We all have our secret destinations, places we have dreamed of visiting. We will mostly likely never reach all of those places—time, money, fear, and sometimes laziness prevent it. But, with that long list of dreams, does it make sense to return to a place where we’ve already been? I decided to revisit one place, not only because of cherished memories from 40 years ago but also as a kind of checking in to examine the story of my life since.
I’ve said that books were my first inspiration for travel, but people soon became as inspirational. I met Joy in the late 1970s, when I first started work at WNET television New York City. Joy was about 15 years older than I, and she fit the bill for a dear mother/friend. My own mother basically disapproved of my direction in life, which was outward. My friends were never interested in going where I wanted to go. Joy had done it all and seen it all and was enthusiastic about my journey too. She and her husband had traveled the world from the 1940s on and did it the hard way: cheaply and with maximum rugged movement.
Joy hosted travelers from all over the world. Every time I would be visiting her house, someone from India, Ireland, Africa, or Scandinavia would be living in her extra bedroom on the top floor. And whenever I decided to travel, Joy would write to friends who had stayed with her in order to set me up with a place to stay (one very nice gentleman in Edinburgh did mention that “guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days,” attributed to Benjamin Franklin and not Mark Twain, by the way).
Shortly before she died in 2003 she arranged for her friends to be invited to her home after she was gone and to take anything they wanted—–art from the walls, clothes from her closets, and a riotous collection of objects from all over the world. After getting over my initial feeling that I was one of the harpies in Zorba the Greek who ransacked Madame Hortense’s home, I joined in. My home is decorated in Early Joy, with pieces from Africa, Asia, and her beloved island, Menorca, in the Mediterranean Sea near Barcelona.
Joy invited me to visit her home in Menorca in the early 1980s. I flew from Barcelona without telling her exactly when or where I was arriving. Clutching a bag of New York City bagels as a gift, I headed for the phone booth to ask her to pick me up at the airport. But….there was no phone book or, as I later learned, a phone. I didn’t have her address, so I wandered the streets of Mahon, looking for a bank that was open (to no avail….it was a Spanish holiday). I ate the bagels.
Finally I realized that I had a letter from her with the name of her town on it. I convinced a taxi driver to drive there, and I recognized her house from a photograph of it on the wall of her New York home (that photograph is now on my wall, part of my booty). The rest of my time there was filled with Joy’s warmth and a houseful of her friends. I remember exploring the megalithic monuments dotting the roads, hanging out at a bar in Mahon where we drank and sang, taking motorcycle rides through the countryside, and walking down the hill to a pristine beach.
Almost 40 years have passed since then. About a year ago my daughter and I talked about traveling to a Spanish-speaking country so that she could practice the language. All at once I knew that I would bring her to Menorca. There were so many places we could have gone where neither of us had ever been, so many new places to discover, but suddenly everything in me wanted to show her what I had loved when I was her age and to pay homage to a generous and wonderful friend long gone.
My kid loved the island immediately. Things had changed—more tourists and expats, more vacation homes and new buildings. But what Menorca was had not changed; the standing stones still stand, the pine-studded cliffs still overlook the beaches, the 13th century church in the Old Town of Ciutadella still looms, the ruins from the island’s Roman, Byzantine, and Islamic past still dot the island. The island itself remains a small and priceless stone surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea.
I took my daughter to Joy’s old house in Cala Mesquida, on a cliff overlooking the beach. The house was sold many years ago, but it was still there. We walked up the hill and faced it. I didn’t want to go in, I just wanted to stand and look at it. I was filled with memories of my time there, thoughts about what kind of person I was then and the roads I’d taken since. I felt caught in a time warp, at once suffused with memories of the past but also seeing everything with new eyes. I had a different life, different ideas, and a suitcase of experiences. It became clear to me that I won’t stop exploring until I no longer can, but looking at Joy’s house and the sea beyond was a precious pause in the movement of time. My kid and I just stood, immobile, looking at the beach and the cliffs. We felt the warmth of the sun and the spray of the waves, which, god willing, won’t change till long after we are gone.
Top Photo: Joy and Barbara in Cala Mesquida, Menorca.
The only thing we bought in Menorca: these shoes—wonderful Menorcan avarcas available on Amazon