3. The Traveler

She was very anxious to open up the developed film of the rolls of pictures she’d taken while on her travels overseas. She paid the clerk and rushed out the door, thinking that she might sneak a peak before she made it to the car, but thought better of it as it was snowing a wet snow and she didn’t want to ruin the pictures. She was just interested in the one shot she’d taken. As she passed through each photo, searching for the one shot, she got to thinking, “Hey, all of these aren’t that bad.” By the time she’d reached the intended photo, she’d already decided that she liked some of the other ones just as much.
*****

It is a hot and muggy day in South Carolina. I came home for lunch, as usual. I walk through the door, am greeted by an overly excited beagle mix, a pile of mail that is mostly bills, and a relief that I am away from work, if only for forty five minutes. It’s a routine that I’m in. We all get into routines, some good, and some bad. If we aren’t careful, we get into such deep ruts that we can’t see outside. We forget about what’s important and what is out there. We forget what we could be.

I reach into the mailbox finding the bills and whatever other junk they are trying to sell me. A lone post card sits face up in my slot. It is a picture of a couple of lumberjacks. One of them has just swiped his ax through a sequoia-sized tree. The other’s hands are in the air by his head, which contains a frightened look as if to say, “I’d best get me arse outta here before she falls all upon me!” Below the tree are a bottle and a half-empty pint glass. In bold Red letters it states “Guinness for Strength.”

“Ah, she knows me well,” I think to myself. It is a postcard from my sister, the one who I consider the traveler. She tells me about her trip in Ireland in a three or four sentence blurb. I’ll hear more about it when she gets back. We’ll talk for an hour or two on the phone about it. Then I remember her birthday is coming up. I’ll have to send her a card on time this year.
*****

I doze off into a dreamy state of semi-consciousness. I picture myself flying through low-lying clouds with the light mist droplets bouncing on and around my face. The light clouds dissipate into an awesome view of majestic mountains surrounded by green grassy hills. I see a lone figure twirling in circles with her arms spread open and a melody beginning to pour out of her mouth.

“The hills are alive….”

I awake in a sweat. Shit, I think, I’ve seen that movie way too many times. Damn it! I’ll have to let her know about this one.

Then it hits me. Shit, shit, shit, shit! It’s my sister’s birthday today. She’s turned thirty-two and I haven’t even sent her a card yet. Oh, she’ll love this one. “What’s your excuse this year?” she’ll ask.

“Well, I awoke in a hot steamy sweat with a picture of Julie Andrews singing in the hills of Austria. And its majestic mountains clouded my memory, thus forgetting your birthday,” I’d answer. Damned Sound of Music!

Yea, she’ll get a kick out of that one. She’s always been cool like that. She’s helped me out of some real jams, I tell you. She’s dropped over two grand my way to keep me going through school. I paid her back, but it’s stuff like that that makes me shake my head in disgust at myself.

I ease my mind a bit, knowing my exact excuse for my belated card. I give myself an inward smile and drift off to sleep again. This time I’m on a train. My buddy and I had drifted to sleep and suddenly awoke with the realization that we missed our stop. We are travelling at a slow speed right now, slow enough to jump with minimal damage to ourselves. Drastic times call for drastic measures and we grab our luggage and toss them off the train as it gains speed. Shit, this is going to hurt. We jump and roll down the embankment of the train track and fumble ten to fifteen feet in a cloud of dust and grass. Ouch. We would have ended up somewhere in Switzerland or something had we stayed on the train. Now we’ve got to lick our wounds, go gather our luggage and hike another half mile back to the rail road station. I look down at my hands, seeing that they are scuffed up a little bit with bits of grass and dirt in the fingernails. They seem a bit smaller than normal. I brush my long hair out of my face and around my left ear as to get a better look at my small hands. Then it hits me. Long hair? Small hands? What the hell???

I stir and wake up. What the hell was that? Now I’m freaking out! I get up to go to the bathroom, making sure everything is in place as it should be. I have never even heard of someone dreaming that they were someone else, let alone their own sister. Man, I remember her telling that story of her travels through Europe years ago. I couldn’t believe that she jumped from a moving train! Shit, I can’t believe I just dreamt that I was her jumping from that moving train!

If she thought the first dream was funny, hell, she’d be rolling hearing about this one! Maybe I’ll keep that one to myself. I get a glass of water and head back to bed. I must get that damned birthday card written as soon as I get up. Obviously a guilt factor is setting in.

I lay back down, turn the fan on high speed and flick off the light. That damned fan! It’s addictive as heroin I bet. The white noise it produces hums me to sleep every night. I remember visiting my sister while travelling with my mother and brother. My brother and I were all set to go to sleep in her Alexandria town home. Her room was downstairs with a huge bed that had a down mattress that she used as a comforter. We were on the floor, laying down on some blankets, our bodies in line with the huge box fan that was humming at a high speed. We heard a tussling upstairs as my sister and mother made it back from going out to a bar for the evening. They made their way downstairs to go to bed, and it was obvious my sister had a bit too much to drink. She was giggling like a little schoolgirl in gym class. She and my mother shared the huge bed, and climbed in under the feather mattress. I recall the giggling change into a faint groaning and hear a reference to how the room was spinning. I crack open my eyes and stare into the fan, watching the blades spin round and round. My mother turned out the lights and we all drifted to sleep.

