Goodbyes and "The Little Prince"

Goodbyes suck.

I grew up a missionary kid--I'm no stranger to change. I’ve been through a lot of moves and transitions and said more painful goodbyes than I care to count. Some transitions are harder than others, and during one of the hardest transitions I've ever been through, someone very special introduced me to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince. It's a beautiful little children's book that I think would do a lot of grown-up children a lot of good. And it permanently changed how I see goodbyes.

It doesn’t make them any easier, no. I don't think there's anything that can do that. But it helps make the goodbyes perhaps even more precious amidst the pain. Every time I come to a new transition in my life and have to say goodbyes, I bring this back out and read it again. And the transition I'm facing right now is my biggest one since moving back to the States six years ago: I will leave my parents' house as a (hopefully mostly) self-sufficient adult this Sunday to move to the beautiful town of Staunton, Virginia to start my Master's Degree in Shakespeare and Performance.

With the move looming and several hard goodbyes already said, I thought I’d share this today. I highly recommend reading the whole novella for better context if you’ve never read it (it’s short and it’s wonderful and everyone should), but here are my favorite excerpts.

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        But it happened that after walking for a long time through sand, and rocks, and snow, the little prince at last came upon a road. And all roads lead to the abodes of men.

        “Good morning,” he said.

        He was standing before a garden, all a-bloom with roses.

        “Good morning,” said the roses.

        The little prince gazed at them. They all looked like his flower [on his planet].

        “Who are you?” he demanded, thunderstruck.

        “We are roses,” the roses said.

        And he was overcome with sadness. His flower had told him that she was the only one of her kind in all the universe. And here were five thousand of them, all alike, in one single garden!

        “She would be very much annoyed,” he said to himself, “if she should see that… She would cough most dreadfully, and she would pretend that she was dying, to avoid being laughed at. And I should be obliged to pretend that I was nursing her back to life—for if I did not do that, to humble myself also, she would really allow herself to die…”

        Then he went on with his reflections: “I thought that I was rich, with a flower that was unique in all the world; and all I had was a common rose. A common rose, and three volcanoes that come up to my knees—and one of them perhaps extinct forever… That doesn’t make me a very great prince…”

        And he lay down in the grass and cried.

        It was then that the fox appeared.

        “Good morning,” said the fox.

        “Good morning,” the little prince responded politely, although when he turned around he saw nothing.

        “I am right here,” the voice said,” under the apple tree.”

        “Who are you?” asked the little prince, and added, “You are very pretty to look at.”

        “I am a fox,” the fox said.

        “Come and play with me,” proposed the little prince. “I am so unhappy.”

        “I cannot play with you,” the fox said. “I am not tamed.”

        “Ah! Please excuse me,” said the little prince.

        But, after some thought, he added:

        “What does that mean—‘tame’?”

        “You do not live here,” said the fox. “What is it that you are looking for?”

        “I am looking for men,” said the little prince. “What does that mean—‘tame’?”

        “Men,” said the fox. “They have guns, and they hunt. It is very disturbing. They also raise chickens. These are their only interests. Are you looking for chickens?”

        “No,” said the little prince. “I am looking for friends. What does that mean—‘tame’?”

        “It is an act too often neglected,” said the fox. “It means to establish ties.”

        “To establish ties?”

        “Just that,” said the fox. “To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world…”

        “I am beginning to understand,” said the little prince. “There is a flower… I think that she has tamed me…”

        “It is possible,” said the fox. “On the Earth one sees all sorts of things.”

        “Oh, but this is not on the Earth!” said the little prince.

        The fox seemed perplexed, and very curious.

        “On another planet?”

        “Yes.”

        “Are there hunters on that planet?”

        “No.”

        “Ah, that is interesting! Are there chickens?”

        “No.”

        “Nothing is perfect,” sighed the fox.

        But he came back to his idea.

        “My life is very monotonous,” he said. “I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat…”

        The fox gazed at the little prince, for a long time.

        “Please—tame me!” he said.

        “I want to, very much,” the little prince replied. “But I have not much time. I have friends to discover, and a great many things to understand.”

        “One only understands the things that one tames,” said the fox. “Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy things all ready made at the shops. But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so men have no friends any more. If you want a friend, tame me…”

        “What must I do to tame you?” asked the little prince.

        “You must be very patient,” replied the fox. “First you will sit down at a little distance from me—like that—in the grass. I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstanding. But you will sit a little closer to me, every day…”

        The next day the little prince came back.

