Peregrino Mommys

In case people don't know this yet, the Camino is hard. You push yourself to get to the next place, you hurt your calves, you burst your blisters, you feel the sun scorch your delicate white skin and sharp rocks dig into the soles of your shoes and you are vulnerable. Sometimes you want your Mum.

Luckily there are a lot of mothers on the camino. Some are doing the camino to get away from the pressures of being a mum. Some have just had the last child leave home. Some have decided on a career break, but all are mothers. One of the things that you find with some mothers is the fact that mothering is in their genes. Sometimes they gather little flocks of kids, around their own kids' ages as a little surrogate family while they are here. Sometimes they do a little mothering when they see someone who needs it. And the camino "child", which can be anyone of any age, really really appreciates it.

It makes you see how compassion is treated like a currency here. Mothers almost never have to pay for a glass of wine after helping someone, they always get something back.

It doesn't have to be a mother either, it can be anyone. For me, it's my sister, and I'm hers, but sometime it can be the gorgeous camino mamas in the albergues who never speak English but always tell us that we are so tall and pretty and to have a bit more tortilla because we look so white.

You feel the love and caring in each place you visit and stay. Women look down from balconies with flowers in their hands smiling us on with a "Buen Camino" and it helps. It's a beautiful feeling to be appreciated, respected for what we are doing. We do it for ourselves but we also help the economies of these villages that we pass through in the hundreds every day. It's almost like a motherly pride that you can feel walking through these towns, buoying you onwards to the final destination, as long as you stop and have a coffee first.

It makes me think of my own mother, who wishes she could be here with me, but is instead working the weekend night shift in the hospital, having to act the mother and deal with the mothers. She has looked after me for so long, worried and watched as I made my mistakes and ran home, as I called her when it was all too hard. Months might have gone between calls and only then it would be just me calling up to complain. It makes me feel so silly, but I know she doesn't mind. She will always be there for me, even when she technically is hundreds of miles away. She sent Siobhán over with a fleece and a poncho for me, which was a total godsend. She organised the whole thing to get Siobhán over to me when I was feeling low. I love her, and I know I'm safe.

That's also how I feel on the camino. I know I'm safe. If I was to (god forbid) break an ankle on the road or something I know that within two minutes people would be along to help me instantly, effortlessly, just like my mother would, or my grandmother.

I keep thinking about my grandmother too on this pilgrimage. Each church I pass by, each lady that smiles at me, I can see her here too. A finer, stronger, kinder woman you could never find. Always looking out for someone else, "have you enough tea? Will you have another biscuit? Ah go on, look she's starving!" (That last bit is to my mum who would have said 'no she doesn't need it!') my grandmother raised eight children and all of us grand kids (23!) in her own way. I can see her strength, her kindness in every kind act I receive and give, whether it's just buttoning up a poncho for a French man in the rain, or giving a little bun to a lady who is sitting at the side of the road, too tired to go on. It's these small things that are what make the camino the best experience in the whole world.

The wine and the sun help too.

Xx

Buen Camino.