ten thousand stars

Meandering Through Massachusetts (With Side-Trips)

May 30th, 2010 :: Traveling Days

Meander is one of my favorite words in the English language. We meandered along the path. Meandering down the road.... The word carries with it implications of a slower, more leisurely, more thoughtful life than my current one, but one that I long for. I want time to meander and wander aimlessly. I want time to linger and daydream.

We had designed this vacation to be bookended by time in Boston, with one free, no-structure or schedule, week in between. This, of course, is a page taken straight out of Matt's self-titled "Journey of Discovery" last May, but an idea he wanted to repeat with "The Blonde" of his previous narrative. After our tour of the Beacon Hill gardens, we pick up a rental car and head out of Boston. (Where should we go: North, South, West? More importantly: Where to have lunch? Ah, on such simple choices the next week would unwind.) Zipping north towards a late lunch of lobsters in Rockport, I decide that the trip needs a name. "This will not be a repeat of the 'Journey of Discovery,'" I announce definitively. "Nor will it be a 'road trip' of any kind. We aren't in a frat house, after all. What we are doing is 'meandering'. We are, in fact, 'meandering' through Massachusetts." And so, with that, the trip was christened.

Rockport holds a special place in our memories, because when we lived here, it was our very first adventure outside of Boston. We moved during the Verizon phone strike of 2000, which is unmemorable if you had a working phone, but since we didn't, and didn't have cell phones either (Imagine!), this was a serious situation. We moved into our tiny apartment in Kenmore Square (writing this, I almost typed "Fenway Park" instead of "Kenmore Square", which is what it felt like when the Red Sox were playing--that we were actually living in the ball park itself.), and spent the first few weeks trying to find work and working payphones on which to call our families and assure them that during this grand experiment in dropping out of responsible adulthood, we were still safe and sound. But about a month after settling in, we had several part-time jobs and a working phone, and it was time to have an adventure.

We boarded the train north early one Saturday morning and about an hour later got off in Rockport. We spent the day roaming the little shops and eating lobsters dipped in melted butter. Everything about this experience was thrilling to a couple of kids from Kansas; that we could get on a train and in a mere hour be somewhere interesting blew our minds. There was nowhere interesting to end up an hour in any direction from Parsons, Kansas, where I spent my junior high years. Our Rockport adventure was an early indicator that living in New England would be full of wonderful surprises.

Rockport, ten years later, is delightfully the same. The lobsters are as good as ever. The boats are still busy in the water off the coast. I sit on the end of the pier and listen to the waves crash against the rocks. I want to bottle the sound of the ocean and take it home with me.

After a couple hours, we get back in the car and land in Portsmouth, New Hampshire for the night. Portsmouth, we decide, would give us options when we wake up the next morning. We could head further into New Hampshire or follow the coast up through Maine, or even turn around and be back in Massachusetts in no time at all. Officially, Meandering Through Massachusetts (With Side-trips) begins.

And so, as unstructured and as indecisive as that, the next week unrolls. We wander through New Hampshire for a day and a half, drive through Franconia, stroll through Dartmouth College in Hanover. We stumble upon the famous Mt. Washington Hotel, and spend twenty lovely minutes hanging out in rocking chairs on the porch that circles the back of the huge hotel, taking in the view.

We end up in the Woodstock, Vermont area for a day. We have a drink in the Woodstock Inn....

One afternoon, I spend a perfect hour lying on a park bench in the park reading a book...

After three days, weary already of the packing up every morning and ending up somewhere new every night, we decide to find a place to stay put for a few days. The temperature is climbing into the 90s, and the humidity levels are unbearable. We are, after all, desert rats these days. Slowing down our pace to a crawl sounds just about right in this heat. We head into New York, and find ourselves in Saratoga Springs for 36 hours: two nights in a row in the same wonderfully air-conditioned hotel room. I do laundry. Matt sits for hours in a coffeehouse and reads. I wander through the park and neighborhoods, trying not to stare too noticeably into the houses and gardens of these spectacular Victorian homes. We discover a fantastic restaurant, Wheatfield's, which was so good we ate there twice. We rent bicycles and ride out past the horse tracks. We pedal out to Yaddo, the artist colony on the edge of town and tour through the gardens. On this hot afternoon, we are the only ones there, the place not yet opened up for the season. I begin to strategize about how we could land a residency.

