We recently spent a two weeks in England and Scotland, and though I won’t recall all the details for you here (It’s been documented), I will answer one question I’ve been asked a number of times since our return. “What did you like most about the trip? What was your best moment?”
That’s always a difficult thing to answer after a trip. There should be many things, many moments that stand out. New experiences. Art. Architecture. People. Injuries sustained and their comical after-the-fact stories. And there was all that, but for me it was something else.
It was in Edinburgh almost two weeks into the trip. We’d rented an Airbnb in Old Town and had lucked into a wonderful flat that had windows on three sides and a view of an old courtyard and the Writers’ Museum from the kitchen. The bed was comfortable, the kitchen clean and the living room spacious, and there was a washing machine, which meant clean laundry after seven days on a boat. In the living room there were books on the shelves—to which I added a copy of The Music Book—and a sofa with a matching chair, both ready for reading or lounging or napping. It was all homey and charming in the ways a hotel room cannot be.
Twelve days in then, with work and the normality of our lives fading, Allison and I were resting in between pub trips, in between new experiences and tours and things learned, bits of history clarified. She was laying on the couch with our Android tablet taking in more details about those bits of history and looking for more Edinburgh things to do later or the following day. She had a blanket on top of her and a glass of wine in front of her on the coffee table. There was some laundry swirling audibly in the washing machine. Allison got up to refill her wine, “Want another beer?”
I was sitting on the chair, which was deep and soft and had arms thick enough for my laptop and beer to rest comfortably. “Yes, please.”
I handed her my empty and she set it on the kitchen counter next to the others. She took the wine from the fridge and poured the remainder of it into her glass and left the bottle on the counter with the empty beers, “We’ll need to get more later.” She came back to the living room and handed me my drink, “Thanks.” Then she resumed her position on the couch, and we continued that way for a while. She was reading and researching, and I was writing, and there were no sounds other than the occasional faint laughter and conversation from the courtyard below. We didn’t speak much ourselves and we didn’t have anywhere to be, not even for vacation stuff. There had no deadlines here, and that thing called work was a million miles away.
After thirty minutes or so, I finished what I was writing and stood up to get another beer, but I did so quietly as Allison, being part cat, had fallen into a brief nap. I paused at the book shelves on my way to the kitchen and wondered as I trailed my finger along the books if any of the subsequent renters would read a few pages of mine. I doubted it, but the possibility was there. In the kitchen I opened the last beer and looked out the window at the courtyard and the Writers’ Museum. There was a small group of people gathering there for a tour and readying themselves for a few bits of history before a pint or two in the pubs. I watched them for a few moments before going back to the chair where I started to think about writing a story or two based in Edinburgh, perhaps rooted in the comfy confines of our Airbnb. I took another sip and looked at Allison napping and had one overriding thought.
This is the way life should be.
We’d had great and new and unique experiences on the trip, and we would have more in the coming days before heading back to Seattle, but it was that moment that struck me, that moment of living as we wanted, of being alone and as we were. It felt like home, the way home should feel when life is about living rather than working. We were no longer a couple on vacation. We were a couple writing and researching, learning about the world and chronicling our journey. I sat there sipping my beer and immersed myself a while in the Edinburgh stories. Yes, I would write one, but I would live this one first. I nudged Allison and she opened her eyes, “Head to the World’s End?”
