Three days into spring break, I find myself on a windy hilltop, alone and reading poetry. At my back is the high outer wall of Rodborough Fort, a well-kept castle of indeterminate history or function, not open to the public but apparently available to lease. I text Timmy a picture of the castle and the…
Tag: Travel
Jet Lag
Monday night, 11:00 PM, and Luci has decided it’s time to be awake. Only our third night back in Germany, it promises to be just as dramatic as the first two, when our one-year-old daughter wanted to roll around our bed for a few hours in the dead middle of the night, before falling sound asleep and…
An Experienced Novice
It’s hotter in Texas than we’d like. When we unfold ourselves from inside the narrow tube of the three-hour “express” from Norfolk, Virginia to Houston, we step onto the warm runway and breathe in the foreign, humid scent of February in the Lone Star State. Three flights down, one to go. Living overseas, Timmy and I…
East
Five years ago, I left the Pacific Northwest. I was alone and excited, seeking adventure and responding to calling on this quest eight thousand miles east. In a few weeks, I’m going back, married and expecting a baby, but with the same sense of calling and adventure as I retrace my steps back to the…
Beyond the Hallways
We’re driving away from our last exploration. Switzerland is damp and cool this April day, unseasonably grey for the spring Senior Day trip to Lucerne. Upon our arrival to this touristic hamlet on the shores of Lake Lucerne, I’d sent them off with a small walking map and instructions that included “walk across the cool wooden…
Oh, The Places We’ve Been
The times we had oh, when the wind would blow with rain and snow were not all bad we put our feet just where they had, had to go never to go “Postcards From Italy,” Beirut The view from our castle tower is stunning, the lights of Saturday-night Nürnberg spread out below us in sequined splendor. We’re…
Open Letter (Of Thanks) To My Flight Home
While my fellow teachers in America sleep in and make food, we spend Thanksgiving in Germany at school, celebrating even on a school day. Some classes have snacks. Mine have a creative writing assignment, a letter of thanks to an object, abstraction or entity that represents what they’re thankful for. This year, I’m thankful to…
Airports
Starbucks vanilla lattes taste the same, everywhere and always. With one sip of sweet, hot, vaguely coffee-flavored milk, I could be fourteen and trying coffee for the first time, or twenty and drinking my first latte of my shift at 5:30 AM as the sun rises. It doesn’t matter that ten years have passed, or…
Home is Wherever I’m With You
Brother Tom nodded understandingly. “It’s the memories, the old loyalties; they are so precious,” he said. “Things that meant so much, that stay present in the wood and stone of a place. If you let go of the place and the things that belong to it, you feel afraid that you’ll lose hold of the…
The Way Home 