You eat gelato in Rome, risotto in Milan, pizza in Naples. You're in England, slurping tea with the rest of them, downing Guinness in Ireland, and maybe sipping a champagne aperitif in France. Each country and each locality within the country offer something that we tend to associate with that place. Sheep in Scotland, koalas in Australia. On and on, the list of associations is so long! And if we travel there, we add to it our unique pleasures experienced only in that country: seeing puffins on rocks jutting out in the North Sea, riding up a Welsh mountain rail car to a windy summit, strolling among teal blue potted plants in a Moroccan garden, waking before dawn to go to the fish market in Tokyo.
You want to bring some of it home. You want the same thrill of eating what you ate there once you get back. You want to hike long hours, drink out of a mug with sheep on it, wear a French scarf -- anything that will transport you to a place far away, where for a few days you were on their soil, doing some of their things. Not that you don't like your own routines. You just want a seamless blend of what you had there and what you have here, so that it wouldn't be so compartmentalized and segregated.
Oh, I'm guilty of bringing home things as well. Rugs from Turkey, spoons from France. Even though I have long learned that if you eat a salad Nicoise in Nice, it's exquisite and if you eat it here, it's just eggs and beans and tomatoes and tuna (I like sardines instead) and a few other things if you're ambitious. Eating it here doesn't put you back in Nice. Walking on the Turkish carpet doesn't recall Istanbul much after the first few days. Now it's just a place where cats shed hairs.
What does stay with you from a trip are thoughts and memories and images, and you don't need stuff to remind you that you've been there. It's all within you and it will stay there so long as you live and breathe and think coherent thoughts. And maybe even that's not necessary. I can imagine being loopy and still having flashes of a seafront in Nice or sheep grazing on Scottish hills.
I do like the fact that for a few days after a trip, I retain determinations. After this trip, I want to bake more, occasionally spray perfume on my wrists and take longer walks every single day. There! Is that ambitious enough?
* * *
I am up before dawn. I never have jet lag on this end, I just need to be up and going at insanely early hours. Ed, too, is up early -- he has a very important Zoom meeting that starts at 6:45 and lasts six hours. So we're both moving around in the shadows of a still dark farmhouse.
And then the same old routines prevail. Morning walk to feed animals..
And prepare something to feed us (even though Ed has to stay on his work call for all of breakfast) ...
The routines are a little off because Snowdrop is out of school with some bug or other, so I'm left with a long stretch of time to do exactly what I said I'd do upon my return: I take that long walk. And it's good, and I'm sure I'll keep this going for a few days, and my wrists will be smelling especially flowery today and tomorrow, but I fully expect that by the end of the week, I'll be completely settled into the here and now. My Fitbit will have to make do with something not quite as ambitious as walks from Paris to Versailles.
* * *
In the afternoon, I drop over some stuff for Snowdrop. She's feeling well enough, but still, here I am, with a mask on my face once more. She's not sick with THE virus, but now that we have discovered masks, it makes sense to use them for things that are not Covid related. (Sparrow is at school, but Sandpiper is bouncy and happy to see everyone!)
And then I do a very circuitous return to the farmette, pausing at the Arboretum just to see if the trees are turning yet. The answer is -- not entirely. No surprise there -- it's a warm day in October! Just to give you an idea -- I'm wearing shorts.
(other Arboretum visitors...)
* * *
Toward evening, I catch up with my little grandgirl in Chicago!
And for supper I fix a salad Nicoise. For no reason except that we have many eggs and a bag of green beans and plenty of potatoes, tomatoes and olives. And a can of sardines that I'd brought back from some trip or other, probably with the hope of preserving a memory, even as over time, it has just become a can of fancy sardines, sitting on a pantry shelf, waiting to be used up for supper.
