Diary

I got exactly what I wanted for my seventieth birthday— a complete stealth event.

It’s funny that I don’t mind standing on a stage talking to audiences, but  a bunch of waiters singing the birthday song is for me a form of torture. I guess maybe it’s because a lecture is about the subject and the birthday stuff is about me, and I really do not like being the center of attention.

I had asked Dan not to do anything to call it to the attention of anyone on board, as I truly did not want any fanfare. A lot of times people say that but don’t really mean it, so I could see he was a little perplexed as to what kind of “don’t do anything” this was. Fortunately,  several repetitions over several days did the trick, and indeed our celebration was a toast over dinner for two.

I was a little worried that the manifest would have passport details, so anyone with access to our information could have picked up on the situation but fortunately no one did.  So I am now sailing into a new year, literally, and completely on my own terms.

For me my seventieth doesn’t signify anything relevant. I don’t hear the ticking clock of time particularly loudly on birthdays, nor do I feel “one year older.”  It didn’t even occur to me to take a picture at dinner to commemorate the occasion.

People who don’t feel as buoyed up and carried along by the wonderful opportunity to exist in this precious world as I do may  have more need for days of acknowledgment. Maybe it’s about how much one likes and feels appreciated the rest of the year.  Gifts  and dinners can’t more than temporarily offset the negativity when relationships are bad, nor for me do they add much to relationships that are good

For me, yesterday was best celebrated by treating it as just another day in a life blessed with adventures, imagination, curiosity, and opportunities to grow.  I get 365 days a year of that, year in and year out.  What song or candles on a cake can compete with that?

 

It’s “smoky Sydney,” tonight.  This afternoon the sky was bright and blue, but around 4PM, the strong winds had turned the air a dingy pinkish-yellow from a bushfire somewhere near the city.

I am staying in the area known as The Rocks, the site of the original colony, where the oldest remaining stone buildings were built with convict labor and almost every block contains a historical marker about the early years of what would become the nation of Australia.

My historical memory should have served me better than it did at lunch today.  I should have known, based on the bad fish tacos I have gotten everywhere other than San Diego,  that the chances of an Irish pub in Australia knowing what fish tacos were all about were (shall we say kindly?) approaching statistical zero. Indeed these examples were crimes that really should be prosecuted. Flour tortillas instead of corn? Sweetened cole slaw instead of raw cabbage?  Avocado sauce? Mayonnaise dressing?  That there were three of these monstrosities on the plate was a good example of the expression “kill it before it multiplies!”

Not being a breakfast eater, to have lunch be a bust can be problematic, especially when evening rolled around and the smoke was too thick to want to leave my room (no room service here). Google to the rescue!  A search for “Happy Hour Sydney Rocks ” produced a hopping pub a block away, where Aperol Spritzes ( my go-to drink) were $5– cheap in USD but here, with the Aussie dollar at 68 cents, practically free. A salad and TWO Aperol Spritzes later, I am back in my room no worse for the little bit of time in the smoke.

I probably wouldn’t have bothered to post about this, but something melancholic and pretty wonderful happened while I was in the pub. All of a sudden on the other side of the room a group started singing the birthday song to a friend. Wow, I thought—December 2!  Whoever the person was, he or she shares a birthday with my son Adriano.  My beloved boy only stayed in this world 22 years, and I am closing in on spending as many of his birthdays after losing him as I had with him.  So when the birthday song broke out, I sang along quietly over in my corner, adding his name.

December is a tough month for me, marking both his birth and death. But today, halfway around the world, I sang out his name. Happy Birthday, Adriano. I carry you tucked safely in my heart wherever I go.

I posted a while back about how I was trying to get more adventurous in port, and I took another step today in Phuket, Thailand.  There was no shuttle into town due to a strong taxi union, and everyone had to bargain with the swarms of taxis drivers hanging out at the port gate.  When I heard it wasn’t going to be a simple as shuttle in, shuttle back, and it would be expensive to boot because the drivers expected to be your escort for 4-5 hours minimum as you made your way around town, I had this moment of old Laurel, asking why bother going in at all if it would be a hassle, but the me I am trying to become won out, and I got a driver  for $70 and gave him the list of places I wanted to go.  Took a photo of him and car license just in case, but he was perfect and always found me.

