Tag Archives: Travel

Sep1

The Ill-Planned Grand Tour: Part 3

Posted on 1 September 2015 by The Reluctant Girl Scout

A friend of mine and I used to be crazy for amusement parks. Every year we’d plan a summer trip around an amusement park, and we’d milk each day for all it was worth. We’d get up early to be with the first group in the gate, we’d attack all of the harshest, most death-defying rides first. We’d stay until the park closed, sweaty, exhausted, feet sore, heads pounding from being shaken and twirled within an inch of our lives. During the day, we’d make fun of the people who were going to “shows” instead of hitting all of the attractions and making themselves feel exactly how we did at the end of a day: sure we’d done all we could and completely sated.

About a decade ago, when middle age had probably arrived but I wasn’t claiming it yet, we went to Disney World and rode some beastly attraction meant to simulate weightlessness in space. I got claustrophobic for the first time in my life—an affliction that has stuck and now requires that I carry relaxi pills when I fly just in case the aisles suddenly seem too full and too close together—and my friend nearly threw up in the barf bags Disney had conveniently provided. The rest of the trip we avoided roller coasters and anything inclined to induce motion sickness. He recovered; I never did. If we went to an amusement park, I’d have heart palpitations and decide that I couldn’t brave a coaster that in my youth would have been a “baby” ride, and the attractions that were more entertainment based seemed like a better bet.

Westminster Abbey

London is striking me in a similar fashion: in my youth, I would have packed each day full to the brim with activities and thrills, but on this trip, at this age, I’m more interested in calm, quality experiences. I don’t need the dips and thrills. The two hours we spend at Westminster Abbey—looking at what is essentially an entombed eight century (or so) history of England in a beautiful gothic jewelbox—feel exactly like the first trip to England in that I am in complete awe of the political intrigue, royal feuds, religious wars, and writers deemed significant enough to land a burial spot in Poets’ Corner. (I’m happy to report that on this trip Thomas Hardy does NOT have a folding chair on his marker as he did in 1988!) But other than that, my very favorite thing that we do on this trip–the thing that seems so much better than the tourist “excitement”–is having dinner with people we haven’t seen for awhile. It’s not quite a “show” but there’s something about the human connection in a foreign place that pleases me and makes me feel like more than just a visitor, crammed on a tour bus trying to soak up buckets of knowledge and experience before being shuffled off to another.

On the first night we take the Tube to Paddington Station and meet Z’s cousin Jaynie by the statue of Paddington Bear. I’ve never met Jaynie. When Z and I were just friends, I was especially disappointed not to be a couple at the time because he traveled to England for Jaynie’s wedding and I wanted to go, believing completely at the time despite all evidence that one day we’d be together and it was silly not to get the experience of a family event then because of something as inconsequential as his not yet realizing our co-mingled destiny. No invitation was forthcoming, and when he got home and reported that her wedding cake was shaped like Africa, I was bitter not to have seen it. (Incidentally, the idea of this cake would later plant a seed that resulted in our own wedding cake with a zebra bride and groom dressed in a tux and bridal veil.)

I’m glad to put that missed Jaynie opportunity behind me and forge new ground. Instantly, she reminds me of Z-ma, and I am at ease. She is friendly, chatty, and inhabits her body in a fashion similar to my mother-in-law. Even better than spending time with a Z-ma stand-in and meeting more of his family, I love watching Z interact with his cousin. They haven’t seen each other in six years, yet the easy way they talk to each other is delightful to witness. She’s taken the train in from Oxford (where she is staying for work) just to meet us for dinner. The evening passes too quickly, and as Z and I take the Tube back to South Kensington after she’s caught her return train to Oxford, I marvel at the world we live in: that I—a Hoosier whose horizons never really extended much beyond the Midwest—am married to a Zimbabwean and we live in Seattle but have spent the night at a little restaurant in London visiting his Malawian cousin who lives in Munich with her English husband. I used to believe it was improbable that that little bear from Darkest Peru had made his way to England’s Paddington Station with nothing but a “Please look after this bear” tag attached to his coat, but maybe not.

The next day, after soaking up Westminster Abbey—where I spend too much time thinking about royal weddings and funerals and not enough time soaking up the communion service that is taking place— we walk up Whitehall to Trafalgar Square, have lunch in a pub, walk down Charing Cross Road so I can gaze upon #84, the site of one of my all-time-favorite memoirs and movies, though sadly it is no longer a bookstore but is in the process of becoming a yogurt shop or something similarly unbookstore-like. Food is a good way to soothe this disappointment, so we go home via a stop in Knightsbridge so Z can see the food hall at Harrods. It is something remarkable to behold. There is an entire room full of nothing but chocolate, and children swarm around the counters like something out of Willy Wonka. There is a produce hall, a room full of teas, a room full of fish, half a room full of the most beautiful and delectable baked goods I’ve ever seen. We make our selections (pastries–delicious, delicious pastries) and head to the hotel.

Because Z lives in America, I rarely get to hear him reminisce with someone else about his life before he came to the States or see that “home” look on his face unless I’m eavesdropping on a phone conversation or we are in Zimbabwe with his family. So I’m glad when our dinner with J, a Z-family friend, and the friend’s partner, is so leisurely that we close down the Italian restaurant near the Kensington High Street. I like hearing them catch up, like hearing them remember the details of stories together, and like the fond way they talk about the other’s family. Because the only other time I’ve spent with J was our wedding weekend when I was not entirely of sound mind, I’m also happy to get to know him a bit better too. Again, I marvel at the tenuous way people are connected to other people—how those connections are a bit like a spider web in both their strength and delicacy, but also in the strange, unpredictable architecture of lives intertwined.

The next day, Z and I head to Covent Garden for no real reason other than Z has never been there and it’s in the guidebook as a place where you must go. It is a sort of multi-building art market/flea market that also has upscale shops and eateries. The original market was there in the 1600s with buildings that have clearly been around a few centuries, though this pedestrianized incarnation has only been in existence since the 1970s. I remember it fondly as the place I bought an antique garnet ring, and despite being in my twenties and thus smart enough to know better, I liked to imagine that it had previously belonged to some lady-in-waiting for Queen Elizabeth I and I really got a bargain.

Though I’m not averse to shopping, this trip has not been about acquiring items, so Z and I do a quick spin around the place. We’re lured into another building when we hear an operatic rendition of “Hallelujah.” When we look into the courtyard below us, there is a man in a bowler hat, making balloon animals that he accosts diners and passers-by with, all while belting out gorgeous music. It seems almost wrong to laugh at his antics while he sings so beautifully, but still, we do as he chases people around the courtyard with a giant comb and puffs their hair with a balloon pump, as if he is some sort of insane, singing hairdresser.

