Home
“I guess you travel all the time, eh?”
“Sure do!” I say to the kind audience man footing the leg of the rig, keeping it from sliding while we take it down after the show.
“So where’s home?”
And the shortest answer is, “I have a house in Kalamazoo, Michigan.” Sometimes followed by, “I’m there about three weeks a year. Not all at the same time.”
And most of the time, that’s home. I keep my stuff there. I email my roommates to water the cactus and put out the recycling, I pay the housekeeper to avoid fights about who cleaned what when I get home. Three hours away, I text “Incoming!” to make sure I have a place to park and the furniture’s where I left it.
I’m there about three weeks a year. Not all at the same time.
There are ways to feel at home on the road. If you’re anywhere longer than four days, unpack, fill the hotel drawers. Longer than a week means scented candles and the same coffee shop every morning. Sometimes you’re lucky and there’s a kitchen, it’s worth it to tote along a canvas grocery bag of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and spices and a good paring knife. Sometimes it’s carry-on only and I learn the vagaries of the local grocery, an American-style hypermarket (say it “ee-pair-market” and the locals can actually help you) or the best fruit seller on the subway steps, the meat market with head-on carcasses hanging like fatty curtains.
I always bring: pillow, blanket, laptop, paper, pen. That and contact lens solution and a bank card, set me down in any city in the world and I’ll be fine. Deal with the jungle on your own; this is my self-sufficiency.
I always find: at least two coffee shops or cafes, free internet (the joke in Eastern Europe as we moved from place to place, “follow Allison, she’ll know where the net is before sunset,” as I roved the streets with my laptop open, seeking the unsecured network and not ashamed to sit on the curb to use it), good fruit and the book store with an English shelf.
Home then is the barista remembering my order. The fruit seller saving some good cherries. A new cheese to try from the clerk at de Kaaskamer, Runstraat 7. Sitting in the morning, or whatever my inner time zone says is morning, turning out words that turn into pages, the voice from the road calling home.
Today is Edmonton. Today is Second Cup in the morning for internet and Vietnamese Subs in the evening for beef salad rolls, yes, extra sriracha please, like always. Today is the guy at Italian Sandwiches trading all my coins for bills, lightening my load. Today is three shows, making small talk with three sets of audience helpers while we take down the rig, “I live on the road. Where are you from?”
I have my blanket. I have my pillow. I have my laptop and paper and pen. I am in the world. I am home.
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Location: Second Cup, Whyte Avenue, Edmonton AB Canada