aging | Travel Well, Fly Safe

Places That I Have Loved

“The town was paper, but the memories were not.” John Green

A fortune-teller told my mother that she would die at 87. At 85 she began to get her life in order. By the time she died at 91, everything was in boxes and labeled with notes. There was one box that had a note pasted on it which said,“These are places that I have loved. Perhaps you will like looking at them”. There were postcards, pictures, menus and a few photos from various travels around the world. I wanted to ask why she had saved them. What were the memories in this box that she wanted us to know?

There were photos from Japan. My mother loved her trip to Japan. They had gone with a group that matched senior citizens with Japanese families who wanted to practice their English. My friend Reiko and her father took my mom out for sushi when she was there. She talked for a long time about how expensive that dinner was. There was a picture of her in a kimono smiling with her Japanese family.

There were some postcards from Brazil. The tour group was going down to the beach and casinos in Rio. My mother had been invited to a friend’s cousin for the afternoon and dinner. Everyone told her not to take public transportation because she could get robbed. She and her friend went on the public bus. Everyone on the bus helped them, shared their food and wanted to talk. They had to change buses and the bus driver got out and took them to the next bus. They had a wonderful dinner with their new friends and drank caipirinhas (cachaca or rum sugar and lime juice). When they returned, they heard that most of their group had been robbed at the tourist locations.

She enjoyed Australia and Israel. I don’t remember her talking about Paris or Italy. I don’t know if she ever got there. She had wanted to see the Great Wall of China.

Travel wasn’t my mother’s passion. Theatre, Opera, Ballet and Classical Music were. I wasn’t surprised to see fifty years of playbills and programs and favorite opera tickets, but I was surprised to see this box. Travel is about pictures and stories and I didn’t know all the stories.

My mother was legally blind from the time that she was seventeen years old. The doctors said it was from looking at an eclipse. I’m not sure exactly what she saw but it wasn’t what we did. When she was young, she made the decision to have the best life she could and not let it affect her. She studied at the Lighthouse For The Blind and knew everything that was available to her to make her life easier. The only difference I noticed growing up was that my mother did not read. She told us the stories of every opera, operetta, ballet, Broadway show and Shakespeare play. She is most famous with her children and grandchildren for her original Bunny and Squirrel stories. (who were suspiciously a lot like us.)

She developed her other senses to compensate for her lack of vision. My mother knew the location of every seat in every theatre in NY. She knew by memory the address and phone number of everyone in her life. She took the subways and had certain markers on the stations so she could tell where to get off. She went with the crowd at traffic lights. She would walk down the street smiling so people would think she saw them when she couldn’t. She never wanted anyone to know that she couldn’t see.

As my mother got older, she was probably almost totally blind but she never complained and asked for help when she needed it. She had many, many friends who were always willing to go somewhere fun with her. The alternative of staying home was unthinkable. One day when she was in her seventies she asked a bus driver if it was the 21 bus and he said ” What are you? blind?” and for the first time she said yes. She was proud of that story.

I also found color-coded envelopes with separated bills in them. I think we are the only country where all our paper money is the same size. I never thought about that. Whenever I asked her for money or small bills, she gave it to me. I always assumed that she could see it.

One day she said that she wasn’t going to travel anymore because of her worsening eyesight. She was in her sixties. I felt really sad. She said “Don’t ever feel sorry for me because I have the capacity for happiness and most people don’t. I understand that happiness comes in moments and I have had many happy moments in my life. I love NY and have a lot to explore here.”

She went swimming and took dance classes. (She had been a dance teacher) She went to the theatre, ballet, symphony or opera seven days a week. She went to all the museums in NY and loved discovering new ones and sharing them with us when we came to visit. She joined a hiking group on the weekends and started going to Atlantic City for a little gambling. She was always coming to visit her children and take care of her grandchildren. My mother slowed down to three to five times a week for the theatre after age eighty-seven because her arthritis was affecting her legs. But even at that age, her phone rang more than mine did and she had friends of all ages. For her ninetieth birthday, she went to the opera with everyone in her family who could make it to NY and then her favorite Chinese restaurant. Her friends gave her a huge friend party as well a week later (Her friends ranged from ages 40-100).

She never talked about traveling again after she stopped. I looked at the memories of a life that wasn’t mine and wished that I had paid more attention. I wondered about those fragmented, arbitrary glimpses into her life. My mother left a very important legacy to me and anyone who knew her. You always have the choice to live the best life you can, or sit in the dark.

Fly Safe,

JAZ

How To Travel Alone

“All you need is 20 seconds of insane courage and I promise you something great will come of it.” Cameron Crowe and Alice Mckenna

Just to be clear. If you told me ten years ago I would be writing any blog, I would not have believed you. First of all, I’m not a writer. Second , I didn’t go to a PTA meeting alone or anywhere else. My life and my future were on a safe, secure path . Then everything fell apart. I picked up the pieces of my crumbling life. I didn’t do it willingly, quickly, easily or happily. But after a while, you just get tired of looking at them on the floor. I had to build a new life.

