Noticing Oxford

There are places that feel like locations, and there are places that feel like people.

Oxford, for me, has always been the latter.

I visited for the first time ten years ago with my parents, sister, and kids. My daughter was enthralled by the idea of Oxford University. I have a photo of her outside of Magdalen College, and I don't think she's ever looked happier. Then Rick and I returned earlier this year. It was a brief encounter, interrupted before it was finished. I left feeling as though I had been introduced to someone fascinating only to be pulled away before the conversation really began.

So I came back. Yesterday, I arrived alone. I checked into a small room, carrying with me all the bits and pieces needed for my Cotswolds Way walk. Today, I'll wander the city. I'll find coffee. Perhaps a sausage roll. I'll pick up the printed copy of After All: The Lost Brothers Grimm Tale and spend the afternoon with a red pen in a café somewhere, making the final marks before the manuscript becomes something fixed.

Tuesday, I begin walking. More than a hundred miles through villages, fields, churchyards, and old paths. Through Painswick itself.

I've spent months thinking about the walk itself, but now that I'm here, I find myself thinking about something else. Second chances, but not dramatic second chances. Quiet ones.

The chance to return to a conversation that ended too soon. The chance to revisit a story and discover it was waiting patiently all along. The chance to become someone you couldn't yet imagine being.

I've come to believe that many of the most important transformations in life announce themselves very softly. They don't arrive with certainty. They don't arrive with trumpets.

They arrive disguised as a train ticket. A pair of walking shoes. A manuscript covered in red ink. A table for one. A city waiting for you to return.

A year ago, I could not have imagined this day. Not Oxford. Not the walk. Not the books. Not this feeling. And yet here I am.

Today, I'll simply be grateful to be here.

Notice things, my darlings.

~ Shannon ᭄᭡ ͏ ͏ ͏

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