HEMISPHERESMAGAZINE.COM
•
NOVEMBER 2013
49
road—dodging oncoming
cars and wayward sheep and avoid-
ing forbiddingly solid stone walls
rising on either side. Eventually, the
road yielded to a narrow stretch of
shore alongside a lovely loch, and
there, standing in lonely elegance,
was the red call box.
I fiddled with coins, dialed and
heardmy daughter’s cheerful “Hello.”
It was thrilling, heart-stopping.
Most of what we actually said to
each other has been lost in the
wash of years, but the intensity of
the feelings remains. I was shaken by the
strength and depth of my love for her.
She was present in a way she couldn’t be
whenwewere together. Back inCalifornia,
she was a part of the landscape. But with
5,000-plus miles and weeks of no contact
between us, I had the rare opportunity
of seeing her as a separate entity, as a
young woman engaged fully in her own
life. (I wouldn’t appreciate how fully until,
months later, I learned of the house party
she andmy younger daughter had thrown
that evening.)
As I spoke to the girls, their lovely
faces inserted themselves into the exotic
environment aroundme. It was disorient-
ing and exciting to be plucked from my
gray-green world and plunged into their
sunlit one. We struggled through broken
phrases and stops and starts, some due to
the mechanics of the phone. But it didn’t
matter what was said: I imagined the
windows and doors wide open, the sun
shining, the garden bright with bougain-
villea and oleander. I saw it all, almost as
a stranger might. And could they imagine
me inmy out-of-the-movies prop of a Brit-
ish phone booth? Maybe, maybe not. Not
having on either side a picture-perfect
image of what the other was up to was
part of the magic of our call.
It would not have been so had I been
able in the previous weeks to pull out my
cell phone and check in regularly, keep-
ing them posted on my every move and
remaining posted on theirs. Instead, we
had sent each other off into new adven-
tures, theirs the newness of livingwithout
my hovering presence and mine that of
unexplored regions.
When we all met again at home, a
delicious shyness threaded through our
reunion. We looked and listened as if we
were somehow new to each other. Not
all of our stories were told then. Some of
our adventures remained tucked inside,
only to emerge at unexpected moments.
Something—a strain ofmusic, the velvety
feel of the air on a summer night—triggers
a memory, launching one of us into a tale
never before shared.
Although I was the last kid on the block
to get one, I do use a cell phone. But my
memories of that summer explain why I
o en (more o en than friends and family
like) choose to turn it off. Howcanwe grow
if we infuse every environment we inhabit
with the same voices, the same issues we
confront inour everyday lives?Why shrink
the world to the size of amobile phone?
Like most things in life, it all comes
down to finding the right balance. In
Oregon, my phone allowed me to be away
from home but also somehow there. It
was comforting to share a laugh with
my daughter over our cat’s antics and to
describe to her the lively street festival
we’d suddenly happened across after
turning a corner. But comfort is not always
what one wants from a vacation. The
disorientation that results from leaping
feet-first into a strange new world can be
what JohnKeats called “soul-making,” and
will last long a er you’ve returned home.
Keats wrote that phrase, by the way, in
a le er to his brother George. In the le er,
he reveals that he received a black eye the
previous day, havingbeenstruck in the face
with a cricket ball. Nowadays, of course,
that news would have come a few seconds
a er the fact, with a photograph a ached.
MAUREEN ELLENO’LEARY
, an English
professor at Diablo Valley College, can best be
reached on her landline.
HOW CAN WE
GROW IF WE
INFUSE EVERY
ENVIRONMENT
WE INHABIT WITH
THE SAME VOICES
FROM HOME?
TRAVEL ESSAY
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