Peterrrrr

I saw a man bandaging his blisters as I walked to the patio of the alberge. I gave a sympathetic look and he smiled. He said they looked worse than they were. But I don't know how a blackened toenail and the blisters that had eaten three of his toes and heel with a growing appitite can look worse than it feels. "What is your name?" I asked. He answered with "Peter," first the English way, then rolling his "r"s. I tried to say it and he smiled with his eyes. I asked why he was doing the Camino, he sighed, seeming overwhelmed with the question. "For many reasons... one, two, three... many.." He said he was from Poland. That he was a priest. That he was doing the Camino for his 25th priesthood anniversary. "I am fifty" he said, "I am very old." He told me about how he had looked up to the men who had been priests for five or seven years and that he wanted wisdom like that, and now he was fifty years old. I told him how muched I loved the respect Catholisism has for God... that I can sense their love for God through the ornate cathedral walls and I can feel their reverance during mass. He smiled with hazel eyes that had a dark blue ring on the outside and he asked what I was studying. I told him about creative writing and art. About learning Spanish and how bad I was. About general ed and studying abroad. He lit up when I talked about art. I showed him the postcards of the watercolor artist I had just bought on the path today. Art Manton Lowe. I gave him the one of Molina Seca. The one with a building with mountains and rivers. I gave it to him because it was the one his fingers lingered on and the one that made his eyes dance. He liked the postcard of the praying hands too. As his eyes rested on it I thought about hands, about how they are beautiful things, that hands tell a story. They show pain and joy with those little wrinkles that act as smile lines, or as wrinkles that look like crevices.

But the thing that mesmorized me about Peter is that he is the director of men and boys' Gregorian chant choirs. That's when I sat down next to him and took out my notebook and asked him to write down suggestions of chants to look up. He wrote down the chant Dum Pater Familias. He said that he sings it when he walks, it's what helps get him through. So I shook his hand, I smiled back into his blue rimmed hazel eyes, and I thanked him. I continued to the patio and put in my earphones, blocking out Ruby Tuesday and the Red Hot Chili Peppers and listened to it: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=33jeQutO58o and it was beautiful. The funny thing is that I almost passed it all by. He was almost just the man in the red shirt with the blue eyes that was bandaging his black toe nails. But now I know he is Peter, he is Peterrrrrrrrr, the priest from Poland who directs Gregorian chants and loves art and God and travel. We shared words. We shared a postcard. But we shared a bit of ourselves, and I think that is beautiful.