Home Sweet Anywhere

by Lynne Martin

  A few days later, we arrived at our rented apartment in Paso Robles, not far from our two California families, and quickly settled into our routine. Although we love the road and have adjusted to staying in other peoples’ places, using their things and living sparsely, it felt wonderful to retrieve some of our own pots and pans, our favorite coffeepot, and familiar linens and pillows from the storage facility. We dug out “new” clothes, jewelry, boots, and coats from our storage unit. My big, fluffy, warm terry bathrobe felt as welcoming to me as a mink coat. Those things don’t pack very well!

  Suddenly, all things American excited us. With renewed enthusiasm, we embraced the prospect of living for two months in our home country. Silly things like hopping in the car and driving without thinking about which side of the road we were on, or puzzling over the configuration of a roundabout thrilled us. Understanding the labels on every item in a grocery store and then just tossing the groceries into the car without lugging them several blocks was a treat. American TV news was a double-edged event: we could understand all the words, but many times the stories were so inane that we’d switch to the BBC. Most of all, we were home and overjoyed to be with our friends and family for the holidays! The view from our small apartment stretched across the town and into the vine-covered hills beyond it. People think of the Napa area of Northern California as the wine-growing capital of the state, but the Central Coast is catching up fast. More than 140 wineries snuggle among them as they step back from the ocean, with new wine tasting rooms sprouting up almost daily. The restaurant and bar scene has become sophisticated, and McMansions dot the countryside. Cattle and vineyards vie for space in the landscape.

  We had dreamed of some downtime and many relaxed evenings with my daughters and their families. But while we certainly enjoyed lots of family fun during the holidays, in California, time seemed to speed up. We found ourselves far busier than we ever were on the road, and the days evaporated with social events and chores.

  My daughter Alexandra and her husband, Lee, had bought a twenty-nine-acre gentleman’s farm in Templeton, California, just south of Paso Robles, while we were gone. The approach to the property, through rolling hills covered with California live oaks, is stunning. Their spread was complete with a pool, as well as heart-stopping views of vineyards and ranches. Ethan, who had entered a new middle school in the community, and Elizabeth, a beautiful ten-year-old whose school was just a mile from the farm, were thriving in their new environment. They loved their new chicken-tending, pool-cleaning, farm-rambling life! The farm became headquarters for Christmas and New Year’s Eve parties for all of us and our friends, even with the dust and grime of remodeling insinuating itself into everything from toothbrushes to kids’ homework papers.

  Meanwhile, my daughter Robin, who owned a small business on the coast in Cambria and kept busy with her two daughters, Fiona and Rory, hosted traditional family parties like our annual cookie day and the Christmas Eve feast.

  One morning, during these mounting family events and my writing schedule, I brandished a yellow pad and pen. “We’d better get with it. Our calendar is filling up,” I said to Tim. “I’ve made checkup appointments with just about every doctor in the county, so we can leave knowing we’re okay.”

  “Do we REALLY have to go to a dermatologist?” he asked, not wanting to be bothered with yet another appointment. “I’ve never been to one in my life, and I hate wasting the time to go all the way to San Luis Obispo to his office.”

  “I know. That’s the point, we haven’t been before,” said Bossy. “But at our ages, we really need someone to look us over, just to be sure.”

  “Oh, I know you’re right, but seeing the internist, the dentist, the mammogram radiologist, the proctologist, hair dressers, manicurists, and with guests coming to town to say hello while we’re home, parties and the Christmas holidays, we’re too busy to think.” He sighed and poured us another cup of coffee.

  I reached for a stack of mail-order catalogs. “This is some ‘rest,’ huh? We’ve also gotta decide what clothes and other stuff we need to buy before we leave. We’d better start ordering clothes for our trip in the next couple of days or they won’t get here on time.” While San Luis Obispo County offers unparalleled beauty and great wine, the shopping opportunities are limited.

  I added, “And then I’ve GOT to find time to write!”

