Day 3: "Hey, Cinderella" Beauty

Traveling can be truly amazing.  Just today, for example, I drove past green fields and sheep on my way to Edinburgh, saw a golden moon rising over Vienna, and leaped from a high cliff into blue, blue waters of the sea caves in Cyprus.  Each of these things are glorious, and truly enjoyable, and fill me with a great thankfulness.  And they all remain when the frustrating or difficult chapters experienced on the way there are forgotten.

One of my favourite country songs is called "Hey, Cinderella" by Suzy Bogguss.  She tells of a girl who wears the white dress, marries the prince, and drives away in a white mustang to her castle in the sand.  But the song opens up years later, and questions the hard days, the difficult bits, and asks the beautiful Cinderella, "Does the shoe fit you now?"

I thought of this tonight as I wandered down to the beach and had a lovely walk through the water, getting some solitary time after a very full day.  I love the Cinderella part of travel - driving along with the windows open and glimpses of sparkling blue sea, diving into that same sea and tasting the salt of the Mediterranean, trying the "Special Sandwich" from what everyone calls "the van at the side of the road" (which it literally is) and happily waiting a half an hour to eat one, because they're so good.  But like in our song, there are times when the shoe doesn't quite seem to fit.  When the airline insists on playing loud band music instead of just leaving me quietly alone.  When I rush to catch my flight in Vienna, but my suitcase apparently doesn't feel it has the same energy, and remains behind.  When the man who is supposed to provide the key to the flat I'm staying in doesn't bother to return from either Yugoslavia or Bulgaria in time (we're still not entirely sure where he is) to give it to me.  When the first jump from the sea cliffs is legendary, but the second one has me rising with coughs and splutters and more seawater in my nose than air, and a favourite ring lost to the depths of the waters.  These are the 'Hey Cinderella' moments.

But what is amazing to me is that these all fade.  They're fading already.  My suitcase, feeling a pang of disloyalty, has magically appeared, rushing to my side and sitting patiently next to me while I write, a disobedient puppy that longs to be forgiven.  My ring was beautiful, but it was simply a small memory of something greater that I cannot lose, friendship and joy and the country I love.  The key will appear tomorrow, and I will probably be pretty thrilled with the place I'm staying at.  And I can hardly remember the seawater in my nose, but I can see with perfect clarity the incredible blue water as it rushes closer, closer, and feel the shock of the surface and the surprising warmth of the waves as my dry body meets the sea. 
 
I really hate complainers.  I hate it in myself most of all, and that's why it frustrates me so much to listen to it.  Or to read it on Facebook.  I'm actually shocked by the level and amount of complaining that goes on in that very public place.  People who hate their jobs, hate their lives, hate the weather, are annoyed at every little thing that goes wrong and want the world to know about it.  I'll give you that I have my bad days, too, but the fact is there's always a 'Hey Cinderella' side...but the good thing is that means there's a Cinderella side, too.  A time when the shoe fits and the prince shows up and the dance goes on till midnight and the evil stepsisters are repaid and the lights sparkle and the wine flows and the joy is abundant...those are the times we really remember.  Those are the moments of beauty that last long beyond the nuisances and annoyances and genuine really, really difficult times.  For the young mother who collapses in frustration after the third accident in as many minutes...the business owner whose biggest account has cancelled...the minister who is taken to task for a throwaway comment in a sermon...the single person who is alone, again...the child for whom the first day of school looms as a terrifying unknown...the teacher who feels that she just can't get through to anyone in her class.  Those are the Hey Cinderella moments, when the beautiful shoe just will not fit, and we fling it away in frustration and anger and some weeping.  But the true Cinderella moments are not restricted to the wedding day or the ordination or the birth of a child...they appear regularly, consistently, day after day for us to rejoice in.

Mine, today, was that moment of leaping off the cliff.  It was so brief, but it's captured in my mind with startling clarity.  That moment between earth and sky, eternity and time, wind rushing, water sparkling, and beauty rushing in.  Hey, Cinderella?  The shoe fits.