Abroad Is Always Closed

For some reason, these words of wisdom, a quote from Italian Days by Barbara Grizzuti Harrison, are a catch phrase in my family.

I travel with peanuts, cashews, almonds, or Balance bars, Gold bars, 40-30-30 bars, with string cheese from supermarkets or rich local cheeses. My purse or backpack never lacks for protein. Fear drives my prudence.

Memories of family trips blur into a single bad trip, Frank behind the wheel as dusk turns to dark, pushing on to find the promised campground, motel, diner, our own stash of food inaccessible in the Volkswagen camper, the International TravelAll, the Nissan Sentra, packed away beneath children in the years they traveled with us, children asleep or sullen or querulous. Inevitably, I've doled out the last of the protein and we're left with brown bananas, softening plums, a bag of raisins, when my blood sugar drops, taking with it all good sense. I cling to the last shreds of maternal decency by shutting up and tuning out, incapable of reasoned discourse.

Later, children grown, Frank and I travel by station wagon or Toyota pickup, food still remote in the back, under the canopy, passing California freeway exits. Along with the shakes and bad temper comes my inability to make a decision. I'm convinced that all choices offered are bad and the situation hopeless. By the time Frank leaves the freeway we're in a small town—empty streets, all restaurant lights turned off, only a motel offering packets of coffee, sugar, non-dairy creamer in a rough-carpeted room. The headache will come, does come, and anger with my husband for whom hunger is an inconvenience, who remains his own good-natured self.

I hate who I become—and then there's the fear. I've blacked out before, briefly, regaining my balance when the darkness clears, able to find food, to eat slowly, gratefully. But I don't know what lies at the other side of that darkness. Would it last? Would it be like diving into deep water, my natural buoyancy bringing me back to the surface? Or not? A black hole sucking me in? Might I trust, turn to sleep, breathe slow and even, sleep until morning. I remind myself that when there's nothing to be done, it's better to do nothing.

But the quieter I grow the greater Frank's concern, as irritating as the scratchy underside of the quilted motel bedspread. I don't want sympathy. I turn away, thinking but not saying, Don't remind me that you're here. I'll only blame you. It's all your fault. You were driving. You wouldn't stop. You'd point out diners only after we passed the exit. Never go back—some principal! I hug my anger to me, pressing it to me until the hard stone against my belly feels like peace.

God bless the child that's got her own—at night in California on Highway 101, at noon in Rome when every store is closed till four, outside the train station in Firenze with only a gellateria open, or on Bali's north coast when the small warung offers only salty peanuts, shrimp crackers, or sweetened, tepid tea.