From Oxford, I Brought Back Gargoyles

A souvenir for the ages

When I was a junior in college, I studied for a year at Oxford University in England. It never quite sunk in that I lived in that shining city. Every day, I feasted my eyes upon the medieval buildings as if I’d never seen them before, my mouth agape, my breath coming fast in disbelief.

Like a tourist, I enjoyed visiting gift shops around town. I purchased sweatshirts, books, magnets, postcards, posters, tea towels, and a CD containing the music of medieval England.

I think my compulsion to buy souvenirs came from the desire to claim Oxford as my own, to declare that, for a time, I belonged to this place and it belonged to me.

Isn’t that sense of belonging what we all crave when we travel?

To this day, whenever I see a TV show or movie set in Oxford, I’ll exclaim, “I’ve been there! I know that street. I’ve walked there!”

My favorite place for souvenirs was the gift shop in the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin.

This church overlooks Radcliffe Square, home of the famous Radcliffe Camera dome, a library reading room where I spent many happy hours in front of my books.

For a fee of two pounds, I could climb up the winding steps inside the church’s medieval spire and emerge outside to a panoramic view of Oxford.

The wind would whip my hair, I’d clutch my camera, and I’d stare out over the warren of streets and ancient spires to the great green space of Christ Church Meadow and the River Thames beyond.

How many people had lived and studied here over the centuries? How many had shared my dreams of greatness, of the triumph of the human spirit? I didn’t know, but the mere questions uplifted me.

Once I’d climbed the spire, I never wanted to walk down.

Walk down I must, though, so on I went to the gift shop. I always seemed to be the only one shopping there in that dark space, which I didn’t understand. They had such cool stuff.

That was where I got my gargoyles.

Technically mine are grotesques — three fist-sized clay sculptures depicting sloth, misery, and envy. “Gargoyles” are decorated waterspouts that project water away from the roof of a building, while “grotesques” are simply decorative carvings.

I like calling mine gargoyles, though. It’s more fun.

Up on the roof of St. Mary’s Church, I had come face to face with real medieval gargoyles and felt a thrill run up my spine.

Girls from Montana, a young land (at least in terms of Western history), aren’t supposed to see such things. Our version of “old” consists of tumbledown barns and towns founded a hundred years ago.

Yet here I was, at a university founded nearly a thousand years ago. There are wooden doors in Oxford three times older than the United States.

When I first entered college, I intended to double major in cognitive science and Arabic. I was mildly interested in the brain, and since it was just two years after 9/11, I figured the nation needed Arabic speakers.

But when I took a class in medieval Islamic history my first semester, I began to crave those moments when my professor would mention the Middle Ages in Europe. Knights, castles, kings — that was what I wanted to learn about!

I ended up with a real passion for medieval European history, and came to Oxford to study it. I couldn’t have chosen a better place.

The very walls breathed the musty air of the Middle Ages. I got to see and touch medieval books, though I couldn’t read the Latin script. Not only were there gargoyles at St. Mary’s, there were gargoyles everywhere. They sat above me as I walked to lectures.

I love my “Sloth,” “Misery,” and “Envy.” Not only do they have great expressions, each of those emotions has dominated me at various points in my life — though not, interestingly, while at Oxford.

My first bout with Bipolar depression came in my freshman year of college. I was scared and confused, uncertain of what was happening to me. It was like my life had been cleaved in two, the before and after, and I was never going to be the same.

A great deal of the depression came from homesickness and culture shock. Going from a tiny rural town in Montana to a large university in Philadelphia was a huge change that I couldn’t cope with.

My second day in Oxford, I told my mom I never wanted to hear another British accent again in my life. I was too far from home, running on no sleep, and once again struggling with culture shock. It was looking like my Oxford year was going to be another year filled with misery, just like my first two years at Penn.

But then I pulled myself out of it. I knew from an earlier visit that I already loved the city. My time at Oxford would be so limited, and I didn’t want to waste any of it by feeling depressed. If I could just make it through each of the three terms, then go home in between them to rest, I would be okay.

And I was.

At Oxford, I made sure never to waste an hour, but I’m a bit of a sloth these days. I want to romp through the world, be a traveler again, but it’s so hard to get out of my chair. Part of that is getting older, a larger part is due to chronic health problems.

“What are you doing, lying there?” my grandma with dementia asked me on a recent video call. “You used to read and write and travel. Get up! Get up!”

She’s right. Being a traveler is about moving in any way you can, in mind and in body, no matter if you have a trip planned currently or not.

The problem is, that lazy gargoyle’s face looks too much like my own.

And envy? Well. I envy that younger me, who at twenty had all the world before her as she strode through Oxford under the watchful eyes of gargoyles. As much as I may wish it, I will never get that specific time and place back again.

I will just have to make new travels to discover new horizons, both out in the world and within myself.

Thanks for reading, and thank you to the editors at Globetrotters (JoAnn Ryan, Anne Bonfert, Jillian Amatt - Artistic Voyages, Adrienne Beaumont, Michele Maize) for running this great publication.

Here is the October “Souvenirs” Challenge:

I enjoyed Ellen Eastwood’s story about her rock collection:

And I related to Casey Lawrence’s story because I also collect postcards: