Ten Dollar Thoughts

What do you value more in your life: Experiences or belongings?  Adventures or routine?  New and different or known quantities? 

When we’re speaking abstractly it’s easy to say that we care more about having great experiences in life; that we aren’t attached to our belongings; and that we are always up for something new.  It’s quite another thing to live out those statements for seven years on a sailboat with your family. 

That’s right.  I said seven years on a sailboat with your family. 

The Crafton family, whom I find simultaneously inspiring and full-throttle bonkers did just that, and apparently they’d do it again.  The nuts and bolts of their story go something like this:

• Family of five decides to ditch everything (literally – homes, careers, property, cars, etc), buy a boat, and sail the world.
• Two of the kids had speech delays which were better addressed without typical peer pressure.
• Everyone got along better without the distractions of material belongings and adolescent angst.
• They stayed on the water for seven years and only returned when it was time for one of the kids to start college.
• They don’t regret a moment of it.

As I read the article about their experience a strong sense of ambivalence hovered over me.  I love the idea of giving it all up in favor of a life un-tethered by convention.  Yet in the same moment I felt intensely protective of those same conventions.  However would I survive without Bobbi Brown face wash, or my KitchenAid mixer, or my king size bed?  How would I incorporate some of my favorite things into a life on the open sea?  Could I get satellite internet service?  How many books would I need to pack?  How would I manage to log four workouts per week? 

Then I kicked myself.  I realized that the purpose of a decision like this is absolutely NOT to create a portable version of your existing life.  The purpose of a decision like this is to turn away from your existing life and take on a life that looks entirely different.  And doing that means giving up things that may mean a great deal to you.  Fresh herbs, air conditioning, a social life, and countless creature comforts would be left behind on purpose.  (Also little things like scalloped tomatoes, television reruns, and flirty nightgowns.) 

And that scares the bejeezus out of me.

By why?  Why do I cling to these things so fiercely?  What do I think will happen to me in their absence?  Will I become unhappy?  Do I measure myself in some way against these benchmarks of convention?  Would I completely lose sight of myself and my priorities in the absence of typical guideposts?  And most importantly, if any of these things is true, what on earth does that say about me? 

I know that I am more than my home, car, wardrobe, and hobbies.  But if that is true, then shouldn’t I be willing to let any of them go?  I don’t necessarily think so, but I can’t place my finger on why. 

PS – As a completely unrelated aside, this is my one hundredth post.  I can hardly believe that after just seven months of blogging I’ve reached an actual milestone.  Thanks for reading and commenting and being a part of these little mental exercises of mine.

Today’s post goes out to my sister Anne, whose practical blog Life in Pencil has been telling me for more than a year now about the merits of letting ourselves evolve organically and embracing life’s unforeseen changes. 

Since we got married six years ago, GAP and I have had an every-other-year approach to vacation planning.  Even numbered years were international trips.  Odd numbered years were domestic trips.  In that time we’ve covered Hawaii, Cardinals Spring Training, Maine, San Francisco, New York (3 times), Italy, Cancun, Switzerland, and the Pacific Northwest.  We love to travel and both get heavily invested in planning and experiencing each trip we take. 

This year’s trip (even numbered year = international destination) was to have been Ireland and Scotland.  We were going to go in the fall.  The British countryside would be lush and cool.  The pubs would be jovial.  The castles would be ancient.  And the beers would be room temperature.  (You can’t win them all.)  Alas, the best laid plans of mice and men… 

GAP and I have spent the better part of the last six months commenting to each other that we really need to have the house tuckpointed.  We have a bit of plaster damage in two rooms and before it becomes any more unsightly or irksome than it already is the exterior bricks need to be replaced and sealed.  To add insult to crumbly plaster, we also need a new roof.  Being responsible consumers as we are, we’ve gotten several bids for each set of work and the results are in.  The verdict?  Expensive. 

