TheBanyanTree: Comments/Critique

[Pat M]

Hi all,

Well, I've finally started writing again and have also joined a local
writers' group. I'm going to write a book.  Here is the introduction or
first installment. If anyone has the time, please let me know if any parts
are confusing or awkward.  Any suggestions to improve it will be greatly
appreciated.  Thanks.  I realize this isn't the venue for my request, and of
course, there is no obligation to even read it let alone comment on it.

Thanks!

Pat

*****

Fear takes hold of all of us at one time or another, and there was certainly
no denying it had taken hold of me.  I was seated in an Air China jet in
first class en route to a country I knew little about. For some reason, I’d
been bumped up from economy class, but the luxury and fine cuisine were
doing little to ease my anxiety. As I peered through the jet’s windows at
the desolate ocher-colored terrain and meandering yellow river below, a hard
fist clenched in my stomach and my pulse raced. I willed myself to take some
deep breaths. Breathe in calm; exhale stress. Breathe in calm; exhale
stress.

We’d taken off from YVR (Vancouver, BC, Canada) some ten hours earlier and
were nearing my first stopover, PEK (Beijing, China). As the sole woman
amongst numerous Chinese businessmen, I’d noticed their initial speculative
glances before they turned back to their newspapers and their own thoughts.
When they'd looked at me, I wondered, what had they seen?  Could they see
past my older body?  Could they see my curious spirit?

In spite of the plush seat, the sleep mask and ear plugs, I’d spent a
restless night amidst the snorts, sighs and snores of the sleeping men
around me. I don’t travel well; I never have, but I don’t let that stop me.


It was July and I was traveling solo, a novice ESL teacher in her fifties
with no Chinese language skills. This wasn’t my first foray into a foreign
country; my overseas adventures had started decades earlier when instead of
joining my friends on a Hawaii vacation, I’d booked a flight to Tel Aviv,
Israel and had lived and worked on a kibbutz in the Negev Desert for six
months. More recently, my husband and I had volunteered as caregivers for
at-risk children and orphans in Guatemala and Mexico. Our marriage of 24
years had ended while we were in Guatemala. I chose to stay on and he
returned to Canada. It had been two years since we’d parted, and I was still
trying to carve out a new life as a single woman.

After Guatemala, I’d enrolled in an intensive TESOL (Teaching English to
Speakers of Other Languages) college course in the Kootenays of BC. Upon its
completion, I planned to return to Safe Passage, the project in Guatemala
where I’d volunteered with children from the Guatemala City dump. Previously,
my husband and I had covered all of our own expenses; now, I wanted, needed,
a small stipend for my work, just enough to cover living costs. Hanley
Denning, the young American woman who founded Safe Passage, had agreed to
this and we were to speak on the telephone to finalize the
arrangements.  Instead,
I received an email stating that Hanley, whom I knew personally, and her
driver had been killed when their car was hit head-on by a bus as they were
traveling from Guatemala City to Hanley’s home in nearby Antigua. I was
shell-shocked.

Several times, I had prayed for my own safety while traveling by chicken bus
in Guate. The brightly-painted buses are poorly maintained, overcrowded and
it often felt as if they were driven by madmen. Throbbing Latin music blares
as drivers floor their buses to full throttle and pass vehicles on blind
corners. Sometimes the only escape of a head-on collision would be over a
cliff-side. Fatal car accidents are commonplace in Guatemala, but I couldn’t
comprehend that someone like Hanley who had established an organization that
had improved the lives of thousands was dead at age 36.

I walked around in a daze. Days passed; then weeks. How could she be
dead?  Finally,
I had to get on with my life and my plans. I contacted Safe Passage’s acting
Executive Director to talk about my plan to teach English for the project,
and Hanley’s agreement to provide me with living expenses. To my
disappointment, he was unwilling to provide any funds. After Hanley’s
untimely death, volunteers (including English teachers) flocked to Guatemala
to ensure Hanley’s project and dream carried on; there was no need for the
project to offer incentives.  I couldn’t afford to continue to deplete my
savings so I had no alternative except to rethink my plans.

While taking my TESOL course, I’d befriended two young Chinese women in my
class, Mao and Joyce. They worked for English Weekly, a newspaper that
teaches English to teens in Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi Province in
Northern China and one of China’s heavy industrial centers. They’d won the
opportunity to visit Canada and attend the TESOL course by receiving top
scores on an exam written by hundreds and signing a 5-year contract with
their employer.  I had introduced them to hiking, something they’d never
done before, and we had grown close. Several times, they had invited me to
visit them in China but I hadn’t thought about it seriously.

Now, their invitations came to mind.  China?  I knew so little about the
country and its people, and the language barrier was more than daunting.
When I first envisioned myself alone in China, panic engulfed me. It was too
big; I couldn’t do it, but as the days passed, my fear lessened. You’ve done
it before, I rationalized, and this time you know people in the country who
you can turn to if you find yourself in trouble.

I’ve found that the most difficult things to accomplish are often the most
worthwhile, and I’ve also learned that great rewards can be realized by
pushing past fear. This was an opportunity to explore more of the world, a
part of the world I had never before considered visiting. I decided I’d do
it.

-- 
Live life to the fullest!

Pat