        “It would have been better to come back at the same hour,” said the fox. “If, for example, you come at four o’clock in the afternoon, then at three o’clock I shall begin to be happy. I shall feel happier and happier as the hour advances. At four o’clock, I shall already be worrying and jumping about. I shall show you how happy I am! But if you come at just any time, I shall never know at what hour my heart is to be ready to greet you… One must observe the proper rites…”

        “What is a rite?” asked the little prince.

        “Those also are actions too often neglected,” said the fox. “They are what make one day different from other days, one hour from other hours. There is a rite, for example, among my hunters. Every Thursday they dance with the village girls. So Thursday is a wonderful day for me! I can take a walk as far as the vineyards. But if the hunters danced at just any time, every day would be like every other day, and I should never have any vacation at all.”

        So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the hour of his departure drew near—

        “Ah,” said the fox, “I shall cry.”

        “It is your own fault,” said the little prince. “I never wished you any sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you…”

        “Yes, that is so,” said the fox.

        “But now you are going to cry!” said the little prince.

        “Yes, that is so,” said the fox.

        “Then it has done you no good at all!”

        “It has done me good,” said the fox, “because of the color of the wheat fields.” And then he added:

        “Go and look again at the roses. You will understand now that yours is unique in all the world. Then come back to say goodbye to me, and I will make you a present of a secret.”

        The little prince went away, to look again at the roses.

        “You are not at all like my rose,” he said. “As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world.”

        And the roses were very much embarrassed.

        “You are beautiful, but you are empty,” he went on. “One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you—the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is MY rose.

        And he went back to meet the fox.

        “Goodbye,” he said.

        “Goodbye,” said the fox. “And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

        “What is essential is invisible to the eye,” the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.

        “It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.”

        “It is the time I have wasted for my rose—“ said the little prince, so that he would be sure to remember.

        “Men have forgotten this truth,” said the fox. “But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose…”

        “I am responsible for my rose,” the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.

         “And when your sorrow is comforted, you will be content that you have known me. You will always be my friend.”

        One runs the risk of weeping a little, if one lets himself be tamed. 

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If you have tamed me, you know who you are. Thank you for taming me. "It has done me good because of the color of the wheat fields."

Wise Words at Capernwray

This was actually written on Wednesday, May 29. 

           I tried to read this morning, but kept getting distracted. So I hadn’t finished as many pages as I would have liked when I went down for coffee break at 10:40, but I figured maybe a break and a cup of coffee would help clear my head a little. I sat down at a table, drinking my coffee quietly, and a kind, motherly British woman named Nicky—who just came up and hugged me the first day I was at Capernwray because she knew I was new—sat down next to me. She was talking to some other people at the table at first, but eventually I joined in a conversation she was having that was originally about sheep but somehow turned to giraffes in Kenya. A few people left and so, in way of continuing the conversation, I asked her how often she’d been to Kenya. We talked about her ministry trips there for a bit before the conversation turned to how selfish and materialistic we can be as human beings, and how we all might be better, less selfish people if we took six months or a year of service somewhere in the world. The class guilt that I’ve struggled with all my life—growing up in Ecuador, and then even more recently in this past year of playing Rachel Corrie—began to resurface, and I began to think of how privileged and undeserving I feel to be studying for twelve weeks in Europe this summer. I mentioned something to that effect, and then Nicky said something that I needed very much to hear and that I will likely remember for years to come.

            “We’re all trees, you see. And sometimes, as we’re growing, especially in the beginning, we have to do things and have experiences that help us to put down strong roots that branch out before we become truly strong and full-grown. Because a spindly tree with no roots can be knocked over by—a sheep that rubs up against it. But if you take the time and opportunities you have to grow those roots, that’s when you become strong, and nothing can come against you or knock you over. And once you have a strong trunk, then your branches can grow out wide and strong too, giving fruit and providing shelter to others. And we’re all different, you know. Some grow to be the tall trees that take the lightning; some don’t grow very tall but spread their branches out wide; and some will always have to be supported by sticks and wires; but we all serve a purpose. And God knows that.”

Traveling Alone: The Perhaps-Not-So-Interesting and Probably-Entirely-Too-Honest Thoughts and Experiences of a 21-Year-Old American Girl Traveling Europe By Herself For the Very First Time, Told in Six Episodes EPISODE THE SIXTH (AND LAST)

            I approached the nearest cab, tapped on the window, and he rolled it down. “Do you know Capernwray Bible School?” I asked him. Google Maps had informed me it was about a twenty-minute drive from Lancaster.

            “Yeah.”

            “About how much will it cost to get there?”

            “Oh, probably around 15 or 17 pounds,” he hedged a little. Still, I didn’t suppose that was terrible. And I really just wanted to get there.

            “Great. Would you mind if we put the bags in the back and I’ll just hop over the bridge to the ATM?”

