My first day back at work after our drive across Europe this summer, a student leaned forward in his seat with the telltale flush of the travel-bitten and asked, “Which city was the most beautiful?” The grin he tacked onto the end showed that he already knew the answer:

All of them.

When experience weaves itself into memory, places become a sort of beautiful you can’t quantify, and here on an October morning packed with damp cotton, I only remember the color. Porto beamed with it, rippled with it, sang from its rooftops in bold chromatics, and if that’s not beauty, I don’t know what is.

The River Douro flows into the sea there, carrying barrels of port wine down from mountain vineyards to hibernate in cool cellars. On one side of the river, wine glimmers secretly in labyrinths of dark wood; on the other side, blue-tiled balconies greet the sun face first. In the rippling in-between, teenagers dive off an arched bridge and swim laughing in the wake of flat-bottomed river boats. There are no guard rails, no prohibitions. It is utterly refreshing.

That’s really what our time in Porto was to me—refreshing. Just soaking up the vibrancy of the riverfront, noticing how a glass of ruby Port caught the same hue of sunlight reflecting off of glazed brick buildings, wandering and tasting and appreciating, let me breathe deep. Even four months later, my windows pressed in with gray, the memories bring color and light. Quantifiable? No. Beautiful? You betcha.

~~~

More from our summer campingstravaganza:

Who’s Ready for Summer Vacation?

(a story)

My calendar says I’m at work teaching businessmen the future tense right now, but in actuality, I’m stretched out on our living room couch with a post-cappuccino buzz and a glowing sense of… survival? victory? impending insanity? Whatever it is, it’s much more pleasant than I would have anticipated Friday afternoon when this all started…

Our trip had been going almost too well. The girls and I had pulled out of the driveway a full minute ahead of schedule, ready with our individual lunchboxes and sun-dappled tunes, and the traffic gods had smiled on us. I’d been nervous to do the 4 ½ hour drive solo with the girls, but just past the halfway point, I was finally relaxing into the easy rhythm of the road, daydreaming about my upcoming date night.

That’s when the alarm went off. I didn’t even know our car had an alarm until it was shrieking at me and pulsing bright red letters on the display: “STOP! STOP! STOP!” I stopped. Hoping it was just a glitch or maybe something easily solved with violence, I consulted our car’s manual. “Low oil pressure—Do not turn on the engine!!!” Well poo.

I had never arranged for roadside assistance before, much less in a foreign language, but two hours, twenty-five phone calls, and one entirely justifiable crying jag later, the girls and I found ourselves high atop a car carrier exiting to The Middle of Nowhere, Emilia-Romagna. “We’re having an adventure!” I cheered while secretly wondering if we’d have to spend the night fighting off wild boars and vagabonds in the surrounding forest.

(more…)

The season is in tear-down mode outside our windows with digits collapsing and clouds corroding, jack hammers on the wind. It all falls (ha!) tomorrow, and my daydreams are scrambling for an extension. Nothing sounds as wonderful right now as putting time on hold, loading up the car, and setting off for someplace new. In fact, why don’t we?

Let’s start with Barcelona at sunset. We don’t have much time before an overnight trek across Spain, but there are just enough moments of terracotta sunlight left to illuminate cranes and fruit baskets on the gaudiest cathedral conjured up by a mere mortal. We’ll try and soak up all the details but resign ourselves to head-scratching wonderment in the end.  Even though we don’t mean to linger so late, it’s worth watching shades of sandstone cool to ghostly pewter, lit green from within like a witch’s stronghold. As our footsteps sizzle away on Catalan sidewalks, we erase Barcelona from our penciled-in dream list and rewrite it in pen.

Let’s drive now into the sunrise over endless fields of scrub brush, wending our way alongside modern-day pilgrims on old paths. Spain is only a means to an end this time, but we pass the miles by plotting future summers in Basque orchards and reminiscing about a nearly-disastrous layover in Madrid two years ago. Mountains suddenly sprout up through the earth, green and dizzying, and just like that, we’re in Portugal. They plunge back into the ground just as suddenly, and we’re finally there, where mountain river flows into ocean deep.

There is only one way we can possibly begin a stay in Porto, of course—set our alarm clock next to the towels and head to the beach on a morning breeze while magic still shimmers in the shallows. We’ll soak it up through the soles of our feet, saltwater packing it into our skin until even our fingertips thrill to its touch. Somehow, this translates into sand being flung like live grenades, but the resultant giggling recalls a long-lost truth: that getting grit under our nails and behind our ears is the purest kind of fun. There is nowhere else we need to go, so let’s run straight into the heart of incoming waves and then dash away again with foam-flecked surf nipping at our heels. If the only thing we do today is remember how to play, our souls will have reimbursed every travel expense a hundred times over.

If you care to join me next time, we’ll take a tour through the colorful riverfront and maybe even charm Sandeman into supplying the drinks. What do you say to a few more weeks of vicarious summer?

It’s a good thing today is a holiday because we’re all still in a sun-stupor. Breakfast was so late that we decided to count it as lunch. Naptime was non-negotiable—for any of us—and a homemade chocolate frappuccino courtesy of my ever-thoughtful Daniel was the only thing that pulled me upright afterward. We’ve skipped almost all socially recommended forms of getting ready for the day (read: clothes) and gotten straight to work lounging away the afternoon. Time consuming, that one is.

While I wish I had something more profound or provocative to write today, truth is that my mind is still back at the campground doing cannonballs into the pond and swinging two-by-two in hammocks and cheating at Crazy Uno to help the little ones win. My thoughts are still soaking up purple mountains at sunset and the happy-making mess of s’mores, s’mores everywhere. I’m still cocooned in a sleeping bag nest with my husband and exclaiming over fish (as only true city dwellers do) with the girls and piling around a picnic table with friends. And I’m going to go ahead and say that’s okay.

What were your favorite moments from the weekend?

Just because it’s Saturday

and because our week fancied itself a trampolinist

and because sunlight is dripping jewel-toned off every leaf

and because scrambled eggs are best eaten outdoors

and because Monday is Ferragosto

so we are pretty much bound by law to do so,

we’re gallivanting off for the weekend to do this:

Catch ya on the flip side.

My head is full up to here. Lesson plans, present perfect study guides, proper British spellings, and would they translate it as cinema or theatre in the UK? Dust clusters, cheese baked onto forks, a weekend filling up fast. Blank pages staying blank, clock face a blur, heart applying whiteout with a heavy hand. Lists like a rolling sea and the tide coming in.

