360 Degrees Longitude (50 page)

Our goal for Ambergris Caye was to get such a powerful case of island fever we would be dancing around doing our Dorothy impressions, clicking our heels together and saying, “There's no place like home, there's no place like home …”

It's not that there was nothing to do on Ambergris Caye, nor is it like we did nothing during our four weeks there. We rented bikes and rode up and down the island several times. We went on a few snorkeling trips, fed eagle rays, and petted a shark. Those activities consumed a few days. Beyond that we mostly spent our days sitting by the pool or dangling our feet off the pier. Katrina also spent an awful lot of time in the kitchen of the condo we had rented. A day hardly went by that she didn't bake a cake, cinnamon rolls, cookies, or a pie.

Katrina and Jordan, who I previously would have thought could adapt to anything, were, for the first time, starting to count down the number of days until we went home.

During the first eleven months on our trip we rarely stayed more than three or four nights in a single place. We were always on the go, figuring out who the local people were, what the area's highlights were, where we should stay, and how we should get there. Until we stopped, it was difficult to realize how fast we had been moving.

After we arrived at our condo in Belize, I found myself thinking, “Gee, where are all the leaf-cutter ants?” Ambergris Caye seemed rather domesticated. In fact, it seemed a little too much like Maui; English was the official language, everything was clean, and there were no swarming insects to torment us. Not that there is anything wrong with Maui, but as far as an adventurous travel destination, it ranks right up there with Fresno.

As I contemplated the lack of leaf-cutter ants, I had to remind myself that we weren't there to partake of adventure, but to get bored and reflect on our year abroad.

So, what about that year? Did we learn anything? Well, I learned that foreign coins breed in suitcases. I don't know how many times I found a coin from, say, Turkey or Mauritius, in the bottom of my suitcase—countries we had left several months earlier.

We learned a lot of valuable things we wouldn't necessarily carry in our suitcases, such as we can get by with a lot less stuff than I would have guessed a year earlier. We learned a tiny bit about what the world is like, but also learned that there is way more that we don't know than we do know.

Ultimately, I concluded that not only would the lessons “we” learned be different depending on who was describing the lesson, but also when. Taking our kids around the world was a 20-year experiment in human behavior—to draw conclusions about “what we learned during our World-the-Round Trip” without the perspective of time would be too much like predicting the future.

• • •

Mr. and Mrs. Middle America were on Ambergris Caye in droves. Because there were almost no cars on the island, and zero rental cars, tourists tooled around in little golf carts. It was so different from the backpacker culture that had been present everywhere we went in Africa, Asia, and South America. The tourists were my demographic, but I identified with the backpackers, with their curiosity about other cultures and the natural environments found in out-of-the-way places around the globe.

Sitting by the pool at our condo, I listened to overstuffed Americans with gold chains around their necks brag about their cool toys back home—Jet Skis, snowmobiles, speedboats, and, of course, fast cars. Cooing over motorized toys seemed so trite, yet I heard myself in their voices, having the same conversation in a place not too far away, not too long ago. It seemed a lifetime had passed since I had lusted for mechanized gratification. Listening to such talk made me uncomfortable.

Katrina was a one-woman baking machine on Ambergris Caye. Jordan would eagerly wait outside the kitchen, just like Plastico. Though Jordan didn't stand outside the kitchen perfectly still with his mouth open for a treat, he didn't want to actually help with the baking or the cleaning process that followed, but was only too happy to eat the results.

One day when Katrina was making cinnamon rolls, Jordan came in from the swimming pool dripping wet.

“Hey, Katrina! Whatcha making?” Jordan inquired with a gleam in his eye.

“Cinnamon rolls. Want to help?”

“Nope. And I don't want cinnamon rolls. I want raspberry ribbon pie. Why don't you make a raspberry ribbon pie?”

“I made raspberry ribbon pie a couple of days ago, and I've already rolled out the dough for the cinnamon rolls. Besides, I don't have any cream cheese.”

“I'll go to the store and buy cream cheese,” he offered. Knowing that Katrina feared lighting the oven, he continued, “And I'll light the oven for your rolls.” That clinched the deal. Jordan has potential in politics.

Later, when the rolls were ready to go into the oven, Jordan was eager to light it. He was of the age that anything to do with fire was cool, and so much the better if there was a chance it could blow up.

I happened to be standing by the oven and Jordan had his head halfway inside, ready to offer it a match. The next thing I knew there was a flash of heat on my legs, a tremendous BANG, and Jordan was flying across the kitchen toward the bathroom. He claimed he jumped backward, but I saw the incident with my own eyes, and I didn't think a human being could hurl himself backward that fast without some additional propulsion.

I gave Jordan a quick appraisal. Two eyes, one nose. That was good. No flash marks. That was good, too. The hair was all there, but I wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not. If I squinted hard, I thought I could see a singed eyebrow, but it might have been that Jordan had gone to seed a bit since we'd landed on the island.

The oven incident was one of those life lessons that will have a way of changing with the perspective of time. Now Jordan remembers to turn the gas on low and keep it on for only a moment before lighting the match. I hope that eventually the lesson will morph into something more along the lines of, “Just because you have done something many times, that doesn't mean you know all there is to know about it.”

In the meantime, Jordan decided that lighting the oven is a job for Dad, who is still of the age that anything to do with fire is cool, and so much the better if there is a chance it can blow up.

