average; plebeian; perfect.

if only they did...

Paris smelled like shit. I was in the city of love and romance and emotion and all I could think about was how the city of lights was literally full of shit – specifically, of the canine variety. Granted, perhaps my sour mood was due to the fact I knew not a lick of French (a fact that seemed to be thrown into my face often) – or maybe it was because I was sporting a head full of frizzed, unruly hair due to the foreign climate, leaving me to tend to the wounds dealt to my pride as Parisian women paraded about, sleek and petite and unmarred by the cruelty of weather.

Why was I even here? There are some vague memories floating about of my mother gushing about Europe, all aflutter with glee that finally, finally, she could go sightseeing and just experience so much more than what was available in our completely average, suburban, two-cars-two-kids-two-story-one-dog home. What a relief to escape the trivialities of adequacy! – or something like that.

Vacations were always like this – they sounded just so good on paper, what with the traveling and the testing of new waters, and my mother was always so overflowing with excitement while my father stayed calm and logical, plotting our routes, planning for gas refuels and lunch breaks. What always wound up happening was usually various amalgamations of the following: we get lost (surprise), we get lazy, we walk for extended periods of time without reprieve, we visit a ridiculous number of churches-slash-temples-slash-shrines, it is hot, it is humid, my brother runs away after an argument and magically finds his way home by way of sheer tenacity that is one part natural instinct and two parts complete foolishness, my mother has her dreams of a perfect vacation crushed, and we all go home glad to no longer be living in the same room together.

I realized once that my favorite memories of traveling are from when I was just six or seven, and we roved around the United States in an old Mercury Villager minivan, red with the middle seats pulled out so my brother and I could lay on the floor of the van covered in blankets, reading the Count of Monte Cristo (abridged) and Robin Hood (also abridged), and eating out of a cooler while my mother dozed in the backseat, small frame stretched across what was rightfully three seats. This moment of spectacular clarification arrived sometime during the three hours we waited at the Lourve to see the Mona Lisa, and it was tinged with sadness when I figured out that it was because that van, with its chipped red paint and blankets, was most like home.

Home in horrible, shameful, delightfully perfect, average suburbia.