Side-trips completed, we direct our GPS, "Stella", back into Massachusetts. (I had never travelled with a GPS, but became strangely fond of "Stella". Here was another woman's voice nagging my husband so I didn't have to.) We have a lunch date with Alice Parker, who has, over the years, become a friend and important mentor in our lives. Alice lives on a farm in the northern Berkshires. We drink iced tea and sit in her spacious studio. "Someday, you'll have a studio like this," my sweet husband whispers to me. Alice's father bought this farm before he was married. He would take the ladies he courted out to see it. Alice's mother was the first person who responded positively. When Alice was 10, her parents built her a cabin all of her own, down by the creek. Imagining Alice as a child making her way down to her cabin--in the dark, (and snow!) --to sleep, I am struck: these were no helicopter parents.

We have lunch in the local inn, talking pedagogy and music. An hour with Alice is like getting an injection of inspiration. After lunch, we get back into the car and direct Stella to Stockbridge, home of our dear friends, Max and Jean. Jean was my pedagogy teacher at New England Conservatory. She and Max are part of the "Thanksgiving" group that gathers in Albuquerque every few years, so we have managed to stay in touch. They have been encouraging us for years to come visit, "Come. We have lots of room. Come and stay with us." Finally, we are.

They live on the top of a very steep driveway in a heaven of a house nestled in the woods. At night, the window over our heads pours in cool night air. This is good, because the daytime temperatures are stifling. Jean and I have a project, she is sorting through her library, determined that a good portion of it will be shipped down to my colorful New Mexico studio. I am honored to be on the receiving end, not only of her books and music, but her wisdom and stories for 24 hours. She and Max spent 30+ years in Boston, and then another 15 in Princeton. They know everyone, and everyone, it seems, lives "just down the road." George Shearing is a friend of theirs; they used to do sing-alongs with him at the piano. For a brief day and a half, we stay. Matt hardly leaves a big overstuffed chair in the corner of the den. Jean and I sort music and then take a field trip to Kripalu, the famous yoga center in the Berkshires. I sneak in a hot, steamy yoga class with at least 50 other sweating bodies. It is hot, not because it is Bikram yoga, but because the temperature outside feel like mid-July. Max makes strong gin and tonics both evenings and we sit out on the screened-in porch and talk. And talk. And talk.....There is no end to the things that need to be talked about with these thoughtful people. Too soon, we are standing in line at the post office, shipping a heavy box of music home, and steering the car back on the Mass Pike towards Boston. Our meandering is nearly done.

We have two more days in Boston. Time enough for another bowl of chowder at Legal Seafoods. Time to walk along the harbor to the new contemporary art museum. (Fantastic views. Terrible collection.) Time to spend hours in the Harvard Book Store, and to visit the Fogg Museum and the Glass Flowers housed in the Harvard Natural History Museum. Time for long walks down Commonwealth Avenue and through the Public Garden and Common. Time for a bowl of pho and a dinner in the North End. Time for one last nostalgic look at this timeless city.

It looks, painfully and comfortingly, exactly the same as in my memories. I look at the view over the Charles as the Red line pops up out of the tunnel between Kendall and Charles street stations and think, this scene is the same one that has been imprinted on my mind all this time. It is reassuring to know that it hasn't changed, that it will be here waiting for the next visit. "Next time we shouldn't wait so long," Matt tells me. I smile, and start thinking longingly toward home. Home: our little cottage in the desert, my piano, my work, our cats, the garden. Home.

Italian Travel Notes

August 30th, 2009 :: Traveling Days

Some of you might be curious about the timing of our trip to Italy.

I mean, who goes to Italy in August? Don't they know, (I can hear the whispering) that Italy is unbearably hot and crowded in August?

Of course we knew. But when the travel gods offer you a trip you don't argue about the time frame; you simply say, Grazie. Besides, this is Italy we are talking about here. Italy.