  The pressure surrounding the sale of my book grew more pronounced every day. Dana had submitted the proposal to several publishing houses that she thought would be a good fit. There was a surprising amount of interest. It seemed that each one wanted a different tweak: one wanted expanded chapter descriptions, which took me days to accomplish; another wanted a full third chapter, which meant I had to finish it, send it to Bob for his editing, re-check it, and have it incorporated into the mix. All the while I had that March deadline in the back of my mind, which made me feel terribly pressured. While we were grateful for so much interest, the drama of revised proposal requests and the question about whether any interested parties would offer a substantial contract fueled an already tense, suspenseful situation. We tried hard to remember that the hoopla concerning our story was incidental to our real life, but we found it difficult not to get caught up in the excitement of the attention suddenly pushed our way.

  “And remember, we still have to gather up the things the French Consulate requires for an extended visa. We have to make the plan to get to LA for that meeting. We’ll have to stay overnight,” Tim said. I added those items to the long list.

  For the next few weeks, we raced from doctor to doctor, while I sandwiched in minutes and seconds to write the new materials we needed. Tim gathered proof of our financial stability, our lack of criminal activity, proof of citizenship, and the status of our health, so the French authorities would let us remain in the EU for longer than the ninety days allowed by the Schengen Agreement. He also handled the mundane issues of our life, like banking, taxes, updating our trust—and, not to be forgotten, planning the details of our next year or two on the road. Since I was writing most of the time, he was also tending to groceries, laundry, and our daily life. This was not shaping up to be the rest and relaxation break we had anticipated.

  We were learning that the homefree life is not really as carefree as it might seem. All the minutiae of living still must be addressed. However, for people on the road for many months at a time, a year’s worth of life’s details must be handled in a matter of weeks. When we’re abroad we have no family obligations other than some delightful phone conversations. At home, we find ourselves happily involved with events with family and friends. It’s a pleasure, but parties do eat up time. There is a trade-off: independence and total control of our activities versus the warmth and joy of being with our people!

  Along with his own projects, poor Tim was kind enough to listen to me read my daily output every afternoon, offering his insight and commentary. He never once rolled his eyes with boredom as I doggedly carried on writing page after page of new material. I do not know how he found the patience to live with this new situation.

  As if all this weren’t stressful enough, we were suffering from claustrophobia. We had rented the tiny apartment the previous spring. Since we did not anticipate my needing a quiet, private place to concentrate while I worked on a book, we felt a tiny one-bedroom apartment was enough. While attractive and providing a spectacular view, it was so small that we could hear each other breathing through the closed door. Tim couldn’t watch the news or make a phone call without my hearing it. A bad situation. We considered renting a small office space, and I even spent some time at the public library trying to write. It almost worked, but the chairs were worn out so my derriere ached after a little while sitting there, and some library visitors couldn’t control their chitchat, the shushing librarians notwithstanding.

  As the days stretched with us both cooped up in our small space, Tim was growing understandably testy. I was downright mean.

  One day, while I was sequestere
d in the corner of the bedroom with the paper-thin door separating us, Tim shouted, “I’ve GOT IT! How stupid can I be? Why didn’t I think of this?”

  The door burst open. There he stood, grinning for the first time all day. “What in the world is wrong with you?” I asked, petulant and cross, because he had just interrupted some great thought. (Not that I can remember it right now. It’s truly amazing how a person can begin to take herself much too seriously.)

  His smile grew. “I’ve solved the problem—tomorrow you will be able to write and nothing will bother you.”

  “How is that possible? Did you buy a bomb shelter?”

  “No, I’ve ordered you the heavy-duty Bose noise-canceling headphones. The top of the line. Merry Christmas!”

  It was a perfect solution. I gasped, and then lunged at him for a big kiss. We went out to dinner to celebrate.

  The next morning, I waited at the door like a kid ready to surprise Santa Claus at midnight for the FedEx guy to appear with my headphones. Tim had changed my life again!

