Prologue
I’m here, and I will soon be there. But first, here’s a little backstory.
I’m a Covid cliché.
Like so many personal stories, self-discoveries, and caterpillar-to-butterfly transformations these days, my story—the travel one you’re here to read—starts with quarantine, with that flip-the-world-upside-down two-plus year period that slapped humanity right across the face. Hello! Wake up!
Covid unmuted and started to crank the volume up on that little voice inside of me.
Get out of that job!
Get out of that relationship!!
Get out of Connecticut!!!
Get out of your own way!!!!
And so I did.
Now, prior to making these moves, I had been elsewhere. I went to college in another state; I travelled by airplane as early as kindergarten because I had parents who didn’t let the reality of a long flight and sleep deprived children scare them out of a good time. There was the trip to the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, UT, where I saw Earth, Wind & Fire perform at the Opening Ceremony. Then there was the ski trip to Portillo, Chile: dinners in a huge sunlit lodge, sunburn on my eyeballs, me winning the resort’s junior ski race.1 There was the château in Switzerland and the day we hopped across the border to France to tour a castle and eat fondue. A trip to Spain with my mom for my cousin’s wedding. Dinner at 10 p.m.—even for kids! No bedtime?! Dancing until 3 a.m.?!! Young Margaret was astonished and taken by the Spaniards! Trips to the Bahamas and the Dominican Republic with my dad, where my brother and I snorkeled in the pool until we had goggle marks that outlasted our suntan lines. A vacation to St. John to celebrate my mom’s fiftieth birthday, where we snorkeled and saw a nurse shark and a sea turtle, and I got a sunburn that made even the thinnest spaghetti straps feel as if they were woven of cacti. There were countless trips to Florida to escape winters and wet springs in the Northeast.
When I start to list out and recollect the vacations past, how many plane rides I took before I even got a learner’s permit, I’m truly lucky. Then I went to high school and had the opportunity to go on a trip to Africa with my mom. The itinerary: guided safaris, wading in Victoria Falls, riding the Rovos Rail. My mom boarded that plane. I did not. I didn’t want to fall behind on my school work, didn’t want to get the travel vaccines—I let my anxiety, and my health at the time, get the best of me. I put myself in a metaphorical safe room and kept “no” on the tip of my tongue, rather than forcing myself, despite all my fears, to utter a “yes” that could enrich my life.
This tendency gripped me through college. While I scrolled through snapshots of my friends’ lives abroad, I told myself I wasn’t missing out. I had a long-distance boyfriend who I was planning to live with upon graduating; I had literary essays that were keeping my mind enriched, poems I was crafting. I was fine. I told myself I didn’t want what I wasn’t allowing myself to have. I wouldn’t allow myself to travel outside of the realm of possibilities that felt comfortable. Feeling safe was more important than feeling fulfilled. And I would travel, eventually.
Suddenly, I graduated. I was trying to operate on my own dollars and a company’s work schedule that made traveling, nevertheless abroad and for extended periods of time, something I could achieve only with the help of Hermione’s time turner. Thankfully, things started unravelling. Covid was the cat that toyed with the ball of yarn that was my life. I had spun everything into such a tight knot to keep it all together that I forgot it could be unraveled, that I could actually make something new out of it.
Put another way, I unraveled: Covid induced my mid-twenties crisis.
The partner I was with for six years, the one I was itching to live with after college? I wasn’t happy and needed to part ways with him.
That first job out of college, the one I only intended to stay at for six months but ended up staying at for three years? I finally quit. I cut myself loose from a job that was giving me less than I was giving it. All that to say, thank goodness I was too much of a chicken shit to make any changes sooner than I did; if I had, I wouldn’t have crossed paths with my current partner—the one described to me before his hiring as a “cultured and worldly” man with a “really cute butt”. Brooks just so happened to be forced back stateside because of (you guessed it) Covid, and when we met I re-met the little girl in me who craved wanderlust. Funny how some people reintroduce you to old parts of yourself.
So, yes, those years overshadowed by Covid were filled with tears, with many boxes (both metaphorical and moving), with many rounds of internal tug-of-war, with ends and beginnings, with family shifts, with relationship tests, with a tonsillectomy, and with Covid (twice). Ultimately, 2020 to 2021 were the great winds that sent me into a spiral of exhaustion with the life I was living and re-oxygenated my curiosity to get up, get out, and go see the world.
So, that’s how I ended up here.
Where is here? you may be wondering. Cape Cod.
And you quit, so you’re—I worked a retail job over the summer and still keep up a small copyediting gig. (Immediately, I felt my cortisol levels drop.)