Probably I should admit here that my favorite thing near Covent Garden is the shop dedicated entirely to Moleskine journals. I don’t actually buy any while I’m there because I have at least six unused ones back at home in various colors, but I take pictures and I fondle several of them as I try to justify a seventh.

Peter Pan/Alan Cumming @ Leicester Square

For lunch, we make a picnic for ourselves at Tesco Express and head to Leicester Square, the center of the theatre district. (We pass St. Martin’s Theatre that has been showing Agatha Christie’s The Mouse Trap for the last 63 years and at the end of every performance the audience is admonished not to share the secret of who the murderer is; I remember wryly that after seeing the play in 1988 I thought perhaps the real reason the secret had never been revealed was that the play is so boring by the time the murderer stands accused, you no longer care who dunnit). It is hot out and Z and I are grateful for the shade by the fountain, where we munch our food—Z is pleased to have finally scored one of his beloved meat pies and I eat fruit, bread, and crisps, which is as well-balanced as I get—and watch little kids splash around. One little guy looks like across between Alan Cumming and Peter Pan as he slices through the water with an inflatable sword as if he’s vanquishing dragons. I prefer this to standing like cattle in line for another must-see attraction. During the afternoon, Z has to do research, so I sit alone on the Strand, nibbling a pretzel and writing in my journal, though the people-watching possibilities makes it hard to focus on the page.

A Tube strike is on the near horizon, so Z and I make plans to bug out of London a day earlier than planned in order to miss it because neither of us can imagine what the city looks like when it isn’t functioning fully. Our plan initially was to stop in Bath on the way to Wales. On the map it appears to be on the way, but a train schedule reveals that if we go this route it will take ten hours instead of four, so we opt instead to investigate Shrewsbury simply because it is at mid-point on the journey west (though I refuse to call it Shrewsbury and instead tell people we’re going to Shropshire because it makes me feel like Maggie Smith in A Room with a View).

London Skyline from Primrose Hill

On our last day in London, we decide to take in a view suggested by J, plus I want to revisit Regent’s Park and the nearby canals that I remember being fascinated by two decades ago. The only drawback to this plan is the rain, which is bucketing down when we leave the hotel, continues once we get to the park (which means we have the place virtually to ourselves), and doesn’t let up until we are halfway through the park. We have new, matching £6 umbrellas with the London skyline drawn on them, so we don’t mind. The lake we walk around is a bird sanctuary of sorts and the storks remind me of Tony Soprano’s crew, sitting outside Satrielle’s, smoking cigarettes and wise cracking.

Canal near Regent’s Park

On our walk to the canals, we pass a guard with a machine gun standing in a driveway to a fancy house. He doesn’t seem bothered by us, but even so, you don’t really want to ask a dude with a machine gun what it is he’s guarding, so we take note of the sign on the gate, Winfield House, and look it up later, only to discover it’s where the U.S. Ambassador lives and was originally a house owned by the Woolworth heiress, Barbara Hutton. I’d wrongly assumed that ambassadors lived in an apartment–maybe in the attic–of the embassy itself.

Eventually, we find the canals, and they aren’t really the way I remembered them. The canals in my memory were full of colorful boats that maybe Johnny Depp circa Chocolat lived in. The only boats we see are full of tourists and none are brightly colored or playing guitar music. We walk along the canal while I try to figure out if this was indeed the canal I saw twenty years ago or if there was some other better, more Depp-inspired canal. I give up and we make our way to Primrose Hill. It’s a big hill and we are used to Seattle’s hills. We stop periodically to look back at the skyline but mostly to catch our breaths before plodding upward. When we do get to the top, the views are stunning. Because I’m never satisfied, I wish I’d seen the view on that trip a few decades ago before so many skyscrapers went up, though I’m happy that we can make out the outline of St. Paul’s, Parliament, and some other choice sights. It’s a good last tourist adventure.

Gloucester Road Tube Station

Our final social engagement is to meet a friend of Hudge’s (FH, for our purposes) who used to work with Z but has recently taken a job at a sort of think tank in London. Instead of taking the Tube, Z and I decide to walk since it is at the next Tube stop from the one we use and discover that it is actually closer to our hotel than the one we’ve been using. The area is buzzing and has, to my mind, more charm than the street we’ve been walking down daily. Suddenly, I feel terribly sad that our time in London is coming to an end when I’ve only just discovered this whole area that needs exploring. FH arrives and we make our way to a pub that is the exact way you want a pub to be: not sleek and sparse and hip, but instead, worn out wing backed chairs around a table with water rings and stools made from barrels and dark wood everywhere. The people having a pint here seem to belong, and because we are meeting FH, it feels a little like we are here legitimately and not as tourists. The conversation is easy and moves from politics on Z’s campus to politics around the world to what neighborhood FH will be moving to and how he misses swimming off the dock at Hudge’s houseboat. Also, because he’s been a tour guide for my travel guru, Rick Steves, FH chastises me gently for not learning to pack light. “It will change your life,” he says.

Slightly Foxed

When we say goodbye and go our separate ways, Z and I bump into a bookstore that looks intriguing. When I look at the name of it, Slightly Foxed, a light dawns. Slightly Foxed is the publication my mother gets regularly and raves about. It primarily covers books the store-owners believe are worthy of being read, most of which are memoir and autobiography. At least a few conversations with Mom a month cover her latest discoveries from Slightly Foxed. In a split second, I imagine the book bag or coffee mug I’ll get her from there as a surprise, but before I can get too far with the fantasy, I notice the closed sign on the door. I’m so disappointed. If only I’d made the discovery earlier in the week. When I get back to the hotel room, I text her with the news and a photo I’ve taken, and like me, she’s terribly disappointed that I’ve missed my chance to go inside.

Though two days before I would have happily paid money to leave London immediately because the muchness of it all overwhelmed me, while we pack our too-full suitcases and make our final arrangements for the morning’s train trip to Shrewsbury, I feel sad. I don’t know when I’ll be back in London. I don’t know why I’ve been so hard on it. I wish I had just a few more hours so I could eek out a little more juice from the place.

What I do instead to make me feel in control of the situation is set my alarm to go off an hour earlier than needed. The next day, while Z showers and finishes packing, I slip out on a solo adventure into a downpour and walk to Slightly Foxed, stand outside under my umbrella until the store opens, and as soon as I hear the lock click, I head in. For fifteen minutes I scan shelves for titles, look at artwork, and snap photos for Mom. Initially, I feel a little miffed that this store owned by two women seems to be in the hands of a young man, but when I ask if I can take photos for my mother, he warmly encourages them and points out various foxes I should photograph. I make a purchase that seems likely to be one Mom already has, but the book feels good in my hands and won’t take up much room in my suitcase. I tuck it into my coat so the deluge won’t dampen it as I make my way back to the hotel and feel slightly more satisfied.

