endless travels

So on Christmas Eve, breaking all familial conversation topic taboos, I launch into conversations about Money. There we are, in our living room, the Christmas tree lights are on, Pat’s mom and dad are sprawled out on the couch, and I have my laptop, checking e-mail. (Please don’t ask me why. All the sugar I consumed caused short-term memory loss.) Right then, I started losing it about how tough it is TO GET PAID when you’re a freelance writer. I was also going on and on about how I’ve got this writing life down. The constant angst? Check! The self doubt and loathing? Check! The pained, torturous internal debates on who to pitch, what to pitch, how to pitch? Check!

Oh, wait, I said. I have everything down except the drug and alcohol abuse. But there are 362 days left in 2008! Don’t give up yet! Everyone laughed. Then, Pat, who sat quietly in our living room listening to the millionth time about how all of this, offered this: “That’s why I want to move to Argentina.”

Seriously? Really? What should I pack?

I should say this is not 100 percent out of the blue. He’s been talking of leaving for a while. First it was to New York. Then Portland. And apparently that’s just not far enough, so Buenos Aires is now the location of choice. This is not helping, particularly the witticisms and beautiful photos. Apparently he spent a lot of time reading about Buenos Aires today since it reached a whopping 10 degrees in the sun today. It sounds better and better, and who needs to know Spanish beforehand? I can mime the universal cupped hand to mouth with the best of them until my tongue and mind adjusts. How much does coffee cost there?

The first time I realized what it is to be jealous, I was in sixth grade. Every day at break (every. single. day), my best friend at the time, Christie, would pull out a Tupperware container filled with salty popcorn. We would go outside and she would eat her popcorn and I would wander around, looking at it and her sideways, wishing I had some and wondering why my parents didn’t pack me some popcorn for break. Sometimes she’d feel sorry for me and give me a handful. That was worse, because who wants pity popcorn? But I took it anyway. And I got over it. In, oh, my second year in college.

But today I’m not to proud to admit that I have again found myself sidled with some jaw-crunching jealousy. But, instead of popcorn, I have travel envy. Big time travel envy, like pack-a-bag-right-now travel envy. We have friends/colleagues now in Rome and Milan and Tuscany and South Korea and others just back from Prague. Dang. It didn’t help that over Labor Day, we ended up talking about Rome over burgers and awesome bean salad at some friends’ house. We sipped proscecco and discussed how to appropriately curse football referees in Italian and how not to fall and crack your head open on wet street pavers in Rome. It made me ACHE to be there, not that I want to particularly escape anything here. In fact, things are going really well. But I’m craving the trip planning, the looking forward to being tired and grumpy after flying someplace, the chance to take walks on new-to-us sidewalks, the belly filled with strange food, the people in a new place, the sound of a new language. I’d love to be in Rome right now. I love that city, with its graffiti and confusing intersections and crosswalks that challenge your inner dare devil. We have a couple of free tickets in our pockets, and it’s killing me! I want to go everywhere, but where now? New York? Boston? Huntington Beach? The Great State of North Dakota followed by the Other Great State of South Dakota? Anybody? Anybody?

Maybe it’s because I’m slightly nutty with all these boxes around, me forgetting what day it is and what I’m supposed to be doing that made me want to get in touch with people from high school. I must be losing it to even consider this because my No. 1 goal when finally walking across that stage, getting my diploma, surviving an ill-advised trip to Myrtle Beach, S.C. and packing up all my junk and moving to my college (crying as my folks pulled away in their blue station wagon) was to forget all about high school and that little shit who gave me a bloody nose in third grade. (Later, my mom ran over his dog by accident. Karma is a bitch.)

In my list of things to accomplish in life, “forget high school” is checked off, for better or worse. I haven’t managed to check off “become fluent in another language” or “win a Pulitzer.” But at least one thing is checked off! And I couldn’t be prouder! (Though, I must say, Facebook has changed everything!)

That said, I can admit that I do get a twinge of nostalgia when my current friends talk and/or do fun things with their high school friends like GO SEE THE POLICE IN CHICAGO FROM BOX SEATS AT WRIGLEY STADIUM.

So did you think this was going to be all about my high school? That I had some great realization that my past is worth dredging up, worth reconnecting to, worth reconciling with? Ah, you have such high hopes for me. Thanks! (Though I did, in all honesty, send an e-mail out to try to find Peter who used to direct the aforementioned Teens Camping Tour of the West. No luck yet. Will update if that changes…)

Nope, here’s a little something from my road trip with The Only Boy Who Didn’t Scare The Shit Out of Me To Whom I Am Now Married. AKA: Pat. This summer we visited his high school boarding school in Ohio, Olney Friends School in Barnesville, where he spent three semesters instead of going to military school. It is surrounded by rolling green fields and bucolic views of cows munching on grass and intense blue skies and super sweet afternoons where you just want to nap in the grass. It’s that beautiful, people, and makes any story I have to tell about going to Davie County High School terribly sad. Here’s photographic proof!