Ten Tips for Safe Travels
People are traveling again. After the cabin fever of shelter-in-place, which seemed to last approximately two centuries, my social media feeds are blooming with photos from Greece, Botswana, Iceland, Portugal, New York, Yellowstone, and Joshua Tree. My husband and I and our adult children are traveling too: our oldest son crossed the border to Tijuana for a Jiu-Jitsu tournament, where (brag alert), he took gold in his weight class. Our middle son, who seems most comfortable in his room when he’s not at work, recently traveled to Florida to visit a friend. Our youngest daughter is currently working as a counselor and lifeguard at 7500 feet above sea level in the southern Sierras at the family camp we’ve been going to since she was two years old. My husband and I are going to family camp later this month and to Seattle in early August.
For many years, we didn’t travel. Not because of COVID, though there was that too, but because our family was remarkably stuck. “Remarkably stuck” is a phrase a psychologist used to describe our middle son five years ago, but it was true of all of us. For many years, we were stuck slamming doors and forcing doors open and offering unsolicited advice to our children (sometimes in high decibels) while our children yelled back at us (often in equally high decibels), and no one was listening to anyone, and in between lurching from one crisis to another there was no time or energy to travel anywhere except around and around the closed circle of our collective misery.
Now that we seem to be less stuck, I’ve been going places in my head. I think there’s a new book in there. It feels a bit like quickening in early pregnancy, when you’re not sure whether the baby is actually moving, and if it is, what those tiny flickers even mean. (I’m well aware that gestation and birth are the criminally overused metaphors for writing and publication. There’s a reason for that.) For now, the flickers feel meaningful enough that I’m trying to establish a regular writing practice, which for years was desultory and driven by guilt, chaos, and the productive panic occasioned by a deadline that was not set by me.
Here’s what I know so far: it will be a book of essays about distance traveled and about journeys, voluntary and forced, literal and literary. About my grandmother, who was evacuated from Odessa in August 1941 with my three-month-old father and who spent the following three years hundreds of miles to the northeast, in a town called Kirov. About my parents, who left the Soviet Union in September 1977 with four suitcases and nine-year-old me. About the endless back-and-forth trips on Cabrillo St. in San Francisco (which had the advantage of being flat and having four-way stops at every intersection) with my terrified mother, who didn’t know how to drive, behind the wheel and my father, coiled like a cobra next to her, and me in the back seat shouting, “Stop yelling at mom!” every time he yelled, “Where are you resting your foot?” whenever she was resting her foot in the wrong place, which seemed to be all the time. About the road trip to the central California coast my mother, daughter, and I embarked on in January 2023 in a category 5 storm.
Because I spent years studying literature, I’m also planning to include at least a few thoughts about literary journeys, among them the voyaging hither and yon in The Iliad and The Odyssey and the Greek myths, Henry James and his Americans abroad, Emily Dickinson, whose poems span universes and belie her tightly cloistered life, Dante Alighieri in his dark wood, a certain yellow car in The Great Gatsby, fairytale motifs that come up again and again.
To that end, I’ve come up with some suggestions for safe travels gleaned from the lessons of great literature. I hope they serve you well wherever you may venture this summer. Stay safe out there!
Don’t yell your name and where you live at an enraged Cyclops you’ve just blinded with a red-hot olive stake (even if he had it coming).
Don’t go tromping into caves that seem to be inhabited, especially without an invitation.
Don’t start a voyage by telling your daughter “Put on your best dress because you’re getting married to Achilles, honey” and then slitting her throat just because some soothsayer implied that doing so might help you win a propitious wind.
Also, when you return, maybe don’t show up dragging a concubine who is screaming, “We’re all gonna die!” Especially if you have reason to believe that your wife, who has been unattended for 10 years, might still be pissed at you.
If you’re fleeing from a prophecy that says you’re going to kill your father and marry your mother, avoid killing a guy who looks to be your father’s age at a crossroads and then marrying a newly widowed lady old enough to be your mother.
If you’re a wealthy and oblivious American, be very careful when you travel abroad, especially when you encounter American expats. (Note: If you’re a wealthy and oblivious American in America, you can do pretty much whatever you want and then retreat back into your money and vast carelessness.)
Exercise extreme caution around rabbit holes, wardrobes, and mirrors. Also portraits that follow you with their eyes. Also suspiciously hospitable hosts, who may simply be trying to feed you but who might have ulterior motives—like fattening you up before eating you or turning you into a barnyard animal.
Don’t fly too close to the sun.
Avoid secluded cabins in the woods. Avoid woods in general. If you’re thinking about wandering in a dark wood midway through the journey of your life, consider making different choices.
If Death kindly stops for you and someone named Immortality is riding shotgun, you do not have to get into the carriage.
For more of my reflections about college admissions, parents, children, and books ranging from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to The Odyssey, check out my memoir The Golden Ticket: A Life in College Admissions Essays.