Osmosis
A quarter century of marriage has brought your memories seeping into
my own. How easily I recall that ... journey from Portugal to Singapore,
one full year of camping in cork oak groves and glimpsing lost centuries
in Morocco, Greece, Turkey, Afghanistan, Pakistan...the perilous border
crossing into a war zone...and especially that quiet bench beside the
reflecting pool in front of the moonlit Taj Mahal...even though you
were the one who actually travelled to India, resting on the beaches
of Goa, crossing a river, clothes piled on your head to keep them dry.
I imagine you must have secondhand memories too, of riding my uncle's
horse in Cuba, then growing up and traipsing through the dry hills of
Puebla on a borrowed razorback donkey, and almost stepping too close
to the ominous fer-de-lance that seemed to be guarding that sacrificial
cenote at Chichen Itza...even though I was the one who rode all those
ramshackle trucks and buses, until I fell ill in the highlands of Guatemala,
and had to turn back, heading north, where we met and traded life stories.