Rome was 100 degrees every day we were there. (It sounds less hot if you translate it to Celsius.) We took a tour of St Peter's crypt. It was fascinating seeing thousands of years of history piled up under that formidable basilica. It was also 97% humidity down there, and, for heaven's sake, we were basically in a tomb. Let's just say the air in New Mexico never sounded so good.

We bought tickets to the Vatican Museum. As an art buff, I usually can't get enough of art museums. Italy promised to be a binge of great art viewing. I had been looking forward to this for months.

The lobby of the Vatican Museum was delightfully cool after the long walk in the sun around the walls of Vatican City. There was little to no line. I could almost taste how much fun this was going to be.

Armed with Rick Steves guide to the museum, we enter the first room. Rick tells us that the Vatican Museum is a one-way road ending with the Sistine Chapel. You don't have to make decisions about where to go, you simply have to follow naturally from one room to the next.

The first room has probably 200 people. I don't know if there was any art because I couldn't get close enough to see it. The air begins to feel less than great.

The next few rooms grow progressively more crowded, and the heat increases. Clearly, they only air-condition the entrance to the museum. I have yet to actually glimpse any art, because the crowds are starting to be shoulder to shoulder.

Everywhere there are signs pointing you to the Sistine Chapel. Rick Steves is right -- we aren't going to get lost -- but after about 15 minutes, we realize these signs are taunting us, because we have a long, LONG trek to the end. There is no turning around. I am beginning to grow faint from the heat and lack of fresh air.

After an hour of steady trudging, pushing our way through the mobs, we enter the Sistine Chapel. There must be 1000 other people in there. I take one glance up at this ceiling I have been reading about for a decade and run out of the room. I can't really say that I have seen the Sistine Chapel, only that I have run through the Sistine Chapel.

This proved to be the only art museum in Rome we attempted. Some day we will go back to Rome (preferably in January) and see:

the Spanish Steps
the Trevi Fountain

the Colosseum

the Forum

the many art museums

the Sistine Chapel

....but this trip, we had no choice but to seek solace in long siestas; leisurely, wonderful 3-hour dinners; and lots of gelato. After all, When in Rome....

We spent a week on the Adriatic Sea in a hotel on the beach with at least a million Italian tourists. Beach umbrellas were lined up in the sand like soldiers. You have to reserve one of these umbrellas in advance if you want to sit and read a novel while burying your feet in the white silk-like sand; otherwise some angry Italian will come and scream at you and wave their hands dramatically.

While on the coast, Matt led choir rehearsals, I played choir rehearsals on the worst keyboard imaginable (It didn't even deserve the term "electronic piano." It was like playing a kazoo.). There was an inspiring performance of Beethoven's 9th Symphony in a little coastal town called Vasto, with the American choir, a choir from Italy and an orchestra from Romania, which was a musical Olympic moment if ever there was one.

It was the evening of the Beethoven performance that Matt had what may yet prove to be the highlight of his career. During the solo bows, he is brought out to take a bow as the chorusmaster. Leaving the church, he is enthusiastically embraced by a random Italian woman who shouted "Maestro!" and kissed him on both cheeks. Then she dragged him over and placed him between her two parents (105 years old, about three feet tall, no teeth), and took his picture. His moments of fame and glory may all be downhill from here.

We ate four days in a row at a fabulous restaurant in Ortona called La Vecchia Lanterna. The first day we ordered bruschetta. When the grilled bread arrived, topped with perfectly oiled and seasoned slices of tomatoes, it was so good that it made us weep. One night we ordered lentils-- lentils I tell you-- that were life-changing. These Italians have a cooking gene that we simply don't have. The last day, Matt tried to tell the owner, who spoke no English, that we were leaving to "go back to America." The man became very animated, shook our hands, and from behind the bar brought out a little ceramic cup with the name of the restaurant on it and presented it to us. I will grow cactus in it and long for that bruschetta.

