Exclusive Subscriber Excerpt
HOME SWEET ANYWHERE
Introduction
Smart people do not loiter at the Columbia Bridge, nor anywhere else near the border in Laredo, Texas.
Nevertheless, this is exactly what my husband, Tim, and I found ourselves doing at dawn on a sparkling June morning as we anxiously waited for someone to come along and tell us the correct procedure for crossing the border into Mexico. Expats who often made the trip we were about to embark upon instructed us to use the bridge, not the more heavily traveled main border crossing, which is famous for delays and gunplay between drug dealers and border guards. But directions from our unlovely hotel to the bridge had been hard to acquire, and as we struck out shortly after dawn, we were still not sure if we had it right. The freeway intersecting the city was too new for our map, Google was inconclusive, and the hotel staff was clueless. Needless to say, we were a little nervous.
We’d stayed up too late the night before looking for a route, our iPhones and laptops blazing. It would be a ten-hour trip—provided there weren’t any surprises. We had to time it just right, crossing the border early before the crowds, so we could arrive in the Central Mexican mountain town of San Miguel de Allende before dark. Smart people also avoid roaming around Mexico at night.
Finally some people arrived and entered the border office building. So we stopped loitering and entered as well to find the employees engaged in a lively recap of their weekend activities. We approached the desk hesitantly, clutching our customs documents. An official, clearly annoyed at our interruption, curtly glanced at our paperwork, relieved us of several hundred dollars for the auto entry fees, banged our passports with a faded stamp, and instructed us to wait for the gate to open so that our car could also be inspected.
Once again, we found ourselves waiting anxiously for another official to arrive. When she did, the challenge of pawing through our SUV, crammed with luggage and gifts for our Mexican friends, which we had disguised to avoid hefty duty fees, proved too much for her. After a couple of desultory questions, she waved us through the last barrier standing between us and our newly minted expat lifestyle. We were on the road.
The border crossing marked our first step toward traveling internationally full time and finally living in places we longed to see. For years in our separate lives, we had just dreamed of going to all these places. Now we were finally making it a reality. But even more importantly, our ability to take on the world without a home base full of familiar things was also rooted in the joy my husband, Tim, and I experienced at finding one another again after a thirty-five-year hiatus.
Our torrid two-year relationship in the 1970s had ended painfully because our timing was wrong. Tim was a brilliant, handsome, sexy lyricist living a financially risky Hollywood existence in the unfettered style of that decade. I was a dynamic tall blond with a demanding career in public relations. We had been friends when we were married to the parents of our children, and when those marriages dissolved for different reasons, we rediscovered one another quite by accident and fell madly in love on the spot. It was a glorious two years, but with two little girls and a ranch-style house in the San Fernando Valley to take care of, I didn’t have the courage or energy to marry Tim and his freewheeling lifestyle, even though I wanted desperately to be with him.
Thirty-five years later, I answered the door and welcomed Tim into my home. He had phoned a few days earlier, saying he was planning to visit Cambria, the seaside village in Central California where I had lived for fifteen years. I could not have anticipated what happened next. I thought our connection would have settled into its proper slot in my life’s experience. When I accepted his offer to stop by for a brief catch-up, I told myself that he was a former lover from eons ago and now a valued friend, nothing more.
Not so. The minute I looked at him, the years disappeared. My heart knew that he was mine, I was his. That was all there was to it. We were in serious trouble.
“I’m so happy to see you, Tim,” I said, smiling. Before he could answer, my husband, Guy, called, “Who’s here?” from his studio downstairs.
My husband was a well-known illustrator/artist, popular with everyone. We had everything we wanted—a happy, loving marriage and comfortable life, a perfect garden, a terrific kitchen, a working art studio, and great spaces for entertaining. It was idyllic except for one monstrous reality: Guy was succumbing fast to Alzheimer’s disease.
Tim had arrived on one of Guy’s lucid days. The three of us chatted in the afternoon sun, enjoying the views of the Pacific through pine trees that meander down to the Cambria beach. At that point, Tim had been settled down for years and owned a small electronics manufacturing business, a far cry from his former rock-star days. He amused us with wild tales about that frantic industry. The conversation was going well, but when Tim mentioned that his marriage of twenty years was ending, I felt my carefully constructed world tilt.