Soon after that, I became an empty nester. I would like to go on record as saying I hate those words. It just creates a sad picture in your head. I’ve seen those nests. They are so cute with the baby birds in them and then you are left with a dry crumbly mess of twigs. I leave them for a while in case the birds come back. When you pick them up, they fall apart in your hands. The nests looked so sturdy with the birds in them. A lot of metaphors arise in my head. I think we need to go into this time in our life with different words. Once you get over the sadness, it is kind of nice to get your house and your life back. In my case, it was a life I never had. I never took the time for myself to create one.

You have four choices as you get older: to go back to adolescence -marry a younger woman get a new sports car etc; to prepare to die and feel that your life is over; to live in the past; or to become wise, check your value system and continue on as a better human being.

I stood on the verge of uncertainty and thought, what kind of life do I want? What do I love? For me it was travel. I traveled as much as I could when I was single and then I spent the next part of my life not traveling.

But now I have a choice. I’m not brave or lucky. I just stopped worrying about what was logical, attainable or expected anymore. It became about how I constructed the possibilities in my life.

At first I traveled with friends. My destinations were based on other people. I went where they were going or visited where they lived. But there were other places that I really wanted to see. The first time I went on a tour alone I cried most of the nights. I was not the cool, young girl anymore but I was now one of those people that I used to make fun of. I was one of the on the bus off the bus older alone women. Meals were traumatic.

On my first tour, a ninety year old man came up to me. My mother told me that people weren’t nice to old people so I tried to be nice and planned my escape. I asked if it was his first trip to Spain. He said “No. The last time I was here, I was working with Reuters and touring the bullfight circuit with Hemingway.” He was trying to write a book on it and this trip went to a lot of the places he had been to. I googled him. It was true. As we walked in Rondo, Spain ( a city on the bullfight circuit ) he remembered everything. “Hemingway called me the kid,” he began and I was right there with them. I learned from that first encounter never to prejudge anyone. I’m not going to say that everyone I meet is as interesting as he was (though Australian author Susanne Gervay and British Peruvian explorer Peter Frost come close) but everyone has a story and I love to hear them.

It was nice to have a tour leader make all the decisions, pick up your luggage, deal with the trains and airlines. There was usually plenty of free time to do what I wanted to do. I learned an awful lot from local tour guides which I hadn’t used before.

It was an easy way to travel alone and not be alone. It was a great option to go wherever I wanted to go. I have now found the kind of small group tour companies that I like to travel with. A week is perfect. I mix it with time alone in a place and with friends before or after. A little of everything is a good trip. You get the taken care of experience and the exploring a city alone and having adventures experience. I’m fine alone in a city but lately I am exploring deserts, rainforests, mountains and villages. It is much easier to do that with a guide.

I learned how to be alone as well. It was really hard at first. I always try to have a book or magazine with me. Reading has probably saved a lot of people from loneliness . I learned how to ask if I could sit with someone on a tour for lunch or dinner. (I admit that I could be better at this). When I am by myself, I use a health spa or gym at night or stay out all day late instead of sitting in a restaurant alone. I hire a local tour guide from the internet if it is a country that I’m not comfortable in by myself. They have all been amazing. .

I’m not going to tell you how to go to bars and restaurants alone . You are either a person who is comfortable sitting at a bar alone or you are not. I am not. It is a different trip than traveling with a mate, family or friends. But lately I have been meeting people. I’m not outgoing – I have to work at it. I’m not adventurous and I don’t take chances or put myself in situations or places that I can’t get out of easily..

When I started traveling, I wrote funny things to my friends and family about my trips. The thing about traveling alone is that you observe a lot more of the world around you. It turns out that writing is something you do best alone. I was encouraged to write a travel blog. My computer skills included email and google. I had no idea how to blog and worse, I had no idea about social media. I make a lot of mistakes. At first no one but my friends and family read my blog because I didn’t know that I was supposed to “put it out there”. But little my little I am learning.

I don’t have to worry anymore that I’m not good enough or talented enough or smart enough. I’ve already failed at what I thought I was good at. I don’t have to explain myself to anyone. I have no more personal limitations or restrictions and not a lot of time to do all the things I really want to do. I have no more if onlys.

I love writing about a subject that I love. It’s great if people read it. But even better is the moment when it comes together and I think – this doesn’t suck. I can put it out there now. It is a blog so it doesn’t have to be perfect. There is no stress.

When you are a kid, everyone encourages you to follow your dreams. When you are older, you don’t get that kind of support. Don’t let the people who didn’t have the courage to follow their own dreams discourage you. Maybe it doesn’t matter anymore which way you go. It just matters that you go somewhere.

Fly safe,

JAZ