What did kitten Camino mean, I am the friend of the oppressed? In driving rain, with the wind shoving me sideways, I trudged huffing and puffing up the medieval hill that lead to the medieval Château d’Annecy, which is a restored castle turned museum of Haute-Savoie artifacts like Alpine furniture and religious art; featured was an observatory exhibit of Lake Annecy boats and their evolution. Cool. I thought to dry off while treating myself to displays of French mountain chalets – their art and architecture – but kitty’s comment haunted me. Who did he think was oppressed? Oppressed how, exactly? Was I oppressed? Was Gina? Given that she in mere months would become his official mom, he would live with her forever, I decided before an exhibit of ancient “bricks,” the two-masted boats with lateen (triangular) sails that sent cargo of wine, coal, and wood to and fro, it would be good to get a better grasp of what his future held.
“Gin,” I texted there and then. “Are you oppressed?”
“What?”
“Camino told me in not so many words that he is a friend of the oppressed. I am trying to understand him.”
“Sure, I guess I’m oppressed. Aren’t you?”
Since Gina couldn’t offer a specific example of her oppression, I surveyed the Way trekkers to get a sense of whether oppression was an expected Camino hazard that my Camino was trying to enlighten me about. After all, he was born on the Camino, and his ancestral lineage, alive in his very DNA and representing generations of cat presumably also born on the Camino, might have important lessons to share – practical, spiritual, or what have you.
Carolyn Gillespie, the Scottish empty-nester, indeed was oppressed – by her misery. “The shower was a mistake,” she sadly reported after yet another alber-goo night in what was not the Ritz. “The room was so cold that every surface was wet, and with nowhere to put my fresh clothes, they ended up wet too. By the time I arrived at the pilgrim mass I was still dripping.” She continued in her suffering: “I sat in the pew but was so cold I couldn’t control my shivering.”
Angela Leslee, too, was smelling stinky learnings everywhere. Her oppression took the form not only of extramarital lovers David and Mary Jo, who were on her last nerve, but also the Camino elements. “I never really liked wind,” she said, “as it makes a mess of my hair.” What’s more, the trail’s uncountable holy sites – from ancient, gilded cathedrals to humble stone slabs, wood crosses, or rock cairns that honored peregrinos who had perished while walking the Way – challenged her. She confessed: “As I walk into the church, I murmur, ‘Holy Shit!’ before I catch myself and realize I’ve said it in my out-loud voice.” And then: “Oops! I smirk and put my hand to my mouth, trying to push the disrespectful words back in.”
Even even-tempered Las Cruces geologist John Pearson was hardly his chatty, exuberant 54-year-old self when, on the Camino, he was awed into shyness by the babe-like ladies he never expected to meet while walking. At an alber-goo dinner one night, “several women graced us with intoxicating smiles,” he remembers in The Way of the Wind: Embracing Life while Walking the Camino de Santiago. The oppression of his personality only then briefly lifted. Tipsy with the unaccustomed attention, he bucked up to confront “the dense wood, supposedly inhabited by witches” he needed to pass through outside Roncesvalles. “I thought to myself, if these witches looked as good as those women who smiled at us at La Posada, bring them on!”
Maybe my kitten Camino did indeed have a message. If he were a friend to the likes of Carolyn and Angela and John – the obviously oppressed – then it would be up to me decipher it. I had only four months. So, I scooted top-speed from the bricks and chalets and art of the château to be sure I had time to pursue the entire point of traveling to Annecy: to shop.
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