40 in forty: Pack spare clothes in your carry-on

Ciao, friends! After a smooth but largely sleepless overnight flight to Rome via London, we are here. Our bags are not. 

It's a beautiful day in this beautiful city, and I have already witnessed a delightful Italian argument between two cab drivers that involved great deals of gesticulation, dramatic eye rolls and facial expressions, and strong but never screaming language. I was in the front seat of one of the cars, so I had a close-up of the action.

Afterwards, Luca-our driver-and I became fast friends, I now have several favoloso recommendations for restaurants and gelaterias, and I received the double kiss and an enthused hug when he dropped us off. I'm telling y'all, no language is more beautiful than Italian, it is beyond wonderful to be able to converse in foreign countries (Luca is not an English-speaking man), and the whole exchange made for such a happy entre to Rome.

But our bags. They did not leave London. I would like them to get to Rome today because we are all tired of the clothes we're in. Two-day, traveled-in underwear? Horrors! I did pack toothbrushes and paste, hairbrushes and some make-up, but our jackets, delicates, and pajamas would soon be welcome.

Tip: Always pack one spare outfit in the carry-on you bring on board with you! Perhaps you'll never need them, but if you do, you'll be as thrilled as I can imagine I'd be to have some now. 

Lovely Rome

40 in forty wisdom: Charlotte's Web

Earlier this year, Jack's 4th grade class read Charlotte's Web together. Although I devoured the book many, many times during my youth, it's been ages since I'd read or even thought about the story.

Jack loved it, and at the library last week discovered the book in audio form read by none other than E.B. White himself. Hurriedly, we checked it out, and Jack, Ol and I decided to listen to a bit of it each time we're in the car.

People, this is a win for many reasons, not least because it completely cuts inane chatter and backseat bickering.

But back to Charlotte's Web. It is a most wonderful tale, teeming with truths about childhood, development, parents, difference, tolerance, and friendship. It is so poignant in some parts, so masterfully written in many others. It is at once simple and sophisticated, and I think that's part of its magic and also why it still moved and engaged so much, roughly thirty years after I first read it.

Don't you all remember this image from the book? So memorable and dear.

I adore this passage from Chapter 15 especially:

The crickets sang in the grasses. They sang the song of summer's ending, a sad, monotonous song. "Summer is over and gone," they sang. "Over and gone, over and gone. Summer is dying, dying."

The crickets felt it was their duty to warn everybody that summer cannot last forever. Even on the most beautiful days in the whole year-the days when summer is changing into fall-the crickets spread the rumor of sadness and change.

Everybody heard the song of the crickets. Avery and Fern Arable heard it as they walked the dusty road. They knew that school would soon begin again. The young geese heard it and knew that they would never be little goslings again. Charlotte heard it and knew that she hadn't much time left. Mrw. Zuckerman, at work in the kitchen, heard the crickets, and a sadness came over her, too...

"Summer is over and gone," repeated the crickets...

The sheep heard the crickets, and they felt so uneasy they broke a hold in the pasture fence and wandered up into the field across the road. The gander discovered the hole and led his family through, and they walked to the orchard and ate the apples that were lying on the ground. A little maple tree in the swamp heard the cricket song and turned bright red with anxiety. 

Isn't that hauntingly lovely? It evokes any time of change, really, and perfectly so the nostalgia of changing seasons, children growing up, ourselves aging. 

E.B. White's voice is not at all what I expected but after a couple chapters of becoming accustomed to what initially sounds like a gruff New Yorker, I settled in to the gift of hearing a talented writer read his own dear words. Not I can't imagine anyone else voicing the book.

We have all adored this joint listening experience, and my bit of wisdom for you today is to find a copy of E.B. White reading Charlotte's Web and enjoy it, with kids or by yourself. I guarantee you that age doesn't much matter. 

40 in forty: Travel as much as you can

More than a decade ago, I went to East Africa. It was a remarkable three weeks in southern Kenya with a boy I loved. He spoke Swahili fluently, and I knew even then that I was experiencing a rare trip, a life-changing one I'd never forget.

In Nairobi, I ate sukuma and ugali (sauteed greens and corn meal mush) and roasted ears of maize sold from street vendors behind steaming carts. I drank cold Tuskers and shot pool. I scooped doro wat with doughy injera as an Ethiopian belly-dancer beguiled us.

On safari, I saw the Big 5. I visited an elephant orphanage and saw the wildebeest and flamingo migrations. Thousands of rickety-looking animals fording a river because instinct told them they must, even as crocs lay in wait. A whole lake turned pink by plumage. A black rhino and her darling baby. Great cats stretching and tending their young.

On the small island of Lamu, I devoured curry made from just-caught fish, vats of fresh "joo-eece" (juice) from the fruit vendor next to our inn, and chicken with fiery pili-pili sauce at a the home of a lovely Muslim woman, Hosna, the boy knew.

After lunch she invited me to try on one of her burqas before taking a stroll through the neighborhood. "Everyone knows you're white and foreign," she said, even though I was covered head to toe. "They look at your feet. Can you feel them staring?"

Was it strange? Yes. Was it a tremendous learning experience? Absolutely. Do travel and trying almost always enlarge our senses of the myriad possibilities and respect for differences in the world? Most definitely.

I remember being spat at while living in Amsterdam. An American friend (living in Amsterdam) and I were walking through a park, and a Dutch woman heard us speaking English. She spat and my friend retorted in angry Dutch, stunning the woman and relieving me. 

I remember being stuck at the horrid Holešovice train station in Prague, waiting and waiting and waiting. I called it "Holese-shit" and Tom and I laughed for days. The baths in Budapest, the disappointing Sacher tort in Vienna offset completely by the magnificent Klimts at the eponymous museum and the Muchas at his museum too.

I can still taste the rhubarb pie at that diner somewhere by Woodstock, VT. I remember the post office in Quechee, not far from the gorge. The redwoods in Northern Cal, the lunar-like beaches north of San Diego. 

I remember accidentally getting off to TGV train in Biarritz instead of San Sebastian. Shit. I spoke Spanish, not French. My friend was waiting for me so we could haul it to Bilbao to see the new Guggenheim museum there. I cobbled together a few phrases dredged from the depths of my mind, got to Spain, ate incredible tortilla and reveled in the opalescent undulations of Gehry's titanium masterpiece. The Rioja wasn't bad either.

~~~

It seems to me that as people age, they take one of two paths: the safe, familiar one, or the road less traveled. I plan to always take the latter, and I beseech you to do the same in all ways that you can. Do not close off, don't limit yourself. As best you can, speak to locals. Drive, walk, fly, train, in your own country and far beyond. Jump, ask, learn, try, be humbled and uncomfortable, enjoy something you didn't know you would. Keep growing!

Travel is a superb education, possibly the best. We leave tomorrow for Rome, and although I'm exhausted (so tired that I again forgot the correct documentation for the DMV which, naturally, I only realized once there. For the third time. I still don't have a license. I give up until we get back.), I can't wait to jump the border and fly toward a new adventure.

When in Rome...