I will most miss Jo. Jo was our tour manager and I am unsure how I will do the rest of my life without her. She fixes everything. She asks proper questions in a variety of languages. And she is legit the first person on the planet who has inspired me to be on time. (I've even been early? I know! It confuses me, too!)
Don’t get excited, I am only on time in France when a delightful British woman encourages me by cheering, saying things like “you do know where you are!” And “wakey wakey!” And “be there in a Mo” and “perfect.” Jo says Perfect a lot and you know what, she is right! I am perfect’!
I mean in a relative way; not in the way God is perfect; more in the way that I am perfectly okay-ish!
We had our last meal tonight at this marvelous, fancy place without air conditioning. I think the heat—which was amped up by my foie gras hot pot with a very large puffed pastry on top—made me insane. I spent 11 minutes looking for a terrible picture of myself dressed as a Smurf. I have no idea why this came up. It was just so hot that my life was flashing before my eyes and sadly, part of my life was as a Smurf.
Anyway, I've gotten side tracked, again, by the Smurf thing, which is perfectly okay!
This trip has been everything I expect out of life: finery and adventure and chaos and bizarre episodes (like when I walked into the hotel tonight before dinner and a man handed me a phone and I was placed in a conversation with a very intense British woman who seemed to know me. It was v. v. v. Faulty Towers).
One of my favorite parts of the trip has been expecting the unexpected and learning the official “f” word of travel (flexibility, obviously!). Also, I loved just being here with my girl Lily—the one who cried when she saw the Eiffel Tower; although not for herself, mind you.
Lily told me later that she cried because of all the beautiful girls she has known who haven’t seen it before they died—the cancer warriors like herself.
Yeah, I know, that's a lot.
But life is a lot of everything, isn't it? The heavy and the light and the chaotic and the distracting all rolled into one. You can't separate it, so why avoid it? I say dump the heavy in the midst of lighthearted and the lighthearted in the midst of the heavy. It is only then that we are truly, completely living our most authentic ways.
All the things matter in your life. Life is short (it will be over in a mo!); make it all matter. Feel it all, do it all, and as my favorite tour manager says, it’s simply perfect.
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