As the bids trickled in over the past few weeks we slowly began reconciling ourselves to the fact that our UK trip should probably be postponed.  Fast forward to last Thursday and GAP dreams up the idea of a four-day trip to the coast as a substitute.  I was delighted at the thought of a getaway and gave him the go-ahead to start scouting around online. 

Fast forward again to today and I’m so excited at what we’ve cooked up that I’m already over the disappointment of kissing our original plans goodbye.  Later this summer we will fly to San Diego for four days of the zoo, Sea World, the beach, and what I expect to be outstanding Mexican food.  Not only that, but we will be joined by some of our dearest friends (whom we haven’t seen in a year and who have had their first baby in that time).  Further still, in a stroke of brilliant happenstance, GAP’s sister and her family will be there at the same time and the entire lot of us is planning a collective day at the beach.  I’m so excited I can hardly sit still!

If life always played out as planned we would not have to deal with such headaches as home repairs and resource constraints.  But as we accepted and then embraced each of those fates we’ve ended up with plans that might actually be better.  (Kudos primarily go to GAP – it was his idea in the first place and he transformed it from whim to reality in less than 48 hours.)  Not to mention the fact that the unexpected nature of these plans makes them even sweeter.

As Anne and her blogging partner Elizabeth have so eloquently explained on their site,

Life is a series of revisions.  As soon as we think we have it all figured out, life reminds us that nothing is permanent, and we have to be willing to rewrite our plans.  And it’s this unpredictability that makes life exciting, novel, and, yes, messy.   Life requires flexibility, ingenuity, and acceptance, because there is no “final draft”.  We’re in a constant state of rewriting our lives.

Apparently, after reading their words for the past year the message has finally sunk in.  Perhaps I should allow my plans to get roiled more often.  At least in this case, I must say I rather like the results.

I write to you today from the desert valley of Nevada.  I am in Las Vegas for the first time in nine years, attending a conference for work.  I arrived on Wednesday and have quickly remembered all of the things I love and don’t love about this city. 

The food is astounding (especially on my company’s dime), the shows are phenomenal, and the entire place is a grownup’s playground.  On the flip side of the coin, it’s 400 degrees outside, I’ve smelled like cigarette smoke for three days now, and the environmentalist within me can’t help but feel guilty for contributing to the continued existence of a city that, quite frankly shouldn’t exist.  (Pardon me while I silently channel my mother and get all hot and bothered (understandably, it’s 400 degrees outside, remember?) about how planting such a resource-intensive city in the middle of resource-less desert is a crime against nature. …  Okay, I’m finished now.)  But then again, the food really is fantastic!

Eye candy and creature comforts aside, it was the flight into this play-land of a city that sent my mind on an existential chase. 

No matter how many times I do it, I will never tire of flying across the Rocky Mountains.  The view from the air is unlike anything you can experience from the ground, or even from an aerial photograph.  The landscape changes in front of your eyes as the flat and agricultural plains of Kansas give way to the rolling foothills of the Rockies.  And just as quickly those foothills are transformed into full-fledge mountains, which transform yet again as you bend South into the craggy cliffs and bluffs of New Mexico and Arizona. 

After a childhood spent vacationing there it is the pine covered forests of Colorado that usually capture my heart.  But on Wednesday it was in my gazes down on those Southwestern cliffs and bluffs that I looked out and saw myself. 

Sedimentary rock.  This part of the country is made up of sedimentary rock.  The land was formed by layers and layers of sandstone and silt and shale settling upon each other and sacrificing their individual natures to join together and create something unified.  Through a process that I’ve learned is called lithification, the layers of sedimentary rock are compacted, cemented, and recrystallized.  And it is that recrystallization that most interests me.  It means that the layers, which were once something separate and distinct, become a single substance.  Yet the mesas and buttes still betray their composition, revealing rust colored stripes in places where wind and water have eroded their sides. 

