Our Story of Stuff

June 28, 2017

I’ve been jogging more lately, which means I’ve caught glimpses of what my neighbors are up to—and not up to, such as cleaning out their garages. I’ve seen a number of garage doors with boxes packed to the ceiling, stuff spilling into the driveway. Catching someone opening his or her garage door is like witnessing a surgery; the surgeon cuts an opening, and the viscera that’s packed in there so tightly overflows past the barriers of skin.

That’s suburbia. More. More. And then more.

Japanese minimalism hasn’t caught on here, or, if it has, those folks keep their garage doors closed. My husband often jokes I should earn money consulting as a de-clutterer. I don’t have any books to my name like Marie Kondo, only a decades-long track record of purging stuff. One of my college roommates called me “Spartan” because in our cramped apartment in London, I kept only a few items and didn’t paste my corner of the wall with mementos. Open our garage door and you’ll find about seven things that belong to us: my 1926 iron-cast clawfoot tub I hope to reglaze; our lawnmower, a fire pit; two bags of potting soil food; two vintage-style porch chairs. The rest of what’s in there: wooden planks (no idea why or for what); gardening tools; a very old dining room chair that doesn’t seem to match anything; and interior doors from our 1926 Colonial all belonged to the previous owner, an avid gardener who was from Japan, and who spent more time sprucing her yard than the house. Not knowing what to do with her stuff, we just left everything alone.

I’ve been doing some late spring/early summer cleaning, and while I was doing this, the same college friend who called me “Spartan” sent me a story about compulsive purging. I’ll own this, but only up to a point. I will admit that there’s a little brain chemical rush when the Salvation Army picks up old furniture, or when last weekend, some guy in a white pickup truck took the old barbecue smoker I left on the curb (because no one has 14 hours anymore to stand around and turn meat as it smokes). Purging gives me the same brain chemical rush as eating chocolate or dancing or jogging or yoga. Perhaps I was sparking my own joy before it became trendy. But I’m not a compulsive purger, and there are many reasons why.

Walk into my house and books are everywhere. On the coffee table. On the dining room table. On the desk. By the bedside. Sometimes on a chair. Sometimes left in bed. Sometimes serving as a coaster. These books aren’t organized in any particular way, just splayed out in either the order I was reading them or the order in which I brought them home from the library.

I also keep in plain sight a conch I found last year. It was lying in a pile of garbage and rotting conchs on a beach in the Bahamas. It’s absolutely beautiful, a swirl of pink grooves, and people have asked where I got it. When I say “in a pile of garbage,” they often look surprised, perhaps assuming I bought it at a tchotchke shop in Florida, because isn’t that where shells come from? I have a number of shells from my travels (though none from the Galapagos Islands because that’s illegal, and I won’t take anything from Hawaii, whenever I visit, because I’m told that brings bad luck). So I guess you could say I’m hoarding shells.

Also, I don’t buy something, purge it, and then go out and buy it again, which is what compulsive purgers do, with anything from lamps to toasters. Usually when I buy something, I hold on to it for a long time. I have two dresses I bought in 1993 at the Portobello Road Market that I can no longer fit into (no amount of diet and exercise is going to give you back the waistline you had at age 20). Donating them would make sense, but I never will. I also have a lovely antique-looking (don’t know the exact date) chamber pot Mike bought for me also at the Portobello Road Market when he was there in 2015. Do I keep a chamber pot next to my bed? No. Do I love having a chamber pot sit on my bookshelves next to a century-old Lithuanian typewriter? Yes. Will that chamber pot ever fall into the Purge Pile? Never.

