Edinburgh celebrates Christmas with the opening of the Christmas markets while my family and friends prepare for Thanksgiving, American football, and Black Friday sales. My phone’s newsfeed is filled with recipes for spectacular pies and hints on how to reduce the stress of hosting a family gathering. These reminders do make me nostalgic as I sit in the local coffee shop, a place where I am now deemed a regular and greeted with smiles and an occasional ‘pardon?’ as the barista misses something in my accent. Last week we had five minutes of confusion as I attempted to order a fruit teacake, but asked for a toastie.

Today marks only the second day of serious rain I have encountered in the last six weeks. Locals in Oxford, Windermere, and now Edinburgh exclaimed over the temperate weather. Cloudy days in Edinburgh are almost preferable to a November sunny day, when the three hours of a low sun produce a blinding ray of light. People walk along the streets shielding their eyes from the sun like they are witnessing some supernatural phenomenon. When the weather was fine and Princes Street was filled with shoppers and tourists, Edinburgh looked like any other city in the UK. But now, rainy and dreary, I begin to see the Edinburgh portrayed by Alexander McCall Smith, as a small town encompassed in a larger city.

The people here are cheerful. Rarely do I encounter a surly shop clerk. “Hi ya” is the usual greeting and nobody appears put out when my credit card transaction needs my American signature. For some reason, I seem to fit in and am often asked for directions. Anybody who knows me will laugh at this as giving directions is not one of my strong points. This is a much different city in the winter than the Edinburgh I encountered on my last visit when it was overrun with Festival attendees. Even then, it was a tired, but friendly host.

Finding a turkey dinner for Thanksgiving is not difficult. I can walk into any café or food shop and purchase a Turkey Feast sandwich, a holiday tradition, filled with any combination of turkey, dressing, and cranberries. This is a way to have the turkey sandwich without the bother of cooking the turkey. If I want a traditional dinner, there are tons of places to sit and have a roast of something, complete with mashed potatoes and gravy and green beans. I might mix it all up and head to the Christmas Market for German sausage or fish and chips.

I have spent Thanksgiving alone in the U.S. where most stores are closed or preparing for the big sales and, according to the ads, everyone is home hugging their families and having that Norman Rockwell experience. Spending Thanksgiving in a country that does not celebrate the holiday and with a time zone difference that will mean my Thanksgiving will be mostly over before my family and friends celebrate, actually makes it more bearable. I will come here to my coffee shop as usual, see familiar faces of people I don’t quite know, eat some strange concoction of foods, and feel quite at home.

And, as in years past, I will hear from family and friends, wishing me from their faraway tables, as I wish them and you, a Happy Thanksgiving!

 

I wrote the following, posted it, and then as I wondered about the current discussion on sexual harassment, I took it down. I thought of my own experiences with sexual harassment and innuendos and of real circumstances where I was told flat out that I was not suited for a work position, simply because I am a woman and particularly because I am a mother.  When I reread my post, it seemed to perpetuate the charge of hypocrisy when women (and men) talk about their experiences with harassment or gender inequality.

Thinking of a painting by Matisse, Woman in a Purple Coat, I used his image as a reference for my purple coat in the black fashion of Oxford. You know– the vibrancy of a life in color kind of theme. Of course, the dark side of this post is the need to be noticed, to stand out in the crowd, but women are told we must be bright and sexual to be noticed and then are reprimanded if we do attract attention. It gets worse for older women and men, because beauty and youth in our culture are valued over life experience and character.  I ran across a survey that determined most younger women consider catcalls and whistles a form of sexual harassment, yet women over the age of 55 tend to dismiss the behavior. The reason is that a catcall provides needed attention for a woman who feels invisible.

So, although I wanted this to be more about feeling bedraggled in my travel clothes, it is a bit of a statement on a need to be noticed, not necessarily as a sexual being, but as a bright spot in a gray landscape. I’m leaving the post as it was published the first time, because it is an honest assessment of my experience.

 

The Woman in Purple

She roamed the streets of Oxford, her purple coat alive in a city of scholarly black and functional browns. Her white beret, placed carefully on her head in haphazard fashion, played with the chestnut curls bouncing beneath it.

“Who is she?” People, especially men, asked about her.”Who is that woman in purple?”  She promenaded through Christ Church meadow or University Parks, looking for a place to eat her takeaway lunch. In the afternoon she could be found drinking tea in Marks and Spencer or sipping a cappuccino in Blackwells, filling her notebook with prose. She might catch one of her admirers glancing at her coyly over his book and smile back in that enigmatic way that warns someone of boundaries. Occasionally she was spotted walking the grounds of Blenheim Palace.

Then one day she was gone and the town went back to its boring blacks and dirty browns — much dissatisfied with itself.

This is the fantasy version of my last few days in Oxford. Now for the real version, the reality when one does not read the fine print before booking an Airbnb bed.

The room I rented was perfect. The owners of the home provided everything needed and even though the bathroom was not ensuite, it was a fabulous, warm room. The hosts are lovely, lovely people who sent me on literary excursions to find Iris Murdoch’s old home or the Hollywell cemetery full of famous people and terrifying in its overgrown, shadowy space. But they teach at home and guests are expected to be gone from 10-5 every day. No stopping by to clean up a bit or drop off the computer. Too disruptive. This was a huge departure from other places I have stayed where the open door policy is encouraged. This forced march over the paths of Oxford was my own fault.

The coat was a gift. It is a jacket, light and puffy, filled with down, a color blended from lavender and blue. The hat is not a beret, but a stocking cap bought at Macy’s. And the hair, well it is brownish and the hat covers the telltale signs of roots in need of a little touch up.

Actually this combination could be quite perky if it had not been paired with ill-fitting jeans, once snug and fresh and trendy, now sagging in all the wrong places due to three months on the road, combined with running after grandchildren and walking about ten miles a day. After replacing my stylish, yet rubbish, light-weight European walking shoes with a pair of sturdy trainers, my fashion statement has transformed into “something the cat dragged in.”

There are no coy glances in the coffee shop. Usually the others look at me like they cannot quite believe what they see. Even the university students are better-dressed than I am with their classic slacks and oxford shoes. The word begins to form distastefully on their lips. American. They look over at another table where an American man is pontificating on British history to an English woman. I want to apologize for him and for myself.

If this is my biggest worry, then I am quite lucky. The fact is that I have never felt pulled together and I never will. It shouldn’t matter. Yet despite all the great things in my life, with abundant opportunities to follow my dreams, there is still the perception, whether it was instilled by nature or nurture, that I am a failure. How many of us strive for the ideal, whether it is being the perfect woman, the successful businessman, the busy volunteer or the A student?  Success and beauty are fluid and unreliable. Yet, like many people, I continue to look to the external to validate my place in society.

So it is important to pack reminders of a good life like the photos of loved ones or a purple and green stuffed giraffe to include in my selfie. And, of course, my favorite boots.

I like my warm purple coat in normal circumstances when I can drop home, freshen up, and pull on my boots, the boots made for walking (admittedly short distances). My back is paying the price for packing those boots. There are many things in my suitcase tagged for Oxfam, but the boots are nonnegotiable. My feet feel at home in my boots as they click-clack along the pavement. Somehow those boots can transform baggy jeans into a fashion statement. The boots make me feel like that exotic woman in the purple coat and white beret.

Who is she?