Gathering a few essentials, I headed for the bathroom, only to discover a wire-rimmed basket on the bathroom counter filled with everything I needed. The towels, white and fluffed up, were stacked on a shelf. Two thick robes hung from pegs on the wall.
“They have an assorted cheese and fruit platter for a party of six to twenty,” Penny called out. “How hungry are you?”
“Don’t they have something simple?”
“What were you hoping for? Cheeseburgers and fries?”
“No, of course not. I was thinking of something like an omelette.”
“Excellent idea. I’m going to call the kitchen and see what they can come up with. It’ll be a surprise.”
I closed the bathroom door and paused a moment. Oh, Penny Girl, you and your surprises!
Turning the faucet, I watched as refreshingly clear water tumbled into the large, deep tub. Within minutes the bathroom filled with steam. I unwrapped a bar of almond-scented soap and let the water rise higher than I ever would have in my tub at home.
Stripped down to my weary flesh, I cautiously slid one foot into the water. The other foot willingly followed. With all the honor of a regal ceremony, I lowered myself into the pristine water until the blessed element covered me up to my neck.
It wasn’t enough. Closing my eyes and drawing my breath deep into my chest, I sunk all the way under until I was submerged. I could feel the ends of my hair darting about my neck like tiny fish in a tropical lagoon. The shimmering waters carried my weight and lifted from me all that was rancid. I floated in a free, uncomplicated state of tranquility.
With my chin up, I lifted my head out of the water, gulping in the steamy oxygen. I tried to capture the floating bar of soap that was bumping against the tub’s side. Adrift like a row-boat that had been torn from its moorings, the almond-scented bar had no choice but to release to me its cleansing powers. Contentedly I lingered in the warm, soapy water for what seemed like a long time. I didn’t ask my mind to assimilate that this wasn’t my bathtub and this water wasn’t Chinook Springs water. It was better to be still and breathe and nothing more.
Fragrant, fresh, and free, I left all my tensions in the tub and watched them swirl down the drain when I released the plug.
I couldn’t stop smiling.
It’s only a bath! my mind chided, as I reached for the fluffy white towel.
Oh, but what a bath! my heart responded. The heart knows truths that the mind could never perceive, there in its ivory tower. Such a going under and coming back up can heal and soothe and bring back life.
I decided that if women ruled the world, such a soaking would be mandatory for all individuals before any major treaties were negotiated. Ah yes, after that all negotiations could lead directly to world peace.
Slipping into the luxurious robe, I exited my private Shangri-la with all the grace of a ruling queen.
“Do you take baths at home very often?” I asked Penny.
“No. And it’s really too bad because we have a tub in our bathroom with whirlpool jets. Nicole uses it more than I do.”
“Baths are marvelous,” I said in my dreamiest voice.
“You certainly smell fresh and friendly. Like a fortune cookie.”
I almost asked if fortune cookies really had a smell, but questioning Penny’s bionic nose when it came to anything in the dessert category was pointless.
“Room service is on its way,” Penny said.
I noticed she had unloaded the contents of all three suitcases onto a bed and was busy sorting and piling. She definitely had enough clothes for both of us. For a month.
“What did you order?”
“Omelettes and something else.”
“What’s the something else?”
“I don’t know. I had a fun conversation with the woman in the kitchen. I told her this was our first meal in the land of my ancestors and we could go for something festive to top off the omelette.”
“What if festive to her means pickled squid brains?”
“I suggested something chocolate, and she said she had just what we needed.”
“Chocolate is a word that women universally understand, isn’t it? Sort of like how I felt on the airplane while I was talking to that young mother. Chocolate and babies know no language borders.”
“Yeah, what was the deal with that mom?” Penny asked. “Did she speak any English?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then how did you end up with her baby?”
“I felt for her. That’s what I meant by the unspoken universal languages of all mothers. Don’t you remember what it was like when our kids were that small? We could never do anything without a little koala bear hanging on us.”
“It seems so long ago. I don’t remember things as well as I used to. I think I burned up too many brain cells during my wild years.” Penny tilted her head. “Speaking of wild years, did you really think I was going to let that taxi driver take us to the disco?”
“I couldn’t tell by the way you were flirting with him.”
“Flirting with him! I wasn’t flirting!”
“Then what was that?”
“That was public relations. That’s what I do.”
“And with the hotel manager? And the kitchen chef? Is that public relations, too?”
“Yes, public relations with a dash of schmoozing. Perfect recipe for success, don’t you think?”
I didn’t respond.
Penny put her hand on her hip. “What? Do you think I did something wrong?”
“I don’t know. I’m not used to being around you when you’re schmoozing.”
“This is how I operate in the business world. I don’t lie. I just creatively direct the situations to get the desired results.”
I folded my arms across the front of my cozy robe.
“What?”
“It could be considered manipulation, Penny. You know how to get what you want. You always have.”
“And is that a bad thing?” Penny asked. “I mean, tell me if you think I have an integrity problem.”
“No, I’m not accusing you of having an integrity problem.”