The analogy of layers in people is not novel.  As we discover and explore the many facets of ourselves and our counterparts we make mention of layers, frequently citing the peeling back of those layers to get to the “true nature” of someone.  But (at least for today) I find fault with this analogy.  Rather than peeling away my layers to uncover my true essence, I believe I am the sum total of my layers.  Like the rugged desert landscape, my layers do not mask me, they become me.  I too am recrystallized into something unified that represents the full spectrum of my life. 

I am the product of the people, places, and experiences that have comprised me.  To look at some aspect of myself absent the others is to obfuscate the complex and nuanced person I am.  Like the cliffs and bluffs on the ground beneath that shiny plane I am one; a single, a whole, a unified person.  Yet within that single, whole, unified person exist myriad components, none of which can stand alone, as they are all connected tightly together as Gale.    

I find comfort in this unified theory of Gale.  It means that I can embrace myself as I am, not needing to emphasize or diminish any part of myself in an effort to become something else.  This is what I am, and it is a welcoming way to think of myself.

For those of you who are fellow bloggers you are familiar with the site swap.  For those of you who do not blog, permit me a bit of explanation.  While I write this blog for myself – to satisfy my own curiosities and explore the things I find interesting – I would be lying if I said that the feedback, insight, and sense of community I’ve grown to love from my fellow bloggers wasn’t also a big part of my affinity for writing, and more specifically, blogging.  Over time we come to know snippets of each other.   And while sometimes names, hometowns, and other identifying details are conspicuously absent, the heart of the matter (whatever that matter may be) is always fully explored. 

Kristen at Motherese is one such fellow blogger whose words I look forward to and whose insights I value.  And so today, I’m honored to post her words here, so that you may get a glimpse of her perspective on life.  In turn, a post of mine is up on her site, so when you’re finished here, stop by her place for my post.  And stick around and pilfer through her archives.  I know you won’t be disappointed.

Homebodies and Rolling Stones
by Kristen @ Motherese

Flying home on a Sunday afternoon in January after another week away, I was actually a bit sad to see the trip come to an end.

That is unusual for me: I usually prefer to stay home than to travel.  I enjoy planning vacations and mapping out an itinerary, but, as often as not, I find myself counting down the days until I can return home once I am actually on the road.

I traveled a lot as a kid and as a young adult.  I’ve visited almost all of the states and many countries.  I’ve had my breath stolen by natural wonders and by man-made structures.  I’ve biked on glaciers in Alaska and gulped apple wine at Oktoberfest in Offenbach.

I treasure these experiences, but sometimes I feel like a collector of memories – more interested in tucking them away and looking at them in pictures, rather than in living a trip as it occurs.

Feeling somewhat nostalgic for this recent trip that was coming to an end, I happened upon two bits of literary inspiration – one lofty, the other not so much – that helped me name these phenomena.

The first came through the typically direct words of Olive Kitteridge, the title character of Elizabeth Strout’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel-in-stories, and a companion of mine on my trip to Florida.  Olive’s grown son Christopher invites her for a visit.  She declines his request to have her stay “for a couple of weeks” with the rejoinder: “Three days…After that I stink like fish.”

And I wondered if Olive’s rule of thumb for houseguests might just apply to travelers as well – and if the best vacations are those that contain – almost like the best meals? – just enough to fill you up, but still leave you wanting a bit more.

This trip to Florida was just that for me.  I was delighted by the sunshine and the warmer temperatures, by the chance to walk and play outside in January, by the time with my parents and brothers.  I felt full of all of these good sensations, then drove away from those people whom I love wishing for more of all of them.

For me, the ideal time away was a week.  For Olive, it seems to be three days.  For others, it might be more or less.  The key, I think, is knowing your travel tolerance and planning accordingly.

The second piece of worldly and wordy wisdom came from one of Big Boy’s favorite book series: Toot & Puddle.  These porcine roommates and best friends have different perspectives on travel.  Toot has been bit by the travel bug and spends most of his time on-page globetrotting – from Provence to Nepal, from Egypt to the Solomon Islands.  Puddle, meanwhile, is a homebody.  He occasionally joins Toot on his adventures, but is usually happier in the rhythms of his day-to-day life.  At the end of Toot & Puddle, the first book in the series, the pigs are reunited at home for a December celebration.