When he left, we parted as old friends should—with a peck on the cheek and a fond hug. We simply could not speak of the obvious. Time would continue to rob us.
It was an impossible situation. My husband required my loyalty and devotion, and of course my heart still lay with him. We loved each other dearly, and for twenty years I had enjoyed the responsibility of making our lives run smoothly and playing the part of his muse while he pursued his active, successful career as an artist. Watching Guy’s mind slip away was breaking my heart. I needed to stay focused, and yet my desire to never let Tim out of my sight again was equally compelling. I was miserable, afraid, and jubilant. I was in love.
The next few months were pure anguish. Guy lost ground every day; finally, for his own safety, our doctor told us that he needed to be in a facility for Alzheimer’s patients. He had reached the point where he needed the level of supervision I couldn’t provide at home. Guy said, as we walked into the common living room, “My dear, what a lovely hotel. Did you know that it’s famous for its restaurant?” I was devastated. He settled in immediately and never inquired about our former life again. Three years later, he passed away—and eventually my new life began.
The notion of traveling internationally full time came to Tim and me several years later as we sipped drinks on a friend’s terrace in San Miguel de Allende. We were staying in her beautiful colonial house for a month while she was away. By then, we had reunited and eventually married and settled in California’s Central Coast wine country, while traveling as much as we could. A cheerful blaze crackled in the outdoor fireplace as we chatted about where we’d like to go next.
This conversation presented the perfect opportunity for me to bring up a delicate matter I’d been considering for quite some time. On my next birthday I would be seventy, a huge milestone. That was definitely past middle age (what I had always considered myself, since I was so healthy and energetic), unless I planned to live to be a hundred and forty. With the big day looming, I was feeling restless and frustrated because there were so many places I wanted to go, but not just to go. I wanted to experience living in these places, not only visiting for a week or two. The problem, I had realized in the months since this thought first occurred to me, was our big house, with its accompanying overhead and maintenance responsibilities. Owning it prevented us from leaving for too many months at a time. But since my relationship with Tim still felt relatively new, I’d kept my mouth shut, worried that if I mentioned my secret concerns he would think it meant I was unhappy just being with him.
But that day in San Miguel, I was so antsy about it that I couldn’t contain myself anymore. I took a deep breath and said, “You know, Tim, I don’t want to upset you or hurt your feelings, but I have to tell you this. I’m not happy living in Paso Robles. It’s not you, God knows, but I’ve realized that there are a lot of places I need to see before I’m too old. I’m just not ready to quit exploring the world yet, and a three-week vacation just isn’t enough travel for me. I think we need to figure out how to be away more than we’re at home.” I closed my eyes to avoid seeing his expression, terrified that he might misinterpret me, that he would think I was unhappy with our life together.
Instead, he roared with laughter. “Oh my God, we’re on the same page! I’ve been thinking exactly the same thing for months, but I was afraid you’d think I’d lost my mind. I thought you wouldn’t consider leaving the house and the grandkids.”
I stared at him in disbelief—and with that, our plan was born. We would “unretire” and find a way to move freely around the world, soaking up the sights and places that had been gathering
With those magical words, off we went on a breathtaking adventure that would carry us into a high-rise in Buenos Aires; a peaceful country hacienda in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico; a tiny apartment with a big view of The Blue Mosque and the Sea of Marmara in Istanbul; a darling flat with a great kitchen a few blocks from the Seine in Paris; a villa apartment overlooking Florence; a medieval three-story walk-up in La Charité-sur-Loire, France; a balconied one-bedroom by the River Thames near London, an apartment outside Dublin in a three-hundred-year-old Georgian mansion with views of the Irish Sea; two rooms in a colorfully tiled riad in Marrakech, Morocco; and a beach house near Lisbon, Portugal.
Here’s the best part: we are in no hurry to see the sights. By living this way, we have the most precious commodity in the world: time. We aren’t tourists at all. We are temporary locals, wherever we choose to park our suitcases. And now that we are “home free,” home is wherever we are. How could we know the adventures that awaited us?
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