We are wandering the aisles of the little supermarket. We started without a basket, but, by the time we go up the first row and down the second, our hands are full. Jim grabs a basket, and we put a four-pack of artisan root beer into it. We add a bottle of peach-pecan salad dressing and a jar of Vietnamese barbecue sauce.
Mark swings the basket, and we continue on,--continue until we've traversed every aisle. By the time the friendly woman at the checkout unpacks the basket, it also contains salted dark chocolate caramels, blueberries, and a large crusty loaf of bread dusted with sesame seeds.
All of this is pure indulgence. We are someplace else, and we are buying things we can't ordinarily get at home.
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At home, I don't often actually set foot in the grocery store. My shopping is planned and controlled. I print off a copy of a master list I created years ago and that I tweak continually. I go through cupboards and pantry and shelves, noting what needs to be replenished.
Then I get online and place an order, which I pick up later that night or, sometimes, the next day. There are no surprises; if something wasn't available, the store has already let me know. If they had to make a substitution, the store has already let me know.
We buys eggs and meat weekly at one of our favorite butcher shops. In season, we get produce at the farmers' market.
Shopping is pleasant; shopping is efficient.
When I'm home, though, it's not much of an adventure.
So it's nice to go away once in a while.
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I would not say I am a creature of habit.
I would not say that, but I believe the people I live with might.
I DO have a daily routine: get up around 6:00, shower, and dress.
If Mark has gotten up before me, I make the bed.
If I'm the first one up, I put the dishes away.
I take my thyroid pill, I put the coffee on, and I do my morning exercise set, which combines standing exercises, weights, tension bands, and walking. It's a twenty-minute routine. The coffee is steaming merrily by the time I finish.
I pour myself a cup, and I take it to my laptop. There I play my morning word games; there are seven of them, and I play them in the same order each day, one leading into the other.
When I am done, I clean out my personal email, and then it is time to eat some breakfast. If it's a work day, I make my lunch. I write my pages. And the morning is the time to write letters and checks, pay bills, and, if time allows, read a chapter of my current nonfiction book.
If I am at home, and I miss doing one of these things, the day just never feels quite right.
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Being someplace else gives me permission to do otherwise. I may, like a wild woman, sleep in until 7:00 a.m. I may forego the exercises and just take a walk, then or later. We may linger over an omelet we've cooked; we may wander out and find a place to cook breakfast for us. The day's an egg to be cracked, a gift to be opened.
When we're someplace else, we let the day unfold instead of ironing it into shape.
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We like to stay in Airbnb homes, and part of the charm is navigating the host's fine details. I pull the ham out for a breakfast omelet, and search for a chopping board. No chopping board in this home! Mark gets the flattest plate he can find, and then he uses a steak knife for chopping, because there's no block of gourmet cooking knives here, either.
It's fun, though, living in someone else's space. It's a voyage of discovery: Oh, this owner likes cozy pillows and throws for TV watching. They don't have a lamp by both sides of the bed, though—maybe they don't enjoy reading themselves off to sleep.
If the chopping board, the chopping KNIFE, or the bedside lamp were missing from my home, I would be greatly annoyed. I would go out and get myself a chopping board, a good knife, and the perfect lamp for reading.
In an Airbnb home, though, it's kind of endearing. I'm being flexible, I think, (Flexible: that's me! Flexible and ingenious!) kind of like if I were camping.
And this is as close to camping as I want to get, with a comfortable mattress, hot and cold running water, air conditioning and heat, and a door that closes and locks.
But the door is someplace else, and my rules about cooking and housekeeping slide away.
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When we visit someplace else, we are awed by the people the area has produced. We go to the Luci and Desi Museum, for example, and we visit the Ugly Luci statue in a Celeron park.
We visit presidential homes and the stately houses and gardens of magnates from a century ago.
We tour the home where Teddy Roosevelt was inaugurated after McKinley was shot.
When I am in Buffalo, I always need to visit the Huckleberry Finn manuscript in its glass case at the Buffalo and Erie County Library. I need to see which page it's open to.
And I have to think about, in this particular place and at that particular time, what exact conditions existed that enabled that famous one to fulfill their promise. Because place is part of each us, and place creates us, smooths and shapes us like one of those gem-polishing machines—even when we spend great portions of our lives escaping those generative spaces.
Being someplace else makes me think all that, and then I go home and look with new eyes. What about the people who lived HERE? What were their particular talents and what, in this space, in their day, coalesced to make them who they were?
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Fascinating people come from everywhere; learning about other place's extraordinary ones reminds me my town has them, too.
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And every place has a very specific history. Feats of engineering—bridges, canals,---shaped the frontier town into a bustling community. That deposit of clay led to a ceramic industry. The sand in that place made it a glass-making mecca. The rapids were harnessed to provide power for mills and the rich, fertile soil birthed an agricultural paradise.
THIS place can grow crops ten months out of the year. THIS natural wonder draws people from throughout the world. The hills, the plains, the cooling breezes—all the particular characteristics bent a place, in its history, toward being what it is.
Discovering all that is compelling. It's good to be someplace else every once in a while.
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And, of course, it's good to see special people on their home turfs, so witness their tapestried interests, to see the place that shapes them NOW. It is good to share the vibrant life they've created.
It's great to share the food of that place—the special dishes, the can't-get-anywhere-else (not like THIS, anyway!) delights.
The gardens, the parks…I take pictures of ground covers, of clever statuary, of outdoor seating nestled just so in a nook that reminds me of a spot in my backyard.
I'm inspired and enriched by being someplace else.
And I come home with the scales fallen away from my eyes. What can we do here? I ask.
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This summer yields us up a surprising number of little trips, of stays in half a dozen or more tidy little Airbnb's, of visits to venues we've seen before and places where we've never been. I am excited about this.
I look forward to be someplace else.
And then, refreshed, I look forward to bringing the learning that takes place there back home.
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