Over the years since I lost my loving husband, travel has provided immeasurable amounts of healing. To Marfa with Janice and Frank; to New York with Alice; to Spain with a group of like-minded art afficionados; to an Ann Patchett-like retreat at a quaint lake house in Michigan with the girls; and to various grandchildren in college towns like Amherst and Nashville, Spokane, and San Francisco.
Most often with traveling companions.
Also, alone on long deserted highways.
The path back from indescribable grief is excruciatingly long.
Years.
As I have navigated, I have developed some standards for a travel companion. A recent return visit to the south of Spain fortified my convictions.
The ideal travel companion:
· Makes the coffee every morning.
· Is fit and strong, often doing daily strengthening exercises on a hotel towel.
· Reminds you to drink more water.
· Emphasizes not THAT water.
· Turns the wrong way out of a hotel room as often as you do
.
· Introduces you to Spanish croquettes (Croquetas de Jamón Serrano)
and gently prods you to new tastes.
· Takes your arm on the cobbliest cobblestone roads.
· Knows the story behind every figure in Velasquez’s Las Meninas.
· Suggests that the cowhide belt is more interesting than the brown leather one you selected as a splurge in Cordoba.
· Refrains from “I told you so” when you insist on turning the wrong way at the Plaza del Sol.
· Knows the secret to solving directional disputes is a chocolate croissant.
· Instantly recognizes the bronze statues of Maimonides and doesn’t make you feel like a dodo for not knowing one of the most influential Torah scholars of the Middle Ages.
· Handles the currency with ease and botches the language as badly as you do.
· Is an endless source of historical facts about the Spanish Armada, the Visigoths, Neolithic times yet is willing to listen to your prattle.
· Meets every emergency need with his backpack stash of bandages, steroid cream, cough drops, protein bars, and Tums.
· Is a brand-new person after a ten-minute snooze.
· Appreciates a romantic dinner as much for its presentation as for its content and is careful not to let his continental gourmet taste overshadow your banal palette.
· Is incredibly discerning over wines.
· Must have dessert.
· Doesn’t get pissed off when you refuse to share your mandarin gelato.
· Is committed to 10,000 steps a day and to walking after every meal.
· Is already planning the next adventure as we travel home.
The ideal travel companion?
I found him.
How lovely to have the "perfect" travel companion. And to travel. Thanks for sharing what matters to you as traveler. You do it so well.