I fall somewhere between wanting that Japanese aesthetic and wanting a Cuban aesthetic, and I recognize that sentence makes no sense, but let me explain. When I went to Japan in 2013, and walked into hotel rooms or restaurants where the only adornment was a single vase with a single flower, or sometimes just a vase or piece of pottery, nothing on the walls, no other distractions, I thought: “I’m home. This is me.” Clutter gets on my nerves, space calms me, and Japan calmed me. And then I walked into paladars in Havana where the walls are sensory experiences, filled with color, dozens of paintings often by local artists because Cuba brims with art, fresh flowers, an old record player, and I thought: “I’m home. This is me.” Color and eclectic stuff make me happy, and Cuba makes me happy.

The decor of our 1926 Colonial swings between these two. I’m not sure it works, but I’m being honest with you in case you visit.

We’re not shoppers. We don’t routinely go to malls or have boxes on our front step from Amazon. We are surrounded by folks who are Black Belts in online shopping. When I’m in Cuba, I think about the Story of Stuff, and wonder what Cubans would think of this, an island where there’s a shortage of just about everything, where I brought a suitcase full of art supplies and baseball gear. How do you explain that de-cluttering has become a middle class American battle cry? Whenever I come back from Cuba, I’m always in shock at the 10,000 brands of toothpaste on the shelves here or the hundreds of shades of nail polish. Do we really need this much?

Research suggests clutter reflects stress, anxiety, and depression, and adds to these feelings. I believe this to be true, though I have my own unique compartmentalization techniques my husband still quite doesn’t understand. I can’t stand the clutter of a pile of shoes (I like shoes kept in their original boxes so they don’t get dusty), but I don’t mind a sloppy stack of books. I can’t stand too many kitchen utensils or appliances cluttering up our small kitchen (really, how many spatulas and frying pans does one need?), but I’ve got a five-foot metal sunflower made in New Mexico that I lovingly dust. A pile of dirty clothes will fray my nerves but a pile of seashells from Mexico, Florida, Jamaica, is okay. It only makes sense to me.

My mother-in-law spent decades shopping herself into poverty, and when she passed away from leukemia in 2014, my husband and I geared up for the arduous task of going through her house and sorting through her stuff. She had countless unopened boxes from QVC, including multiple salad spinners and asparagus cookers (so that you could cook asparagus vertically instead of horizontally in a conventional saucepan). To call the experience sobering is an understatement, and perhaps afterward, my husband came to appreciate my quirky de-cluttering tendencies (or maybe not; you have to ask him).

The death of a loved one, the clearing out of a house, always makes us pause and think about what we really need, what should stay and what should go. Whenever we move out of our 1926 Colonial and away from these overstuffed garages and McMansions, I will feel a huge sense of relief but also, surprisingly, some sadness. We’ve lived in this house for seven years now, and I’ve grown very attached to writing on my enclosed front porch, where I write this blog post. I will miss this porch very much, one of the main reasons we bought the house. I will miss my other clawfoot tub in the upstairs bathroom (I will reglaze its twin someday), where I would soak after a day of skiing in the Catskills. I will miss the backyard Easter egg hunts that we no longer do because kids quickly outgrow such activities (we already donated the plastic eggs we used to fill with candy). I will miss roasting s’mores on the backyard fire pit. We will be eventually downsizing because my husband and I dislike lawn care and we only use two-thirds of our 1,430-square-foot house, which is modest compared with current American floor plans. We are not very good suburbanites. It’s time for a change.

Five years from now, which will happen in a blink, our only child leaves for college. I’ve kept five or six large plastic bins filled with stuff from her childhood: tiny handprints cast in clay; crayon drawings; some baby clothes; some baby toys—items that used to be randomly tossed about our apartment before we bought this old house because back then, they were everyday objects. I remember during those early years, feeling overwhelmed by baby clutter, the strollers, the swing, all the bulky plastic toys before she became old enough to play with small Legos and not swallow them (and then the tsunami of Legos overwhelmed me). Over the years, I set aside the items, many that my daughter made, that I could never say goodbye to (though she was such a prolific artist we did have to toss quite a bit of art). Now, these objects that were once taped to the refrigerator or gathered dust on a table are mementos and memories stored in bins, bins that will follow us no matter where go, no matter what the anti-stuff experts say.