 

I also swore to myself I would eat lunch in town instead of chickening out due to tender tummy issues, and indeed I did!  Here is a photo of my crab curry with some sort of  leaves and rice noodles.  It was wonderful.

I learned something interesting about Thai table manners too.  The restaurant was packed with Thais and I noticed they all were using their fork to place food on a big spoon, which they then used to eat.  Very different, but when in Rome, or Thailand, do what everyone else is doing, and I have to say it worked just as well as any other way.

I had a clueless moment, however, when I forgot to ask in advance if they took credit cards (it was a very nice restaurant, so I just assumed), and they did not, nor would they take dollars.  Uh oh!  I wandered around  looking for an exchange booth, but it being Sunday, couldn’t find one.  I went back to the restaurant only to be told that really credit cards were fine with a 5 % surcharge, which sounded just fine to me, despite a little annoyance at wandering around in sauna-like air to solve a problem I apparently didn’t really have. But note to self:  always take debit card, not just credit card and American cash, if I don’t have local currency.  And second note to self:  don’t assume anything.

Still learning!

But the big deal for me is that I pushed my usual boundaries.  I did what doesn’t come naturally, and what I hope someday will.  I can’t say I love Phuket, but I can say I didn’t let it pass me by.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by Linda Olson

 

I am in Muscat, Oman, on my last day in the Middle East. Barren, rocky mountains loom behind the town, pressed into a tiny strip between land and sea— a reminder that people don’t easily make a place for themselves here. Beyond the mountains lie hundreds of square miles of sand dunes, the “Empty Quarter” of the Arabian desert.

Hardship brings communities together, but scarcity of resources can also work the other way.The Middle East illustrates both. Competition over water has pitted families against each other for centuries, while within these communities, I am told, one will not find greater friendliness and hospitality anywhere on earth.

I observe the lovely, languid way women in their black robes and headscarves move through their world, chatting among themselves. I observe the way men are more solitary, how even when in groups they tend to look outward, monitoring everything that passes by. Even today, when water and electricity and other niceties of urban life can be relied upon, their watchfulness may be a culturally embedded remnant of a time when threat had to be continually assessed. Or maybe I am, in my ignorance, reading too much into things again.

Despite the curiosity and desire to learn I bring with me everywhere I go, I am eager to be gone from here. I try to be open and and non-judgmental about other cultures, but this is simply not my kind of place. There’s a public aloofness in this part of the world.  People keep to themselves and public acknowledgment of the presence of strangers is minimal.  That’s fine.  It’s their right. They don’t owe me anything.  But for someone who grew up in a culture that goes overboard to say hello and smile at every social opportunity, it’s a bit of a disconnect.  Also a bit of a relief to be off the hook, not to “owe” them sociability back.

For another thing (hence the title of this piece) I can’t tolerate the desert. By the middle of the day in Doha, our first port, I was beset by a dry hacking cough, which turned into laryngitis the next day, followed by that nasty, noisy, infected cough you get at the end of colds. I seem to be nearing the end of it—much better today, thank you—but when I look back over the years, there seems to be a perfect correlation between these symptoms and being in a desert, whether it is the Atacama, Mojave, or here on the Arabian Peninsula. So yes, I have been literally choking the last few days.

Which brings me to why else I am calling this post “choke.” My two lectures so far have both been done in difficult circumstances. First, we had an unexpected sea day when swells made us unable to use the tenders to visit our port. I had about ninety minutes notice to get showered and dressed, review a lecture I hadn’t planned on giving, add in a few minutes about an additional port, and get early to the lecture venue because it was my first talk and we need a little extra time in case the equipment doesn’t sync. I was a bit frazzled by all of this, but it went off without a hitch. In other words, I didn’t choke. Experience is a blessing.

I woke up the morning of my second lecture barely able to squeak. I tried my usual remedy (hot water with lemon, ginger and honey), and was able to get to a pretty strong croak. My worry was that it would get progressively worse as I talked, but the cruise director and I decided the best course was to try, and then if I was going downhill after ten minutes to stop and reschedule. Much to my surprise, I got through just fine. I might have been literally choking, but I didn’t choke.

I am back on the ship after a morning in the souk. Those of you who know me won’t be surprised that I bought earrings—three pairs! I am done with the Middle East and now have two sea days before our first stop in India. Challenging in its own way, but at least it’s not a desert!

