Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Faraway Places

I have a folder with all the clippings I save on travel ideas. I have enjoyed traveling abroad ever since that trip to England, Wales, France, and Switzerland back in the early 1980s with the All Ohio State Fair Youth Choir. By the time I was a freshman in college I had enjoyed not just one, but two, TWO choir tours to Europe—but even years before that I had dreamed of calling a travel agent and booking trips to exciting places. When I watch that scene in It’s a Wonderful Life where Jimmy Stewart is regaling Mr. Gower of the exotic climes he will visit, I guess I knew I had a kinship with George Bailey.

Then 10 years ago I began traveling with my treasured friend Anne, and the travel excitement kicked into high gear. We went on domestic trips down South or to California, or we chaperoned students to Asia and Europe, and we went with other simpatico friends on thrilling, momentous trips.

In my travel folder right now are articles extolling the beauties of Easter Island, and Greenland, Thailand’s northern capital, Mount Kilimanjaro, and the obscure Italian Bassano del Grappa. There is an article on another obscure Italian area, the “magical boot heel” as the article describes Ostuni. There are the articles on budget cruises and the article on how to rent a chateau in France on a budget.

When I went off to college my mother gave me a mini-poster from Hallmark to put somewhere in my dorm room. The sign read:
To faraway places it’s nice to roam,
but nothing in the world beats coming back home.


That is so much my mother! This is the same woman who packed away in my suitcase bound for college, unknown to me, the clipped apron strings from one of her aprons. She wanted me to feel that surge of independence, and wanted me to understand she cooperated in that liberation from childhood. In her own inimitable way, she made sure I was aware of my “roots” as well as my “wings.” Mary Martha was an original for sure.

It is interesting that for all the wanderlust my mother harbored for faraway places, she never left the shores of the USA. But she thrilled to my trips, and encouraged me to visit these faraway places, hoping that these visits would broaden my horizons and teach me skills and maturity that traveling affords. But of course as the Hallmark placard reminded me, nothing beats coming back home.

Starting tomorrow evening we have a break here at KA. The examinations marking the end of the first trimester wind up tomorrow, and in the Muslim world there is an Eid holiday. This Eid is two moons after the last Eid holiday, and this holiday serves at least two purposes. One purpose of the week-long holiday is to allow people to make arrangements for the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca if this is the year one might make that pilgrimage, one of the requirements in Islam. But for those not journeying to Saudi Arabia, families are supposed to slaughter a sheep. If you drive around Amman you see all these cute little images of lambs (with a strange smile actually) in store windows welcoming the holiday. The slaughter of the sheep is to remind the faithful of sacrifices, and specifically the sacrifice Abraham was willing to offer through his son Isaac. When the family slaughters a sheep they are also encouraged to offer half of the sheep to a needy family as well. So there is a week-long break coming up.

So earlier this fall, I got out the travel folder and looked through it to decide where I might spend this holiday. I had narrowed my choices down to four locales, three brand-new, and one an old favorite seeing an old friend. Each one had great possibilities for adventure and excitement in a faraway place. I looked at Cyprus, a 90-minute flight away to enjoy the Greek ruins and quiet Cypriot charm. (One of my dearest students here is from Cyprus.) Another choice was Tunisia. The travel article spoke so highly of the beaches and the Roman ruins and the quiet, elegance of Tunisia. Then I had been hoping to do a cruise down the Nile, culminating in the fabled Valley of the Kings. An old friend, this quirky genius named Andrew, lives in Switzerland, and last year we had made some promises of spending Thanksgiving 2009 together. Each trip sounded magnificent.

Then about a month ago I started thinking about these faraway places.

I thought about the excitement in the promise of these faraway places, but they weren’t where I wanted to be. True to that old Hallmark sign, nothing beats coming back home.

I write this blogisode on Tuesday evening in Jordan, and in about a half hour I will be going to the airport for a flight to Paris, and then a connection from Paris to Cincinnati. I have cooked up a scheme with our great friend Sylvia where I will surprise my family for Thanksgiving. I will not publish this blog post until Wednesday evening because my brother-in-law Steve is an avid reader of the blog and I want him to be surprised as well.

So Sylvia has invited my family over to her house for dinner tomorrow. Sylvia will have picked me up from the airport in the afternoon and when my family arrives, Surprise!!!

Since I plan things in my Teutonic fashion, I rarely actually surprise anyone, but this fall, as I wanly put aside the travel articles and instead looked toward the beauties of going home to Cincinnati—and yes, I will be there again just a couple weeks later for Christmas, I got so excited about the Price Hill Thanksgiving Parade. Hey—I know two of the marchers in the parade—Emma and Jack will both be in different groups marching down Glenway Avenue Thursday morning. We will end the day at Uncle Jack’s enjoying Aunt Joy’s sumptuous Thanksgiving feast. I will visit our neighborhood YMCA, I will eat ice cream at Graeter’s, have a BLT at the Imperial Diner, and then spend a few days in New York, seeing and doing familiar things.

Yes, the sights of Luxor sound spectacular—but the people I want to see and embrace are not in those distant climes and faraway places. The people I want to see are those friends and family who are the true essence of my Thanksgiving, and I want to spend my money to see them.

Faraway places are magical, yes, but right now, as I look toward the next 20 hours of traveling to faraway Ohio, nothing is gonna beat that trip back home.

1 comment:

TMM said...

There's no place like home.

TMM