Why the Cape? During my elementary and middle school years, at least one or two weeks of my summer vacation consisted of skim-boarding on the bay, trips to the Brewster Store for candy bags weighed by the pound, ice cream, seafood dinners at the Lobster Claw, mini-golf, and go-karting at Bud’s Go-Karts. And, in the town over, Brooks grew up going to his grandparents’ Cape house. With all this serendipity, it’s no surprise then that after Brooks and I cohabitated for a little under a year, and our renewed lease never made it to finalized paperwork status because—whoops!—the rental company just forgot, we took it as a cosmic kick to quit our teaching jobs, pack up, and move to a place of sweet nostalgia. The Cape would be our layover.
Was the move seamless? Oh, of course. The boxes were all packed before the sun went down and everything fit neatly in the storage unit.2 How long would we travel? Rumor has it we may stay abroad long enough to wash ashore for one more summer on Cape Cod before we make our next move. We’re planning just enough to be prepared but not so much that God laughs. We’re trying to be carefree for goodness sakes! Stop asking questions! I’m trying to savor the freedom I granted myself when I finally pulled the tablecloth woven of my untouched aspirations, a life-shattering pandemic, an outgrown relationship, and a stressful job off the table that was my life. Poof! Freedom! I’ve wiped the slate clean and have uncuffed myself from the constraints of the made up couldas, wouldas, shouldas. I’m just saying “yes”! If not now, when? If the opportunity presents itself, I’m going for it! Or, better yet, I’m making the opportunity for myself. Yes, it’s cliché, much like this whole “I’m traveling in my mid-twenties origin story” is shaping up to be, but whatever. Isn’t life cliché? Frightfully, I feel the biggest cliché is the one we’ve all been ascribing to: that life has a sequence and that a 9-to-5 job is a marker of success, along with following some five-year plan that we were forced to come up with sitting across from a career counselor.
All that to say, I cannot tell a lie. Even now, while I’m bargaining with my suitcase to grow just one more fucking inch so I don’t have to choose between my six bottles of probiotics or another pair of sandals,3 the idea of traveling sounds better than the boots-on-the-ground, butt-in-a-plane-seat reality I’ll be living. Why? Frankly, traveling isn’t glamorous. All trips, from the life changing to the quick weekend getaway, are bookended by (long) travel d(el)ays and the reality that one must always return home. There are moments I huff and puff, when packing feels like chore and groan when I have to do *adult things* to prepare for my departure. But then I remember my unique and possibly crippling financial position: no return date, no mundane job, no brick-and-mortar home, no routine to get back to. (As you can imagine, my parents are thrilled.)
The possibilities truly are endless. As The Beatles sing in “Here, There, and Everywhere”: “I will be there / And everywhere / Here, there and everywhere.” Although a love song (somewhat apropos given my travel muse and companion), the passionate sentiment and verbiage rings true to the adventure Brooks and I are about to embark on. This trip is fueled by the desire to experience the expansiveness this world has to offer, to experience what Brooks and I have to share with one another, and to meet the parts of myself that I’ve either lost touch with or haven’t met yet.
I want to be here. I want to be present, to be in the moment, to experience what each country we travel to has to offer, to be grounded in my body.
I want to be there. I want to remember all the experiences and people. I want to remember where I was and who I was, and who I could have been, as I see where I go, who I become, and what I can be. I don’t want to just be content with staying put unless I feel called to be. I want to embrace the movement that travel, and living, entails.
I want to be here. I want to be there. I want to be everywhere. And so, I will.
We will.
Something tells me this memory about winning gold is warped and probably inaccurate, but I’d like to think it’s true.
Indeed, it was not seamless. We thought we were so organized during the weeks leading up to our personally proclaimed move-out date that I had the audacity to think I could leave my closet to tackle last. We did jenga everything we planned into the storage unit…almost everything. As for packing the car… Turns out, my Mini Cooper wasn’t as big as my old Subaru. Here’s hoping the vacuum, our pantry dry goods, the boxes of unopened/vetoed condoms, cleaning products, and other knickknacks we left in our hallway with a “FREE” sign were pillaged by our neighbors after we fled the scene at midnight. (The amount of useful stuff we left gave me pangs of guilt for at least two weeks thereafter.) Thanks to Brooks’ driving, and fueled by the pizza we ate on a park bench outside our building at 9 p.m. to break our unintended 12-hour fast, we arrived on Cape at 3 a.m. A good 16-hour moving day. 0/5 stars. Would not recommend.
Alas, as much as I wanted to introduce myself in this prologue as a reformed over-packer, it just wasn’t meant to be. As of now, my suitcase is packed, and, yes, it is not carry-on size.