Fortunately, I don’t freak out about hurtling in a tin can above  land and sea.  When the engines roar and the plane speeds up for takeoff, I say to myself, “if this is it, I have had the best run in this life and have no complaints,” a mantra I took from my late husband as he was dying of prostate cancer. I also say a thank you to whatever power might be out there that has protected me, sustained me and enabled me to rise up to meet the day.

I call  this post “fear of flying” not because I have sudden doubts about my safety but because on Wednesday I will embark on an itinerary that, even if it goes smoothly, will be the trip from hell.  Months back,  I got a huge bargain on business class  for what would be under any circumstances a grueling journey from San Diego to Dubai—roughly 50,000 points from a card I had dumped and was trying to zero out my points. Sounded great at the time.

It was what they call a “mixed ticket,” meaning that some legs will be in economy, but the biggie, Toronto to Cairo, and the last leg, Cairo to Dubai, will be in business. That’s okay, because the first two legs, San Diego to Chicago and Chicago to Toronto are in premium economy   Good enough.

the trip from hell part, however is twofold.  First, I have four flights to get there ( the first a red-eye)—four opportunities for game-changing delays and lost luggage ( universe, I did not say that).  Each stop involves a two hour layover, which adds to the hell, but does reduce the risk.

Second, the business class is on Egypt Air, which on the one hand has never crashed that I know of, but upon closer look has crappy seating in business and apparently the most lackluster service in the skies.  And, they serve no alcohol at all.  I don’t care about the last, except that some wine does help with napping. Still, the  happy gene sings in my ear,   at least I won’t be squeezed into Economy.

So what could possibly go wrong, I ask myself, my voice creeping into upper register.  Well, plenty, including my two biggest fears, that I  and/or my luggage won’t arrive on time to catch the ship.  I do that double nightmare “what if” every time I set out, which is why I (and hopefully my bags) always arrive a day early.  Though this one is a bit scarier, I tell myself it will work out somehow. It always does.

Still, when I see my bags slide down on the carousel in Dubai with  enough time to catch the ship, I will heave the biggest sigh of relief ever in my Years of Living Travelly.  Rude attendants, mediocre food, bad departure lounges—all things to shrug off, or maybe write about in my next post. And if there is one, it’s a sign I survived.

UPDATE:  Bags and I all arrived successfully. Thirty hours to get here, even with no delays. This morning we go to the ship!

This post is, for a change, not about Living Travelly. It’s about hair.

I consider myself pretty open to new things, and I admire people who show daring beyond what I am comfortable with. So why is it that going to the hair salon is such a source of existential dread for me?

My hair style hasn’t changed much since high school, except for the thick Sixties bangs I had then, or one foray into a perm when I was swimming before work and had no time to dry my hair. Not my best look, I must reveal—fortunately, I think all photographic evidence has been destroyed.

I don’t want anything even slightly different, just straight chin length blunt cut, thank you very much. I worry inordinately that it will be cut too short ( meaning maybe an inch more than I wanted). That was all I had to worry about before I started to cover the gray, and I got into the world of hair coloring.

In the last year or so, my body chemistry has changed in some way that affects my hair’s ability to take color.  The first time this happened, my hair turned orange. The second time, it looked great when I left the salon but had turned a  deep olive brown by evening.  Finally, i got a formula that worked, and I was good until about six months ago when a stylist on the ship decided that surely I must want a lemon meringue pie on my head. Seriously! I told her I was not leaving the salon until I didn’t look like Carol Channing.

All of these mishaps are pretty drastic, and it’s easy to see why I wasn’t willing to just go with the flow. But yesterday’s trip to the stylist was different. Yesterday made me dig a little  deeper.

By the time my hair has been out in the sun for a few months it is an almost white blonde I think is unflattering. I suggested to my stylist that maybe we go a little darker to cut down the natural bleaching process.  She overdid it a bit with the lowlights and I came home with hair that is more of a reddish brown.

My first reaction was to go back and have her fix it.  My second reaction was, well, you wanted darker blonde, and you were wondering  a while back what you would look like with a hint of red from those Scottish genes, so voila. My third reaction was once again,  geez,  go back and fix it! My fourth reaction was, this doesn’t look bad at all, just different.  So that’s where I am, and the hair is staying.

