We drove down to London from Stratford for a week and stayed in the west end, a half-hour train ride into the city. Our flat was in the bottom of a house on a quiet suburban street and in the early morning commuters hurried by our window on their way to the train. I saw myself in them, that look of mild detachment, now unemployed for a year, a month left traveling the UK, then three more in Germany before moving back to the States. I’d really need to get a job then but there was little to do about it now. I curled up in my candles and my books counting the days until dry January was over, imagining the boat ride back to continental Europe, the good ol’ Schengen, our first meal in France.

It’s now ten years since I left my job at Starbucks (1995-2014) and I still have the occasional dream where I’m floating through those cubicles and scanned entryways. Sure there’s something unresolved about my leaving there, some trauma even, perhaps the late onset of a kind of anxiety I’d never known before. That winter in the UK I was about as far as I could get from it and yet it was still with me. There’s no point in actively going back; it’s got the feeling of a splinter where you can’t see the insertion point but it’s still there.

We spent Christmas in the country outside of Cork with my mom, got her back to Germany, then drove to Waterford for a couple days of nonstop rain, ferried to Wales, drove up to my friend Alex’s in Chester for New Year’s, then down to Stratford-upon-Avon for two weeks and lots of plays. A town steeped in theater is a good place to be.

And more theater in London of course: exposing our kids to that in hopes it would stick, and it might have, though they were so young (Lily almost 10, Charlotte just 8). Dawn and I have reflected on whether or not that trip was really good for them, seeing now the later challenges they grappled with, and where that 90-day road trip may have factored in, all the packing up and moving on through foreign places, endless castle tours, no people their age really. The whole plot was one of self-indulgence maybe (for me, escape), spun as a mid-life sabbatical, the kind of thing few people get to do, and now in hindsight one of the best times of my life. The richest source material.

The flat in London was posh with a renovated kitchen, high ceilings, tasteful bathroom tiling: the living room by the front window and main street. I can see the glass coffee table and mid-century modern gray sofa, clean lines and minimalist design. They were marketing to people just like us, London tourists. But I preferred our time in the small cottage outside of Bath, our next and final stop before we left the UK, a place called Combe Down, which sounded like the best advice, to just calm down.

It’s there a post of mine got picked up by WordPress’s recommendation engine and my phone blew up with notifications, and I loved falling asleep and waking to the sound of it buzzing, this feeling of validation, of vague connection, with people around the world. It may not have been a real connection but it didn’t matter. It gave form to a new fantasy of myself, a foil to the player in my work dreams that brought angst. Neither may have been real, but both offered clues.

Categories: Creative Nonfiction, Memoir

Tags: Creative Nonfiction, Europe, London, Memoir, Shakespeare, stratford, travel