I’m Going to Tuscany This Fall And This Freaks Me Out

June 21, 2017

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Italy, I’m coming back. No one is more surprised by this than me. Last month, I had my first piece published in Panorama where I talk about Italy as if I’d never see it again because I didn’t expect to see it again. It’s a gorgeous country, worth seeing repeatedly, but we’ve got this overpriced suburban-blue-ribbon-school-district lifestyle to pay for as well as an old house that eats up most of my husband’s paycheck, so I have to be choosy about where I go and when I go. Like many families in America, we live paycheck to paycheck, though we have equity and retirement savings (his, not mine; my meager IRAs went into buying this house and paying off debt), so we are fortunate. Writing is not my hobby, it’s my job, and it doesn’t pay well. In fact, it pays worse than when I started out 21 years ago. No one could have predicted this when I was earning my English degree, but here we are. I don’t praise the freedoms of the gig economy like I used to a few years ago, but I’m not eating ramen noodles three times a day either.

Then I got accepted to this, and you just don’t say no to those kinds of opportunities when you’re trying to get your own book off the ground. I’ve had the pleasure of working with Hannah Tinti before, and I’m a huge fan of her latest book, The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley, which I gulped down in four days (that Alaska chapter–wow!) and still occasionally reread, like I do with Naomi Williams’ Landfalls. Both books are about large, geographical journeys (and, yes, there are emotional journeys, too). Take them to the beach and go read.

My own book is a road trip story that I’ve been chipping away at since July 2013, the day after my daughter started sleep-away camp, and as a parent of only one, I suddenly had an empty nest and decided to pursue a lifelong dream. Four years in, I can report that lifelong dreams are expensive. Thrilling, sometimes fulfilling, a shit ton of fun, but very, very expensive.

This is why I’m freaked out about going to Tuscany. Because this writer’s life is one big gamble. We cashed out some old stock so I could go. Meanwhile, we have a teenager with a $6,000 smile who has her own dreams of becoming an artist, so she goes to art school and art camp, and there are medical bills, car insurance bills, our front sidewalk is so crumbled it looks like we have been blitzed; the neighborhood dogs give it the stink eye when they’re being walked. My husband brings home the bacon, writes science fiction on the side, and is trying to pursue his own dream of being a sci-fi author. He attends conferences, does his own marketing, and promoting his own books costs money. We keep our CPA busy with tax deductions and many, many receipts.

We are a household of three, each with our own dreams and ambitions, and this costs money. We feel lucky to even consider pursuing what makes us happy. Some people—no, many people—don’t or can’t. I grew up with those people. I now live in a McMansion community where everyone seems to be able to afford everything; last month, my daughter came home complaining about a classmate who complained how her housekeeper wasn’t bringing up the clean laundry to her bedroom—a room that has a chandelier, a skylight, and a flatscreen TV. This drives me nuts.

Unlike many of our neighbors in our McMansion community, we value travel over stuff but our stuff is falling apart and we have to prioritize. Our sofa is ripped up. My glasses need to be replaced because they are quite old and scratched up, and I have put off this purchase for years. One of our garage windows is broken because a neighbor sent a golf ball through it. Kitchen cupboards are peeling or becoming unhinged (and who isn’t with the current US administration?). One small pleasure I always delight in is going out to the chicken coop in the morning and collecting whatever eggs the hens dropped. Our credit card debt may be high, but dammit, I do enjoy an organic, extremely freshly-laid egg, usually paired with some diced cherry tomatoes and doused with a little olive oil and black lava salt. I eat it on my front porch with all the windows opened. It’s my morning treat.

But yeah, dreams cost money. A lot of money.

No one tells you this when you begin chasing your dream.

It would be easier if writers I’ve met over the years who read my stuff said things like “Look, Woz, this is nice and all, but focus on your family,” which is something said more often to women than men (it was said to me once by a female HR rep at a publishing company), or “Hey, Katrina, great effort, but have you considered basket weaving instead? Baskets make great gifts, you know.”