            “Oh, I can take you to an ATM.”

            “Oh, it’s just right over the bridge—I can run over—"

            “Naw, it’ll be easier—I’ll just take you past one.”

            “Oh okay, that’s fine,” I consented. He got out of the car and came around to load my bags.

            “You certainly have a lot of stuff in here,” he huffed as he had to exert more force than he had apparently anticipated to lift my bag into the back of the car.

            “Yes,” I laughed, self-consciously, “I’m over here for several weeks and I guess I don’t really understand the concept of ‘packing lightly.’”

            “Brought the kitchen sink too, did ya?’ he chortled, lifting in my smaller bag and shutting the back.

            “Yes! That too,” I said with another small laugh as I ducked into the back seat.

            He stopped at an ATM in Lancaster and waited for me, as promised, but other than that, the ride was uneventful. I watched the scenery go by, investigating what would be my new surroundings for the next two weeks or so. I saw a road sign for Carnforth. Carnforth! A name I recognized. Brilliant. We kept going, getting farther and farther into the country. I watched the red numbers on the taxi meter begin to tick up past 14. Soon the only things I began to see were grass, sheep, and the occasional house. Ah! A sign that said Capernwray! Excellent. I realized fully, for the first time, that I was going to get to my destination. On time and everything. I was so relieved I could have kissed that cab driver.

            We began to wind around several very small roads, finally entered a gate, and then kept winding around small roads inside the gate before eventually pulling up in front of a—well—a castle. Oh. Oh, a castle. Oh okay.

            We finally stopped when the meter had ticked just over 19 pounds. I was so grateful to finally be standing in front of my destination that I gave him a 20 and told him to keep the change. Probably a better alternative to kissing him. He seemed pleased and smiled as he helped me unload my bags.

A sign in front of an enormous arched wooden doorway with dark iron fastenings and a huge black ring handle read “Reception” with an arrow pointing inside. The juxtaposition struck me as odd. Reception. Right this way. Through the big castle door that King Arthur himself might step through any minute holding a lighted torch in one hand and Excalibur in the other. Just step right in.

My bags put up a fuss getting up the stairs, but a nice guy who happened along just then helped me pull them up and through the enormous door.

“Where do you need to go?” he asked.

“Just here to reception, thanks.” He nodded and rapped on a closed frosted window for me, which proceeded to slide open, and then he disappeared before I could properly thank him.

“Hello, I’m Kendra—“ I began, unsure whether or not Amanda—the lady I’d been corresponding with—was one of the ones behind the counter.

“Hullo—Kendra! I’ve been expecting you. I’m Amanda,” said a younger-looking woman with an interesting British accent that I couldn’t quite place. “I’ll just come ‘round and take you to your room,” she said, starting for the door.

I followed Amanda through a maze of corridors (Of course corridors. It’s a castle. What else would there be?) while she explained some of the policies at Capernwray and talked business. It took both of us to haul my red suitcase up a flight of stairs and down another corridor. I went back for my blue bag and met her in what was to be my room. It was simple, but snug. And more than adequate. A small closet. A bathroom. Two twin beds. A nightstand. DEAR GOD, a bed. As if in response, my eyes stung vindictively, begging me to close them.

Amanda handed me the key to my room, led me around to a few more places, and then left me to my own devices. An overwhelming heaviness began to settle over me. I’d been surrounded by people I knew and had structured time for almost a month. Thoughts of now having no structured time and not a single acquaintance, as well as residual stress from the day’s travels, pressed in rudely on my consciousness, and I suddenly felt very, very alone. I walked slowly back up the stairs and down the corridor to my room, turning my key over in my hand and fighting the sting of tears. I felt silly. I’m just tired, I told myself. I’ll be fine. I’ll be able to think better after I sleep.

I walked in my door, assessed the room, and tried to figure out what was next. It was almost 5:30—teatime. I looked closer at the bed in front of me. There didn’t seem to be any linens on it. Crap. Was I supposed to bring linens with me? Bah. There was no time to go back into town today. Amanda was gone. Guh. I didn’t exactly relish the thought of sleeping on a bed without sheets.

There was a large towel, a small towel, and an itty-bitty bar of soap sitting on the foot of the other bed. I bent down to pick them up and my eyes swept the pillow. It was covered. Linens! Ah! They just hadn’t covered both beds. Another small wave of relief swept over me, and I welcomed it. I had made it. All by myself. Well, with the help of several kind strangers. I’d even had money to pay for the cab. And to top it all off, there were sheets on my bed. I meandered into the bathroom to place the towels. I peered at my haggard reflection in the mirror, unwrapped the itty-bitty bar of soap, and placed it carefully next to the faucet. I frowned. It suddenly seemed my biggest and most pressing question now had become this: Was that itty-bitty bar of soap going to last for two weeks?

