and laughter. But lost on a winding mountain road with no phone coverage, dressed in shorts and T-shirts, in a hire car running low on gas, with darkness descending, Mark and I found we weren’t so much for jokes. Instead, we were both considering possible emergency plans.

Then,  just when it all seemed bleak, the car turned one final corner and there in front of us, the word ‘Bastardo’ shining out in the distance like the veritable Holy Grail.

When we arrived, we were more interested in filling the car with gas than taking pictures. But as the light faded, Mark and I both had our photographs taken in front of the town sign, and then we headed home.

On the journey back, I think that was the first time it came into my mind that we could get married. Because when know you’re OK being lost with someone, it becomes abundantly clear just who you have found.

Anyway, since our jaunt to Italy all those years ago, Mark and I tend to enjoy towns with daft names from a distance. No need to go looking for the ridiculous, when everyday ridiculousness is perfectly capable of making its own way to your door.

This year seems to have started fairly full force. Though here, in Tweddley Manor, we’ve so far found ourselves plodding along on fairly level ground, we are surrounded by people who have change in the air. They are navigating hills and valleys - some with full tanks of gas, some running almost on empty.

Real life has ups and downs – that is universal. Life, like story, is just a sequence of events laid out along a timeline. You breathe in, you breathe out. You get light, you get dark.

When it’s scariest is when you’re not really clear on where you are, and you feel like any moment you could drive off a cliff. But just keep on keeping on. Before you know it, you’ll have done what needed to be done, and be on the way back from the journey with a belly full of experience, and the knowledge that something wonderful is naturally on its way.

And if someone along the road should happen to say, “Don’t just weather the storm,  learn how to dance in the rain,” it’s probably best not to punch them in the face. Though you could strongly advise them to drive to a place called Bastardo.

Till next week

xo

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Learn more about Lynn’s Story work at YouTellYours.com