All right. So I won’t make it to the Australian Outback, or pet a penguin in Antarctica, or watch the sun rise over mystical Stonehenge. I’ve never strolled along the Champs Elysees in Paris either, or marveled at the Angkor Wat Temple in Cambodia, or been skiing at Zermatt in Switzerland. So what? I know a few people who have been everywhere — people with unlimited funds and lots of free time. But I know a great many more people — the vast majority, in fact — who have never been anywhere exciting, or been able to step outside their own little worlds, even for a while. And just look at what I have been able to do.

Nope, not the ski thing. But I once climbed a mountain in Czechoslovakia.

Sound familiar? It should. It was the introduction to my very first blog post, back in December of 2022, titled “This Is Me.” It went on to tell of my strolls through Moscow, Prague, Budapest, London, Helsinki, Berlin, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Tallinn . . . wonderful, magical, incredible places, all of them. It described riding the White Pass Railway along the edge of a terrifyingly steep ravine in Alaska; and being transported in the luxurious King’s Elevator in the Royal Palace at Stockholm. And it told of being nearly — but not quite — mugged in St. Petersburg, Russia. And of a boat ride up the Danube to an artists’ village called Szentendre, and playtime with a friendly jellyfish in the Black Sea at Sochi, and a visit to a hospital in Kyiv for child victims of Chernobyl.

Oh! The places I have been.

And stories I haven’t mentioned. Like the one right here in the U.S.: the cross-country drive in 1962, when I saw the wonders of New York City and Chicago, Mt. Rushmore, the Black Hills, Yellowstone Park, the World’s Fair at Seattle, the hills of San Francisco; rode the ferry from San Diego to Coronado Island, then back east through the Grand Canyon, the Texas Panhandle, and the vast midwest plains all the way home to Virginia. Along the way, we encountered a sudden sandstorm in South Dakota that we rode out in our car by the side of the road; the friendliest people in Cody, Wyoming; and surely the world’s biggest, crunchiest bugs in a gas station rest room in Oklahoma.

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And there have been other places and other things — adventures, great and small — that I haven’t mentioned. Little memories that pop up, unbidden, from time to time when some word or picture or smell brings them back from the dimmer recesses of my mind. Such as . . .

Food. The best steak, aboard each of the Holland America cruise ships I sailed on to Eastern Canada, Alaska, and along the Baltic Sea. The best salmon, in landlocked Prague, of all places. The best Dover sole, in a little restaurant in Stockholm. The best meat and potatoes en cocotte in another little eatery in Kyiv. The tenderest fried clams on Cape Cod, of course. And the most decadent desserts, seated outdoors at a bakery in Budapest. I’m gaining weight just thinking about them.

People. The ten years I had the privilege of working with the attorney who, in his earlier days, had been the chief legal draftsman of both the Marshall Plan and the NATO Treaty; and how during those ten years I chatted with the remarkable widow of the late Shah of Iran, attended social events at the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China, and made a lifelong friend of an official at the Soviet Embassy. And the famous singer in Prague who pointed me out as his “new American friend” in the audience at one of his performances; the not-so-nice Soviet official who wanted me to be his “new American friend” in London; and the KGB officer who became my unofficial guardian in Moscow. The adorable tour bus driver in Stockholm who didn’t speak English, but loved it when I asked him for a “boost” to help me up onto that first high step. And the waiter on the cruise ship Maasdam who remembered our names and the fact that I drank tea instead of coffee. Odd friends; unexpected friends.

Little things. The warmth of the people who “adopted” me in Moscow: the women who worked with me, and the neighbor who looked after me and my apartment on behalf of the apartment’s owner. Bumping into an American acquaintance at a concert in a city of nine million people (Moscow again). Placing a rock on a headstone in the Old Jewish Cemetery in Prague. And doing the same at a concentration camp outside Berlin.

And sad things, losses. People loved, and then gone. Family, friends, bosses, doctors, my masseuse, the sweet guy at the gas station up the road who took such good care of his customers and then drowned in a boating accident. Heart attacks, cancer, old age took them. And others lost due to the circumstances of life: people retiring, moving away, or just drifting away. Children growing up — no more little kids around the Christmas tree.

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But I’ve decided to concentrate on the happy times; dwelling on the losses doesn’t bring them back. It’s too easy to allow ourselves to sink into the sad memories; and it’s not necessary, when there are so many happy ones. I’ve said it before: a life without tales worth telling is a life only half-lived. Everyone has them, though they may not have seemed exciting at the time; we just need to let them come forward.

Maybe I’ll write another book.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
10/28/23