Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, August 23, 1993 TAG: 9309290292
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Monty S. Leitch
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
This led to a conversation about fortune-tellers and fortunes told. ``You will be a hard worker all your life,'' the gypsy in Ireland had said. ``Everything you get in this life you'll get through hard work alone,'' another palm had revealed. ``So, whose fortune isn't like that?'' asked a skeptic at the table.
I last had my palm read at a Halloween party in the early '60s. The ``gypsy'' doing the reading was a woman whose children I baby-sat. No great mysteries were revealed in that session, either. But, of course, no one expects great revelations from so mundane a setting or so ordinary a source.
Still, when I listened to this conversation last week, it was not the gypsy fortune-teller that struck me as exotic or risky. It was that trip to Ireland.
There are people in this world who just pick up and fly away to other countries as if they were driving down to Valley View. I am not among them.
``Once in an airport in Bolivia, I saw ... " ``Oh, I'm sorry, I can't, we'll be in Rome that month.'' ``We just rent a flat whenever we go to London; it's so much easier to get theater tickets that way.''
I seem to know more and more people who drop such sentences into our conversations. At which point, I have nothing to add.
Do I say this wistfully? Not really.
I have been to other countries. Two of them. Twenty years ago. I was so glad to get home, I could have fallen to the ground and kissed the airport pavement. I will never forget the night I flew into Roanoke and thought the star on Mill Mountain glowed like a heavenly beacon. That's how homesick I was. Homesick enough to tear up at the sight of the world's greatest kitsch monument.
Earlier in the summer I had spent the better part of one evening looking at a friend's photos of her trip to Ireland. (Ireland seems to have been the destination of choice this summer.) The country is spectacularly beautiful. ``These pictures just don't do it justice,'' my friend kept saying, impatiently tossing aside photos of landscapes that made my heart flutter. ``You should see it yourself.''
Well, yes. But then I'd have to leave home, wouldn't I?
These days, if I do leave home, I always drive. That way I can take along in my own car everything I think I'll need, as well as everything I think I might need. Or even want. In short, when I leave home, I take along as much of home as I possibly can. In motel rooms, I always put my clothes in the drawers and hide the suitcases, pretending I'm really still at home.
People who fly off to Ireland can't do this. They have to be able to carry what they need in one suitcase. Or, better yet, in a backpack. How could anyone who needs home as I do possibly take all that's required in a backpack?
I would need steamer trunks. Several of them. Six-month leases. Probably even relatives within walking distance.
A gypsy would take one look at my palm and say, ``My stars! The baggage you carry! You're going no place fast.''
\ Monty S. Leitch is a Roanoke Times & World-News columnist.
by CNB