“Here’s to all your adventures around the world,” said Puddle.

“Here’s to all your adventures right here at home,” said Toot.

And perhaps that is the distinction right there: some of us find adventure through travel and some of us find adventure through staying put.  And maybe those proclivities bend and evolve as we age, as our destination changes, and as our sense of home shifts.

But maybe some of us shy away from adventure altogether, evincing a preference for home but really masking a fear of the unknown?

Could it be that my own deep connection to the idea of home makes me tend toward a static life?  Could it be that my risk-averse nature causes me to miss out on the brighter and deeper dimensions of living?

What is your travel tolerance (i.e. how long can you be away from home before you want to return)?  Are you a homebody like Puddle and me or a rolling stone like Toot?

Over the past few weeks I’ve been listening to various newscasters mention the impending shuttering of the NASA shuttle program.  After 30-some years of space exploration, the program is being disbanded, and surprisingly, I care.

I am not a science buff.  I care very little about space exploration, rockets, moon dust, and the like.  It is all so far away, so abstract, and has so little bearing on my daily life.  Other than the disasters, all of our space exploration has captured very little of my attention.  Nevertheless, the romance of it resonates with me.

I can imagine the 1960s.  I can picture the race with Russia.  I can understand the sense of incredible national accomplishment of Neil Armstrong’s small step that was for our country a giant leap.  And I can understand how the realization of President Kennedy’s dream fostered pride in Americans and a drive to keep striving for more.

My life has never existed without NASA buzzing about somewhere in the background; shuttles preparing to launch; satellite photos showing up in National Geographic and Time magazines.  I was born into the country that won the space race and wore that badge proudly.  As a product of the seventies I have never seen America’s superiority legitimately challenged, and there’s a certain level of braggadocio that can develop as a result.

But now we’re sitting down for a few years.  We’re going to have to hitch rides on a Russian shuttle while our own program is in time out.  Granted, there is a new program on the horizon, but it will be several years before the Constellation program is actively launching anything.  And there’s something about this that makes me a little bit sad.  It’s reassuring to know that your country’s best and brightest are behind the wheel, doing things that you will never be smart or brave enough to do yourself.  

When I say it like this it feels silly.  Much as the shuttle program didn’t affect my daily life during its lifespan, its ending likely won’t either.  And if I gleaned any sense of security from our space exploration it was probably unfounded.  I suspect that subconsciously I liked to believe that if we had the time and money to be bouncing around space, then things here on the ground must be in pretty good shape.  But I don’t have to read too many headlines to know that’s not true. 

I guess what it boils down to is that there is something romantic and powerful about space travel.  And walking away from it – even if temporarily – feels like we’re taking a step backward.  Once the newness of this change has worn off the topic of our space exploration program will probably return to the outer recesses of my mind.  But when it comes back, I’ll be cheering for it to be better than ever before.

As I mentioned yesterday, I am newly obsessed with The Pioneer Woman’s blog.  Yesterday when I pulled up her site I was delighted to see that her latest recipe was for Hot Cross Buns.  My mother made Hot Cross Buns on every Good Friday of my childhood.  And while I have lovely memories of coming home from school to find a fresh batch on the kitchen counter (sometimes with extra frosting left in the bowl!) my favorite Hot Cross Bun memory comes from my adulthood, and from China.  This story is not meant to be thought-provoking or challenging in any way.  Rather it is a cherished moment of my life that I felt inspired to share. 

If you’re not familiar with Hot Cross Buns, you can learn a quick bit about them here.

I was 26 years old.  I was less than a month away from my wedding.  I was in Shanghai in the middle of a two-week business trip to my company’s Japan and China offices.  So things in my life were pretty calm at the time.  Right.

