The Things We Cannot Say(113)

I won’t have much coverage today. If you need me I’ll be back in range by about 1pm your time. We can talk tonight. I’m really sorry about yesterday, and I love you.
And then I follow Zofia into the hut, where I indeed am impressed by the squeaky, smooth taste of smoked ociepek. The vendor winks at me and insists I also try his homemade lemon liqueur—which tastes exactly like lemonade when it first hits my tongue, but scorches the back of my throat like vodka. Zofia and the vendor laugh at the way my eyes widen, and then they laugh harder when I thump my chest as the liquid burns its way down.

We are straight back in the car and Zofia is zooming through the traffic again, stopping only to show me some impressively styled wooden huts and a breathtaking vista from a lookout, and then we keep moving on all the way to the town of Zakopane. It’s high in the mountains—so high that, despite the summer heat, I can see snow on some of the peaks of the mountains behind it.

We stop for lunch and I pick up some souvenirs from the stores in the town center: necklaces fashioned with Polish amber for Callie and Mom, a sippy cup that says Zakopane for Eddie, some authentic Polish vodka as requested by my Dad—and a second bottle for Wade, who surely deserves a drink after what I’ve put him through this week. When I think we’re finished, Zofia steers me back toward her car.

“The town is cute, sure,” she says with a grin. “But what I really brought you here to do is the cable car.”

It’s midafternoon by the time we reach the cable car station, and I’m taken aback by the insanely long line waiting to ride it. But Zofia asks me to wait at the end, then disappears into the crowd. Ten minutes later she returns.

“Good news,” she says, motioning for me to follow her. We walk all the way to the front of the line. “You get to skip the line! Just one thing you have to promise me.”

“Sure?”

“When you get to the top, go for a walk—enjoy the view—take your time. But do not come back down until you’ve stopped at the restaurant for a glass of wine. It’s pretty much the law,” she says, then she winks at me, and farewells me to take the journey to the top alone, because she’s convinced a Japanese tour guide to let me slip into a spare slot with his group. That’s how I find myself standing in a cable car, hundreds of feet above the earth, squeezed into the little space with a dozen Japanese tourists and their guide.

It’s a two-stage journey to the peak, but ten minutes after we board, we are almost to the top of an immense mountain. The English announcement in the cable car tells me it is two thousand meters above sea level.

“That’s 6,500 feet,” the Japanese tour guide offers me helpfully, and I give him a grateful smile. I leave the group at the cable car and begin the walk up the last little part of the mountain to the summit. There’s dozens of people making the journey in each direction past me as I walk, but the tourist traffic ebbs and flows. Just as I reach the very peak, there’s a break in the hikers, and for a few magnificent moments, I’m actually totally alone.

A sign tells me that the valley on one side is in Slovakia—and the valley below where Zofia awaits is in Poland. The mountains are so high, the valleys below so low—and the shades of vibrant green against the white snow-topped peaks and the milky blue sky is so breathtaking it actually leaves me feeling a little emotional. I rotate slowly—taking in a 360 degree view of one of the most stunning vistas I’ve ever seen.

Three days into this trip, it hits me that despite the disappointments, this has been a wonderful experience, and I’m actually lucky to have lived it. Maybe I won’t be going home with any distinct answers, but somehow, the chance to connect with the roots of my grandmother’s life has been satisfying in a way I’d never anticipated. And having survived this trip—failures and all—has bolstered a confidence I didn’t actually know was shaken.

Wade has given me a real gift this week, despite the struggle of it back home and my own struggles here. I can’t wait to tell him how much of a revelation it has been to do something like this—standing on a mountaintop for no reason other than the sake of the experience. This moment is an investment in myself. I’m giving myself permission to make a memory that benefits no one but me. I love being a mother, and I love being a wife. I even love being a daughter and a granddaughter. But as I stand here on the mountaintop, I’m not any of those things.

I am simply Alice, and for one breathtaking moment, I’m completely present.

I don’t just drink a glass of wine at the restaurant. I linger over it, then I drink a second, and when I get back down to Zofia—I tell her one glass was for me, and one was for her. She laughs, and then she hugs me.

“You’re finally getting the hang of this ‘travel’ thing, Alice.”

As we pass the cheese huts on the way back into Krakow, I realize that I still haven’t turned my phone back on, so I fish it out of my bag and hit the power button. It takes a few minutes to locate the tower, but when it does, a flurry of text messages hits the phone. There are the inevitably chilly thanks for letting us know messages from my husband, daughter and mother in response to my warning that I’d be off-line. Then, a series of completely unexpected texts arrives.

Alice, this is Lia—Emilia’s granddaughter. Please call me back on this number as soon as you can.
Alice, it’s Lia again. I have been trying to call you all day. Please tell me you are still in Poland. Call me urgently.