After a simple vegetarian lunch near my father’s condo in Taichung, Taiwan, I walked to the corner optometry shop to pick up the glasses I had ordered when I arrived two days ago. The optometrist advised me to replace the pitch-black lenses of the year-old Maui Jim sunglasses and not to leave them in the sun or inside a car to prevent deterioration.
I was grateful to have those sunglasses on standby when I had accidentally dropped my made-in-Italy Gucci prescription sunglasses in San Francisco nearly a year go.
Satisfied with the replacement lenses, I paid and got ready to head into the noonday sun.
Just then, I caught the overworked optometrist staring at me with admiration. She hesitatingly whispered, “I wish I could travel.”
“You can,” I said immediately.
She smiled and shook her head. “No, I don’t have the money.”
Then it occurred to me that I had taken travel for granted. To travel, one must have the inclination, the time, the means (money), and the health. To travel independently as I have done, one must be able to communicate in the native language and be fearless about getting lost and approaching strangers.
Dad and me at the Notre Dame in Paris, 1998
Earlier, my eighty-three year-old father asked me how many countries I visited. In responding, I could only think of countries I did not visit. In my own mind, there’s a pecking order. A visit doesn’t count as much as a lengthy stay for work or study.
Before coming on this week-long trip, I wondered why I had become content not traveling as wildly as I used to. After all, I once commuted out of London Heathrow Airport, preferring to shop at duty free and living in spotless, clutter-free hotel rooms to my own home.
Nowadays, I question the interruption of travel. Why would I get on a plane and endure the logistical hassles of queuing for luggage inspection, visa clearance, and other third-party approvals, when every day on Maui is a day in paradise? With high speed internet, I could easily FaceTime or Skype my friends in other time zones. Have I become too comfortable?
Now that I am away from “home” I remember why I travel. Because I can. As long as I can still travel, I will travel.
When I am far away, I remember all those things I forgot that I missed.
Speaking Chinese everyday. Eating authentic Chinese food every meal. Hearing my father speak in Shanghainese dialect. Hearing my maternal relatives speak in Hakka dialect.
When I travel, I not only cross time zones but also, it seems, time itself. I am a daughter again. I am a teenager again. We revisit the past as if it is still yesterday. My father recounts the same stories with detail: lament for his best friend who returned to Shanghai because he was homesick, only to suffer in the Cultural Revolution, his second-best friend who helped get him a university teaching position in Taipei, and his all-expense-paid trip to mainland USA on his East-West Center Fellowship in the late sixties.
Other than my first eighteen years, our lives intersected in discrete periods of time: the summers I returned to visit, the occasional family reunion, travel to mainland China, Paris, Amsterdam, and now my solo visits during Spring Break. For health reasons, my father stopped traveling a few years ago.
Travel has taken on a new meaning for me. It’s not about going places where I’ve not been before but visiting those I care about, wherever they are.
So I should say to the optometrist, “if you really want to travel, you can.” But most people are too comfortable where they are.