I was dressed to kill in my new travel outfit! Hat! Gloves! Purse! In my train case were books and two teddy bears: Mama and Baby. I stood at the boarding gate, Idlewild Airport, NYC, mother at my side holding me, knowing she would not see me for at least two years. She was putting her only child, age eleven, on that looming-on-the-tarmac TWA Constellation. Off to school in Athens, Greece. September 28, 1955 was the beginning of my lifelong education as a citizen of the world, aka nomad. My ODYSSEY!
Athens was my first Ithaca: there it began. But there it did not end. My Odyssey in education took me beyond to:
· Thessaloniki, city of Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman splendor;
· Saint Germain-en-Laye, bordering one of the many beautiful forests and hunting grounds of the kings of France;
· Châtou, sleepy suburb of Paris;
· Vienna, where I saw my first opera;
· Ankara, capital of the Turkish Republic;
· Istanbul, the pearl on the Bosphorus and that continues to hold my heart;
· Milwaukee, on the beautiful waters of Lake Michigan;
· Honolulu, home of gentle Hawaiian breezes;
· Ann Arbor, the idyllic university town
When my marriage to my French husband ended, my previous rootless existence beckoned to me: I the nomad happily returned to my former life and introduced my daughter to the footloose, joyous, nomadic life of a blissful academic. The world was our oyster, and everywhere we went we found new and more beautiful pearls of all shapes, sizes and hues: Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, summers on Greek islands and in the Loire Valley.
Today, St. Helena is my new Ithaca, though the Odyssey is far from over. I the nomad continue to seek new adventures, be they real or in the vault of my imagination, in the treasure coves of my memory. I have “morphed” from a female Odysseus to the faithful Penelope. But unlike the patient queen, I do not undo my weaving every night. No. I continue to weave the tapestry of my life, the past, the present, my thoughts, reflections on what was and what may be. In the end, over the millenia our world has not changed, nor have we. Only the landscapes. Weave with me through this tapestry of life.