Instead, the feedback to my novel manuscript has been, “Wow, this is really promising shit. Keep going. I can’t wait to read your book.” These compliments make me feel compelled to see things through, to not let others down, to not let myself down, to not let all that’s been invested be for nothing.

What is the cost of chasing a dream, the price of seeing your name on a bookshelf? Maybe think about this the next time you browse the shelves of your local bookstore. If I added things up for myself, including this upcoming Tuscany trip, I would likely have a panic attack, and I can’t afford ER visits right now or any additional prescriptions (trying to ease off the Klonopin now that it’s summer and my seasonal affective disorder is temporarily shelved). When I voice my panic about finances and risk and “Oh my God, all of this for a book???” I get responses about keeping the bigger picture in mind, keeping an eye on the finish line, that anything worth doing is a slog, and the usual cheerleading axioms. People want happy endings. I want a happy ending. I want to be successful. I don’t like carrying debt.

This September, if you peruse my Instagram feed, you’ll see hopefully sumptuous, well-composed, eye-catching photos of Tuscany. And it would be easy looking at my Instagram feed to assume I live this glamorous life with endless sources of income because that’s what Instagram does—it carefully curates those most beautiful moments. And beautiful moments are worth curating; we all need more beauty in our lives. But don’t let beauty skew reality; I am thankful to live an amazing life, but it’s not glamorous. The large dust bunnies congregating under our dining room table or the orange mildew blooming in the cracks of our white ceramic shower tiles or the spiders of varying sizes that love the cracks and crevices of old houses tell a different story, as do our bank statements. Tuscany will be every positive adjective that you can think of. I’ll celebrate every minute I’m there. I’ll bring my donut floatie to the pool that awaits me. I’ll want every sunrise over the olive groves to last forever. And then I’ll fly back across the Atlantic biting my nails, praying to the old gods and the new that my efforts will lead somewhere.

Me and Josue Finding Santeria

May 12, 2017

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A week ago today, just a few hours before I had to return to Jose Marti International Airport, I stepped into the backseat of a bicycle taxi driven by a twenty-something named Josue. I had no idea who he was, that he had a five-year-old daughter with big, brown beautiful eyes, that he struggled with asthma, that he lived in Old Havana. He didn’t stand out from the other Bici-taxi drivers—sinewy guys in secondhand T-shirts. There’s a look to the guys moving the gringos about. I asked him to take me to Fin de Siglo, a market not populated by gringos. He drove me there, and it was closed, even though my hotel concierge told me it was opened. That was twice in one week that I had tried this market with no success. But that’s the thing with Cuba—you don’t learn about what’s opened or closed by researching online, if you’re lucky enough to get on the Internet. You learn Cuba by asking around, and going there, either to discover the doors opened or closed.

(This isn’t Josue, but a different Bici-taxi driver who didn’t take me anywhere.)

Josue offered to take me to the San Jose mercado, a massive craft market on the waterfront that’s popular among tourists. Along the ride, we chatted in that broken, awkward way two people who don’t know enough words in one language do, but he had a warmth to him that I trusted. He coughed throughout the entire ride, and when I asked what was wrong, if he was okay, he said he had asthma. Our conversation was mostly in Spanish. I learned he was separated from the mother of his daughter. That soon, he’d be going to the pharmacy to pick up his asthma medication. That he didn’t smoke cigars because of his asthma. That the following day, Saturday, he would get to do his hair, drink some whisky, enjoy the weekend. Cuban men have a thing about hair. He showed me pictures on his phone of how he liked to style his hair. I wanted to tell him he spent more time on his hair than I did on mine, that my idea of going out was a shower and hopping into a convertible so that the wind could give me that beach-blown look I often have. He admired my eyes. I showed him a photo of my husband and daughter, said I missed my family but also enjoyed traveling alone. He jokingly said if I were his “chica,” he wouldn’t let me travel alone. I smiled, enjoying the sweetness of it all. Blonde ladies traveling solo from the Snow Belt are exotic in Cuba. I get it.

