Being in Two places at one time

The great thing about traveling is the new; new customs, new faces, different buildings, another language, and strange fruit. That’s why we get the urge to go.

Today I had 2 (okay, 4) Montmorillon macaroons with my afternoon coffee. The tourist brochure said that these were famous macaroons and “just the word” would bring Parisians and the Japanese running. At the patasserie, an older woman with a spiky haircut and zany glasses (a look older french woman can somehow pull off) wrapped them up “just so” in a large sheet of paper emblazoned with their elegant logo. I love that. Somewhat apprehensively, I took my first bite and watched out for a tourist stampede. Happily that didn’t materialize. It was a good macaroon. Though, I do think just as good could’ve come out of my friend Andrea’s kitchen.

And that’s the other great thing, foreign travel also renews the familiar. New things help us see our old things in a new way.

As we drive around France, I often play a little game with myself. For a stretch of road, I’ll think to myself. ”If I was in Nebraska, where would this be?” I imagine that I’m NOT in France but in Nebraska, or Illinois or Holland or Ireland or the UK – anyplace else that’s familiar to me. No matter where you are, the countryside has a limited combination of elements – trees, fields, hills, etc – and one place can resemble another.

For example, yesterday the road was lined with tall trees and swept to a river bottom on one side. For a few miles, I wasn’t in France, I was on the river road going down to Mt. Michael Abbey, near Elkhorn, Nebraska.

Later, another stretch wound through vast fields on rolling hills, That was the back road to Arlington where we took swimming lessons when we were kids. Often the illusion will last for just the time to round a corner but I get a vivid rush of memories with this game and revisit the most obscure places from my past. A stand of trees near Charolles were like the ancient cottonwoods that grew by my sister Rita’s old house. This is a place I haven’t thought about for years but the memory came to me so strongly that I could just about hear the wind rustling the leaves. The new helped me remember the old and the old was new again.

Often this game doesn’t work because there will be a feature in the landscape that doesn’t fit the memory. This being France, there is always a pesky château or 14th century watermill marring the view. We don’t have many of those in Omaha. However, this doesn’t spoil the game and actually sharpens my impressions of a new country. I notice tiny details I may not have noticed otherwise. For example the glass insulators on the old electricity poles in France are a beautiful greeny-blue color that I’ve never seen before; not in england, not in Ireland, not in the US. A few days ago, I was driving along a flat, open stretch with a river to my right. It could almost have been the road to Dieren in Holland but the trees were too tall. For some reason, there aren’t very many tall, old trees in the Dutch landscape.These were fine French trees that had been allowed to grow and get old.

Traveling is not only about seeing new things. It’s often about seeing old things in a new way. When it helps us remember the places we love, we journey backwards and forwards at the same time. I love that.