Friday, March 16, 2007

An embarassment of robins

Well, not quite. But this morning, as I resumed my early walks with the dogs, I counted at least six robins happily pecking at the thawed and sprouting ground.

The dogs were in their element, doing their usual sniffing and pulling and grunting and marking (Geni has taken to imitating Rusty and trying to lift one of her hind legs to pee, which considering her girth is a pretty humorous scene to witness). And I was in my element despite that fact that, in crossing the Atlantic, I returned to be in about 40 degrees less of warmth and sunshine than when I was in Puerto Rico.

But, for me, the best part of traveling is returning to my own home and to my daily routines. At heart, I'm not much of a traveler although I've come to appreciate the quiet and focused time afforded by airplanes for reading.

In fact, I pretty much hate traveling not because I'm afraid of flying but because I dislike the whole process of getting in and out and of being on airplanes. I wish we had advanced to Star Trek levels of technologies where I could just use a transponder (or whatever that thing was called) and yell: "Beam me to [wherever I'm going], Scottie!"

It's possible, I've considered, that the pretty amazing amounts of traveling we did as kids has contributed to my otherwise inexplicable general antipathy for traveling. Before I turned 16, I had been to the former U.S.S.R. (where we ate and drank every possible concoction imaginable made of apples and where the sun was out for about four hours in winter), to Colombia and Venezuela, to Mexico, to Paris and London, and to Greece and Egypt, in addition to many trips to the States.

In their efforts to combat the increasing materialism bred by an Americanized Christmas in Puerto Rico (after we'd started asking for toys by brand names), my parents decreed when I was about 10 years old that we'd spend the holidays in December traveling so we could experience the world. They pooled their middle-class earnings and we mostly went on the cheapest educational tours they could find.

The trip to London was particularly memorable because they played the Abba song "Fernando," over and over in the restaurant. To this day, we can all recite the song verbatim. We arrived during the Boxing Day holidays when nothing was open and there were no cabs. We walked for miles around the entire city and ate in a fish-and-chips place owned by Indians, but we didn't get to tour Buckingham Palace, the Tower of London, or any of the other famous tourist attractions everyone talks about when they've been there. My next trip to London, whenever that might be, will be a quite the pleasant surprise since all I remember is Madam Tussaud's wax museum (which was great fun) and Shakespeare's town (where I had the best butter bread ever!).

I guess all that world traveling at an early age contributed to making me quite a committed homebody, to my wanderlust husband's continual dismay. Of course I enjoy traveling to be with my loved ones and to visit (some) new places. But, in the end, I'm happy to be back home so that I can take long walk with my old doggies and start looking out for Mr. Robin once more.

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