When we got there, I asked him where I could pick up a taxi to get back to my hotel; I didn’t expect him to wait. He offered to come inside with me. So we wandered the market together. We were about the same height. Me and Josue looking at baskets. Me and Josue looking at jewelry. Me and Josue looking at art. When I stopped to admire a painting, and the vendor told me it would cost fifty, Josue leaned toward me and whispered to only pay forty.

I wanted to spend more time at the market. I wanted to fly home with more Cuban art. I wanted to know more Spanish verbs so I could have a more meaningful conversation with Josue. But it was the end of my trip, I was running low on cash, I had used up the five or six Spanish verbs I knew, and I still had to throw my suitcase together and make my way back to the airport. That afternoon, I would be somewhere over the Florida Keys, heading north. I tried to explain to Josue I didn’t have enough to pay for both him and an artist. He kept putting his hands up, and if I understood him correctly—and, perhaps I didn’t—he told me not to worry about it. I got the impression he was giving me a free ride, and who anywhere anymore gets a free ride? I told him it was okay, we could go.

On the drive back, he began talking to me about Santeria and the “Santos,” or saints. I never mentioned Santeria, but he seemed to want to tell me more about himself. He pulled over to two different Santeria shops, gently led me by the arm or the shoulder, showing me inside. He started pointing at things, speaking in a slow Spanish, sensing I was trying to tune into each word, like recognizing a song. I didn’t pick up everything he said, but admired the santos beaded bracelets he wore, which he pointed out were for sale in the store. I didn’t get the impression he wanted me to buy anything, but that this was something that was cool to him because he darted from one section of the store to the other, explaining things along the way. He pointed to ceramic urn-looking objects that he said you put food and offerings in; he mentioned he had a few of these at home. I could tell he wanted to share more with me, but we were limited by language, and I kicked myself for not practicing more Spanish before my trip. I didn’t buy anything, at the San Jose market or the Santeria shops, and Josue didn’t appear to care.

After a few stops to Santeria shops, we were back in front of Hotel Parque Central, one of the city’s newest additions at only a decade old. Another example about how you learn Cuba at street-level: Hotel Parque Central sells five-hour Internet cards, a luxury in Havana where the telecommunications infrastructure is still embryonic. I discovered this by accident when my hotel, Hotel Telegrafo, informed me they were out of Internet cards, and offered no further explanation. I ran across the street to Hotel Parque Central, made my way to the “Business Center,” another rarity in the Havana hotel scene, and was sold a five-hour Internet card for $10, a much better deal than the hourly cards that cost $4.50. There’s your Cuba travel tip for you.

In front of Hotel Parque Central, I paid Josue more than the cost of the fare, and maybe he anticipated this or maybe he didn’t expect anything. I’ll never know. I hugged him goodbye, and he gave me a kiss on the cheek. I would miss him, even though I had known him for about an hour. We’re now Facebook friends.

And I knew why I would miss him. In New York, or when I’m visiting Los Angeles or when I’m pretty much visiting anywhere, I don’t chat up taxi drivers or allow them to join me at art markets. I don’t follow them into Santeria shops or ask them about their kids. I don’t tell them to be careful with their asthma, genuinely worried that bicycling through clouds of exhaust coming from vintage cars was exacerbating a medical condition. The U.S. trade embargo may have kept out Starbucks and McDonalds (though Starwood is making headway in Cuba), it may have made Cuba the time capsule that intrigues the rest of the world, but what it also preserved was Cuban hospitality, a warmth unmarred by relentless ambition to get ahead, which I see in abundance everywhere else. I would miss Josue because I knew what I was flying back to: a heads-down, self-involved affluenza neighborhood where moms at book clubs compare their wedding band upgrades; where, three miles from our house when my daughter had a bicycle accident and was crying loudly over her bloody foot, three people jogged past us as if we were in their way. I was flying back to Trump’s America, to rainy weather where the temperatures were in the 50s, to a dance studio where my favorite teacher no longer taught, to where no one would offer to take me to a Santeria shop without something in exchange.

