The world is my oyster
Several readers told me they enjoyed reading my last column about traveling to a foreign country, but you don’t have to go far away to get a new perspective on life. When I am away, I can’t see the dust that the vacuum cleaner missed, put away laundry, or X off any days on the calendar. Why do I do this?
A break in routine has many advantages, especially if you are married. No sooner than our suitcases were brought into the house, did my husband turn on the TV. On vacation we went for strolls on the beach instead. We drank our coffee together in quiet conversation.
The first day we were home, my husband’s face was bent into his beloved crossword puzzle, while I reverted back to my ping-pong ball self. An invisible spring catapulted me from one room of the house to the next putting everything back in its place and feeling victorious that everything has a place.
I know where everything goes, but when my husband unloads the dishwasher he always leaves two or three items on the counter. “I don’t know where they go,” he says. Why is that?
When we travel together we don’t have to know where anything goes. We don’t even have to know where we are going. We don’t have to even speak the language. My husband practices Spanish into his cellphone at home, but when we are face to face with the natives he relies on me to communicate. He stands in the middle of a busy intersection with the map stretched out wide, looking lost, while I go into a shop and ask someone for help.
“You look like a tourist,” I tell him.
“I am a tourist,” he says as if his blazing red Arizona T-shirt didn’t tip anyone off.
Some people like to vacation in the same spot every year. I met a man from Wisconsin in the Dominican Republic who has been renting the same apartment for 14 years. I know a family that has gone to Disney World for seven consecutive years. I would be arrested for beating up Mickey.
It’s not a small world after all.
After two weeks at home, my husband and I are getting ready for a road trip to visit family in Maryland, Tennessee, and North Carolina.
We are the old couple with the same movie script.
“Stop the car!” I shout.
“What did you forget this time?” he asks.
“Doesn’t that noise bother you?”
“What noise? I don’t hear anything.”
I will get out of the car to begin my search for a golf ball that has been rolling from side to side in the vehicle for months now despite my pleas for its safe return to the golf bag.
He will get out of the car and find it just like he found the cricket in the closet years ago. We won’t speak for 200 miles. I’ll read my Kindle until it’s my turn to drive and his turn to work the crossword puzzle. He will ask if I have a pencil or a pen in my purse, and I will hand one to him. He will smile. I will smile back at him.
I will say to my beloved, “If money were no object [he always runs the numbers in his head], where would you travel next?” I have to plant the seed, you understand, and let it grow inside him. The world is my oyster. Let’s seek a pearl together, I say.