I’d spent the first week of the trip in Japan.  Sushi, tempura, industry trade show – all the usual suspects.  The second week took us to Shanghai for a 5-day training session with our Pac Rim distributors.  We were staying at the St. Regis hotel which was then, and is still, the most mind-bogglingly luxurious hotel I’ve ever stayed in.  I had a personal butler assigned to me at check-in.  The room was huge and stunning; the bathroom even more so.  Every time I left my room – even if it was just to run down to the hotel gym for a quick workout – someone came in and refolded the towels, tidied my toiletries, smoothed the duvet, and tucked under the corners of the toilet paper.  And every afternoon around 2:00 a snack was delivered to my room on a silver tray.  It was usually a pastry of some kind.  Something delectable that made me slide to the floor and want to never return home.  (What wedding?  GAP once lived in China.  Surely I could find a back-up version of him running around somewhere, right?)

I spent each day in a hotel ballroom, giving presentations on the key selling points of my company’s products, changes to the competitive landscape, and pricing and discount structures.  I’d eaten all of the local fare that had been served and had, for the most part, been delighted by how much I loved it.  Cuttlefish, jellyfish, whole roasted fish, seaweed salad, etc.  Business dinners each evening featured dishes that rotated among the traditional menus of our distributors’ home countries – Thai, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, and Malaysia.  I was lost in an international smorgasbord.   

I’d gone sight-seeing with a colleague one afternoon and eaten dumplings purchased from a street vendor that have never been matched by any I’ve eaten since.  The bread was fried crisp on the outside and chewy underneath.  The broth inside was rich, salty, and surprisingly hot.  It dripped all the way down my forearms and I actually licked some of it off.  The bite of pork in the middle was tender and fatty and melted on my tongue.  I was in a food nirvana.   

I was also reaching a saturation point of visual stimulation.  Ancient gardens, Confucian temples, giant Buddhas everywhere.  My colleague and I had a personal local tour guide for two days who took us into nooks and crannies of her city that we’d never have found (or braved) on our own.  I was absorbing the culture around me like a parched sponge.  I had moments of homesickness, but for the most part I’d been able to separate myself from the impending wedding and gotten lost in the world around me.  And so it was that when Good Friday rolled around at the end of my trip I was barely aware of it.

That day our business agenda reached its scheduled afternoon break.  I returned to my room upstairs where I looked forward to slipping out of my heels, collapsing onto the fluffy bed, and delicately tearing into whatever scone, éclair, or other confection might be awaiting me.  I opened the door, walked into that now-familiar and serene retreat of a room, and stopped cold.  There, on the silver tray, was a porcelain plate with two Hot Cross Buns. 

They were beautiful.  Golden dough glazed with egg whites and studded with raisins.  Iced by hand with careful, but not perfect, crosses.  I was so touched by the gesture that I almost couldn’t bring myself to eat them.  But I did.  They lacked the delicate crumb and subtle sweetness of my mother’s, but it was irrelevant.  I was as far away from home – geographically, culturally, metaphorically – as I’d ever been.  And yet a hallmark of my childhood sat before me on a silver tray.

I still don’t know the answers to all the questions that spun through my head as I ate my Hot Cross Buns.  How did they know these tiny details of Christian culinary heritage?  Did they know I was a Christian?  Did everyone in the hotel get Hot Cross Buns for their snack that day?  Or was it just for the Westerners whom they thought might enjoy a taste of home.  Did they have any idea how their thoughtfulness would strike deep to the heart of me?

Since I’d left home after college I’d never made Hot Cross Buns of my own.  I guess I didn’t realize what meaning they held for me.  But in that moment I became keenly aware of their significance; significance to which I’d been heretofore oblivious.  The next year I made my first batch of Hot Cross Buns.  They too didn’t measure up to my mother’s, but they were good.  And they were mine.  And it felt good to take my traditions into my own hands.  I have plenty of time to perfect my technique.

I haven’t made them every year.  But I will make them this year.  I think IEP would like them very much.  And I want his memories of them to be as ingrained as my own.