During our stay on Ambergris Caye we rented bikes for the entire month. If there ever was a 1968 VW Bug of the bicycle world, these babies were it. When we went to the bike shop, I noted that every bike in the shop was the same: all built like locomotives and probably just as heavy, with only one speed and the kind of brakes where you have to press backward on the pedals and then hope that the bike actually slows down. Every bike, without exception, had deep patterns of salt corrosion. Before we could try one of the bikes, the shop owner ran a stiff wire brush over the chain to dislodge the larger chunks of rust.

Bicycles are a way of life on Ambergris Caye. Although the more affluent families on the island can afford golf carts, most of the population tools around on their one-speed rusty beach cruisers.

On our last day on the island, we packed some snacks and drinks into the wire basket mounted on the handlebars of my bike, filled the basket with ice to keep the foodstuffs cold, and then set out for a picnic at a pier at the end of the island.

As we pedaled down the sandy road on our 1968 VW Bug-bikes, I couldn't help but think about how far we had come during our year, both figuratively and literally. Our near-state-of-the-art tandems were waiting for us in storage at home. Most people in the world will never know the difference between a two-ton, single-speed beach cruiser with a wire basket mounted on the handlebars and a finely engineered modern bicycle, let alone a finely engineered modern car.

I knew the difference, though. Luckily, over the past year I had learned to be just as happy on a rusty beach cruiser, bouncing across potholes and sliding in the sand; I no longer saw my identity formed by where I lived, what I drove, or what I did for a living.

We arrived at the pier and ate our picnic. After we finished eating, no one moved. The sun was setting in the west and the four of us watched the horizon as it transitioned through the color spectrum from bright blue to deep red. “I can't help but think back on the sleepless nights before we left for Iceland, contemplating ‘what if…,'” September mused.

“Had we known Katrina would break her leg, or that we would get stranded, penniless, in Lushoto, would we have stepped on that first plane?” I responded.

Jordan stopped what he was doing and stared at me as if I had lobsters crawling out of my ears. “Why would that have stopped us?” he asked, incredulous.

“Before we left, we worried a lot about what could happen. A lot of the things we worried about actually did happen,” September replied. “It's possible if we'd known all these things we may have simply stayed home.”

That was true. Given the cold facts, September and I may have just chickened out. If I had learned anything though, it was that cold facts are just that. Cold. To understand something, someone, or someplace you can't simply analyze it intellectually and expect all the answers. To be understood, places, humanity, and culture have to
be felt
. To be lived.

“It's lucky you can't tell the future, then,” Katrina responded. “Because everything turned out just fine.”

A
fter being away for more than 52 weeks, we landed at the San Jose, California airport at 11:00 p.m. on a Sunday night. I had to be at work for the first time in over a year at 9:00 the following morning.

When I arrived at work the next morning a colleague bumped into me in the hallway. He said, “Hey! I heard you were back. I, uh, expected you to be more suntanned.”

He was looking for some sort of change in me. I
had
changed, but it wasn't visible. There was no real way to communicate that change, so I smiled and said, “A suntan is more than skin deep.”

Later that evening a box full of mail was thrust into my hands. For twelve months, home had been “where our stuff was.” Now I was holding mortgage statements, IRA statements, letters from the IRS, and property tax assessments. I hadn't opened a letter in more than a year. Why should I care about any of that stuff? Or any “stuff” at all? “Stuff” just creates stress. Who's to say that
hakuna matata
isn't a better philosophy?

In the weeks that followed, I would find myself waiting in line at the grocery store, and a stranger would introduce himself (or herself) and tell me how much he (or she) enjoyed my e-mails and photos from our trip. “September's friend forwarded them to me!” Then came the standard follow-up question: “How is it being home?”

How is it being home? It took me months to sift through all of the conflicting feelings to formulate a good answer for that one.

It is good to be among friends again. It is indescribably wonderful to have a hot shower whenever I want one. We can also walk into a grocery store, buy fresh milk, and take it home and put it in the refrigerator where it will stay fresh.

But during our travels, “home” wasn't a place. It was a feeling of being together. Now that we have activities taking us in different directions, the hardest adjustment is that home once again has become a place. Capturing that same feeling of being together requires work.

Within a few months of reentry Katrina had entered a world of cell phones and chemically dependent hair. Jordan had become assimilated into a world of baseball and superhero comic books. September was once again doing hand-to-mouse combat with 1's and 0's and I was working on the next generation of satellites for satellite radio.

When we were traveling it felt natural that we would always be together. Now, our individual interests pulled us in different directions; if we wanted face time as a family, we had to schedule it on the calendar. So that's what we do.

“Movie night!” I exclaimed. “We're watching
Forrest Gump!”

“Whatzit about?” Katrina and Jordan asked simultaneously.

“Doesn't matter. The four of us are going to cram onto the bed and pretend it's the Unimog and we're stranded in the middle of nowhere. There is a force field around us so nothing can get in or out until the movie is over. Cell phones off!”

An hour or so into the movie and the familiar “Life is like a box of chocolates” resonated as it never had before. In our year abroad, we found things are rarely what they seem. People are complex and are more than the sum of their experiences and our preconceptions. Seeing the WTO riots in Hong Kong left a much different impression than when I read about them in the
New York Times
. Being rescued by the humble people in the Usambara Mountains left a much different impression on me than if I'd read about those kind souls in
National Geographic
. As with chocolates, so with life. You may get chocolate-covered
dulce de leche
or a chocolate-covered prune; it might be a Horse Shit Ball special delivery from Switzerland or a tropical island-made bar that tastes like dirt. Or quite possibly M&M's on the Bolivian Altiplano.