April 20, 2012

Hey, Look At That!

“There’s something so liberating about traveling alone.”

Yesterday, I heard this on the radio, and remembered having told it to myself many times. But it’s not really true. Yes, the voices of my everyday life simmered down and I was able to hear my own thoughts without all that outside clamor, but now that my life is much fuller than it was then, I realize how thankful I am for the noise. I say this while sitting at an outdoor cafe all by my lonesome: something I haven’t done in months. 

Men like staring. Women with children side sad looks my way. But I hear everything like I wouldn’t if I were with someone else--the clink of a fork, the generator’s hum, Oh Sherrie, our love. Hold on, hold on. I find quiet space, calm, and I remember some of the places I’ve been alone. On the beach in Roses I watched the sun smear dirty red with a single glass of Sangria. I contemplated the holding-hands couples as they strolled past me down the boardwalk, and thought, that’s not me anymore, as I acclimated to the prospect of getting a divorce. I hadn’t told my ex-husband yet. The trip was like a primer on aloneness: how to be again with only myself. 

Later in Barcelona, I searched out paella. Leaving the security of my Las Ramblas hotel room, I braved the strange crowd and street performers: a band of capoeira acrobats with drums and Edward with foil Scissor-hands. Past the flower stalls and fruit vendors, I descended the steps to the Metro. It was rush hour, and the car was full. Try as I did, I couldn’t make out my high school Spanish from Castilian. I counted the stops to the sea, where I walked from restaurant to restaurant holding up one finger and hoping someone would seat me. When a kind man finally did, I felt so grateful, I ordered enough food for four. 

But somewhere in that sense of being completely helpless, I found what I was looking for in Spain. It was in Gaudi’s fantastic space, Parc GUel, that he made from recycled tile and broken dishes, and in the house he built for his family, La Pedrera, where the empty center is tiled so that it replicates the sense of being beneath the ocean. Those spaces reminded me what work there is ahead of me, and that my creativity might outlast my momentary loneliness, my impending husband-less-ness. 

Leslie Castle was my very first trek alone. On a tour bus with strangers, I in my window seat watched the clammy bog beyond. At eighteen I was stretching my legs for my first walk-about away from my family, who had no interest in the obscure place or the hours-long, winding-roads drive. I remember glancing inside at the old wood, but spending most of my time exploring the lakeshore in awe of the strange gray structure, so different from those I’d become accustomed to seeing at home. It was cold. And I remember it less because I enjoyed it, more because I made myself do it. 

My family later visited Blarney Castle to kiss the stone. And even though my sister-in-law was drama-ing out, even though my dad had a shit fit about nothing, we all took turns. When it was mine, I lay on my back, shimmied past the ledge, the stone at my sacrum, and trusted my family to keep a firm grim on my ankles. I’m not sure about the promised gift of the gab, but I am sure that back-bend opened me up. For once I stopped being a sullen, angry eighteen year-old whose family embarrassed her to blush red. I stopped caring about what other tourists thought or the danger in dangling backwards, so high off the ground. There was bliss in being together, joy in being part of a whole. 

Almost twenty years have passed since that trip to Ireland. I have visited a multitude of places alone, and I admit it has been somewhat liberating. But in Rome, I sought out other travelers, preferring a San Franciscan’s itinerary to my own. In Florence, I followed an eye-glassed doctor to the old bridge and climbed the duomo trailing his frayed bermuda-shorts. Charles Bridge in Prague would not have been so scrutinized without an Emily from Zelienople, PA, and I may not have even visited Vienna without the girl from Louisiana.   

And my most recent trip to Disneyland with my fiance and his children, barring amnesia, will prove to be unforgettable, not just because I almost had a breakdown. The night we rode Grizzly River Run so many times we were soaked from head to toe, I recalled how having fun builds relationships. And on our last day my fiance’s son finally overcame his fear of California Screamin’, and gravity pulled our cheeks in every possible direction. I remembered how important patience is, how everyone grows at his own rate, in his own time. 

Traveling alone means I miss out on every one else’s excitement, fear, and boredom. It means being faced with only my own, which isn’t always a bad thing. But I’ve done it so often and tried so hard to convince myself that traveling alone is better, even though when I really examine my experiences, there are very few trips I’ve truly made alone.  

Of course the wrong travel companion can be even worse than being alone, and having to bend to the will of children can be extremely frustrating. But there’s something to be said for watching kids realize they aren’t the only beings in the world and remembering the transformation I made from that same, self-obsessed place. It’s humbling. And it requires grace--something I had to find for myself when my world was up-ending. Besides, there’s something extremely gratifying about pointing so that another looks, and something equally empty about not being able to.