My adventurous husband

My husband’s birthday is April 19. I’ve purchased and wrapped his gifts and made, as I do each year, his birthday card.

He will enjoy the meal that we will be having and the gifts and the card, but with all of that, there will be something awry, something missing.

My spouse loves to travel. He doesn’t care where. He’ll go anywhere.

Mention a destination and he will tell you that he has always wanted to go there. Ethiopia?  The Upper Irrawaddy?  Bug infested swamps? And why not?  Travel can be fun, But…

I’ve traveled with Senor Ferro. He is what one might describe as not attached to creature comforts. I’m not finicky. A roof, running water, access to clean linens. I’m OK.

He will settle for accommodations that would get animal rights activists up in arms.

The words hovel and shack come to mind. Sheets are not necessary, nor has any recent washing or cleaning of bedding. Hot water is optional. As long as there is food, food of any sort, he’s fine.

A trusting soul, he will believe any local when they tell him that a particular hotel, hostel or roadside shack is habitable. I have first-hand experience of such trust and accommodations that were so awful that I chose to stay up all night rather than risk God knows what.

Large flying arthropods don’t seem to faze him either. We’ve stayed in a room where the bugs were the same size as the ceiling fan. We’ve paid money to stay in a room where the rain came in the windows and left a foot of water on the floor. Most of the beds that we slept on had mattresses no more than an inch thick and covered by one questionable blanket … in temperatures that were in the high 30s, that’s Farenheit. All of these places included food in the room cost.  You do see the connection?

He will believe that food served by people who haven’t washed their cooking pots, let alone their hands in weeks, is edible. I have vivid memories of a foodstuff that we purchased in a little town somewhere in the middle of a Colombian nowhere.

They were tamales wrapped in corn husks containing something that looked like wall paper paste punctuated with bits of pig hooves and snouts.

I have even more vivid memories of their aftermath. Then there are the mystery meats on a stick that you can buy from street vendors all over South America. The cut and the sources of the meat was debatable.

He will tell you that was when we were much younger and more flexible about comfort. Even then, there are some bottom lines that should be acknowledged. The phrase, “I want to go home” is a vivid memory.

Older and supposedly wiser, we’ve taken some escorted trips to Italy.

Traveling to Italy was a bit different. The accommodations were better, sometimes very much better and the food was without doubt, marvelous, but my spouse has this thing about traveling that leaves me — well, to be specific, he leaves me — alone.

Doesn’t matter that I don’t speak Italian, that I have no idea where or when to meet up with him, he goes off to climb towers. In Florence it was Brunelleschi’s Dome. In Siena, it was some building bordering the Piazza. A piazza filled with people sitting on the stones and one over aged American female looking for something to lean against.  Sitting down on the stones was not even remotely possible. OK, sitting down was possible. Getting up without mechanical help?  Not.

Here is my day in the hill town of San Gimingnano.  At Lucca, Montecatini and, Siena, the walk from the bus was uphill but short. At San Gimignano, the bus parked at the bottom of an exceptionally long, steep hill, which being that San Gimignano is a hill town is normal, but the incline and its length of this hill was daunting. It felt like a 45 degree angle. Really!

I was on my own from the moment the bus doors opened. Spouse was out the door and disappeared before I knew it. There were towers to climb.

I had yet to address the deteriorating nature of my knees other than have some cortisone injections that didn’t work. The 30 or so tourists with whom we traveled made their way up the hill. Knees protesting the incline, I climbed that steep hill leading to the hill top town by myself.  Well, I did start out with a particularly overweight gal, probably coming in at 250 lbs. She left me in her dust. I struggled on despite what I thought was a minor heart attack. Not joking here at all. We are talking chest pain, which it turned out to be what the Italians call agita…indigestion, most probably caused by the paint remover erroneously labeled as coffee in our hotel.

As I reached the top of the hill, worried that I would collapse right there, imagining the dramatic headlines at home and my husband’s surprise…I spied a gelato shop, the shop that the guide said had the best gelato in all of Italy.

My mind told me that if I were going to meet my eternal reward then and there, I might as well have some of that gelato. A lot of that gelato.  So, feeling sorry for my alone-self, I bought the biggest dish of that wonderful dessert and sat in the sunny piazza to enjoy and, well, at the time, I thought, die. That took about 15 minutes. The pain went away.

I had no idea where spouse was. Now San Gimignano isn’t a big place. It’s a medieval town on the top of a modestly small in width hill with lots of winding streets and ancient buildings, punctuated by many towers, each a boast by a rich resident of many years past.

Somewhere among the towers, my spouse was climbing. I wandered around, followed groups of tourists, trying to hear what their guides were saying, wondering if I would meet my husband before our bus left. At each tower I would poke my head inside and call his name, listening to it reverberate through the stone. No spouse.

I did do my best to appreciate the beauty of the town, to take in the touristy and the non touristy parts that should be a part of my memories. Aside from being able to tell you that the gelato was primo and that the pastries were heavenly, I mostly worried about my husband remembering when the bus was going to leave.

Fifty years ago, I was suffering from the flu and the need for basic accommodations. Ten years ago as well as today, it was and is arthritis. At each juncture, the irritability quotient was high and I became an awful travel companion, wishing only to go home.

Perhaps we should think of places where I can sit with a nice book, an adult beverage or two, a hat for the shade, I absolutely refuse to go somewhere where you have to wear a coat, and my cell phone while he pursues his explorer’s desire to get lost.

While I wish my husband a wonderful birthday…no trip this year.