Solo

Challenge. Work. Ah-ha.

Back when I was part of a couple, which seems like both yesterday and a hundred years ago, the two of us traveled to many places: three times each to Crete and Italy, our favorites, to Scandinavia, the Baltic states and all over Europe, to Turkey, to Iceland, to Costa Rica and Mexico. Over the course of our long marriage, there were some things we were not very good at. But we were always good at travel.

I also traveled quite a lot by myself those days, to teach, to give talks, to promote books. But there is a difference between traveling by yourself when you are part of a couple and traveling solo.

When you’re partnered, the non-traveling partner can be a sounding board, an idea-generator (or squasher), an extra set of eyes when choosing what cheap apartment in what unknown neighborhood to rent. The non-traveling partner sends texts, is available for midnight phone calls. And when you come home, you come home to someone. That’s a big deal. It has nothing to do with taking care of the cats or picking up the mail. It doesn’t even have to do with having an audience for those many hundreds of images on your iPhone. It has to do with the deep, embodied feeling of coming back to an inhabited place, warm and human. A place that looks and feels and smells lived in.

I miss that.

Now I travel solo all the time.

There appears to be (based on random scrolling that, sorry to admit, occasionally leads to deep reading) there are two basic reactions to those of us who do this:

1. Poor you. You must be lonely.

2. Oh, you’re so brave.

Ah, there are also links to “Solo in Style” sites and “solo-ish” tour packages and “Single but Not Alone” Facebook groups, plus more glowing reports of cruises than you can imagine. So, actually, there is a third reaction:

3. Solo? Don’t go solo! Sign up for a cruise! Join a group tour! Don’t be alone!

Allow me to simply discount #3 without explanation. For the others:

#1: No I am not.
#2: No I am not.

Solo travel is an adventure and a challenge. This speaks to me. It is also work. Which does not speak to everyone, I know. But the experience comes with the deep satisfaction of achievement—even if that achievement is just figuring out a bus schedule or how the damn washing machine works.

The flip-side is what might be a funny story if experienced with someone can be a long frustrating moment if handled alone. And a moment you might wish to share with someone, is a moment that goes unshared. Or it might be an ah-ha moment, like this one:

I was drinking a very good glass of 2 euro vino tinto watching the sun set over the Atlantic. The sky was rose and gold, peach, apricot, and lavender. Everything all at once. And the thought crossed my mind: This would be even more perfect if I were sitting here with someone I truly love, with someone who truly loved me. And then the thought crossed my mind: I am.