Maybe when you hit your forties some people don’t need roller coasters for thrills anymore. Maybe it’s okay that a good meal with friends, a park with a view, a well-appointed bookstore surprise, and a good traveling companion are what satisfies.

Shropshire awaits.

Sep19

Flashback Friday: Secret World

Posted on 19 September 2014 by The Reluctant Girl Scout

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Wednesday, October 25, 2006

[FYI, this entry covers my inaugural trip to Seattle to help my friend Z celebrate his birthday. Keep in mind, at this point, I’d resigned myself to the notion that he wasn’t interested in me as anything other than “good buddy.” I’d been in love with him for four years and the boy just would not budge.]

There’s a reason why Meredith Grey’s hair is so flat and lifeless on Grey’s Anatomy. It turns out, everyone’s hair, especially mine, is flat and lifeless here. I assume it is the weather (rainy with a chance of rain), yet it seems like that would lend itself more to frizz.

I’m here visiting my Zimbabwean. I like saying that. It makes me feel like Meryl Streep in Out of Africa when she refers to the people she makes work on her farm as my Kikuyu. He’s teaching here, and I am in his bed. Before you get notions of me, spent from a night of international passion, you should know that while I was in his bed, he was on the an egg-crate mattress on the floor of his living room.

I ruin all the best romantic scenarios I create for you by telling the truth.

My college friend Jane emailed that her eleven-year-old son came home from school yesterday and said, “I’m just starting to realize that girls have their own secret world, and it’s FREAKY!” The Zimbabwean and I laughed and laughed over that last night when I read it aloud, but I could tell he has no idea. No idea despite advanced academic degrees that we women have secret communication-interpretation skills no Navajo code-breaker could ever crack. So when you open his refrigerator and see he has two Cokes and a package of Dubliner cheese, just for you, you swoon a little even though you’ve sworn off swooning over this particular man. When you lament how awful and Meredith Grey-y your hair looks and he says, “I don’t think so” it is, after several mental contortions, the equivalent of his saying, “Your hair is as the sun shining on the Zambezi, and I wish to spend my days basking in both the glow and beauty of it.” When he refers to his apartment as “our apartment” it is as if he has said, “I want to share my living space for the rest of my days with no one but you.” When he says, “I took off the roll of scratchy toilet paper and bought you the kind that those bears use” it’s as if he said, “I love you so profoundly that I want only the very best—softness, absorbency, and four-ply bathroom experiences—for you.” In this sick, sad world, even his choosing to sleep on egg crates instead of in his own bed with you seems like a declaration of love.

Poor eleven-year-old boy. How can he ever learn to cope in a world where half the population is this indirect, this given to fancy. . . this freaky?

So, Seattle. We walked over half the city last night and so I’m reserving judgment until we rent a car tomorrow and investigate it when my feet don’t hurt. It’s nice. Lots of coffee. The people are friendly. Somehow I had in my head that it would look and feel like Vancouver, but it turns out it’s a whole different place. Yesterday, my Zimbabwean took me to Pike Place Market. While I don’t like fish and do not like to smell them, eat them, watch them, or see them manhandled by the stall vendors, it was a unique experience. Also, there is a lot there that is not fish. Like huge bundles of fresh flowers for $4, and hippies selling art, and little dogs in plaid raincoats, and jam sampling, and fudge sampling, and street musicians singing protest songs (just protesting in general, with an undertone of “This war is unconscionable” and “George Bush sucks” thrown in for good measure), and all sorts of useless crap you don’t need like Oscar Wilde action figures, “Aunt Flo’s Tampon Case,” and cardboard cutouts of William Shatner. From there, we went to Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe, where you can buy other useless things and see oddities like mummified human remains and a stuffed two-headed calf. We took a bus to the Space Needle but opted not to go up because it cost $14 and was cloudy. My cousin G suggested I go up not because the views are spectacular or because it is a piece of post-Populuxe history, but because she didn’t go up when she visited in the spring and apparently the only thing people ask youwhen they hear you visited Seattle is, Did you go up in the Space Needle? I will wait for a sunny day. Or at least a day when there is a chance of sun.

Last night we walked up a San Francisco style hill to see his university. He wanted decorating suggestions for his office as some big wigs are coming to campus today, but it is a hopeless cause. I suggested he buy a plant and an Edgar Allen Poe action figure from Pike Market, but other than adding some doo-dads like that, it is a hopeless sea of glass and giant industrial office furniture in the space of a broom closet. While there, I met the man who hired Z, and he tried to entice me to their wine and cheese reception this afternoon. I will, instead, be buying a birthday card and maybe a cake or some gift-ish thing for Z’s birthday. Extroverts never seem to get that the invitation to spend three hours with total strangers whom you will never see again is like a prison sentence.

After that, we walked up Broadway in search of food and so I could see, as Z put it, “the freak show.” It’s a street that apparently delights in the counter-culture, so in the space of a single block you can see goths, hipsters, drag queens, the heavily made-up, heavily tattooed, significantly pierced and spiked, as well as people randomly dressed like super heroes.

Sadly, the freaks were not out, either because it was too early in the evening or two middle-of-the-week. I will have to save those human oddities for another day, though clearly I’ve got my own little freakshow happening right inside my head and don’t have to walk up any hills to get a front row seat.

Jan24

Flashback Friday: Ghost Ship

Posted on 24 January 2014 by The Reluctant Girl Scout

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The House Bar, Kilkenny, Ireland

[Another Friday, another flashback. Here is another chapter from the Irish adventure with my friend Belle. As with most of my Irish posts, you should imagine Van Morrison (or the Saw Doctors) playing in the background.]

23 March 2006

Crystal is expensive & its absence of color bothers me, but when you are at the Waterford Crystal Factory and you’ve watched the film about how it is the MOST perfect crystal in the world—how, in fact, imperfection is not tolerated—suddenly it seems like you need to own a piece and like maybe your cousin who is getting married next month needs a piece. And maybe your mother. Maybe an aunt. Maybe a neighbor. If you find yourself in this situation here is my advice to you: don’t do the euros-to-dollars conversion in your head. Pretend that the sticker that says ’85’ means eighty-five dollars and be done with it. Later, when your Visa bill comes, you can worry about the math and bad exchange rates. At which point, the prisms dancing around your living room and your cousin’s note of thanks about how her marriage would not have been so happy without your gift will soften the blow.

It really is just the most awful kind of extravagance there at the Waterford Crystal Visitors’ Center. For instance, I mailed ten postcards by dropping them into a giant crystal mailbox.