  At last, I was able to tune out and write wherever I wanted, including the long car rides when Tim happily listened to music and drove us to and from Los Angeles for our meeting with the French Consulate. Both the book material and the visa request worked out just fine.

  Since then, I have written proposals, articles, and this book in cars, planes, trains, on ships and ferries, in hotels, apartments, and an Irish cottage (which was sublime since it required no earphones). One afternoon, I plopped down in the lounge area of a Portuguese shopping center and wrote almost 1,000 words of Chapter Five while Tim shopped for sweaters for us. People swirled around me, laughing, talking, and pushing baby carriages and shopping carts. It made no difference to me: I happily sat there writing about Morocco’s swirl of color and dust while listening to Mozart sonatas in a sparkling clean shopping temple full of Europe’s ubiquitous C&A, Zara, and Sephora stores.

  ***

  All the hard teamwork paid off when the new proposal content was well received. Before we returned overseas to the next phase of our homefree life, I secured a book deal! Stephanie Bowen, an experienced editor at Sourcebooks, Inc., the publisher we favored all along, decided to buy the book, and Dana artfully arranged a contract that satisfied all parties. It was a thrilling moment, proof of our extraordinary luck in gathering a team of smart people who contributed their experience and energy to helping us tell the world about our homefree life! Rick and Sarah, Dana and Bob, and so many others had conspired to bring us to such a delightful place in our lives.

  After we indulged in jubilant phone calls to everyone we knew who really cared about the project and some who probably didn’t, but were polite enough to be encouraging, we took ourselves out for a luscious meal and a very, very nice bottle of local Paso Robles Zinfandel. We stayed up late crowing about our great good fortune and imagining what the future would bring.

  We were overjoyed to have this major event completed before we left the country again. Right from the start, Stephanie and I were on the same page. I was as nervous as a schoolgirl when we had our first conversation, but right from the beginning I knew that our collaboration was going to work. She was so enthusiastic about our story, and her warmth and obvious expertise inspired the level of renewed inspiration and confidence I knew would be needed for me to accomplish the job. And guess what? The March deadline was lifted. Sourcebooks, in its wisdom, had given me until June to complete the project. At that moment, it felt as if a boulder had been lifted from my shoulders. I still had a mountain to climb, but at least I didn’t have to do it in three months!

  A few days later, after we had recovered from the news, I shouted, “Hey Tim,” from my bedroom office, where I was tethered to my laptop.

  He jumped with alarm and almost dumped his computer off his lap. A harpsichordist was banging away to a Bach piece through my earphones, so I hadn’t realized how loudly I’d spoken.

  I looked through the doorway to see him pointing to his ears, grimacing. I apologized, took off the equipment, and said in a normal tone, “I just got an email from Judy Butcher. She’s coming to town on her way to San Francisco. Won’t that be fun? We can take her over to Cambria to meet Robin and up to the farm, too. I think she’d like that, don’t you? I’ll bet she’ll like that swanky Argentinean restaurant that’s opened over there by the park.”

  He nodded his approval and motioned for me to get on with my work. Is muse another term for foreman?

  After we roasted together in Florence, Judy spent the late summer in Germany before touring around Europe visiting relatives and pals. We were anxious to catch up with her. A few evenings later, while enjoying Malbec and some really tasty South American food, we chatted about our experiences and shared our plans for the future. Our conversation somehow seemed easier and more natural than our talks with family and friends. Of course, our family was interested in our adventure. However, it seemed hard for them to relate to our free-floating life, in which we talked about meeting someone for lunch in Berlin as casually as if we were meeting them in Los Angeles or San Luis Obispo.

  It began to dawn on us that we had fundamentally changed since our decision to live home free. Our worldview had become larger and our place in it more fluid. As we talked with Judy, who had lived internationally for much longer, we realized that living home free had unfettered us in more important ways than leaving pots and pans behind. We were much more intrepid and felt completely comfortable about being in new situations, living in countries whose languages were unknown to us, finding friends to amuse and inform us. We had more confidence in our ability to be in the world, and it certainly took a lot more drama to make us upset nowadays.