Towards the end of our ride, Josue either said that next time I come, I bring my entire family or next time I come, I should meet his entire family. Either way works. Josue, if you’re reading this, muchas gracias. Espero ver ti próximo año cuando visito otre vez.

I Suck At Packing (and Blogging)

April 23, 2017

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I have visited about 15 countries, which is quite a bit more than most Americans and paltry compared with the travel writers I follow on Instagram, like JetSetSarah, truly one of the funniest, most upbeat women I’ve ever met on the road, and Where’s Andrew, who somehow combines intrepid with mellow (and the two know each other because when you travel that much, your paths cross—it is known).

Some countries I’ve been fortunate enough to visit several times: three times to England; three times to France; three times to Mexico with a fourth later this year; and later this week, my third time to Cuba, a country I adore even though I can barely speak any Spanish. I’m returning with the Cuba Writers Program, co-led by the indefatigable Tim Weed, who knows everyone in Cuba, from one end of the island to the other, including the guy on the highway who sells fruit and who will slice off a sample for you with his machete. That’s right—Tim has friends who have machetes. He’s that kind of guy.

How to pack for Cuba? Well, it’s really hot there, so I don’t need to wear a lot of clothes. I can likely alternate through a couple of sundresses and survive in one pair of flip-flops and be okay. Though my first two trips to Cuba have taught me a few things:

– Pack Pepto Bismol, not because the food will cause problems—I loved the food and didn’t have any issues, but someone in the tour group will likely need Pepto.

– Pack toilet paper. I forgot this last year even though I meant to pack it. Then I endured a number 2 situation in the lobby of Hotel Florida in Havana last year where I had to go back to the abuelita sitting next to her basket of single-ply, single square toilet paper that she handed out one square at a time. Every time I asked for “Una mas?” in a pleading tone, she shook her head. I went back to her three times. So I’m not getting stuck in that situation again because let’s face it: one square of single-ply toilet paper doesn’t do much.

– Pack snorkeling gear. This is a first for me, but I learned I’m snorkeling, and renting gear in Cuba isn’t a reliable option so I rush-ordered some from Amazon, a company I hate. My new fins arrive in a few hours. Because that’s America. Or, I should say, that’s Jeff Bezos.

– Pack dancing shoes. I can’t dance in flip flops, and I’ve become spoiled by my Italian-leather, suede-bottomed dance shoes. This will be their first trip anywhere—they’re excited.

And then there are the packing essentials that follow me no matter where I go:

– My pool floatie. The world is three-fourths water, and that’s not counting all the glorious, man-made swimming pools everywhere. So my odds of bumping into someplace swim-able are good. That means my pool floatie goes where I go.

– My bathing suit. I pack this whether I’m going somewhere warm or cold because someone somewhere will have a hot tub or a swimming pool, and being in water relaxes me, especially after a flight.

– Klonopin. Sad to say, but me and my benzos are inseparable at this point; I can’t fly or sleep without them, though know that if you hang out with me between the hours of 7 a.m. and 11 p.m., you’re getting the pharma-free version of me. It’s only on airplanes or in bedrooms where I’ve gotta knock myself out. When traveling, I will share from my stash the following: Pepto, gum, tissues, tampons, maxi-pads, Excedrin, Band-Aids, toilet paper (within reason), vitamins, probiotics, hand sanitizer (again, within reason) and lemon ginger tea. I will not share my Klonopin—I don’t care how wound up you are or what you’re willing to pay.

