Around the World
by
Joyce Maynard
Excerpt from the Domestic Affairs column, Travelers
Pass Through:
One
long ago summer, when Steve and I were still together, we found we had
an overabundance of home-canned tomato sauce. So we decided to throw a
spaghetti party. One couple -- friends invited to the party -- brought
along another couple who happened to be passing through our little town...
She turned out to have an accent: exotic, unplaceable. I asked where she was from and she thought for a second. "New Zealand, sort of. But nowhere anymore, really." She and Martin, a lean, dark, remote-seeming man, were on the road -- had been for over three years. They had spent last winter in Nepal, last week in London. Tomorrow they would set out for the west coast of Canada. But tonight they were in this little town of ours in New Hampshire, where spaghetti was bubbling on the stove and an applewood fire was burning.
I've never been much of a traveler myself. I spent the first eighteen years of my life in one small New Hampshire town. When -- during a brief stint in New York -- I met Steve, we thought we'd get a van and just travel around for a year or so, picking up odd jobs on the road. Our friends took us at our word and showered us with sleeping bags, outdoor cooking sets, and road atlases for wedding presents. And they kept asking (a sore point) just when it was that we were planning to leave.
Our scheduled departure date was always being put off. I would find myself poring over seed catalogues. Steve began talking about how nice it would be, after our trip was over, to build a studio here. Intellectually, we knew that this was the time in our lives to be footloose and free. But we acquired a dog. And I kept thinking about what to name a baby.
We never precisely canceled our travel plans; they just got less and less ambitious. In the end, we spent a long-delayed honeymoon weekend at a beach a hundred miles from home, remarking frequently to each other on how good it was to have a change of scenery. Then we came back to this place in New Hampshire and had Audrey. Followed four years later by her brother Charlie. And two years after that by Willy. Now here he was in my arms, resting one sauce-orange hand in a proprietary manner on my shoulder, while Steve got Martin and beer and Jo examined my flowerbeds. Our dog Ron was licking her foot. Charlie was demonstrating his breakdancing.
Jo and Martin had no children. Neither did they own pets, a garden in need of watering, a mortgage, a mailbox to which bills are delivered daily, or a pantry full of spaghetti sauce and preserves. Sitting by the fire, seeming instantly at home the way perpetual travelers often do, they told us the story of how they'd met. JO had just come from India, Martin from France, when they ran into each other in a Moroccan cafe. From there they went to Scandinavia, working on a fishing boat, and then to Poland. "Never go to Poland in January," said JO
Since then, I would say I've done my share of traveling. Sometimes I take one or more of my children with me, but most often I travel to distant countries on my own. Everywhere I go, I find stories of the people who live there that I want to share with my readers. Often, I go because of the stories that await me.
In Guatemala, Bliss by a Blue Lake — December 26, 2004 Sunday New York Times travel story about San Marcos la Laguna, GuatemalaParadise Lost? — Published in the July/August 2002 issue of Metropolitan Home magazine.
A Legacy of Love — Published in Redbook Magazine, December 2000. In three parts.
"I Know My Parents Will Find Me." — In three parts. Originally published in Redbook Magazine, 1999.
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