When you walk in, you are at the highest level of the show room, looking down on the chandeliers. This level has replicas of the various trophies that have been created (one in the shape of a football, most in the shapes of loving cups), place settings of goblets and doo-dads that Queen Elizabeth (or Oprah) couldn’t afford. It’s gorgeous, but excessive.

The next level down is where the goods are sold. I walked around this area for an hour, trying to do the math that would make it possible for me to spend money in a cost-effective way, get a wedding present, a shower present, some other small gifts, and spend the 200 euros needed so I could ship everything home for free. (For the record, other people are going in with me on the wedding gift. I’m not THAT extravagant. I do just teach at a small Midwestern university.)

I couldn’t decide, so I went to the next level down where the Wedgewood is sold. I’m not buying English china in Ireland. I’m not. So I scooched on into the room where other bits and bobs were sold. The space started feeling a lot less posh and a lot more like a basement. I was more comfortable. Here was the tourist tat that is sold everywhere in Ireland, of which I own too much because in those last minutes before a plane boards, suddenly it seems imperative that I have a Claddaugh apron or sixteen bumper stickers that say ‘Póg mo Thóin’ and key chains and coasters with my family’s supposed crest on it. It disturbed me that Waterford Crystal, an entity that couldn’t be more Irish, has the same class stratification that the Titanic (another Irish creation) did. So there I was in the basement in my scuffed up clogs with my hair in a ponytail and my black ‘just say no to troops in Shannon airport’ Shamrock button, KNOWING that I belong—and always will—in steerage. But for the sake of my cousin and her impending wedding, I clawed my way out of the ship’s hold before I was tempted to buy her a shamrock covered teapot with ‘Eire’ written above a facsimile of Brian Boru’s harp.

I made my choices, did the euro-only calculations, and then at the last minute asked the woman how long the free shipping would take on these items. Six weeks, she says. The wedding is in three weeks. Guess what’s going to be in my carry-on, wedged under the seat in my own little hunk of American Airline’s version of 3rd class travel?

An interlude: yesterday in Kilkenny, I saw a pub with a blue sign that said, “The Mouse Bar.” It made me laugh and imagine tiny rodents sidling up to the counter, asking for a pint, so I took a picture. This evening I mentioned it to Belle and Himself and showed them the picture. Isn’t this funny, I said. The artist looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “It’s the HOUSE bar,” he said. “Not the MOUSE bar. I told you about it before you left, said it would be a good place to eat.” Belle got so tickled she couldn’t quit laughing. Her face was red and Himself said, “Get control of yourself, woman.” For the rest of the night, all either of us would have to do was softly mention “mouse bar” and the other would start cackling.

Back to our regular scheduled programming:

This afternoon, Belle decided that I should see the famine ship in Dunbrody. She’d tried to see it last spring but it was in dry dock, and then later in the year she’d made the trip and found it worthwhile. She’d even checked the web last week to make sure it would be open this time of year. It is a replica of one of the ships that brought over emmigrants who were trying to leave an inhospitable Ireland in the mid 19th century. The night before she’d pointed me to a few sights to find information on a great-great grandfather no one in my father’s family knows anything about, and she said that at the ship I could search manifests to see who traveled from where and when. Though I’m not big on re-enactments of such things (can we really know how horrible the insides of those coffin ships were in 1847?), the genealogical aspect seemed excellent, so today we drove the 20 minutes or so down the road to New Ross, and as we were crossing the bridge, she said, “I don’t see the boat.” It was misty out and I figured she’d just forgotten where it was. The closer we got to the dock, the more sure it seemed that it wasn’t there.

The visitors’ center, however, was opened. People were there having sandwiches in the little shop and the ladies running it were dusting off the souvenir erasers and sterling silver Celtic crosses in hopes of making a sale. It was as if they were unaware that the boat wasn’t there. As if, perhaps, it were a ghost ship that only they could see. There were two computers there and I momentarily got my hopes up that I could do my search anyhow, but then quickly saw the ‘out of order’ signs hanging on both. Belle asked about the ship. It’s in dry dock again for some big sailing thing later in the spring. Belle pointed out that she’d just checked the website. The lady said, “But it only went into dry dock last week!” Belle said that yes, perhaps that was the case, but last week was when she checked the website to see if it was worth making the trip (FROM AMERICA) and the woman said, “But it will only be in dry dock for a week!” as if that explained it away. She then offered to show us a ten-minute video about the boat we wouldn’t be able to see. I said, ”No. I’ve gone off it,” and we left. And then we laughed most of the way back to Waterford. It was annoying, but I can’t really be too annoyed in Ireland about anything. Everything just seems sort of funny. Going to the wrong church. Having a pint at a mouse bar. Visiting a ghost ship.

To save the day, Belle then drove me to East Dunmore, a resort town that Maeve Binchy writes about and where movies of her books are filmed. Lots of cottages with English thatch. It was a windy, misty, cold day, and the sea was crashing against the rocks and roaring. We saw a monument to the sea-dead from the area that one of the Artist’s co-workers designed, and drove around the high road looking at the view. It was breathtaking, and there, without benefit of ten-minute films or faux famine ship passengers, I could think about what that voyage must have been like, how desperate a person would have to be to leave family and home to brave a sea that could be so violent. How optimistic. And while I’m not ego-centric enough to think they imagined their future generations drinking Coca Cola out of crystal goblets, I wonder if maybe they weren’t wanting something a little more close to perfect than what they’d been born into.

Isn’t that why we’re always scratching and whinging and charging things on our credit cards? Don’t we have some idea that things could be better if only we….

East Dunmore Memorial

Jan22

Borderline

Posted on 22 January 2014 by The Reluctant Girl Scout

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Peace Arch

This weekend, Z and I went to British Columbia to celebrate, belatedly, our 4^th anniversary, which we had to spend apart last month.

Z has a freshly minted Canadian visa burning a hole in his pocket, and he’s never been north of the 49^th parallel in North America, so it seemed like the best place to celebrate. (Also, I like to think we were celebrating the occasion of my 50^th blog post with a little international travel.) It wasn’t my first trip there; a conference in Vancouver almost a decade ago was my first introduction to this part of the world, even before I met Seattle, so I was anxious to see it again now that we’re neighbors.

Because I grew up smack in the middle of the country in a town situated on the National Road and I-70, it often felt as if there was nothing but wide-open space and an open road that led to other more exciting kinds of lives. Since moving to Seattle, I’ve sometimes felt the pinch of this geography. It’s not exactly that I want to run anywhere, but the close(ish) proximity of the Pacific to the west and the Canadian border to the north, has, at times, made me feel hemmed in. I have elaborate apocalyptic fantasies that I blame on being raised during the End Times crazed 1970s, so while we were sitting in line at the Peace Arch waiting to cross into Canada, my brain got a little overactive, thinking about how our twenty minute wait would be hours and hours if we ever had to run away from home because of some sort of Red Dawn style invasion or Zombie attack or what have you. And that “Brethren Dwelling Together in Unity” etched across the top didn’t soothe me so much as make me imagine ways in which this would become a mockery in some dark future, not unlike that scene of the decimated and mostly submerged Statue of Liberty in Planet of the Apes.