Actually , I am getting kind of pleased with it.  It’s interesting and different, two things I love, and I am getting in lock step behind it.  Maybe it’s the start of something….

But it got me thinking about why I care so much about an inch of hair, or a shade different than I wanted. Really, how shallow is that?  I have friends with involuntary boldness because of cancer or alopecia, for heaven’s sake. I consider myself strong, confident and well self-actualized, but I guess I should reconsider whether that is as true as I want it to be.

I suspect we all have an internalized view of our physical appearance we carry around with us. I am rarely taken by surprise when I see my reflection in a store window, because I look pretty much the way I thought I did.  Now I look in the bathroom mirror and see something I wasn’t expecting, and that makes me uneasy about myself in the world.  There is some truth in the idea that we dress for other people and maybe I care more about what others think of my physical appearance than I wish to admit.

At any rate, I am not happy with myself for reacting as I did.  I see young people with colored stripes in their hair and think , “if I were young I would do that!”  I think it’s true, but then again, if I haven’t changed my hair much since I was a teenager, maybe I wouldn’t.  Why is it that someone who thrives on change can be so weird in this one area? Why is it that I am so cautious about something so minor, when I will step on a plane and go halfway around the world alone?  I don’t get it. Do you?

I am so used to these short interims between cruises since I began Living Travelly, that I quickly fall into a routine that works something like this.

First few days: recover from jet lag and stagger through setting up appointments and contacting friends for lunch, tennis, etc.

Remainder of first week:  deny how much work I have to do, but find myself pulled toward my computer anyway.

Second and third weeks: work compulsively, broken up by going to all the appointments, lunches, and tennis I have set up.

These days, that’s about all the time I have.

Right now now I am in the second week, working like a dog to be ready to leave for Dubai early in November. From there I will float across the Indian Ocean and eventually arrive in Singapore, then on to Sydney for holiday assignments on Silver Muse.

Today, I am feeling the weight of it all. I’m  not quite to the point where leaving again feels all that positive. Too much to do, and even the fun I usually have thinking about what to take hasn’t kicked in yet.

It will, though.  As I review my lectures, I fall in love again with my topics, and can’t wait to share.  I think about how much I prefer the sound of waves to traffic outside my window, and how great it is to have every new day dawn with the promise of something out of the ordinary.

Just writing this is all I have to do to feel the first frissons of excitement.  Hello, wonderful world out there!  I’ll see you soon!

 

 

 

 

I arrived back in the United States day before yesterday, after a cruise that took me from Lisbon to Greenwich, then across the Atlantic to Newfoundland and down the eastern seaboard to New York, where I will disembark tomorrow.

After decades of travel, I can’t count the number  of times I have come back into the United States from abroad.  Until recently, I have always felt a strong sense of belonging when I would see airport signs saying “Welcome to the United States of America.” I would grin from the inside out at being home.

Not any more.  There is no sense of welcome, no sense of home. 

I feel ashamed  and disconsolate at what my country has been reduced to, and so deeply, deeply betrayed that when I approached the immigration agent, I could not even offer a polite smile. I feel knocked to the ground by unutterable sadness, at the same time almost airborne with anger,  as I reencounter a country that for all its flaws,  I used to feel proud to be part of, a country that undeniably has worked well for me.  

Yesterday, I accompanied a group making a quick tour of historic Boston’s main sites.  A couple of times I had to turn away and will myself not to tear up at the reminders of American patriots who were willing to pledge their  “lives, fortunes, and sacred honor” to create a nation I owe so much to.

I am too much of a skeptic, and have read too many alternative histories of the United States, to go overboard glorifying any of them, but yesterday in Boston the country I want to believe in was on full display, while the papers are full of stories about the president refusing to cooperate at all with a constitutional process that is at the heart of our democracy—the right to hold our leaders accountable to us.  Stories about abandoning Kurds to die, probably because  there’s something for the president to gain personally out of a conversation with a foreign leader. Stories of quid pro quo’s for venal ends on matters that affect my country’s safety and standing in the world. Yesterday  was a time for tears. Every day is a time for rage.