We leave to camp our way across Europe in just over a week, but the days are still picking up speed, and I’m bracing myself for the almighty impact of vacation… or rather, the night before vacation when we’re playing Trunk Tetris with the car and my eyes are only half open and I still have half the kitchen to pack. Being a detail person generally works well for me, but I do have a habit of drowning in my own practicality—especially, say, when we’re T-9 days from an epic camping trip with pretty close to nothing planned. We haven’t even figured out which country we’re going to spend the last week of it in. That would be more than enough to overwhelm my head if there were any space whatsoever left in it right now.

But seeing as there’s not, I can’t manage to work up a good panic, and truth be told, involuntary oblivion is kind of nice. I guess all that really matters is that four of us leave home together and come home together, even if I forget to pack the kitchen sink and/or we accidentally detour through remote Slovenia. (Come to think of it, that could be fun…)

I’m grateful for these spastic little glimpses into the brain clutter reminding me that yep, it’s pretty full in there, no room to worry about the future, and hey what do you know, we’re all surviving. What’s more, we’re all happy to be here right now, and I suspect that two weeks from now when the unknown is our new right now, we’ll still be glad to be living it. However, if there were room in my head for the kitchen sink, I wouldn’t complain. Just saying.

I’m beginning to understand the term “breakneck speed,” caught like a reluctant driver in these days that trade time for whiplash. Good lordy. I stayed up until 1:00am on Saturday cleaning the bathrooms simply because it was the first opportunity I’d had in… uh, _weeks. Don’t you wanna come party with me now? ::wink wink, nudge nudge:: (My definition of weekend fun might be a little off, but I can offer freshly scrubbed toilets!)

I don’t intend to keep going so long between posts, you know. My dearly beloved blogosphere is on my mind here and there throughout each day, my thoughts briefly lunging toward it while a work document loads or lesson plans shuffle into folders, but life in the fast lane is teaching to me to reel in my focus and quickly, before any synapses get tangled. Nevertheless, I haven’t forgotten about this space, and your comments and letters have meant the world to me. Thank you so much for taking the time to connect with me, even if I haven’t been able to reciprocate yet. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Over the weekend, I finally wrapped up a huge project and am now embarking on the next: our annual epic camping trip. I always forget just how much work goes into planning these things until we’re three weeks away with nary a campsite reservation to be seen. Plus, Magellan needs some serious TLC before we leave (he still hasn’t recuperated from last summer’s adventures), the line of super-duper-urgent-VIP errands waiting to be run is now winding into last year, and the ironing pile has officially usurped our sofa.

…Aaaand this is also why I haven’t blogged much lately, because pretty much anything I write will eventually degenerate into a to-do list. Apologies, friends. Just know that I’m grateful for you… and if I’m not around much, it’s only to spare your dear necks from secondhand whiplash.

(Photo from last summer’ road trip to get me psyched about researching this one.
A photograph is worth 1,000 motivational speakers, right?)

Admittedly, our weekend in Rome wasn’t the most harebrained idea I’ve ever jumped on, but it clearly was not the work of a sound mind. One daughter was vomiting, you see. The other was dealing with a bout of “poop juice” (what her term lacks in delicacy it more than makes up for in originality), and I was feverish from a mild case of food poisoning. However, one’s husband only runs his first marathon once, and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to cheer him on. Besides, it was Rome. Cobblestone streets, gold-plated basilicas, Colosseums, Rome. We were all going.

The decision was at least 30% mistake. The family and friends of 14,000 racers seeped along the streets carrying curious tourists along, and a sickly mama with a preschooler attached to each arm was no match for the full-bodied tide. We never made it within 300 meters of the starting line, and we were somehow less successful at finding the finish.  As for my vision of popping up around the city like moles with Metro passes, arriving at famous monuments with impeccable timing to whistle and snap artsy photos as Daniel ran past… well, we were actually more like earthworms, inching from the underground stops in pale discombobulation and completely missing our first pre-planned photo opportunity because we were lying belly-up in the sun.

However, for all its faults, the experience was one I’m glad I took life up on. Had the girls and I stayed curled under familiar blankets, we wouldn’t have gotten to watch spring wake fresh-faced from her beauty sleep and beam into the niches of the Eternal City. It was a rare kind of pleasure to sit on a marble bench in the Piazza del Popolo with the sun freckling my nose and the girls napping on my lap while we waited for Daniel to sweep by on the stream of marathon runners. For that hour, we had no obligation to tour or snap photos or do anything; it was a golden opportunity to just be, and the unplanned respite could not have been more perfect. While tourists milled around surreptitiously snapping photos of us (“I’ve never seen such a sight in all of Rome,” grinned the man who offered to take a shot on my camera), I soaked up spring and the precious nearness of my still-little girls.

And then my husband ran past—kilometer 37 of 42.2—and it was incredible to see his hard work and dedication in every footstep planted on centuries’-old pavement.   We smiled at each other like married people do, one in sickness, one in health, both calculating the experiences of our life together and coming up rich. Then he turned the corner, the girls and I collected our jackets and sickness bags, and all four of us headed on jellied legs toward the finish.

That was about the time the girls and I got lost and Daniel ended up dehydrated and we realized it was three in the afternoon and some of us hadn’t eaten in 24 hours and our parking meter ran out and the glamor of our adventure was trampled under tired feet and I decided that next year I’m limiting my spring-welcoming activities to opening windows and potting flowers. Still, even our least sane ideas lead to experiences that we cherish as our family’s most valuable keepsakes, and there’s no doubt in my feverish, harebrained mind that we left Rome richer than we came.

February has been a perfectly charming house guest so far. Blossoms are exploding on the mimosa trees, sunshine is beaming the chill into compliance, and our thoughts have turned to summer vacation. There is talk of Belgium, but I’m hoping the other possibility of Portugal wins out. I would love to camp our way through French countrysides and Spanish vineyards, maybe take a ferry to the Azores… or not. Now that I’m looking at the map, I see that the Azores are practically halfway across the Atlantic. It was a nice daydream though. At any rate, this line of thinking keeps snagging on something at the back of my brain… something about our epic camping habit… something I’ve forgotten to finish…

Oh. Oh dear. Seven whole months have passed since our trip to Scotland, and I have somehow neglected to post the last installment of my related letter to the girls. Seven months are an embarrassing amount of time to wrap up a vacation, no matter how many adventures it entailed, and I am appropriately sheepish. I hope you can find it in your hearts to forgive me… and possibly even to keep reading. (Even though I’ve done my very best to ensure that none of you will remember what happened up to this point. Egad.)

