Bela and Stephen took separate trips in June, coming together for the last few days in Edinburgh. Here’s Bela’s tale. It’s about connecting with strong women, finding new inspiration, and discovering a reverence for writers and artists in Europe that is missing here in America.
The first courageous, strong woman of my trip is my dear friend Hildegarde O’Connor. She remains fiercely independent after suffering the loss of the man of her life, Eddie, in 2024. Hildegarde and I first met in the summer of 1971 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
This June we immediately resumed our morning chats over toast and tea. We took walks to the University College Dublin campus. Sister-in-law Mary O’Connor (Eddie’s sister) took me about one evening. We went to Dún Loaghaire (Dunleary) and walked on the water’s edge. I hadn’t seen Mary since Hildegarde and Eddie’s wedding in 1973. Mary is also a writer. Across the waters, Mary pointed out a round white Martello tower and explained that James Joyce lived there for a brief time.
I later read: “It was long enough to make it famous as the most eccentric address in literature as the setting for the opening episode of Ulysses.” My last night in Dublin, Mary drove the three of us for a walk on Sandymount Beach. Another location featured in Ulysses.
In each of the three countries I visited, Ireland, France, and Scotland, there was a noticeable respect and appreciation for writers. In Paris, I walked by Les Deux Magots. It is now a fancy tourist restaurant, but it once was a meeting place for Paris’ literary and intellectual elite – Jean-Paul Satre, Simone de Beauvoir, Ernest Hemingway, James Baldwin, Albert Camus, James Joyce . And the bookstore Shakespeare & Company was so busy I could never get in. I was in a culture that celebrates writers and artists.
After three days, I escaped the Paris crowds and extreme heat and took a train to Cuy, an hour and a half south of Paris. I stayed with Nicole Beauvois. Nicole is a long-time Shintaido practitioner. She was married to Ito, our Shintaido teacher (and my ex-husband) until he passed away a little over a year ago. The last time I visited Ito and Nicole was with Stephen in 2017 in the Loire Valley. Now, traveling on my own, I fell into long conversations with Nicole in French. We talked about our experiences in Shintaido. It was a healing time. I appreciated her strength and bravery in forging ahead with life on her own. Our conversation was for the most part in French, which fulfilled one of the goals of my trip, to refresh my French-speaking abilities. She drove me to beautiful, nearby towns (Troyes, Sens) where we would “prendre un pot” and enjoy the French culture.
It was long after an afternoon “pot,” an espresso, that I found myself in bed and awake at 4:30 am. Nicole had given me a book she had that was in English, Finding the Heart Sutra by Alex Kerr. I started to read the word-by-word analysis of the Heart Sutra. Not sleeping was a special gift. Reading this book was inspiring. I concluded that all of it, the three days with Hildegarde, these days talking in French with Nicole about our pasts, about Shintaido, the sharing, the talking, the doing, the not doing was a special gift – a gateway to a new inspiration, a creating of something new even while looking back. Of course, now comes the challenging part: to act on whatever this inspiration brings.
The third courageous and strong woman of my trip is my sister-in-law, Nancy Billias. I flew to Edinburgh and met up with Nancy and Stephen. After a surprise meeting at the airport with a crazy Scotsman:
off we went to experience what the city had to offer.
Over two days in Edinburgh, I had the opportunity to talk with Nancy. I once again appreciated how much she is accomplishing by the courageous and kind work she does at the Christian-based retreat center where she lives near Inverness. More recently she has begun a job providing therapy that includes working with children. The good she is doing in the world is immeasurable. She’s settled and happy.
When Nancy left to go home, Stephen and I had two more days in Edinburgh. We went to the Writers Museum that Nancy recommended. It celebrates three writers: Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson.
Then we went to the National Gallery – Portraits, where we saw and read about many writers, including many women writers, both contemporary and historical.
What have I learned from this trip? I have wonderful and strong women friends. I was touched by the gift of inspiration. I value the way other cultures honor writers and writing. I hope to take inspiration from my travels:
“To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.” Robert Louis Stevenson.