As lame Americans with barely one language at our disposal, we had numerous humorous incidents trying to communicate: One night we stopped in a cafe for a nightcap. Matt ordered "Limoncello" (pointing at me), "Amaretto" (pointing at himself), and, having seen beautiful looking cantaloupe being consumed for dessert all around us, "melone." The waiter was understandably confused by this combination of items, so Matt repeated it, this time making a round globe-like gesture for the melon. (Surely the international symbol for cantaloupe.). The waiter continued to look confused. After a while he brought out a lemoncello for me (Go Matt!) and something mysterious for my dear husband, which we can only speculate was Amaretto mixed with melon liqueur. Matt found it absolutely undrinkable. Some time later, a cantaloupe appeared on the table. It was delicious.

Another time we were having an argument about whether or not everything would close during siesta in the afternoon. I said yes. Matt thought not. We were planning a picnic on the beach that evening and wanted to get some food at the market, but Matt didn't want to carry it around. "We'll get it after lunch," he argued. "It'll be closed," I replied. "I'll just ask," he said impatiently. There was no way this exchange was going to go well.

First he accidentally said the name for church (chiesa) instead of closed (chiuso) leading the puzzled proprietor to start naming big churches in his little town. Then he said, "No chiesa. Chiuso. Are you chiuso?" Which puzzled him more, as clearly Matt now wants a closed church. Then he mimed falling asleep (there was lots of miming on this trip, making us in good shape for our next game of charades), which lost the man completely. What the hell? He must have thought. This crazy American wants a closed church for sleeping. We didn't get our question answered, but I won the argument. Everything in Ortona closes for the siesta.

We had four fabulous days in Florence, our time there book-ended by drinks we had in a rooftop bar we stumbled upon the first night. From our perch in the sky, we could almost touch the Duomo.

Like all of Italy, Florence was overrun by tourists, but by this point in the trip we had starting adapting our expectations and had grown more tolerant of the heat. We took an interesting walking tour one morning, and stumbled upon a parade, which seemed to have something to do with different sections of the city making their annual allegiance to city hall.

We didn't see David, only the copy in the Piazza della Signoria.

We attended Mass in the Duomo. Matt, being a former Catholic, could at least follow the gist of the service. I, raised Methodist, couldn't and so concentrated on trying to keep my shoulders covered with my gauzy shawl, and tried to imagine what the tiny charming old priest might have been saying. The next day we ran into the priest in the street. He greeted us with a huge smile, clearly recognizing us from the previous day, which was a sweet small-town kind of moment in a foreign country.

We continued our pattern of eating copious amounts of gelato and nearly wore out our shoes walking the cobbled streets and alleys of the beautiful city.

Our Italian holiday ended with a journey of at least a dozen legs:

a walk with our luggage to the train station in Florence
train to Rome

two buses to our hotel

night in Rome

taxi to the train station

train to the airport

countless shuttles to various terminals

delayed plane from Rome to Atlanta

missed connection to Albuquerque

later flight to Albuquerque

car ride home.

From the first step to the last--nearly 48 hours. From the taxi ride in Rome to walking into our door back in Albuquerque---a grueling 24-hours, sans sleep.

This holiday required as much internal shifting as actual physical traveling. Faced with the Disneyland-like crowds and the unmanageable heat, we quickly learned to stop expecting to see or do much and started learning simply to be in a wonderful place. In many respects, this was both disappointing and enlightening all at once. August will never be my preferred travel month, but I learned that I can do it and keep my mostly good humor intact. This is no small lesson, and worthy, perhaps of all the sweat, mobs, and gelato.

Connections

April 19th, 2008 :: Traveling Days

Last week I was in Denver for the MTNA convention. This isn't something I do every year, but certainly every few, and with the convention relatively close this seemed like a good time to attend. Matt and I flew up a few days early; he was in need of a getaway after the pressures of Holy Week and Easter. As someone who works from home, I'm always in need of an escape. For two days, we ate our way through downtown Denver. We started our culinary adventures with lunch at The Cheesecake Factory, which, admittedly, is embarrassing to confess. But after spending several wonderful hours at the Denver Art Museum taking in an Impressionist exhibit in its impressive new building, I was ready for something good and familiar. Besides, I have eaten amazing salads at Cheesecake Factory in the past, and Albuquerque doesn't have one. Even though it was lunch, we must have waited nearly a half-hour for a table, and then the hostess marched us to our seats spouting the exact same pleasantries I had overheard her tell every other person. Our food was good, but not spectacular, and the waitress had the identical habit as the hostess of saying word for word the same thing to every table she served. I became annoyed quickly, and commented about the lack of personality of the whole scene to Matt. He replied, "In their defense, they do have the word 'factory' in their name."

