Edible Arrangements
Overnight train, Hong Kong to Beijing
From the moment our plane touched down in Hong Kong, we realized we’d need every ounce of experience gained in eight months of travel to navigate China on our own. For one thing, English was in short supply.
Our train left Hung Hom Station at 3:15 p.m. and was due to arrive at Beijing West Station 24 hours later. We booked a “soft sleeper”—four bunks in one compartment. It looked incredibly small, but once we found the storage spaces it turned out to be quite roomy. We settled in for the ride.
Shortly after dark, there was a knock on our compartment door. The young, female train attendant outside seemed as surprised to see us as we were to see her. She began speaking in rapid Chinese. We looked confused. She repeated herself more slowly. I didn’t know how to tell her that it didn’t matter how slowly she spoke; none of us knew Chinese. 
She pulled out what appeared to be a menu with pictures of various dishes. By now I’d figured out she was there to take our dinner order. But the pictures on the menu weren’t particularly informative. We had no idea what anything was. The conversation went like this: She would ask a question in Chinese, we would shrug and respond in English, then we would repeat the cycle again. Round and round we went for about five minutes.
Finally she pointed rather insistently at two items on the menu. I gathered these were her recommendations. I nodded, and she smiled. With our order in hand she moved on to the next compartment. But what had we ordered? One of the dishes turned out to be chicken with peanuts (and not too bad). We never were able to figure out the chewy white ringlets in the other dish, but we did recognize the broccoli.
After dinner we laughed and braced ourselves for the week ahead. We’d been lucky up to this point, getting by on English or the kids’ Spanish everywhere we’d been. To our credit, we adapted quickly. The next morning, the same attendant returned with the same menu to take our breakfast order. We were able to communicate the same order in less than half the time.
Vishnu at the Wheel
Delhi, India
“My name is Vishnu, like the god. But I am not a god, sir. I am your driver.” And a good driver he was, effortlessly navigating the chaos of India’s roads.
The thing about driving in India is that you never know what might come at you next. It could be an auto rickshaw, a handcart laden with bricks, or a dozen people on broken-down bicycles. Or it could be something potentially more dangerous: an elephant, a camel, a cow, a rhesus monkey. You just never know.
Vishnu stayed calm no matter what appeared on the road ahead, perhaps because of the symbols of two Hindu gods that rested on the dashboard of his van. Before we left Delhi, Vishnu explained them to me. First there was Ganesh, the remover of obstacles. “He is very important,” Vishnu explained. “Ganesh will help get us to our destination safely.” Next to Ganesh was Hanuman, the playful monkey god. “Hanuman is my personal god,” Vishnu said. “He supplies me with strength and courage.”
On the third day of our road trip, Vishnu executed a driving maneuver rarely seen in the United States—a U-turn into oncoming traffic. We were traveling on the largest dual highway we had seen in India, and Vishnu was trying to take us to a restaurant on the other side of the road. There was no place to cross over, but that didn’t stop him. He simply made a U-turn while heading straight at the cars, trucks and rickshaws coming the other way. The kids squealed. 
“Do not worry,” Vishnu said as cars and trucks swerved out of our path. “This is India.”
Afterward, Vishnu asked: “In your country, police catching for driving wrong way?” When we said yes, he told us: “In Delhi, police catching. In Rajasthan, police not catching. Drive where you want, and people, they get out of your way.
“Besides,” Vishnu said, “Ganesh will protect us.”
The Space Between
Madrid, Spain
As we roamed Madrid, the last leg of our journey and our only European stop, we found ourselves living in the space between, when one thing ends and something new is about to begin. Our great adventure, conceived over lunch in a neighborhood restaurant two years earlier, was ending. After 10 months of travel, we had decided it was time to head home. We were road weary and ready to experience the pleasure of a familiar place. But Dani, in particular, was troubled.
“It’s not that I’m not ready to go home,” she said. “It’s that I don’t want this time to end—time with the kids, just us. When we get home, within days we’ll all be heading in our own directions. I’ve gotten so used to us all being together. I’m not ready to give that up.”
“When we get home,” she added later, “we’ll only have Caroline for three more years. It’s not just that the trip is ending. A whole chapter in our life is ending. It’s hard to let it go.”
I realized at that moment that this journey hadn’t been about what we would see or not see, do or not do. It had been about stealing time. As usual, my wife had figured it out long before I did.
Afterward
Silver Spring
“So,” a friend said. “What’s changed as a result of this trip?”
He wasn’t the first to ask. For weeks I fumbled for an answer, trying to absorb what we’d experienced and what it meant. I mumbled something and changed the subject. But after many months at home, an answer that feels true is forming.
What’s changed? Nothing. Everything.
We returned home in darkness, after the neighborhood was asleep. Ten months earlier, we had departed in darkness, before dawn, and the symmetry struck me. When we walked in, everything was as we’d left it, but even cleaner thanks to our renter’s hard work: a few dishes drying next to the sink; the soft hum of the dryer running downstairs, fluffing one last load of towels; the nightlight glowing in the hallway. It was an odd feeling, as though we’d been away for the day and were returning home late.