“Then what am I doing that’s wrong?”
I thought about how Penny’s “public relations” techniques weren’t dishonest or cruel. She opened herself up and gave freely to others. I think she expected others to respond with equal generosity.
“I don’t know,” I said after a pause.
“Well, you think about it while I take a shower. You, more than any other woman, know me by heart, Sharon. If you see anything out of line, I want to hear about it.”
Penny always had been open and teachable. But I couldn’t remember a time that I ever asked anyone to evaluate my actions or point out any undesirable qualities in my life.
I thought back on when our friendship was young and Penny asked me to help her practice what she was going to say at her baptism. Our church was more accustomed to baptizing children than adults. I think Penny realized that she and Dave were an anomaly and she didn’t want to shock any of the old ladies with what she called her “spicy testimony.” I stopped Penny before she could read me the four pages she had written out. I told her I didn’t want to know all that stuff from her past. I suggested she limit herself to three or four sentences and focus on making it clear that she was now an obedient follower of Christ.
I think that was the worst thing I ever did to her.
At her baptism, Penny stepped into the water, working hard to keep her expression flat even though I knew she was ecstatic. All eyes were on her. All ears were listening. Calmly reciting a few generic phrases of Christianese, Penny plugged her nose and went under. Up she came, glistening and spilling laughter from her merry heart with her arms in the air. She was so full of life.
I knew then that I had robbed her and those in attendance of experiencing the real passion for God that was exploding in Penny’s life. I had censored her. I diluted her spirit in an effort to make her more like my type of
Christian so she would be acceptable to people like Gloria.
I told myself I’d never do that again. I’d never try to change Penny. She was a zealous woman, true. But she was also humble and teachable.
Unwrapping the towel from my head, I leaned back, shaking the water from the ends of my clean hair. Why do I still feel it’s my job to correct her and corral her, even when I made myself promise that I wouldn’t do that?
Hoping to find a brush, I reached for my shoulder bag and dumped the contents on my bed. My belongings formed a small mound. I looked over at the mounds on Penny’s bed and back at my meager collection.
The contrast reminded me of when we first met Dave and Penny. When they started out, they had very little. They decided to get married when they found out they were expecting Noah. At the time they were living in a one-room converted farm equipment shed under high power lines beside a peach tree orchard.
The first time I visited their substandard housing with a box of maternity clothes, my oldest, Tyler, was with me. He was three, and he thought sitting on the potty to take a shower at Dave and Penny’s was the most wonderful thing in the world. The soapy water ran under the lopsided bathroom door and down the linoleum floor to a drain. Tyler came home and asked Jeff if we could put a drain in the middle of the floor in our house, too.
My dear hubby quietly collected funds from a few church folks and arranged for Dave and Penny to move into a two-bedroom cracker box before Noah was born. Dave had a full-time job by then and was taking computer classes at the community college. Penny read a library book on real estate and found a way for them to buy their little cracker box of a house.
A year and a half later, with a toddler on her hip and another on the way, ever-clever Penny managed to finagle some creative financing. They bought a serious fixer-upper in a nice neighborhood while renting out the cracker box. Penny made good use of all my hand-me-down baby clothes. She stuck to a tight budget, and she and I worked for days trying to sanitize their terribly neglected fixer-upper. The house had four bedrooms, and we were certain that three of them had been used to raise chickens.
Within fourteen months, Penny had turned that chicken coop into a cupcake, and before their third child, Nathan, was born, she had sold it for three times what they had paid. They bought a house six doors down the street from us and lived there for nine years. I think those were the best years for all of us. I didn’t realize at the time what a gift it was to be so close. Our lives were meshed together, and that made both of our families stronger.
Then Dave was offered an incredible job in the Silicon Valley. Dave never finished college, but he was sought after because of his exceptional computer programming abilities.
When they moved to the San Francisco Bay area two years ago, Penny managed to buy and sell another fixer-upper to get into the neighborhood where they wanted to be. I hadn’t been to their new house, which they had bought five months ago, but I’d seen pictures. By Chinook Springs standards, they were living in a mansion.
Just like the contrasting stacks of belongings on our hotel room beds, Penny and Dave now had a blessed abundance, and I was the one with the drain in the middle of my budget.
A knock on the door startled me. A young woman delivered our midnight omelettes. Each plate was covered with a silver dome.
“Are you Penny?” she asked warmly.
“No.”
“Please tell Penny we made something for you that is a nice chocolate. I hope you will like it.”
“I’m sure we will. Thank you.”
I lifted one of the silver domes and found a delicious looking omelette and a parfait glass filled with a swirled chocolate dessert and topped with a Finnish flag on a toothpick.
Penny opened the bathroom door. “Did the food come?”
“Yes, and wait until you see it. Our first meal in the land of your ancestors, and it came complete with a Finnish flag!”
“As long as it includes chocolate,” Penny said, “I’m sure it will be memorable!”