Shaking off the whole anonymous lunch experience, that first night we ate dinner at Strings, a restaurant we had visited on our honeymoon some 14 years ago. After a wonderful meal and a delicious bottle of wine, the waiting brought us free dessert, thinking that we were celebrating an anniversary. We were, of sorts, not having set foot in Denver since that night many years ago. The next day we had an amazing lunch at a Mexican place called Tamayo. This meal was a revelation to us, accustomed as we are to all New Mexican food being "smothered." (It is said that this is the most common verb on menus in this state: "smothered in chile," "smothered in cheese," and so on.) This Mexican meal was not smothered; in fact the individual ingredients popped out distinctly. I had beer-battered fish tacos with pico and cabbage that danced in my mouth. Delicious. Another night we ate dinner at a small Italian cafe, Osteria Marco, noteworthy for its lack of tourists. The menu was simple and casual, but they prepared their own meats and made their own cheese. In fact, there was a "cheese woman." What is not to like about this? Still another lunch we walked over to Steuben's Fine Foods, because we had read about their lobster rolls. Lobster rolls were not something we were anticipating eating in land-locked Denver, but the owner of this diner had an uncle who owned a supper club in Boston in the 1950s, and this place was an homage to him--complete with the best lobster roll and fries I have ever eaten. That statement includes all the lobster rolls I have had in New England. Who would have thought?

After two days of eating, Matt went home and my friend Anne joined me for the convention. Some years the convention gets me all fired up and sends me home with dozens of ideas to try immediately. This was not one of those conventions, but I made some good connections, saw some old friends, attended a meeting I needed be at. Traveling back home, I was struck how very few new (or even old) tangible ideas I had to take back to my teaching, and the next day I had to hit the ground running--my first lesson showing up at 8am. But in spite of that, I had a fantastic teaching week; the kids were well prepared, I was energetic and on fire, even considering the extra long week. It reminded me that many times I don't need a convention to get re-inspired, I just need a break.

On the heels of all this, my best friend from Boston moved to Albuquerque, renting a house just around the corner. It feels like family to have Lora here, for there are very few people in the world I could rely on as easily and as simply as Lora. In a thousand and one ways, it will be wonderful to have her around the corner, and hopefully comforting to her to have me two blocks away. But it isn't without its potential challenges, for although I have the best friends one could have, most live far away. This is new territory to have a best friend in the same town, let alone in the same 'hood. I'm thrilled, but as Matt says, I do like my boundaries. Sometimes he is suspicious I would do well with him being long-distance too. What will it be like to have a friend dropping in on a random weeknight, or phoning for a cup of sugar? I hope we fall into the easy habit of checking in to see what the other needs when we head out to the store, or bringing back gelato to the other when one of us visits the Italian ice cream shop up the street. I think we Americans are, in large, too isolated from one another, that we are out of the habit of thinking about helping each other as a matter of routine. Just last week, my friend Anne confessed that she had had a near breakdown about getting everything done before guests arrived. "Why didn't you call me and ask me to help clean your house for an hour?" I asked her. "You know I would have been glad to help." It was clear it had never occurred to her that this was an option, but if the roles were reversed, she would have been at my house sponge in hand in a heartbeat. In her defense, I'm not sure I would have been quick to ask for her help either, no matter how stressed out I might be. I'd like to change that, however, and learn to take and receive other's kindnesses better. If nothing else, I'd just like to connect more with my circle of friends and loved ones. Having Lora down the street is a great way to start.

In dozens of ways, we are back at it: working at living a normal life after the pressures of the Easter season, after the mid-semester travels and convention. Just ahead lie spring recitals and contests, final performance classes and workshops. One high school student asked me if we had done anything at the convention to "revolutionize piano." When I admitted that we had not, he exclaimed, "I know what you could do! You could add an extra key. That'd change everything!"

