Hey Jude! - Portrait of An Unexcpected Adventurer

I have only been in Ensenada four months and still recovering from major losses resulting in a total life change . My Spanish is not yet very good , I am still learning a new culture and I am only just beginning to make friends. I lost what little work I had writing online. The next day my best friend told me she was leaving for Monterey, Mexico in a week. I was devastated feeling a continuing sense of loss and being left. I struggled mightily with a depression in which some previous blogs "Out of the Darkness" resulted. I worked very hard to recover a positive sense of gainfulness and purpose and dedicated myself to giving complete support to my best friend as she prepared to go to a new friend and new opportunities in Monterey. The day came when I took her to the bus station and watched her walk into the building and blend into the queue of people buying tickets and waiting for buses. Tears spilled down my face as I drove away, now alone in a foreign city, with little money, few friends and no family. I drove home having never felt such overpowering loneliness. I had never felt this in my life before.

I remember having a headache the day my friend left. I thought it was stress, but by the next morning, I was sick with a stomach virus. I pulled myself out of bed to walk about a half mile to the corner store for a couple of things and came home and collapsed again into bed. The next day was similar only accompanying the sickness I found myself staring into the jaws of a massive yawning loneliness threatening with wide open mouth to swallow me into its dark abyss. I remember thinking this is what hell must be like. I cried out. I reached out. One friend called and checked in everyday. She lives far away but her daily concern was very close and a light in the darkness. I felt I could resist those jaws for another day. Then it happened!

There was a knock at the front door on the evening of that second day, and there stood a woman with disheveled white hair holding a plate of tacos. I'd only met her a couple of times. She was the neighborhood female alcoholic. We'd already heard plenty of gossip about her drinking binges and escapades. But a few weeks ago she quit drinking and hasn't touched it since. Now here she was standing at my door with tacos. I took them and explained to her that I was sick with a stomach virus and with with depression. I invited her to sit down and thanked her for her thoughtfulness. She encouraged me to come to her house and sit in her patio. Even though I wasn't feeling well, she said the warm sun and her comfortable chairs would be great for me. So I walked with her to her patio and sat in the midst of a wonderful garden of cactus flowers and palm trees and a big painting of tropical birds.

Her name is Jude and as I sat in the warm sun, she made me a fruit smoothie. She talked with me of her alcoholism, why she drank and why she quit. She did not ask me to say much. She seemed to sense that what I needed was just to sit and have companionship. The next day, she came by with a bowl of stew. She encouraged me to come over again because she enjoyed our visit and I did. Then after a couple of hours I felt well enough to go out but not for too long because I started feeling sick again. When I got home, there she was sitting on my porch waiting for me. She was concerned that I still didn't look like I felt well when I left to go out and visit friends. She came in and sat with me a while. She encouraged me to apply for some financial help until I can get on my feet. She gave me numbers and helped me to get motivated to make some calls and see what I could discover.

Then this morning there was a knock at my door. When I answered, there was Jude with her characteristic disheveled white hair. "Guess what!" she exclaimed. There was happiness and excitement in her eyes. "I can tell something good happened, Jude. What is it? Tell me." "I'm a grandmother for the very first time!" she burst out, unable to contain her joy. I threw my arms around her and hugged her and congratulated her. She then said, "You're the first person I wanted to tell." I told her I was honored. Wow! Then she invited me again to sit in her garden and I did. And then another unexpected surprise.

Jude began to spin out the tale of her life and I found myself enthralled with her adventures. This disheveled white-haired alcoholic woman has been all over the world and done things most women wouldn't think of attempting. She has back-packed through Africa alone; traveled and lived in Europe alone, and traveled the whole of Mexico and lives here alone. Her working career was as a cook aboard a tugboat that guided oil barges between Seattle and Alaska through the Northwest passage up to the pipeline.
Here is her tug.
Here is Jude in the galley.
Here she is in her quarters.

I have these pictures because again she honored me by letting me take home her diary to read. She wrote: "Life should always be an adventure. Me --- well, I might take time to wave good-bye. I never know where I'm going but I'll know when I get there...Ahh life is grand."

As I closed the diary I realized that I, too, have been an adventurer. I have lived in 6 sates and three countries. I have studied multiple languages. I have taken risks and sometimes gained and sometimes lost, but always come out ahead. No depression or loneliness has swallowed me up yet although I have had moments when they have come close. I needed Jude, her kindness and her strength to remind me a little more of who I am and how kind and strong I am. I asked Jude if I could hang onto the diary until my best friend Triana gets home. My Triana is an adventurer, too. I know she would love Jude's stories and her diary.
Here is Jude's newest adventure
Life should always be an adventure!
Lord, thank you for sending me Jude to remind me of the adventures still ahead of me.