A Line of Thought

Hong Kong I

Sitting on the Airport Express train to Hong Kong station, I am reminded of my first solo trip outside the county to Holland.
Everything was new, unfamiliar, exciting, frightening. I remember successfully boarding the train I’d take to Roosendaal where I would meet Rolf de Jong for the first time.
My eyes never blinked as I stared out the window at the Dutch countryside. The field was a fictional green, the sky an uncommon blue, the windmills out of Don Quixote’s imagination—or my own.
Daddio, as I would come to refer to Rolf, smiled and shook his head as we drove through the town of Waow. That seemed to be all I could say. “Oh, wow! It’s so beautiful!” “Oh, wow! Look at the flowers in the windows.” “Oh, wow…wow…wow.”
My childish infatuation for travel has turned into something else over the years. It’s not that I’ve lost my first love—the butterflies in my stomach upon landing, the disorientation I get when i step out of the comfort of the airport, the open-mouthed awe when I see the beauty of an ancient monument or the canopy of a jungle or the salt-air of the Mediterranean. But there is now in me a deeper appreciation for silent observation, contentment in just—I stop writing to look out at the beautiful Victoria Harbor illuminated by the lights of the skyscrapers.
I’m calmer these days, a sense of comfort, of knowing, like travel has become a partner, a husband whose habits I can predict, who can sometimes surprise me or anger me or elate me.
We’ve been through a lot he and I, and perhaps we’ve both grown over the years, learning from each other certain necessary lessons that make us who we are today.