I am dreaming again. This time I am travelling with my brother. We’ve already hopped all through Europe and have ended up in the country of our father’s birth. Morocco has a culture all unto itself. Its only similarity to the United States is that it blends several cultures together forming its own. We are sitting around a campfire at the edge of the great Sahara desert. It is very surrealistic in that there is an air of calm around us, though we are surrounded by the largest vast emptiness on Earth. It houses chaotic dust storms that roll up over the dunes, consumes them, and regurgitates them somewhere else miles away. That is the ultimate chaos; thinking you are settled in one spot, unmovable, yet in an instant you have traveled hundreds or thousands of miles away.

I gaze into the fire, and think back to when I was a kid, always dreaming of being a traveler. I’ve been all over the world and have brought back many stories and gifts from my adventures. Some jaunts have been seeking pleasure, others have been seeking knowledge, and others have been for caring of my family. I never realized how much it was going to become part of my life. I can barely remember one of the first trips I had was on a huge ocean liner sailing from this area of the world back to the United States. Right then and there on the deck of the boat I decided that this is one thing that I wanted to do often in my life. I might have been five at the time, but it is something that has stuck with me for all of these years.

I shake my head out of a daze. The fires in the desert can do that to you. I turn to look at my brother and see him in a similar state that I was just in. He is talking with another while staring wide-eyed into the fire, expecting to see the answer he seeks. As he looks into the fire, I imagine that he is seeking some guidance from somewhere beyond the realm of earth. I imagine he is looking for direction for his life. That is one of the reasons I invited him on this trip. I admire him for his openness with me on our journeys. He’s shared some things with me that I would have otherwise never known. Maybe the end of the trip will focus him focussed on what he wants to do. Maybe it will help him find…

CRACK!

The fire spits a cloud of read glowing ash into the air. The particles are consumed by their own fate and their glows fade until only dull, gray corpses are left rising into the great nothingness of the open sky. We all look up and follow their paths expecting to see something. We do.
*****
I open my eyes. I’m very tired and groggy and I glance over to the clock by my bed. It’s 4:30 AM. I have to be to work by seven, and felt like I haven’t slept in weeks. I just want to fall back asleep and find out what it was we saw in the sky. I roll over, kicking the dog in the process. She makes a slight grunt but is otherwise unaffected. Alright, now what was it I was dreaming about again? A rush of adrenaline suddenly pumps through me. My heart rate increases and my mouth dries a bit as I realize that again, I dreamt that I was my sister in one of her many travels. I was there with her and my brother in Morocco. No, I was almost acting as her while in Morocco a few years ago. Of course, I’ve never been to my father’s homeland, so this is all too weird. I get the distinct feeling that someone is trying to tell me something!

I fumble with the covers and throw them to the side of the bed. I’m too energized now to fall back asleep. I stand and walk to the living room and turn on the small desk lamp. I rustle through my briefcase and pull out a birthday card and yellow envelope. I sit down and begin to write. I pre-date the card with her birthday, and stop.

What can I write to her? What funny little thing can I write will ease my guilt yet convey to her I really feel about her on the anniversary of her birth? I gaze through the living room window outside to the calmness of the early morning. The sky is already getting lighter in anticipation of the rising sun. My foggy head begins to piece together some of the dreams I just had.
I realize that for once, I am at a loss for words. What can I say to someone I admire so much in the way she is and the way she deals with things and people? In that instant I decide that I need to get to know my sister better. I think it an awful thing not knowing her as I should. Hell, I’ve known her my whole life haven’t I? Yet, how much time have we spent together, one on one learning about each other? Not very much. Sure we know each other’s lives and all, but we haven’t connected, as siblings should.

I look down at the birthday card that I had bought months earlier. I begin to adjust the humor in the card to allow for my belatedness. Then, I try to think of what else to say. I write a few words hoping her birthday was a pleasant one and that I look forward to seeing her over the holidays. Then I write four words that convey what I have felt over that night. To me, it’s almost an invitation to myself to try to live the dreams I had just had. It would give me a chance to see and hear first-hand all of the stories she had told.
I look down at what I had written:

We must travel together!

I sign the card, lick the envelope closed, address and stamp for delivery. I turn off the desk lamp and head back to bed. I hesitate as I glance at the clock. It’s 5:15 and I will be getting up in an hour. The dog has already sprawled out, taking over the space of the entire bottom half of the bed. I hope it’s not like this if and when I get married! I don’t think my wife would be happy if I just nudged her with my foot to get her ass out of my sleeping space.

I crawl into bed and listen to the moaning grunt of the dog as if she were saying, “Make up your mind, would you? Sleep or get up!” I start to drift off to sleep again. I see myself flying through clouds of mist leading through high mountain peaks and grassy rolling hills. The last thing I think in my semi-conscious state is, “Shit, here we go again.”