Is there a word for being simultaneously creeped out and fascinated by something? Someone should invent one if there isn’t. (And if there is one, someone should tell me. I can’t figure out how to google such a query.) Aside from end-of-the-world concerns, I’m also weirdly drawn to and repulsed by those places in our lives that are neither here nor there: airplanes in mid flight, waiting rooms when someone is in surgery, the place where the sea and land meet, the gloaming. It’s magical and kind of terrifying. What is that no man’s land, that is neither one thing nor another?

While we sat in line waiting to cross into Canada, where were we exactly? We were, I think, still technically on US soil, yet the houses we were looking at beyond an inconsequential fence seemed to be in Canada. The yards looked Canadian, if that’s possible. And if we got out of our car and walked in the roadside park, where exactly were we? Would anyone want to tackle us to the ground for stepping over some line we shouldn’t?

Also, I felt really geeky that at this friendliest of borders, the adrenaline rush I was feeling was tantamount to moving between East and West Berlin before the wall came down. When we finally made it to the border patrol agent and he asked us a few questions about how we knew each other and what our plans were, in my mind the whole trip had grown into some caper we were trying to get away with. All we really wanted to do was get to our hotel in New Westminster, eat some food, see some sights in Vancouver, relax, and after two days, return to Seattle in time to see the Seahawks playoff game from the comfort of our own sofa. Yet as the questions got fired at me, I felt more and more like we were smuggling someone across the border in our trunk. Also, because Z doesn’t yet have a green card, I often worry that someone with a badge will decide we aren’t legitimately married and make us live apart. (Why I thought a Canadian border agent was the person to do this, I don’t know.)

The guy looked at Z’s documents and asked a few more questions about why he’s here and not in Zimbabwe, and Z, being Z, answered with authority and reminded me of Obi Wan Kenobi when he does that Jedi mind trick on the storm troopers and says, “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for” and the storm troopers sort of shrug their shoulders and give up the hunt for R2-D2 and C-3PO. Z is amazing. Meanwhile, even if I seemed calm, inside I felt as if I had baggies of heroin stashed in unmentionable places, and I hoped he wouldn’t notice the sweat on my brow.

Something snapped inside me though when the agent asked why we had a rental car instead of our own. I can’t say why it annoyed me so much except our lack of car here sometimes gets under my skin. I miss Hilda, my beloved CR-V that is parked in my parents’ drive-way currently covered in snow, waiting for my return, and I love the ease with which you can drive places back in Indiana. So it was kind of a sore spot, frankly. I was pleasant, as is my Midwestern training, but for some reason, I wanted to say, “Screw you. We’re going back to Bellingham where we’re wanted and no one questions our life choices.”

In retrospect, I wish I’d acted morally superior about carbon emissions and how we don’t own a car because we love the planet more than most people. (Though just between us, the reason we don’t own a car is because parking in our neighborhood is $4 an hour, traffic is tedious, and Z walks to work.) Anyhow, he seemed to believe me and waved us on. Never mind my body cavities filled with imaginary drugs or the imaginary Peruvian in our trunk, trying to get into the country illegally.

Jan11

Flashback Friday: The Moose at the Gate Should Have Told You

Posted on 11 January 2014 by The Reluctant Girl Scout

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Kilkenny 2006

[Technically it’s Saturday and not Friday, but I got a new iPhone yesterday and so the day disappeared while I figured it out. So far, the only drawback to it that I see is that it’s becoming apparent I might need reading glasses. Anyhow, I’m continuing the Irish sojourn with Belle here.]

March 26, 2006

This morning I woke to the sound of Belle scratching at my door, singing Morning Has Broken and saying that the musical wake up call is just another of the services offered here. I had a train to catch for my solo adventure to Kilkenny and she’d been given orders from the Artist to leave forty minutes early ‘just in case.’ She rolled her eyes at his caution, but it was harmless. Both of us were secretly pleased to have someone Irish clucking after us, I suspect.

My reasons for wanting to go were three-fold: 1) my need to go places alone periodically so I feel adventurous 2) Rick Steves’s (my former travel god) recommendation that it is the most beautiful inland medieval city in Ireland 3) a song of the same name that I love to torture myself with.

In terms of adventure, I’m more like a toddler who is just learning to walk, being shunted across a narrow living room between parents. I like the independence of mini-solo travel when I know at the end of the day someone is going to be waiting on me and will know if I’ve been hit on the head with a piece of Connemara marble and left for dead in a bog. I KNOW adventurous people. I am not one. But this affords me the illusion.

My mother thinks I have amazing traveling acumen because I can navigate the Dayton International Airport without studying signs overlong. She finds this ability akin to a sixth sense or messages from the Holy Spirit, but the reality is that everything I know about getting from one place to another I learned at amusement parks. I think parents who don’t take their children to Disney World or Six Flags or even Kennywood should be brought up on child-endangerment charges because of the life-coping skills that can be learned there. When I go somewhere new, the first thing I do is look for the ‘park’ map, find the key things I want to do and make a plan of attack (to avoid lines, excess walking, or midday sun), and then search for a landmark by which I can navigate. ‘Tram’ service of some sort is operational most places. ‘Concession stands’ (most here selling pub grub instead of corn dogs, admittedly) are every two feet, where you can also find restroom facilities. Souvenirs can be purchased anywhere, though balloon animals in this location tend to make you look a bit touched in the head.

So this morning when I got off the train in Kilkenny (population 10,000), I immediately searched for castle turrets and got my bearings. Irish Frontierland. It was about a ten minute walk and on the way a car pulled up beside me and asked how to get to the castle. I said, ‘Straight ahead and turn left. You can’t miss it.’ I didn’t KNOW this for a fact (I’d left the guidebook back in Waterford, even) but the truth is these are basically always the directions you get in Ireland anyhow, so why not give them like a native? Sure enough several minutes later, I was standing behind the folks I’d given directions to, waiting to get my ticket for the Kilkenny Castle tour. They thanked me; I smiled, secretly pleased with my own navigational brilliance.

Kilkenny Castle is nice. I’m not a fan of Irish castles because I always think of oppression and audacity instead of the romance and adventure. In England, it is easier to buy into the whole chivalry thing without worrying too much about serfs and thralls. Maybe a beheaded wife will intrude on your Arthurian fantasies. Here, you can smell it for what it was–imperialism with a helping of genocide. Rich people (living richly) on the backs of the poor. But I digress. The castle is lovely. It’s 800 years old, has beautiful grounds, and has been refurbished impeccably in Victorian decor, the last era it was used before falling into ruin. The town was beautiful too. Bustling. Narrow, cobbled streets. Brightly colored store fronts. Just what you expect to find.

