Travel: I Kvetch Leading Up To Departure Then Gush Upon My Return

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“You always do this,” my husband said. “Fret about having to go somewhere, then come home and gush about it. You always have a great time.”

He was right.

Like many of us, I’ve become a homebody since Covid. I used to be an adventurer, a wanderer, a lover of seeing the world. I adored the idea of going somewhere to explore and observe. Even at home, when I wasn’t doing a run on the wooded trails — which is an adventure every time — I’d put a ten-dollar bill in my pocket and run around town, stopping to buy water and snacks because it felt like an old-fashioned, unplugged, self-supported adventure.

Flash forward to today. Me no want to venture into front yard. Me like cozy cave.

I don’t travel too much these days, but when I do it’s either a flight within the US or a 4–8 hour drive from home. To be fair, road trips can be energy-sapping, and this is my primary kvetch. I live in a metropolitan area in the eastern US and drive up and down that coastal line, which means in and out of metro areas — which means traffic. Which means kvetch.

However, once I get situated in my car — snacks and drinks at hand, music on the radio — I’m fine. If traffic bunches up like the sad, horrendous knot it can become on I-95, then I click straight to a pop or rock radio station and start seat-dancing like you never knew was possible. My fingers, arms, shoulders, torso — they groove as if that word was reinvented.

Then, ta-da! The kvetch turns into a gush. I’m having fun, smiling, happy, and thinking this road trip is fantastic.

Sometimes, it doesn’t take much in life, does it?

I’m on a road trip as I write this, on the last leg of my journey before I set out for home. True to form, I kvetched for weeks to my husband about this trip. He has a way of shutting that down, but it doesn’t prevent me from trying. You never know when you’re going to catch him in a weak moment and have the great fortune to go on and on about what a complicated process it is to pack so many Clif Bars for emergency starvation, and the arduousness of such a plan, and the flavors, and whether you found some on sale at Walmart— bless their discount hearts — and how you’ll separate the bars into Ziploc baggies, and which will go where, and— 

“Enough!!” he will say.

And then you will know it is enough, that you were kvetching again, and you’ll slink back to your packing and mutter under your breath that this trip is going to be the pits. Too much traffic, too much social interaction, too much effort, no sleep, dietary drudgery, and having to keep track of every coffee source from A to B and back again.

Me. Like. Cave.

Except, as soon as I drove away from my house last week, the magic began. As it turned out, this trip was extra magical, and it’ll take me a while to process. Some of the magic stood out as it was happening and I think this is the Universe’s way of trying to get it into my head, Steph, a cave is nice, but the wider world, with its people and places — that’s where the magic happens.

This trip had me driving 7+ hours to upstate NY to meet some writing friends for a small gathering because a fellow writer was flying in from England with his wife to meet us in person for the first time. I felt it was the responsible thing to do to go up there and meet him since he was coming so far. This is true, but what’s also true is how special a visit this turned out to be.

I love to meet people from other places, even if England is like the US in many basic cultural ways. This writer friend was funnier and kinder in person than I realized from his presence on Zoom. He was a clever storyteller. He was fun to be around and interact with. He taught us about trees! And his wife was such an interesting person. I got to sit with her and hear about the fellowship she was awarded to extract cultural evidence from an archive in Texas in November. I could have asked her questions about archival research forever. I could have watched how much the two of them love and respect each other for even longer.

I’ll never have an opportunity like that in my cave.

As a group, we attended two events — a Sheep and Wool Festival, and a historic estate that was the birthplace of the underpinnings for the United Nations. Talk about magical.

A Sheep and Wool Festival is not someplace you want to go if you’re trying not to buy any more yarn ever again in your life forever, no way, no how, oh god, please oh please don’t do it. But you go anyway because, come to discover, back home your cave can hold an unusual amount of yarn.

I was well-behaved. I bought very little and took in the sights as you will on an adventure. The variety of attendees was captivating. I saw a nearly new baby, an old man hardly able to move, and everyone in between. The flood of hand-knitted garments on the bodies of knitters was amazing. My eyes popped out every half hour. Then, my friend and I chatted with Leaf, a twelve-year-old who sat on a folding chair in a sheep stall with his sheep. He’d raised her ever since her mom died when she was two days old. I asked him all the questions and he answered like someone twice his age.

None of this has ever happened in my cave.

Finally, on the last night, in the Airbnb I was staying at, I got the idea to tell Rosa how much I admired her beautiful heart. Rosa is a woman from Peru who’s part of a program where you can travel the world and stay in lodging for free in exchange for labor — typically housekeeping duties. Rosa is one of the sweetest, most dutiful people I’ve met. Everyone I spoke with thought so, too. I thought she should know this, because why not? This is what makes the world go around — and that’s evidence-based.

I speak very little Spanish, so I grabbed my phone and walked over to Rosa. I typed into an online translator, Rosa, I wanted you to know that you are one of the kindest and sweetest people I have ever met. I read the text in Spanish to her.

Then something happened that will never happen in my cave. Rosa, who I barely knew, broke down sobbing. I was stunned. I started to cry, too. We hugged each other and kept crying. She broke away from our embrace and tapped a sentence into her phone. Stephanie, you don’t know how much that means to me. You have a huge heart. Then we cried some more.

I will never forget that moment.

If I want to experience these precious exchanges, meet new people, learn about Leaf’s sheep, watch a loving couple interact, or dance in my car in traffic — I’ll have to leave my cave on occasion. I think I’m starting to understand this. Acknowledging all the good that comes from venturing out might further solidify this. Even if I like the coziness of my cave, I can also look forward to venturing out instead of kvetching about it. I can start to become excited again.

This would be a good thing because I can’t tell you how many Clif Bars I still have in boxes waiting to go with me on my next adventure.

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Have a nice week, friends.