25 August 2020: Daily

I took the boys to Vermont last week for a brief getaway. Growing up, Mom and Dad took us to Woodstock several times to experience white Christmases, and I have an enormous spot in my heart for the town still. As it turns out, a friend from the boys’ summer camp lives on a farm in the next town over from Woodstock and invited us to visit.

It was such a wonderful delight to show the boys around Woodstock and Quechee, going with them to many of the very places my sister and I loved as children (and also discovering new haunts, like Mon Vert Cafe [fab] and the simple-but-delicious sandwiches at The Butcher Shop). Unfortunately, both kids had bad falls from a rope swing, and Oliver came home with a mild concussion, but if you ever find yourself needing emergency care in that area, haul ass to Mt. Ascutney which is literally the nicest, friendliest, sweetest hospital ever. Oliver’s injury was really terrifying for both Jack and me, but the three of us were the best crew, and I felt inordinately grateful for Jack’s strength and help as I do for the care Oliver received and the recovery he’s had since. He’s doing great! I also appreciate that Tom flew up on Friday to help me drive home as I was completely wiped out from the stressful night at the hospital and the relatively sleepless night after.

I was very sorry to miss the DNC, though I have tried to watch some of the speeches since returning home. I have made every effort to completely avoid the grotesque, histrionic spectacle of lies and revisionist history coming out of the RNC this week. Instead, I’ve enjoyed fundraising for Dem Senate candidates, organizing for the Get Your Knees Off Our Necks march this Friday, and helping get the boys ready for school. Jack is starting 9th grade which is somewhat hard to believe but also isn’t at all as he just seems so capable and grown up these days. My baby’s taller than I am! I am totally overwhelmed by the fact that both kids will be learning from home through January, at least. Send vibes.

Meanwhile, my parents have boarded up their home and evacuated as the hurricanes race towards southern Louisiana, and I am outraged and horrified by the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, by police earlier this week. They shot him EIGHT TIMES IN THE BACK, IN FRONT OF HIS KIDS, at point-blank range. He is now paralyzed from the waist down. I am disgusted and furious and so sad. Black Lives Matter, and until America reconciles with its past and present, educates its people, and makes amends, nothing will change, and that is disgraceful.

Please work every day until the election to do something, anything, to ensure a fair and free election, to turn the tide Blue and sane and educated and patriotic. Our lives depend on it.

40 in forty: Travel as much as you can

More than a decade ago, I went to East Africa. It was a remarkable three weeks in southern Kenya with a boy I loved. He spoke Swahili fluently, and I knew even then that I was experiencing a rare trip, a life-changing one I'd never forget.

In Nairobi, I ate sukuma and ugali (sauteed greens and corn meal mush) and roasted ears of maize sold from street vendors behind steaming carts. I drank cold Tuskers and shot pool. I scooped doro wat with doughy injera as an Ethiopian belly-dancer beguiled us.

On safari, I saw the Big 5. I visited an elephant orphanage and saw the wildebeest and flamingo migrations. Thousands of rickety-looking animals fording a river because instinct told them they must, even as crocs lay in wait. A whole lake turned pink by plumage. A black rhino and her darling baby. Great cats stretching and tending their young.

On the small island of Lamu, I devoured curry made from just-caught fish, vats of fresh "joo-eece" (juice) from the fruit vendor next to our inn, and chicken with fiery pili-pili sauce at a the home of a lovely Muslim woman, Hosna, the boy knew.

After lunch she invited me to try on one of her burqas before taking a stroll through the neighborhood. "Everyone knows you're white and foreign," she said, even though I was covered head to toe. "They look at your feet. Can you feel them staring?"

Was it strange? Yes. Was it a tremendous learning experience? Absolutely. Do travel and trying almost always enlarge our senses of the myriad possibilities and respect for differences in the world? Most definitely.

I remember being spat at while living in Amsterdam. An American friend (living in Amsterdam) and I were walking through a park, and a Dutch woman heard us speaking English. She spat and my friend retorted in angry Dutch, stunning the woman and relieving me. 

I remember being stuck at the horrid Holešovice train station in Prague, waiting and waiting and waiting. I called it "Holese-shit" and Tom and I laughed for days. The baths in Budapest, the disappointing Sacher tort in Vienna offset completely by the magnificent Klimts at the eponymous museum and the Muchas at his museum too.

I can still taste the rhubarb pie at that diner somewhere by Woodstock, VT. I remember the post office in Quechee, not far from the gorge. The redwoods in Northern Cal, the lunar-like beaches north of San Diego. 

I remember accidentally getting off to TGV train in Biarritz instead of San Sebastian. Shit. I spoke Spanish, not French. My friend was waiting for me so we could haul it to Bilbao to see the new Guggenheim museum there. I cobbled together a few phrases dredged from the depths of my mind, got to Spain, ate incredible tortilla and reveled in the opalescent undulations of Gehry's titanium masterpiece. The Rioja wasn't bad either.

~~~

It seems to me that as people age, they take one of two paths: the safe, familiar one, or the road less traveled. I plan to always take the latter, and I beseech you to do the same in all ways that you can. Do not close off, don't limit yourself. As best you can, speak to locals. Drive, walk, fly, train, in your own country and far beyond. Jump, ask, learn, try, be humbled and uncomfortable, enjoy something you didn't know you would. Keep growing!

Travel is a superb education, possibly the best. We leave tomorrow for Rome, and although I'm exhausted (so tired that I again forgot the correct documentation for the DMV which, naturally, I only realized once there. For the third time. I still don't have a license. I give up until we get back.), I can't wait to jump the border and fly toward a new adventure.

When in Rome...