Astonishing Sights

Friend, I've seen some
     Astonishing sights:
A lion keeping watch
     Over pasturing cows;
A mother delivered
     After her son was;
A guru prostrated
     Before his disciple;
Fish spawning 
     On treetops;
A cat carrying away
     A dog;
A gunny sack
     Driving a bullock-cart;
A buffalo going out to graze,
     Sitting on a horse
A tree with its branches in the earth,
     Its roots in the sky;
A tree with flowering roots.

Kabir. Brother, I’ve Seen Some Astonishing Sights

The baggage claim area at Pearson Airport in Toronto. After having travelled for almost 24 hours from Sydney via Vancouver, I had finally made it home for Christmas. Well, not quite. The hardest part of my journey was yet to come: claiming my suitcase! Not thinking clearly after 14 hours on the plane from Sydney, I had made the fatal mistake of checking my carry-on suitcase in Vancouver. The flight had been completely full, they were asking for volunteers, and so I did what, I thought, was the right thing and dropped off my tiny bag at the gate to be reclaimed in Toronto. Only that I had completely forgotten what a chaotic mess Toronto airport was ever since the pandemic.

And so there I was, in the midst of piles and piles of suitcases, at the luggage claim at my final destination, waiting for my suitcase to arrive. Me and all the passengers of three other flights. Nothing was moving, people were tired and hungry and stressed, and we all just wanted to be home for Christmas. To make things worse, every time the automatic exit doors opened, I could see my entire family (minus 1 of course) waiting and waving at me. So close and yet so far away. A robotic voice announced the wait time for arriving luggage to be over an hour, and I resigned to my fate. 

And then, out of nowhere, the most astonishing sight: my family standing right next to me! What a wonderful surprise! Not letting anything hold them back, my boys had simply entered the restricted area via the exit doors and were now on the wrong side of the gate. Or the right side. It felt so good to see them, hovering above me, making me look a bit like a superstar surrounded by her bodyguards. 

We chatted a bit, one eye on the conveyor belt that still was not moving. My boys eventually got bored and disappeared to explore the arrival hall. Only later did I learn that they had used the free UV-light telephone sanitizing machine not only to clean their phones, but also one of their shoes. Which, needless to say, brought the entire machine to an abrupt standstill, making a loud: Thump! Sound. Fortunately, they were able to retrieve the lost shoe by forcing the metal trap door open. Not sure the shoe was any cleaner, but my children were hopefully a bit wiser (though I doubt it). Before we could get into any further trouble, the belt started moving and soon thereafter my small suitcase arrived. Yet another astonishing sight! Suitcase and family and shoe in hand, we quickly made our way out of the airport to finally be home for Christmas.

Astonishing sight (definition): something that is astonishing is very surprising, amazing (Collins Dictionary)

This week, I received a message from a friend who was wondering if there would be a new blog post any time soon. My first reaction is always to feel slightly flattered and surprised that someone was actually reading my writings—a warm, fuzzy feeling in my belly. I hadn’t planned on it, but then I thought, why not. An end-of-year kind of post. Or my travels around the world in 18 days…

That’s when a writing prompt landed in my inbox: “Friend, I’ve seen some astonishing things.”

You know how social media feeds you Ikea ads just because you googled “cheap dining table.”  Or walking aids because you are getting old. Someone was sending me this specific writing prompt to inspire me to think about the astonishing sights I had seen this past year. And to write about it.

The first thing that came to mind was the obvious stunning visions I had been lucky enough to encounter this year. After two years of Covid and look-downs, I admit that I had taken every opportunity to find those stunning visions, both near and far. 

Ottawa in the winter. Finland in the spring with its lakes, islands, and Nordic charm. The cafés and architecture of Helsinki. A day trip to Tallinn, Estonia, to see this beautiful medieval city in Northern Europe with its cobbled streets, colourful buildings, and encompassing city walls. Exploring Prince Edward County and its delicious restaurants and wineries in the early summer. A trip down memory lane when returning to my hometown in Germany to see my family in June. The quiet and peace of the Muskoka lakes. 

And of course:  Australia! Exploring downtown Sydney on the weekends, wine tasting in the Hunter Valley, and the breathtaking beauty of the Great Barrier Reef. The year ended with spending time with my kids in Germany visiting Opa, enjoying astonishing sights like the Cologne Cathedral, the picturesque canals and bridges of Amsterdam, and the medieval charm of Monschau near the Belgian Border. 

Yes, I admit it – I did plenty of fantastic sightseeing this year, and I am very grateful for it. Grateful to be able to travel again. Grateful for exploring familiar and new places, cities and countries. Grateful for the people that I got to visit and that travelled with me. Grateful for all the astonishing sights this planet has to offer.

And then there are the small surprise. The tiny awes that make every day a little special.

In one of my favourite books of the year, “Love Stories,” the Australian author Trent Dalton offers a collection of stories of the many facets of love … the sustained, returned, lost, unrequited, deep, or fleeting. Throughout the book, the author describes simple things that people are in love with. We tend to overlook the small, astonishing sights of everyday life so easily. For the past year, I have made a point of writing down three things every day. Surprising, unique, astonishing, mysterious. And while it is not always easy to find something positive every day, it helped me develop an eye for the truly astonishing sights around me. 

The view from the bus window of the sun rising over the ocean on my way to school. A fresh snow cover glinting in the sun after a winter storm. My bench. Any bench.  A student’s love letter. A friendly face. A dog’s kiss. The sun rising over the ocean. The white of the sand, the blue of the sea, the green of the forests. And the people in my life. All the astonishing sights, big and small. The real and the invented. The good and the bad. The mysterious and unexplained. And the shoe that made it!

Cheers to an astonishing year!