I ate lunch at the Irish equivalent of Subway, and when I was finished asked for directions to the cathedral. Which cathedral, the sandwich guy wanted to know. I don’t know–the cathedral you’re supposed to see when you are here, I said. He chewed his lip, consulted with the sandwich girl, and they decided it must be St. Mary’s I was after. I asked how I got there and they said in unison, Straight up the street, turn left, you can’t miss it.

I walked to the cathedral, humming ‘Kilkenny.’ It’s a song that you listen to when you feel you need to cry but can’t quite get yourself over the hump. Three lines from it and you’ll be wiping your nose on your sleeve. After the first round of the chorus, you’ll be belting out great hiccuping sobs. It’s like an old-timey Irish version of ‘Cats in the Cradle.’ So I sang it, walked to the cathedral, peered in the door and felt generally unmoved. I like Catholic churches when they aren’t in session. I like the smell of incense, the candles flickering, the sounds of the kneelers creaking under the weight of the devout. But this church didn’t feel like the one I was supposed to see. I shrugged and headed back toward the train station. On the walk I started thinking that ‘Kilkenny’ didn’t sound right either. It didn’t sound right at all. I hum-sang a few more bars and realized it WASN’T ‘Kilkenny.’ It was KILKELLY. ‘Kilkelly, Ireland, 18 and 60, my dear and loving son John/Your good friend the schoolmaster Pat McNamara’s so good as to write these words down.’

Sniff. Wipe.

So, while I had managed to get myself and a family of four I’d never met to the castle, I had basically gone to the wrong town in the first place and while in the wrong town I had hummed and fantasized about a song that was, apparently, inappropriate, seen a church that was not recommended by Rick Steves, Esq. Still, it was a good day. I’d seen some things, I had people waiting on me when I got home, and in my fake-out amusement park world, no humans in giant furry animal suits tried to hug me as I departed the magic kingdom of Kilkenny.

Dec31

Happy New Year from Somewhere Over the Dakotas

Posted on 31 December 2013 by The Reluctant Girl Scout

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Skampy wants to know what your New Year resolutions are.

Either 2013 is ending well or 2014 is starting well, but the Delta gods blessed me with an upgrade to First Class on my flight from Indiana back to Seattle. I reckon this might be the only post I will ever get written on a flight. When you have bonus elbow room, you don’t sleep. You type. You knit. You do your taxes or practice a little Tai Chi. You order drinks and enjoy the novelty of a beverage in real glass. You yawn and stretch because you totally can; you aren’t going to slap anyone in the face.

Also, if you are me, you have Fergie on a continuous loop in your head sing-spelling G-L-A-M-O-R-O-U-S.

I have to say, life up here beyond the blue mesh curtain looks a lot less like a Mad Men cocktail party than I’d like. I always expect pearls and heels up here, but on the very few times I’ve been upgraded, the people look surprisingly like me. That is, like we all just stopped off at Big K after going to the VFW pancake breakfast and are kind of surprised to find ourselves on a plane.

The woman in front of me draped her hot pink puffy coat over her seat, which infringed on my First Class real estate and I find I’m feeling very territorial about it. I firmly flicked it back up over her seat and she gave me a dirty look, but I know my rights, and I also know without a doubt that she is up here on an upgrade too and doesn’t really belong here either. Let’s face it: if any of us were anybody, we’d already be at our New Year’s Eve party destination.

My destination: Rick in our messy First Hill apartment. It’s the only party I’m interested in this year.

This upgrade has taken the sting out of leaving home for Seattle. It’s always melancholy, the leaving. Mom and I were both a little bereft at having to say farewell after being together for two months (I was in Indiana for a wedding, she came back to Seattle with me, and then I returned to Indiana with her for the holiday). It’s better to focus on the positive though: her house is going to be a lot neater without me in it, shedding hair like a cat and starting projects in the middle of the living room like jigsaw puzzles featuring the lunchboxes of my youth, or re-beading a wonky bracelet, a job that went horribly awry and because of which, Mom will be finding blue beads all over the floor for the next 14 years.

Further balm will be seeing Z after three and a half weeks. He landed in Seattle two days ago, with, I am happy to report, his freshly cobbled shoes. Z-ma is tipping over less too, which makes us all happy. Here’s to her continued improvement in the new year. Skampy sends his love to you all. He thinks this blog is about him.

I’ve spent a portion of this flight trying to figure out what my New Year’s resolutions should be. I’m expert at making them but rarely manage to achieve them, so I’ve decided to use a two-word motto as a sort of encouraging theme for the year. (I thought I invented this, but have discovered belatedly that it is all the rage to have a single word to claim what it is you want to focus your energies on for the year.) Here’s mine:

SHOW UP.

Obviously, I’m hoping to show up in Seattle in an hour and a half and the fine captain from Delta has suggested that we are on course for that target, so that isn’t really what I’m talking about. Instead, I mean that instead of distracting myself with endless google searches re: questions to which I am only mildly interested in finding answers, for example, I will show up at the page to write every day. I’ll show up regularly to this blog. I’ll show up to my house so it looks less like a way station where I dump things between travels and trips to Target, and more like a home where there are actual places to sit and not just piles of things. I’ll show up to meals without the distraction of a TV or cellphone. I’ll (try) to show up regularly to the gym. And finally, when I am in Seattle, or Indiana, or some other location, I will BE in that place—as fully present as I am capable of—instead of always longing for some other coordinates.

Here’s to 2014. May she be kind to us all. Are you ready?

Sep6

The Seen and the Unseen

Posted on 6 September 2013 by The Reluctant Girl Scout

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When we head to Lake Chivero, a national park outside of Harare that has been a favorite spot of Z’s family for decades, I have high hopes of seeing a rhino, despite the fact that none showed themselves when we visited on my first trip two and a half years ago. Then, it was the height of summer and everything was green and overgrown, so I left without “rhinoceros” ticked off my list but was sure I’d see one if we returned sometime in winter when the landscape is more barren, like it is now.

Rhinos look a lot more like rocks than you might imagine. I think I’ve spotted about fifteen within the first ten minutes of our bumpy game drive into the heart of the park. I haven’t. What I see is only a few big roundy, rhino-shaped rocks. So much for my new prescription sunglasses.