– Lemon ginger tea. This is true no matter where I go, and was quite handy during last year’s trip to Cuba. I brought plenty, and handed out tea bags like candy. Lemon ginger tea soothes almost anything except a gunshot wound or a broken heart, though I would even venture to say it can indeed help alleviate a bad mood. It’s physically and emotionally potent, and I trust it.

– Books. Pretty self-explanatory.

– Scarves. Even to hot places. You never know when you’ll feel chilly, especially walking on a beach at night, plus scarves are the most versatile item of clothing anytime anywhere. You can tie up your attacker with one, flag down a taxi, stash away some snacks you took from the breakfast bar, or wrap an abandoned kitten. Lots of options with scarves.

– Hats. Just because I like hats.

You’d think given past travel experiences I’d have some hard-won expertise in packing, but the truth is I suck at packing. I often leave packing to the last minute, though I have friends who take the packing process very seriously and tackle their suitcases like a puzzle. The contents of their luggage are as diverse and as thought-through as their retirement portfolios. I am likely to show up in Cuba or any country with a bag full of Klonopin, swim gear, and books, but missing essentials such as underwear or sensible walking shoes. This has actually happened before—me showing up to a destination without underwear because I forgot to pack it. This may make me sound like a fun person to hang out with (“Hey! She’s gone commando, and she’s got Klonopin AND a pool floatie!”) but at age 44 and the mother of a teenager, I should know better. When I went to Japan in April 2013, a friend of mine came over and took a C-suite level approach to packing *my* suitcase. She coordinated and laid out outfits for the different days of the week, sorted out which shoes were necessary, and showed me how to properly roll clothes to make everything fit. She brought her A-game to the task, and truly, my suitcase never looked so well-organized. For her, packing is as much fun as the flight and the trip. I want to aspire to this, and maybe on this trip, I will try.

On Motherhood and Travel

March 9, 2017

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A year ago today, I flew to Switzerland by myself to begin a 12-day journey that would take me through the chocolatiers of old town Zurich, to the train station in Milan, Italy, to the Amalfi Coast, and then back to Zurich. I had enough frequent flyer miles saved up to fly across the Atlantic in first-class, which I’ve never sat in before. I was bummed that as I popped a Klonopin and prepared for takeoff, the flight attendant came around with champagne to toast our journey. Obviously, this doesn’t happen in coach, otherwise I would have held off on the Klonopin and gulped down some champagne instead (I’m not gutsy enough to combine benzodiazepenes with alcohol as some do).

Today, I won’t be going anywhere. Well, maybe the grocery store, but that’s about it.

I love traveling alone. I also love being married and being a mother. But traveling alone doesn’t jive well with motherhood in particular. It’s easier to explain to a spouse with his own needs and interests about your own needs and interests. Much harder to explain to a tween daughter where you’ve gone off to and why.

(Strolling Zurich solo)

Working from home as a writer allows me to be more in the weeds with regards to parenting, and I wouldn’t go back to my office days even if you threw a high six figures at me. Most days, I am home doing what moms and dads do: driving my kid to school, driving my kid to swim practice, driving my kid to art class, driving my kid to the orthodontist, driving my kid to tutoring, driving my kid and her friends. When I’m not a chauffeur, I am a referee, nurse, tutor, coach, cheerleader, psychologist, events coordinator or annoyed office manager (though none of this appears on my resume), and evenings are capped with snuggles in bed, giggles, a download about the day’s events, a catch-up on who said what to whom, reminders of what’s on the calendar for tomorrow, or the occasional admonishing for dropping the ball on a homework assignment. In between all of this, I advocate digital detox: I tell my daughter it’s time to unplug and read a book or it’s time to put her phone down and finish her breakfast or that she has spent too much time on YouTube, which we’re all guilty of.