  Later, we introduced Judy to the girls and their families. While she was with us, we plotted how we’d meet the following summer in Paris; she planned to take one of her granddaughters on an expert’s tour. Judy gave us some excellent contacts for our search for an apartment in Berlin the following August, and we tweaked our schedules so we could enjoy a few days together in that city, too.

  Finally, the time came to part ways. After we dropped off Judy at the train station in San Luis Obispo, Tim said, “You know, this is something we didn’t expect, a surprising bonus. We meet people all the time who share our love of being on the road. And the best part is that we’re staying in touch with a lot of them, looking forward to finding one another again. We’ve seen Judy Butcher in, what, three countries now? And by the end of the year it’ll be five. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to try to hook them all up somehow? What a great party that would be!”

  “What an idea!” said the gal who is always ready for a party. “If we really worked at it, maybe we could round up a lot of the new friends we have in someplace central. Maybe London or Paris. I’ll put that on my list. Lord knows we’ve pulled off crazier stuff.”

  We spent the next few weeks tearing around the county, visiting our medical people, our attorney, and talking with our tax guy and our brilliant financial advisor. We checked out medically: absolutely nothing wrong with our bodies. We had been in good shape when we left for Europe, and it appeared being on the road agreed with us, because we returned even healthier. Our financial checkups were good, too. Our plan was working, and we were staying well within the budget we’d agreed upon, but that was no surprise. We had expected it to work all along. Most people our age have learned to stay within a budget!

  Things we had ordered from catalogs and stores arrived every day: shoes, bags, easy-care travel clothes, all the things we needed to begin another odyssey. This time, we packed even lighter, and replaced essential items: a new blazer for me, new jeans a size smaller (ahem) since I had successfully shed a few more pounds from all the walking we had done, and a long raincoat with a zip-out lining I would need in Portugal and Ireland during some seriously cool, rainy weather. Tim bought a new blazer, too, and his Irish cap scurried right back into the suitcase, along with some new comfortable walking shoes. After days of debate, he popped his beautifu
l summer Panama straw hat on his head decisively. “I’ll wear this hat in Paris this summer if it’s the last thing I ever do,” he said. We’ll both live to regret that decision, I thought to myself.

  In a few weeks, while traveling again, Tim and his beige straw hat with the black grosgrain band became easy to spot in airports full of people wearing dark winter clothes and tweed hats. Our efforts to find a safe place for the thing on planes, ship cabins, trains, taxis, and ferries drove us crazy, but he was too stubborn to mention it. I certainly didn’t want to antagonize him by complaining. It became of those silent “gotcha” jokes familiar to all couples!

  We made our agonizing decisions about what to cram in the duffels, and shoved the rest of our gear into storage. We deposited our car at the family farm, tearfully departed from our beautiful people, and found a hotel near Los Angeles International Airport—where we were treated to an impromptu jazz concert.

  The next day, we sat across the aisle from one another on a plane bound for Florida. Tim’s straw fedora rested comfortably in a spot he claimed in the overhead compartment. I watched a fellow passenger give him the stink eye for taking up valuable space, but I buried my head in my Kindle book and didn’t say one word. That hat was his problem, not mine.

  Sometimes, gotcha moments aren’t at all worthwhile.

  Chapter 13

  Portugal

  Destiny brought Tim and me together after decades apart, but eighteen days aboard Carnival Cruise Line’s ship Destiny thoroughly tested fate’s wisdom and our devotion.

  The minute I saw the chocolate brown main salon swathed in golden disco lights, I suspected we had a problem. I hadn’t seen anything like it since Viva Las Vegas. “Do you think Ann-Margret’s going to come strutting down that staircase?” I asked

  Tim cut his eyes at me and kept walking, harrumphing under his breath. Further inspection revealed that the ship, when built in 1996, was the largest cruise vessel in the world. It had plied the Caribbean for sixteen years and it was clearly in need of more than a paint job and new drapes.