When you grow up in a land where Holsteins are easily spotted as they stand in pasture against the razor edge of a skyline, it’s a shock to realize how animals in their natural habitats blend in so seamlessly. You’d think, for instance, that a zebra would be the easiest creature to see because of its black and white stripes, or a giraffe because of its long neck, but it turns out the patterns and shapes their coats and bodies make are better camouflage than Harry Potter’s Invisibility Cloak. On the last trip, I had trouble seeing the animals at first. On this trip, I see them everywhere, only most of the time there is nothing there. At one point, I am even convinced I’ve seen one of Z and Z-ma’s beloved rock rabbits (Google it—they are more meerkat/tiny elephant than rabbit), even though they haven’t been in the park for years.

Fortunately, a giraffe has the good grace to stand in the middle of the road in plain sight, and this gets the game-sighting party started.

Before long, we’ve seen about twelve giraffe, several zebra including a baby that was suckling, and a variety of buck. (I’m never excited about buck since there are approximately two deer to every one resident of Indiana, but Z’s family gets as excited about “lesser” animals as they do the Big Five, and their lack of favoritism is a quality I love about them). And then a rock moves. And the rock has a horn. And another rock with a horn. And another.

When I was a kid, I had an alphabet pop-up book, which I now realize wouldn’t have been so engaging without the animals of Africa to illustrate the different letters. I was never a fan of the “R” because a rhinoceros popped out of the center of the book aggressively, its horn pointed right at me. Last time we were here, I must have had this image in my head, because while we were picnic-ing, I saw a rhino headed straight towards us, only to realize after my heart had amped up to 800 beats per minute that it was a game warden on a bicycle with a gun slung over his shoulder. (This is why I have new prescription sunglasses.)

While I am happy to see these rhinos (a different type has recently gone extinct because of poaching, and given the stupidity and greed of some humans, I realize how lucky I am to witness these in their natural habitat), I’d be lying if I told you I am disappointed that mostly we see the backsides of them, lumbering away from us through the tall, dry grass.

Before we leave today, we will also have added a couple of anxious looking warthogs to our list, as well as a bush pig, which I’m assured are usually hard to see. The warthogs are one of my favorites. Their tails remind me of the teasel weed that my mother used to have stuffed into a pitcher for decorative purposes, and that’s what I see first before I realize an animal is attached. We look at each other for a moment, this particular warthog and I, and then it goes skittering into the bush. We see it running parallel to the car as we drive, like it’s hoping to keep tabs on us and won’t feel safe until we’re nothing but a cloud of dust.

But before we see the warthog, we make our way to Bushman’s Point, our picnic destination. We are disappointed to see other people already there, so we situate ourselves in a less perfect picnic spot next to a thatched information kiosk highlighting the animals that are in the park and could, if they want, interrupt our lunch. Z has regaled me with tales of his niece’s birthday party here when she was little and how a monkey snatched her baby brother’s bottle. I’m keenly aware that there is no security fence between us and the animals we’ve seen on the drive, and I won’t even let myself think about how you can’t really create a snake-free zone so near a lake.

Z suggests that I join him on the wall of the kiosk instead of sitting on the ground. It would be a good vantage from which to eat my cheese sandwich, except for the part where I am incapable of hurling myself onto the wall, nor am I able to climb up and on to it. It seems like it should be such an easy thing to do, but it is high and I am not athletic. (I instantly feel the failure of every elementary school gym class when the teacher would decide it was “pole” day and we needed to try to climb this slick, wooden pole that hung from the ceiling of the gymnasium to demonstrate our worth. Mostly it was an exercise in mortification because I could never get myself any higher than wherever I first placed my hands, meanwhile classmates were shinnying up to the rafters, at which point I would try to make myself feel better with the knowledge that I usually scored higher on math and spelling tests than the best pole climbers. And then I’d worry that one of my classmates would fall.)

Finally, I flopped myself onto the tarp with a sigh, and then the flies came. They couldn’t have had less interest in Z or Z-ma, but they were trying to fly up my nose and into my mouth. I flapped my hat at them, furiously, and realized how I looked like a caricature of an American tourist in Africa, fussing about a few pesky flies. In my defense, they were so annoying and persistent, and I was relatively certain that just before trying to crawl into my mouth they’d probably been sitting on the giant rhino poo we’d seen on the road. If we weren’t on a sort of pilgrimage, I would hop in the truck, rolled up the windows, and demand that we drive away from the rigors of high kiosk walls and overly extroverted flies.

The truth is, though, I love this spot for a lot of reasons and so don’t want to leave. It’s a beautiful. Huge rocks balance on each other in impossible contortions, there’s a lovely tree canopy, and the lake is in the background. While the rest of the park looks dry and brown at the moment, the area around the lake is verdant. When you see water in Zimbabwe—especially in the dry season like now—it feels kind of holy. This place especially so because of the San (or bushman) paintings on some of the rocks near the water, and because Z’s father’s ashes were scattered on the lake fifteen years ago, three years before I met Z. His family has made regular trips here to celebrate his life, which to my mind is a lot less depressing than going to a cemetery because the place is alive.

The walk to the water is rocky and worn. Chipped stone steps and pathways leave me lumbering like a bear, and huffing and puffing like an asthmatic, which I wouldn’t feel so bad about if Z-ma, who has almost three decades on me, weren’t navigating the path better than I am. We stop when we are almost at the water and Z tosses some rose petals on the wind near a tree where his aunt’s ashes were scattered a few years ago. Z-ma says hello to her younger sister, using a pet name, and we move on.

We stop next at the San paintings in a recess in the rocks. They’re behind a fence, but close enough that I could touch them if wanted to. When I see the reddish pigment on the canvas of the rock, I have a lot of questions about who they were and the meaning of life and what I would have done if I’d been born a hunter-gatherer, since I can’t handle the insects, rough terrain, lack of indoor plumbing, or, let’s face it, lack of indoors period. Looking at the paintings, I feel the way I did when I first saw Stonehenge or Poulnabrone dolmen in Ireland, which is to say, I can’t take it in in any sort of satisfactory way. It is too huge a thing to contemplate.

Finally, we move on to the cement jetty, where Z and Z-ma cast their petals onto the water, and I stand back, wondering what the appropriate way is to mourn or offer homage to a man I’ve never known. Though I don’t feel it here, when I am back at Z-ma’s, I’m very aware of Z-dad’s absence and what I’ve missed out on by nature of having come to the family too late to meet him. At the house, I look at his rose bushes, the structures that used to encompass an aviary, the now irretrievably empty pool where two proud-looking lions used to spit streams of water. At night when we watch the one channel of TV that Z-ma manages to get, Z sits in his dad’s old chair, and I can imagine his father sitting there, even though my vision of him is only a guess, based on what I’ve seen in photos and what I’ve sussed out by watching Z and his brother: how they speak, the way they hold themselves, their strong senses of self.