This afternoon I will arrive in New York Harbor.  I am honored to be asked by the captain to be on the bridge to provide commentary as we sail in, so I will have a view of the Statue of Liberty few civilians get to see.  If Boston was emotionally hard, I suspect this will be harder. I think of the children with their shiny blankets on floors in detention camps. I think of exhausted people hoping only that their fears for their lives will warrant asylum in an America whose president, when told they couldn’t simply be shot down if they tried to cross illegally, wondered aloud if perhaps non-fatal bullets in the legs might be a sufficient deterrent.

One time years ago, when I was walking in Battery Park and feeling the  beautiful benediction  of the statue in the harbor,  I felt such a rush of emotion that I called the people I love most, just to share being there with them.  It felt like such a blessing that day to be right where I was, part of this country. The loss cannot be measured, but perhaps our wholeness can be restored  I don’t know. I don’t see how.

I picture the beautiful woman in New York Harbor, saying the America she represents is a land of tired and poor who came and made good.  Perhaps the statue we now deserve would not be raising a torch but aiming a gun down the Narrows, or pointing to a sign quoting the president, “Sorry, We’re Full.” Or perhaps she would have uprooted these gigantic feet and gone to stand in reproach on our southern border. I am certain at the very least her face would be stained with tears. I suspect mine will be too when I greet her..  

I am listening to a novel in which the narrator, a mother of preteens, is at a a party where, for the first time in years, she gets stoned.  She tunes in to the conversation the other stoned mothers are having around her, and is bewildered that the conversation doesn’t seem to have changed.  They are still talking about their children, and their teachers, and the ups and downs of their lessons, sports, and other activities. She is feeling disaffected  and dissatisfied with her life, and wonders, “where is the yearning?” 

No one ever talks about that.  It’s as if we all hide behind superficial conversation and call that friendship, when in fact we almost never reveal what we really think, the things that are too scary to talk about, the things that, once spoken of, would require actions we don’t want to admit we need to take.

Looking back on my own life, I see now that when my toxic first marriage was taking such a toll on me that there were times I though just driving my car at high speed off the road would solve my problems, I never said one word to women I considered my best friends. I look back on those times and I don’t even recognize the person I was, and the cowardice of my lack of ability to be honest with myself, or to hint of my reality to others.

We are so good at hiding. If we should start an sentence with anything as daring as “I yearn for…,” would it dissolve into something hip, or shallow, or silly, like wanting a fabulous massage, or our all-time favorite cocktail or glass of wine? No wonder we feel adrift. We don’t even have the words for what we want, because we have dumbed down our vocabulary for feelings, or maybe we never really had more than a few words to speak for the gamut of our emotions to begin with.

Since this is my blog, I wish I could say, “Look at me!  See how I have worked through this and I have this sage advice to offer.”  Well, I don’t.  I think only that I need to be able to complete a sentence that starts with “I yearn for,” and once I can complete it privately,  to say it out loud to others and, in doing that, make a commitment to turning it into reality, whatever I am brave enough to determine  that is.

This is a form of living traveling too.

This morning we anchored in the bay of St. Pierre, part of an overseas collective of France, tucked into the southern tip of Newfoundland. I had this gorgeous thought that I would go ashore early and find a cafe where I could indulge in what, bar none, is my favorite breakfast.  Honestly, a piece of fresh and perfect baguette, slathered with good French butter and equally awesome jam, cannot be surpassed in this world. Better even than the best croissants, although they are close behind in second place, and can also be enough to make me swoon straight out of my chair.

St. Pierre is truly part of France in its orientation, and I just assumed this goal could be easily achieved.  Indeed, I saw the typical scene of shoppers coming out of the boulangeries carrying one, two, or sometimes a dozen baguettes, but they were taking them either home, or to shuttered-up restaurants in preparation for lunch. The bakeries didn’t have any tables, so fulfilling my fantasy right on the spot was out.

I wandered all around the little town and didn’t find a single place open for breakfast.  Poor me, or should I say “pauvre, petite moi,” in a bid for Gallic sympathy.  I was thinking of heading back to the ship for a baguette breakfast that would be almost as good,  when I saw one ice cream shop open that was advertising coffee and crepes.

Well, okay, I told myself. It’s not my dream meal, but really, crepes are pretty authentic too.  So that’s what I had.

 

It wasn’t the world’s best crepe, or more than just a good cafe au lait, but it was a moment to savor nonetheless. As Plan Bs go, this one was just fine. I’ll save perfection for another day.