Seven
After enjoying our room service banquet so late on that first night, we weren’t sleepy. Penny decided to organize her clothes in the closet and dresser drawers. I turned on the television, and the two of us wearily sat on the edge of the bed with our jaws slack, flipping through the channels and not understanding a single word.
Around two in the morning, Penny decided we should call home to let our families know we arrived safely. On the West Coast our kids were just coming home from school. I talked to Kaylee and Josh for a quick five minutes and told them to tell their dad everything was fine with me. Josh asked why I hadn’t called yesterday, and I tried to explain the time change and the long flight.
My tenderhearted ten-year-old said, “Mom, could you call us every day when we get home from school? Then I won’t miss you so much.”
“Honey, it’s the middle of the night here. I won’t be able to call you every day at this time because normally I’ll be asleep. I’m awake now because we just got here a little while ago, and we’re still up.”
“Oh. Well, can you call us other times?”
“Sure. I’ll call you whenever I can, okay?”
“Okay. Mom, can we eat the rest of the cake?”
“What cake?”
“Gramma Gloria brought a cake over yesterday, but I didn’t get any ‘cuz Dad said I had to do my spelling homework first, but after I did it, he said it was too late, and I had to go to bed.”
I was glad to hear that my mother-in-law was feeling well enough to bake a cake and bring it to my family. “Is your homework done for today, Josh?”
“Mom, it’s Friday.”
“Oh. How did you do on your spelling test?”
“Not good. But could I still have some cake?”
I couldn’t remember a time I ever had parented like this over the phone. I was the one who always was home. Monitoring snacks and helping with homework was my career.
“Yes, you may have a piece of cake. And Josh?”
“No, Mom, it’s me, Kaylee. Josh went to get some cake.”
So much for my son’s missing me!
“Are you and Aunt Penny having fun yet?”
I had to think about my answer. Had any of this trip actually been fun yet?
“It’s been an adventure,” I told her.
“Do you think Dad would let me have a few of my friends stay over tonight?”
“How many is a few?”
“Just four. Rachel, Laurel, Sarah, and Emma.”
“What did your dad say?”
“I didn’t ask him yet. I thought if you said it was okay, then he wouldn’t mind.”
“Kaylee, you need to ask Dad. He’s coordinating all the schedules while I’m gone.”
“But you always say yes.”
“Dad will probably say yes, too. But you need to ask him.”
Kaylee sighed. “Okay. Well, I hope you guys have fun.”
“Thanks, honey. Love you.”
“Love you, too. Bye.”
Penny talked with her kids much longer than I did. She asked for specifics about their homework and Nicole’s practice for a play she was in at church. Penny gave them all kinds of details about our trip, including the sick baby, my lost luggage, and our deluxe hotel room.
I realized I hadn’t told my kids anything about what had been happening with me. I wondered if I never had specifics to talk about in my daily routine at home, and therefore they were used to everything being centered on them.
Penny’s kids seemed to be more involved in her life. Was that because she had more of a life than I did? Or was it because she opened up more to her kids? What would Kaylee have said if I told her I threw away my clothes? It didn’t seem like a topic worthy of pricey long distance phone minutes. But then, what had we discussed with those pricey minutes? Cake and friends coming over.
I remembered when our kids were babies and Penny would come to me for advice on everything. I liked being the expert. My first two were
born before her Noah arrived, so I had plenty of advice when it came to diaper rash and preparing children for the first day of kindergarten. As I listened to Penny relating so openly with her three kids on the phone, I thought I could learn a few things from her. In all our years of friendship, I’m not sure I ever had that thought before.
Is it possible that arrogance can masquerade as being “more experienced”? Did I think all these years that I was better than Penny simply because I didn’t have all the childhood and teen stuff to get over?
That was the last thought I had before falling into a deep sleep. When I woke the next morning, it was nearly noon.
Penny was propped up in bed reading her Bible. When she saw I was looking at her, trying to focus my bleary eyes, she pushed her reading glasses up to the top of her head and giggled. “Guess where we are, Sharon? We’re in Helsinki!”
I smiled. Then I remembered my lost luggage and frowned. “Do you think it’s too early for me to call the airport about my luggage?”
Penny gave me a sympathetic look. “I called an hour ago. I didn’t think you would mind; you were sleeping so deeply.”
“What did they say?”
Penny shook her head. “They said there’s no sign of your suitcase yet. They told me to try calling again this evening.”
I pulled the covers over my head.
“Don’t go back to sleep. You know what this means? We have to go shopping for some clothes for you!”
“Don’t you want to make some phone calls and try to find your aunt first?” I peeled back the covers and propped myself up on my elbow.
“We can come back and start those phone calls later.” Penny hopped out of bed. “Times like these call for an adjustment of priorities! The top of our list at this moment is new clothes.”
And off we went. Twinkle dust everywhere.
A nonflirty taxi driver drove us through the streets of downtown Helsinki under dark, gray clouds. I stared at the profoundly solid stone buildings. Some were old with domes and architectural details of an era long gone. Modern buildings sprouted in unpredictable gaps standing straight, uncompromising, and sleek as silver. Quiet hung over the city and over us.