It’s another mystery I can’t solve, and so after a few moments, I get distracted by lizards, sunning themselves on the rocks.

Aug29

Xanax Safari (Part Seven)

Posted on 29 August 2013 by The Reluctant Girl Scout

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Dear American readers, here are some things you should know about a road trip in Zimbabwe before you set out:

There is not a McDonald’s, truck stop, or rest stop every 25 miles, so you might want to go easy on the liquid intake.
Carry your own toilet paper (“loo roll”) because when you do find a place to use, the facilities might look like something from the backside of a U.S. National Park that the rangers haven’t cleaned up or restocked lately.
Don’t assume that a clean restroom means there will be running water. I’m still not sure what the protocol is for this situation, but my preference, upon discovering a toilet will not flush after I’ve used it, is to leave as quickly as possible with my head held high and my travel-size hand sanitizer clutched in my hand.
Sometimes a baobab tree is as good as it’s going to get. Try to situate yourself away from any oncoming traffic and check the area for wild animals.

This was our first stop on the drive back to Z’s hometown after leaving Kariba:

This is known as “the Big Tree” because it is big and everything around it is small and scrubby and offers no real cover from passing traffic.

I can’t tell you how badly I needed to go, but I crossed my legs and prayed that Makuti and its dodgy but serviceable loos would appear on the horizon sooner than I knew possible, while my braver companions made use of these more natural facilities.

On the list of things we won’t speak of: the amount of loo paper surrounding its base. It’s a popular spot.

Road trips in Zimbabwe are different than they are in the U.S. Though I first read the motto “the journey is the destination” in a book about Africa (Dan Eldon’s illustrated journals, which are not to be missed), it is a road trip motto that I am more comfortable with in an American context, where there is a seemingly endless supply of pecan logs from Stuckey’s, giant balls of twine, and outlet shopping. Here, you climb in the car with a cooler at your feet full of cheese sandwiches and Cokes, and you drive and drive and drive until you get where you are going.

On the drive home, we reversed through the landscape that had haunted me on the way up. Even more of it seemed to have burned up while we’d been enjoying Kariba. Eventually we made it to a place called Lion’s Den. This is the name of an actual town and not a restaurant or a game park, like I thought, though what is there mostly is a good restroom (sorry the water isn’t working), a place to buy good biltong (like beef jerky—a family favorite that I skip because it isn’t “jerky” enough), and a great gravel parking lot for the brother-in-law to change a flat tire he didn’t know he had until he got a hankering for biltong.

On the drive we’d gone through three police roadblocks, where we were waved through in our vehicle, but the brother-in-law was pulled over because there was something irresistible about the fishing boat he was towing. (The purpose of the roadblock has yet to be explained to me in a satisfactory way, but because I was raised during the Cold War with stories of Checkpoint Charlie, my posture always improves when we approach one.) Later, on a nearly deserted road, we passed a policeman with a radar gun. Again, not entirely sure what the purpose of that was, since we were the only car on the road and it wasn’t a road you could go particularly fast on because of potholes, not to mention the rogue cows and goats, who roam about freely.

We drove through Murombedzi, which I was told is a “Growth Point.” I had big expectations. Something that had grown out of control, perhaps, but instead, what I saw was a few shops, a bottle store, a grain depot, ZimPost, some more goats, and a jacaranda tree that was beginning to bloom. It turns out “Growth Points” were really just places in rural areas in the 1980s that got designated as such so rural people wouldn’t have to travel to larger towns for needed services. Interesting.

About an hour from Z’s hometown, the trip was starting to feel unbearably long. I’d lost the ability to ohh and ahhh at balancing rocks (so cool) or the roundy, thatch-roofed huts (exactly how you want places in Africa to look), or even the joy of uncontained livestock leaping in front of your vehicle. So I suggested we play the alphabet game. You know the one, where you find an “A” on a billboard and then move on to a road sign with a “B” on it. When you get to “Q” you pray for a Quick Lube or a Quality Inn.

It turns out you can’t really play the alphabet game on a rural Zimbabwean road. We made it to “D.”

Perhaps the best thing about a long road trip—aside from the joy of good plumbing—here or there, is that if the journey is long enough, you are so happy to arrive home that you forget how sad you were to leave whatever hunk of paradise you just left.

Aug19

Be Prepared

Posted on 19 August 2013 by The Reluctant Girl Scout

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When I was a kid, I thought the scouting motto Be Prepared was excellent. My single mother had a lot of fears, and so I grew up being prepared for all sorts of eventualities: tornadoes, boredom, how to put out a kitchen fire with a box of Arm and Hammer baking soda, strangers with candy.

The downside of being prepared is that when you pack for three weeks in Zimbabwe to visit your husband’s family, this is what the suitcase situation looks like:

When I met him, there were a lot of shortages in Zimbabwe. Now, you can basically get what you need for a price, but on this, my second trip there, I’m still inclined to think I ought to pack entire boxes of Band-Aids, peanut butter crackers in bulk, and a lot of hats, even though I’m not a hat-wearing person. But you know, there’s all that sun. Also, my tiny stuffed turtle named ShellE, goes on all trips with me for photo ops and makes me feel guilty if she gets forgotten. A set of cobalt blue prayer beads that I never really use have to go because I’m too superstitious now to leave them home. My carry-on alone is stuffed to the gills because I’ve imagined all sorts of eventualities for the 24 hour flying time and I want to be prepared for that too, even though I’ll basically be eating, sleeping, and watching B movies the whole time. (But what if we get stranded in Amsterdam for a night and need extra pairs of underwear, more reading material, and bonus peanut butter crackers?) Z, on the other hand, carries a green man-purse with a magazine, his passport, and three cough drops on most trips.

I remember how disappointed I felt when my Girl Scout troop leader explained that the motto “Be Prepared” was selected because the first letter of each word corresponded with the initials of scouting founder Baden Powell. First of all, I was annoyed because the Girl Scouts hadn’t bothered getting their own motto, and they were willing to take boy castoffs instead of using JGL for Juliette Gordon Low, the woman who got scouting for girls started in the US. More importantly, even when I was ten it seemed an arbitrary way to pick a motto. What if his name had been Xavier F. Allen? Would the motto be Xylophones for All? (Of course if they had gone with JGL, what would the motto have been? Just Get Lumber?)

It doesn’t matter. I’m as prepared as I can be, and we’re off. On my first trip to Zimbabwe not long after we got married I was hoping I’d fall in love with it for Z’s sake, but I didn’t. I loved seeing where he grew up, meeting his extended people, and my first zebra and giraffe sightings, but the land itself didn’t speak to me the way I imagined it would when I was in college and Bono was forever talking about it. But I’m open to new discoveries and allowing myself to love more than one spot on the globe.