What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding

by Kristin Newman

This last rule is the most important to me: you are able to go with the flow in a spontaneous, non-uptight way if you stumble into something amazing that will bump some plan off the day’s schedule. So you missed the freakin’ waterfall—you got invited to a Bahamian family’s post-Christening barbecue where you danced with three generations of locals in a backyard under flower-strewn balconies. You won. Shut the hell up about the waterfall.

The man who, even if we hadn’t fallen in love yet, after months of knowing each other, was still ensconced in my little head as my best hope for finding someone who would make me want what everyone else in the world seemed to want.

They hadn’t had my experience of Argentina. It hadn’t saved them during their times of crisis the way it had saved me. But they hadn’t expected it to; only I had. I realized they didn’t look at travel the way I looked at it, like medicine, like my chance to right all of the wrongs that might exist in my life. They just had a few interesting days in South America, and went home not too disappointed, but not too changed, either.

When you travel you’re forced to have new thoughts. “Is this alley safe?” “Is this the right bus?” “Was this meat ever a house pet?” It doesn’t even matter what the new thoughts are, it feels so good to just have some variety. And it’s a reboot for your brain. I can feel the neurons making new connections again with new problems to solve, clawing their way back to their nimbler, younger