At the moment I am OK with not changing everything, enjoying an unexpected respite of normal busy days, instead of extraordinary overflowing ones. Spring is in full bloom. The wisteria hanging off every trellis in town; the tulips and irises blooming their hearts out. Even though this is the desert, we are experiencing a rare fiesta of color, like the technicolor of Oz after the black and white of Dorothy's Kansas home. Tomorrow friends are coming over for Sunday brunch with "bubbles" as my friend Jerome says. Tonight Matt has promised me cocktails in the courtyard. Lora just called saying she has finished at the gym and she'd stop by as soon as she went to Walgreens. As I write this an ice cream truck is going down the street playing "Greensleeves," an odd departure from the overly saccharined music it usually gives us. Aside from this, no one is revolutionizing much of anything around here, and on this lazy Saturday afternoon, that seems suddenly, completely, right.

Thanksgiving Travels

November 30th, 2007 :: Traveling Days

It’s just that Matt and I have different ideas about Thanksgiving. It might be the one time of the year where I go all out for the traditional: the turkey, the firelight, the stuffing and too much to eat and four whole days where I can catch up on sleep and reading and no! I can’t even imagine hitting the stores at 4am on Black Friday. I love Thanksgiving.

In any way to imply that Matt does not love a traditional Thanksgiving would be to paint an unfair picture. He is all for turkey. But he sees four days as--whoopee! Let’s take a vacation. Somewhere. Anywhere. How ‘bout Mexico?

I was not having it. Mexico does not celebrate Thanksgiving, I pointed out rather haughtily. Even though we actually had five days this year, not just four, due to some fluke of the Albuquerque Public Schools calendar, giving us a potential Tuesday through Saturday vacation week (we always have to be back for Sunday morning. Matt, church job, you know.), I was lukewarm at best about the idea of going anywhere. I like Thanksgiving at home or with family, even though one of the best Thanksgivings ever happened on a trip by ourselves to New Hampshire some years ago. Instead of squashing his enthusiasm entirely, I compromised: if he could find a trip that involved a not too stressful traveling schedule and keep it in the US, I would consider it.

Of course, within hours, he had two tickets to San Francisco—one of them even a free Southwest ticket, which only maximized his advantage. His plan meant leaving Tuesday morning at 7:30am and arriving in San Francisco by 9am. Then after five full days, leaving San Francisco on Saturday night at 7:30pm, arriving back in New Mexico at 10:30pm. Of course, I couldn’t say no. He was so excited, and in his defense every other time we had tried to get to San Francisco (long stories, another time), we had ended up in Canada. This time it truly looked like it was meant to be.

So what I did was just not think much about it. Although we had our tickets since September, I forgot to tell my mom until the week before. I made no plans, read no travel books, gave it no thought whatsoever. Matt mentioned at one point that he had booked us a great hotel by Priceline in downtown San Francisco. I think I grunted in reply. He asked if I had been reading any of the California books he had been getting from the library and if I had any ideas about what I might want to do. I said no. It’s really not that I was indifferent—just busy and preoccupied, first with a string of performances, then St. Cecelia (“I love how St. Cecelia is now a day in your house,” one friend remarked. “You know you made this up, don’t you?”). And if nothing else is going on, life in general is enough to keep me humming on a daily basis. Even so, with all my excuses, I should give the man a prize for effort; it’s not easy being married to me. Finally, last Tuesday morning, we got on a plane headed west.

Luckily, for the most part, we were pretty much on the same page about this trip. Both of us wanted to walk a lot exploring (perfect in a city like San Francisco if it weren’t for the hills!), eat a lot of good food, and then also take it easy: take naps in the afternoon, read, enjoy cable TV, which we don’t have at home. So immediately our days settled into a familiar rhythm of small adventures and lazy hours of reading, writing and napping, interspersed with regular great meals. Mary, Matt’s sister, sent us repeated text messages: “OK, what are you eating now?” Oysters, we responded one evening. And champagne. 18 small pancakes from Sears Fine Food, we told her another time. With loganberries. What are loganberries anyway? We rode cable cars and trolley cars, sat in Starbucks near the Embarcadero and Peet’s Coffee near the Museum of Modern Art. After much walking around and heated discussion, we found a wonderful French restaurant near Union Square where we had our first dinner that Tuesday night, and then breakfast on subsequent mornings: a hazelnut café latte, a croissant, and a blank book to write in and it’s a perfect morning.

