By Mary Jo Maguire
Bronze Solas Award-winner in the Elder Travel category
Although my travels have been few, I don’t feel that I have been short-changed as my imagination has taken me places. Books have provided adventures as have film and interesting people with stories to tell. I am an observer and listener, so I think I could fool you with a memoir of my life as either a spy, an actress, an archeologist, or a world-renowned photographer. I know that I could have swum across the English Channel, designed high fashion or been a missionary. I have imagined myself as a fortune-teller with all the garb that goes with it.
If I hadn’t fallen from a pony, face down into a puddle of mud as a child, I am sure that my life would have revolved around the world of horses. Instead, I handed the reins to my daughter, who spent a year in Southeast Asia falling in love with an Englishman at the Taj Mahal, cavorting with rug dealers in India, flying on the last plane out of Burma before it became Myanmar and trekking in the Himalayas.
Now, as an octogenarian, I want home and security. I can’t blame that on age because I think I was born that way. How grand it would have been to have traveled throughout the world! I am sure that I have missed a big, meaningful chunk of life. At one time, I could proudly tell my traveling friends that I had been to Oklahoma, Colorado and Japan. (I visited my daughter, who was working in Tokyo). Later, my husband Sean and I branched out, without crossing an ocean too often.
A popular destination was Mexico, which served all senses abundantly. Bougainvillea petals scattered on our white linen bedspread were visual delights. Swimming up for a margarita and a crispy snack at the pool bar or dancing to mariachi music, wearing a white dress adorned with a fragrant lei, remain magical moments.
Our first Caribbean cruise proved to be an adventure, not because of the ship or destinations, but because of our dinner companions. In those days, passengers were assigned to dining tables according to the form they filled out. Sean was a smoker and we had included it in the questionnaire. I agreed to sit at a smoker’s table. He had assured me that the people would be more fun. You were expected to remain with the same group every night.
We toughed out our cruise following the rules. To our surprise, the group ended up being table number one on the popularity list. Unusual, humorous life stories, freely shared, wafted above and throughout the dining room to the amazement and amusement of all. We became instant cruise celebrities, notable and quotable.
Buoyed by this surprisingly enjoyable travel experience, Sean and I took a big step and decided to cross the Atlantic to visit The British Isles. This trip was of special interest as Ireland was Sean’s ancestral homeland. I read up on the countries we were to visit incessantly, checked out art gallery books of famous museums in Ireland and Scotland and studied the work housed in them.
I delved into my research so deeply that by the time it came to make the trip, I quipped, “I’ve already been there. Let’s go someplace else.”
The family trip that I remember most as a child was a drive to Arkansas to fish, which happened often. There was no need for research. Floating pool bars didn’t exist. The only table I was assigned to was a booth with my mom, dad and brothers in a small diner with our own table-top juke box. Looking back, it may have been the best of all trips.
As I sit at the computer in my bedroom, walls covered with my original paintings, I gaze through glass doors leading to an atrium where rain splashes on the brick floor, I begin to long for one final, floating adventure – a worldwide cruise. This would become my version of a senior retirement residence, yet I would still feel at home and have a sense of security.Medical care, tasty food, new places to see from my own balcony sound better than the local institutions I have checked out.
And I could bundle up all my missed travel opportunities into one big splash!
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Mary Jo Maguire wishes she had been a faraway traveler, but other meaningful activities have kept her “young” over nine decades. Writing energizes her and helps her forget about her “rocking chair.” She has won regional and national contests for her original poems. Short stories are a new way for her to present a snippet of her life, something she also does in folk art. In addition to her personal activities, she enjoys time spent with her six grown grandchildren when they cut short their travels to visit. She is a University of Colorado graduate and a former elementary school teacher.