have bags, will travel

pearls before swine

When I was a kid growing up in New York I loved to lay on my back in the thick, fragrant grasses of our freshly mown lawn, where I would contemplate the clouds and listen to the buzz of various insects as they swooped in, inspected me for signs of dinner or danger, and flew on. Whenever a plane would break my lazy reverie, gliding regally across those bright summer skies I would watch it intently until it disappeared, wondering where it was coming from, where it was going, and wishing with all my young heart that I was on it.

My husband, who knows me best, knew me well enough even on our first date to woo me in a red leather booth in a dark downtown bistro, plying me with rare steak, a heady Cabernet and amusing anecdotes about eating lizard sandwiches with an elderly ex-pat in Mexico, and dreams of drinking kava while cruising the Nile aboard a tramp steamer bound for Africa. I'd never heard such tales or drunk such wine, and as I listened to this charming, erudite man I sensed that perhaps I had finally met my match. He had me at "tramp steamer."

Of course, after dating awhile I found out that he hated red wine, didn't care much for steak, and wasn't all that keen on that particular restaurant. Men. But the stories were true, as was his heart, and over the years we have been lucky enough to satisfy much of our mutual wanderlust.

Lately, however, family and health concerns have been keeping us close to home, and we haven't been able to stray very far afield for the past few years. So I'm thrilled to be able to say that, at long last and after a number of false starts we're happily planning a trip to Greece: Athens, Mykonos, Naxos, Santorini and Rhodes. I don't know where else. Crete, we think. Delphi, if there's time. Turk likes to travel 'by the seat of his pants.' I like to make reservations. But all I know is that I can hardly wait. I'm ready, I'm not ready; there's so much to do and so little time. But I'm so excited, I'm up at 6:00 am ~ I know! And I'm not even just getting home in a cab! I'm giddy as schoolgirl. Because I've never stopped staring up at every passing plane, willing myself on it. Soon, I will be.

So as they say in Greece... well, I've no idea what they say in Greece, frankly. I bought a Grecco/Anglo dictionary and it looks like a 3500-word combination of Egyptian hieroglyphs and Esperanto. Suffice it to say, it's all Greek to me. Suffice it to say, we are going to get very, very lost. Very, very quickly.

So let's just call it ciao.

Ciao for now!