During my family’s first trip abroad this summer, I was walking alone in Ireland’s Killarney National Park. The sun was setting, bathing the path in a golden hue, surrounded by lime trees and swarming with bees so numerous that at first I thought someone had called in an army of drones. Beyond the path stretched rolling hills and, beyond those, a small copse of trees, from which rose the 600-year-old Franciscan monastery of Macross. In the monastery’s courtyard, an ancient yew tree poked out through a gap in a window, towering into the sky from its now-roofless entrance.
If I lived in Kerry I’d walk here every day.
I would live a slower life. I would get up early for walks in the woods, sip cups of Barry’s tea while I write in my wildflower garden. I would be more creative. With so much beauty around me, how could I not become the next Maeve Binchy? Even if that meant leaving my husband and marrying a burly shepherd called Seamus, so be it.
Back at the hotel, I pored over property listings on MyHome.ie and researched how to move to Ireland.
Sadly, after two weeks admiring the stone cottages of the Irish countryside, our vacation came to an end and we returned home to Oregon.
You know that phrase. Wherever you go, are you there?
That’s bullshit. I’ve seen thousands of women in thousands of places.
In London I transformed from a slacker TV-watcher into an unofficial walking tour guide, and the city’s energy took me to every museum, tourist attraction, theatre, castle, village, forest and historically significant park bench.
In my twenties, I lived in New Zealand, where I became an adventure marianne: I hiked the Tongariro Crossing, did six months of yoga teacher training, spent another month working on a farm planting native trees, and slept in a hut overlooking a mountain range called the Remarkables (yes, that’s what it’s really called).
Normally a modest teetotaler, I spent summers in Spain tanning topless on beaches and sipping wine late into the night in cobblestone piazzas. When I moved to San Francisco at 26, I worshipped three things: avocado toast, artisanal coffee, and “disruptive technology.” Two years later in Germany, I made the most of my straightforward, no-nonsense personality, which Germans admired as much for their on-time trains and perfectly sorted recycling.
Of course, I was young, and everything I did back then felt like walking through an open door into a new life.
Now, at 37, I write this in the kitchen of my home in Portland, Oregon, where I’ve lived for the past four years. I’m a wife and a mother. A basket of laundry sits across from me, and the detritus of daily life is piled high on the table. Though a long way from the adventures of my twenties, this version of me is as real as the rest of me. When our beloved garden gnomes were stolen, a mysterious neighbor replaced them with a family of three tiny gnomes. And when I returned from Ireland, I was more grateful than ever to be able to lie in my own bed. I told my family over and over again, “Oh, I love this bed. I love the plants. I love the coffee machine.”
But that knowledge doesn’t stop the fantasies. And those fantasies live on on Zillow. At night, as my husband sleeps next to me and I stare out at our high-ceilinged Amsterdam apartment, hunched over my phone and sighing, maybe I’ll be the kind of woman who hops on her bike and heads to the market to buy fresh tulips. AhhhBut if we moved to a 1700s farmhouse in Vermont, with exposed beams and a kitchen with a fireplace, I’d be the kind of woman who whipped up a cauldron of alcoholic cider for Halloween. When I attended a writing institute on Whidbey Island last winter, I spent half my time touring the grounds and texting my husband things like, “We can rent out the barn for your wedding!”
These fantasies reflect a part of me that still exists, buried under piles of laundry and lunch boxes, a Marian not fully expressed in this life. Traveling from house to house allows me to explore different versions of myself without shocking my family. I can live a thousand lives while my real one remains rooted in one place.
At least for now.
I sometimes Done Would you uproot your life to move to a rocky island in Maine? Of course you would. Do you understand that life is always going to be a little unromantic no matter where you go? Of course you would.
But I also know that this ongoing exploration is how I keep the door open, how I connect with all the women I have been and all the women I aspire to be — adventurous and varied. It’s how I hold onto the idea that, no matter what age, there are countless versions of me waiting just beyond the threshold.
Marianne Shembali Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Cosmopolitan, and Marie Claire, and she has written for Cup of Joe about being diagnosed with autism as an adult, as well as a memoir. It’s a little less likely to breakwill be released this September. Pre-order hereIf you like.
P.S.: What it means to raise children all over the world.
Source: Cup of Jo – cupofjo.com