THE END

Traveling Alone: The Perhaps-Not-So-Interesting and Probably-Entirely-Too-Honest Thoughts and Experiences of a 21-Year-Old American Girl Traveling Europe By Herself For the Very First Time, Told in Six Episodes EPISODE THE FIFTH

             As I was mentally cursing every heavy item in my bag, a man behind me offered his help. I acquiesced, and he pulled the bigger bag into the entryway. He looked like a scruffier, slightly less handsome version of Robert Downey, Jr., wore fingerless gloves, and his dark, curly, salt-and pepper hair peeked out from under a brown cap. “Shall I drag it for you?” he offered.

“Sure, thanks,” I replied, grateful for his kindness. I followed him and my red bag through the car with my smaller blue one. “Is there a place for it, do you think?”

            “Perhaps back here,” he replied over his shoulder. He dragged it all the way through the car, and I followed. There was room on the back luggage rack, and he hoisted it up to perch on the second level.

            “Thank you, you’re very kind,” I told him, then sat myself and my blue bag down in a pair of unreserved seats while he took another ahead of me and across the aisle. The train started moving and I realized I was sitting facing backwards for the third time in a row. Not that it mattered I guess. That wasn’t any sort of bad omen. Right?

            The man came through asking for tickets, and I again produced my three little blue slips of paper. He flipped through them and handed them back to me without comment. Bless you, Irish Ferries SailRail ticket. Bless you. Never in my life have I been fonder of three little slips of paper. They hadn’t failed me the whole day.

            Robert Downey, Jr. got off at the first stop. I smiled at him as he walked past, silently thanking him for his help. I reprimanded myself for not opening my mouth to thank him again.

Now that I was comfortably sitting on my last train, I relaxed more than I had all day. The knot in my stomach still wasn’t completely gone, but at least it wasn’t forcing its way up my throat anymore. I was going to get to Lancaster. Almost half an hour before my cab had agreed to meet me. I marveled at how the timing of every step had worked out. It certainly wasn’t the result of my own planning. At least, not that I could tell. Now, if there was just an ATM at the Lancaster station, all my worries would be taken care of.

            After several stops, I heard the voice over the intercom again—we were close to the Lancaster station. The voice went on to announce changes and my ears caught “Windermere.” Windermere! I’ve been there. It must not be too terribly far away after all. Maybe it wouldn’t be too difficult to go and visit again?

            I piled my bags off the train without too much of an incident, and looked around for an ATM but didn’t see one. I still had 20 minutes before the cab had technically arranged to meet me, but I figured I’d poke my head out and check. Just in case. I followed the signs for “Way Out,” and found the door. I looked outside and saw several cabs, none of which read “Big Blue Taxi.” He probably just wasn’t here yet. I dragged my bags back inside with me to a lounge area. Should I wait here, maybe? I had to find an ATM. There was a little café at the back of the lounge, and I left my bags by a chair, ensuring I could still see them.

            The woman behind the counter at the café was intently counting change with the cash register drawer open. I approached rather slowly, waiting to see if she would look up. She didn’t. Was she too busy counting? I hesitated to speak or make a noise, in case doing so might throw off her count. Several seconds passed. She didn’t look up. Oooookay. I shifted just slightly. She jumped. I apologized. She laughed. I laughed.

            “What can I get for you?”

            “Actually—could you tell me—is there an ATM anywhere around here?”

            “Yes, just back over the bridge on the other side.”

            I thanked her, and went back to my bags. I really didn’t want to have to haul them over the bridge. Well. Not just that I didn’t want to. I wasn’t even sure I could, by this point. I decided to wait till the cab came, load the bags in the car, and then ask if I could run across the bridge to the ATM. Perfect.

            I decided to wait outside instead of in the lounge. Various people trickled out, getting into cars or cabs or crossing to wait at the bus stop. I situated my bags together and perched just on top of the small blue one, clutching my purse to my chest. Anne of Green Gables was now blonde and sitting at Lancaster Station.

            I watched the minutes tick by on my phone. Cabs kept arriving and pulling in next to the curb. The drivers would throw me inquisitive looks but I stared past them, straining to see if perhaps the next car would be my ride. It was 4:25 before I started formulating my backup plan: I would play Anne of Green Gables outside the station until no later than 4:45, and if the cab hadn’t appeared by that time, I would hire another cab, since there seemed plenty to spare.

            4:30.

            4:45.

(To Be Continued...)