We heard Garrick Ohlsson play Barber’s Piano Concerto with the SF Symphony, Leonard Slakin conducting. And according to Matt, sitting in the third row applauding wildly was Francis Ford Coppola. I wouldn’t know. Thanksgiving day we took the trolley car out the Ocean Beach (could they not come up with a better name?). Who would have thought we’d be staring out at the Pacific on Thanksgiving?

We had Thanksgiving dinner in one of those fancy buildings with a restaurant at the top with wrap-around views. From our table we could see pieces of the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz Prison. The buffet was amazing: a seafood table: oysters, crabs, shrimp, salmon, crab cakes. All the traditional holiday foods: turkey, stuffing, vegetables, cranberries, roast beef, ham. And a table of desserts that went on for miles. We ate for two hours and then staggered back to our hotel room and didn’t leave again the rest of the day.

We stumbled upon the big Christmas tree lighting in Union Square the day after Christmas, visited Grace Cathedral, I went to the SF MOMA and was under whelmed by the amount of experimental art. While I’m all for it, I just won’t necessarily seek out, so I like to be warned that it is what I am in for. I especially want to be warned, as a migraine sufferer who has spent years on epilepsy prevention drugs, that the fifth floor is a performance art piece that is going to involve flashing lights, wavy lines, weird sounds, resembling, I suppose, a crazy fun house, or in my opinion, the ninth circle of hell.

Our last day, after fueling up with our daily lattes and croissants at the French café, we rented a car and headed north. Across the golden gate bridge to Marin County to the Muir Woods, which I wanted to see. It was like Disneyland. There was no place to park, the highway getting down to the entrance was like a rollercoaster with its sharp curves and steep banks, and I have never seen more people. There were more people there then at the Macy’s Christmas Tree lighting the night before. I don’t have a problem with crowds, except in nature, where I like the idea of, well, nature and not thousands of people. Frustrated with the lack of parking options, we left and headed up to explore highway one—something we had long had on our life to-do list: drive the Pacific Coast Highway. Except we soon discovered that Matt will be crossing off that dream with someone other than his first wife, because I immediately got terribly sick, what with the migraine I already had and the crazy winding roads. So much for that.

We aren’t easily discouraged, however, and after backtracking we made our way to highway 101, a bustling freeway—straight and wide, yippee! —and drove up to Sonoma for lunch. After a great lunch, a little puttering around the square, we made our way to Napa along roads with views of fields of vines and changing yellow and red grape leaves. While this was not the trip for wine tasting, due to my headache, we had a lovely drive, saw some beautiful countryside, and then made our way back to the city and then home to Albuquerque.

Home: that must be one of my favorite words. But no matter how less than enthused I might be about traveling, it never fails to open up my world and perspective. I always return with new ideas about how to live and work, eat and play. I always come back recharged about infusing my life with some fresh things. This time was no different. Moving from Boston four+ years ago was the hardest move ever, certain that I was leaving behind forever a city life that fit the patterns of my soul so well. But I have carved out a life for myself here that still carries much I loved from Boston: I still mostly walk or ride my bike everywhere. For the most part, I shop and visit restaurants and coffeehouses within my neighborhood, deepening my grooves here as I encounter the same faces in the same shops day after day. To my surprise, visiting a great city like San Francisco does not make me pine for a more charged city life, but reminds me that with intention, I can build this anywhere. Boston taught me how to live this way; I have to want it bad enough to keep it. Lately, I think my dissatisfaction with traveling comes not from the hassle, or even the time away from my own cozy walls, but with the feeling that I’d rather live in many different places than travel in many different places. That to skim the surface as traveling forces us to do, is not nearly as satisfying as developing rituals and routines and patterns and shape our days and our lives, which are ultimately colored by the places we find ourselves. So while I am thankful to have a husband that forces me to go, I am equally thankful to come back, and even more thankful that he has the grace to say nearly every day as we putter around our home, “Now this is the best place to be.”

Home. Home.