~~~

(Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, & 12)

Early the next afternoon, we rolled into Munich and the waiting hospitality of our dear friends the G’s. Your dad, the car, and I exhaled a collective sigh of gratefulness that we didn’t need to unload the camping gear; for our last night of the trip, we could luxuriate in home-cooked meals and mattresses, not to mention wonderful company. Don’t be fooled though into thinking this meant we spent the afternoon sinking our toes in the carpet and marveling at our proximity to indoor plumbing. That’s just not our style. Instead, we outsmarted both the heat and Germany’s lack of beaches by spending the afternoon at a local creek sinking our toes in the sand and marveling at how far our water cannons could shoot. You, Sophie, weren’t as keen as the rest of us about the creek… and once I slipped into its knee-deep silt, I could certainly sympathize. (Shudder^259103738992.) However, you happily used the hours to collaborate on sand soup recipes with your friend Noah, and I’d venture to guess we all got our fill of pure, slimy fun.

The inconvenient thing about shooting water straight up in the air is that it insists on coming straight back down. Of course, that might have been the whole point…

(more…)

Airlines encourage passengers to arrive three hours before their scheduled flight times, but considering the vast emptiness of my gate’s waiting area, I’m the only one zealous enough to do so. I feel like I should be sitting bolt upright clutching a carpet bag and craning my head toward each new marvel à la Anne Shirley. A gingham dress would be a nice touch too; it would look far more earnest than my current getup of hoodie and headphones. I’m on my way home after a long-short time warp of a week, and the threads connecting me to my husband and girls have wound themselves so tightly around my heart that it’s in danger of bursting a seam.

How do parents travel for a living? Or spouses, for that matter? Does that lifestyle grow familiar with time, or does it ache continually like a phantom limb? I know I’m a little pathetic here, but that’s okay. I’ll be home soon smothering my girls with kisses and passing out Nonna’s oatmeal-raisin cookies. Just not soon enough… what with three hours until my flight and all.