It’s mundane, but precious, and I relish all of it, for her childhood is whizzing by. But I also like to take off by myself. I started doing this when Anna was age 10. Why should I have to choose? Why should mothers be one thing and not another? When I was in Cuba last spring, my waiter appeared stunned that I was gallivanting the globe while my husband was home with our kid. I recognize cultures, social structures, households and all the expectations that come within those systems and environmental microcosms vary greatly not just country to country but even within the United States, from one family to another. I’m not assuming we all want or choose the same things in the same way.

(Anna on her first international trip to Montego Bay, Jamaica, March 2007)

However, my guess is that fathers who work, clean their houses and care for their kids aren’t asked about what they’re doing when they’re sitting alone on a plane or train. Women are. “Who’s taking care of the kids?” is a common question I get, as if my daughter only had one parent. When I’m traveling, Mike runs the household without me micromanaging affairs from afar. We aren’t some 2017 matriarchy. He parents, he cooks, he cleans, he feeds cats and chickens, he takes out the garbage, he puts in a full day telecommuting and getting his office job deliverables delivered. Honestly, it’s not complicated.

Being a mom, while very fulfilling, also means being tethered—this is especially true if your child is part of the school system, and you’re now under the tyranny of the school calendar and she’s got a big science project due soon involving hot glue and wires. During these days, which outnumber the days I fly to Switzerland first-class, or fly anywhere for that matter, I read about other people going places, usually guys globetrotting—and it’s *always* guys. I follow Andrew Evans’ travels, and really look forward to buying his book. I just finished Steve Hely’s “The Wonder Trail,”, who was making his way from Los Angeles down into South America at an age when I was running my toddler to daycare so I could get to the office on time. Before I read Hely, I read Ian McGuire’s “The North Water,” a fictional account of dudes exploring the dangerous North Atlantic. Now I’m reading “Astoria” by Peter Stark, about the doomed Astor expedition to Oregon. I’ve also been flipping through Darwin’s journal entries as he sailed the globe aboard the HMS Beagle from 1831 to 1836.

See a pattern here?

There are women travel writers out there, though the ones people often toss back at me when I mention this point are: Elizabeth Gilbert who wrote “Eat, Pray, Love,” which doesn’t interest me (sorry, Elizabeth), plus Ms. Gilbert doesn’t have kids, and Cheryl Strayed, author of “Wild,” which I did read and liked, though Strayed hiked the Pacific Trail before having kids, and wrote the book after becoming a mother to two.

Please don’t misunderstand. That I get to go anywhere is joy, though it makes me hungry for more. That I got to board a plane to Switzerland and ride in first-class is a privilege I am constantly grateful to have had. I know mothers who can barely leave their homes or routines because so much is demanded of them, they are too busy meeting the daily needs of others. I know this because I grew up in it, a single-mom home where cash flow was a constant problem. To have a flight attendant stroll past and offer me champagne, or later, on the return flight, roll up with an ice cream trolley and serve me a custom-made sundae with all my favorite toppings is a gift. I mean, listen to me—here we are an entire year later and I’m still gushing about the experience! I’m replaying the day in my mind even as I type this blog post.

We take international family trips, and those are awesome, too, but there is something special about jet-setting on your own. The focus centers on discovery, not making sure everyone is doing okay, getting enough to eat, is wearing seatbelts, has enough to remain occupied during the flight or car ride or wherever we might be going. Our daughter has visited nine countries in the past decade, with more to come. In fact, we have to renew her passport this weekend because without a current passport, we can’t even get to Canada, and the Trump administration has been pissing off so many countries, I’m worried Puerto Rico might close the door on us and we’ll be stuck.

But even as we go on these family adventures, I sometimes wonder if I was some European sailor in a past life. I get seasick easily, and open water terrifies me (maybe as a result of being a sailor in a past life?), but at the same time I have this constant tug to keep going, to see places where I know no one, to get on a train, a boat, a plane and go forward. Novelty lures me. Constantly. I can’t explain it. Wanderlust and motherhood are a tricky mix. I’m not sure I’m doing a great job at either, yet I swing back and forth between the two, perhaps one inspiring the other.