Kathleen McCall:
Occasional�� Muse�

2002-07-25 - 7:00 p.m.

Wanderlust

I got a Hotmail spam with the subject: "Request Your Itinerary Confirmation." Yes! I can confirm right now! I'm going to start out here, and then I'm leaving to fly...right here, and after that I plan to spend some time visiting....right here, before finally arriving right back...you guessed it, here. Yeah, not goin too far.

Oh, I gots a bad case of itchy feet these days, I do.

Neighbor is picking up her cousin late tonight, in from the East Coast. "She won't have baggage," Lena says. "She always just travels with a carry-on." I wipe the drool from my chin.

Best friend has gone rafting. Rafting! I done that. I remember turning a half-day canoe trip down the river into a marathon wine-soaked hysterically fun portage, too. I remember motels so dingy you HAD to laugh and sleep on top of the sheets, and discovering tiny ethnic restaurants and junk shops where the proprietors would swap you life stories if you were friendly enough.

Where's my damn microbus with the Indian print curtains? Oh, that's right, someone else is using it right now. It won't be mine for a while yet - I get that all mixed up. This is the part where I stay put and raise kids and teach school, yeah, that's it. I'm back on track now. Whew.

I love being on the move. Love the exciting hopeful smell of jet fuel, or even the grubby hopeful smell of Greyhound exhaust. Love the way an open empty suitcase looks on my bed.

I take trips in my head, I drive the bus. We visit farflung old friends, and stay in campsites, evenings spent in folding chairs at a campfire with marvelous new acquaintances. We swim in warm rivers, and have nowhere we need to be.

Youngest calls road trips "eventures." She used to love an eventure, stuffed in the back seat of the car with her feet on the cooler, headed somewhere different. Now I think the girls are outgrowing eventures, wanting to be sure that the end of the journey has roller coasters or they aren't so interested. Feeding dimes into campground showers might no longer thrill them. I'd like to get in a few more good road trips before they have no interest at all, and before they finally come back to loving them - but want to drive themselves, and don't invite me.

Sometimes, though, there are no children in the trips I take in my head. There's music and photography and coffee made on Coleman stoves and decisions to spring for a night at a cheap motel, but no children. When we've been together without a break for weeks and weeks, I can imagine being without them. Guilty pleasure.

I wish I had the measurements for the curtains for my bus - wish I knew who has it now so I could call and get them. I'd like to begin patching together those curtains, sewing with my hands, traveling in my head.

�

previous - next

