La Rentrée

Theme song: Citizen of the Planet

La Rentrée is a French term for getting back to work and school after vacation.

I love that the French have one special word signaling the transition from Summer to Fall. It goes along for their love of real time off.

However, the French, like me and everyone else, have to confront the difficult realities of getting back on track after extended time away.

It’s cute that they can confront the problem of adjusting to daily life (le quotidien) as a single united nation because, really, at the end of the day, getting back to work isn’t the worst of all problems.

Still, it points to something which we all have to confront: banality.

And stress.

Many of us in the Western world have experienced the luxury of post-vacation blues.

Yes, it’s true. We face obesity instead of starvation and the weight of all other forms of over consumption instead of the brutality of deprivation.

I can’t speak much to the question of deprivation, but I have a feeling it involves its own form of banality.

I am looking forward to coming back home. The children and I are tired. We are looking forward to some banality.

And we have a lot to look forward to, in my case not the least of which is a stable wifi connection and not the best of which is a dying cat.

Usually I think of the post-vacation blues in terms of catching up with piles of work.

In this case, I have worked my way through 7 weeks in France (very, very unFrench) and still I probably underestimate the backlog.

Facing her death upon my return represents a marked contrast from the lightness of even a working vacation to the heaviness of “hitting the decks.”

I will be ending one journey and Pilar will be ending another.

She was actually already dying when I left, but it was in the slow and early stages.

Since I left, things have progressed and she is struggling.

That’s right, friends. My cat of 17 years, increasingly little Pilar, is dying. Let me just say, when she dies I will have lost the most stable, loyal presence of my entire life.

(You know, marriages come and go, but cats are always willing to give you a smug look to show they care.)

There will be no heroics.

Those who know me know I believe death comes at the right time (if nothing else, there is no stopping it).

This is maybe a little more comedic visualized with a cat, but I often visualize death and other relational losses as two people who have been walking together holding hands (on a beach) suddenly and quietly letting go.

There is no sound track (death is so very quiet, after all).

The point is that the people and cats close to us accompany us for a time on our journeys but never forever -- at least not in the same form.

It’s painful, I know.

One thing that annoys me about death (there’s always something, isn’t there?) is that it doesn’t give you any exemptions for the banalities of life.

In fact, I still feel an occasional twinge concerning the fact that I never sent thank you notes on black-edged Crane stationary for all the flowers people sent following Chloe’s death.

It would have been a glamorous move, yes. But I didn’t even know that you are actually supposed to do that until I read about it in a Miss Manners column.

And then started going to more funerals (that happens as you age) and receiving thank you notes -- sometimes with photographs of the flowers I sent. . . .

So. The point is, life goes on. Vacations and trips end.

I generally think in terms of transitions, with death being a very special transition.

Any type of transition is an opportunity to establish your karma because, remember, karma is generated not by what happens to you but how you respond to it.

Travel is all about transition. It’s almost as if each trip is a life within a life.

For this reason, I like to find ways to bring a sense of the sacred into travel. Anyone can do it.

When I have a destination that is, for any reason, outside my normal range of activity, I ask myself these questions:

1. Why am I going?
2. What do I hope to learn?
3. How will it make me better?
4. If I take this trip, can I make a better contribution to my world?
5. How can I incorporate a sense of wonder?
6. What things, material and less material, would I like to bring back as gifts for myself and others?
7. What is the purpose of this trip?

Death and travel have this in common with everything else: they can, and usually do, carry elements of both the sacred and the banal.

By taking time to explore the questions above (or creating new ones of your own), you have the power to add meaning and subtract banality from all of your transitions, including returning from vacation or caring for a dying cat.