Seasons and Horizons

Tonight I sat outside with a bag of Reese’s waiting for trick-or-treaters.

A couple of young girls stopped. A few other kids walked by. Most people kept going.

It was quiet enough that my mind wandered back to Halloween when I was a kid.

I was born in Orange County, California, and grew up in El Cerrito, in Corona. That was home to me.

The neighborhood felt alive in a way that is difficult to explain now. There were families everywhere—the Ayers, the McCorkles, the Mejias, the Wrights, the Sackages. Kids were outside. Somebody had a trampoline. We had a pool. People came over for barbecues. Teenagers still went out on Halloween.

You could walk a relatively short distance and come home with a bag full of candy.

It wasn’t perfect. Neighbors annoyed one another. Kids irritated adults. Adults probably irritated each other too.

But somehow everybody still belonged.

When I was 11, we moved from California to Missouri.

I still remember leaving California in November, where it was warm, and arriving in Missouri wondering what in the world we had gotten ourselves into.

The weather was one shock.

The culture was another.

Some places seemed much more concerned with who belonged to which group.

Who do you know?

Where are you from?

Are you one of us?

Growing up in California, I remember being around people I had never met before and feeling as though nobody particularly cared that I was unfamiliar. They had their friends. I had mine. Nobody needed to make a judgment about it.

Years later, traveling opened my eyes to that same feeling again.

I have experienced versions of it in Turkey, Georgia, Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Japan, the Philippines, Seychelles, and other places.

Every country and every city has every kind of person, so I would never pretend a short visit tells me everything about a culture.

But certain encounters stay with you.

I remember landing in Tokyo and not really knowing what to expect.

I never even left the airport.

I went into a duty-free shop during my layover. The lines were long, the prices were in yen, and I was trying to figure out what I was looking at. I had gone looking for sake and found bottles made from things like sweet potatoes and other starches. At the time I remember thinking, Is this basically Japanese vodka?

I didn’t know what I was doing.

What I do remember is the way people treated me.

The airport was modern, busy, and professional, but the people were not cold. Even when there was a language barrier, they were patient and friendly. Nobody made me feel stupid for not knowing the currency or understanding what I was buying.

On the plane, I sat next to two Japanese women who were nurses. One of them was named Katie. At some point during the flight, another passenger had a medical issue, and both women immediately got up to help.

There was no performance in it.

Someone needed help.

They helped.

Katie and I stayed in touch for a while afterward.

That memory has always stuck with me.

Georgia gave me another one.

I met a man named Giorgi while flying into Tbilisi. I believe we may have been on the flight from Istanbul together. We exchanged numbers, but before that, we spent hours laughing and talking. He kept handing me wine throughout the flight, glass after glass, and somehow by the time we landed it felt as though I had known him much longer than a few hours.

Later, Giorgi invited us to his family’s home.

His mother was there. His brother and sister-in-law were there with their baby. Giorgi and his brother cooked outside, grilling meat on skewers the way I had seen done elsewhere in that part of the world.

It was one of those evenings I still remember because it felt genuine.

It also happened to be Giorgi’s mother’s birthday.

To me, there was no question about it. If someone invites you into their home, feeds you, welcomes you into their family, and you discover that it is his mother’s birthday, you bring something.

So I went and got her flowers.

It wasn’t about impressing anybody.

It simply seemed like the right thing to do.

That evening also made me notice something else.

The baby was upset and crying. The woman I was traveling with tried to interact with her but seemed completely uncomfortable and unsure what to do. Somehow I managed to get the baby smiling and settled down.

I don’t claim to have some special ability with children.

I think I was simply willing to meet the child where she was.

But I remember looking around that room and realizing how much you can learn about someone when life stops being a performance.

Travel can do that.

A person can know exactly what to say in a restaurant, on a dating site, at a party, or in a polished conversation.

But put that same person inside somebody else’s home, around a crying baby, an elderly parent, a waiter, a hotel employee, or someone who can do absolutely nothing for them, and you sometimes see something different.

You find out whether the warmth is real.

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, I remember stopping at a fruit stand and seeing the curiosity people had when they learned one of us was from the United States and the other from Russia. They wanted to talk. They wanted to understand who we were.

In Armenia, especially Yerevan, I remember how approachable people seemed. Women helped us without making me feel that helping a stranger was beneath them. They were not excessively familiar. They were simply kind.

It was one of those places where I remember thinking how easy it felt to be there.

You could ask a question.

Someone would try to help.

You didn’t feel as though you were being evaluated first.

In Georgia, there was also a doctor who went out of her way to speak with us and help us.

In the Philippines, I remember the friendliness of people in places where I was obviously the outsider.

In Seychelles, I remember the woman running the hotel simply being kind.

Turkey was different again. In many places there, I almost felt as though nobody particularly cared where I came from at all.

And there was something refreshing about that too.

You were another person walking down the street.

Fine.

Carry on.

None of these people knew my résumé.

They did not know what I earned.

They did not know what I owned.

They did not know who I knew.

Most of them would never see me again.

They simply encountered another human being.

Maybe that is why, as I get older, I find myself increasingly drawn to people who do not seem to need to be impressed.

People who are curious.

People who are adaptable.

People who are appreciative.

People who can laugh.

People who are willing to experience life rather than constantly evaluate it.

People who do not seem to measure everyone else by status, money, appearance, social circles, or whether they belong to the right crowd.

I have not always been good at recognizing those people.

There were times when I was drawn toward people who were easier to connect with immediately.

They talked easily.

They showed interest quickly.

The connection felt effortless.

Looking back, I sometimes mistook immediate attention for depth.

Meanwhile, people who were quieter, slower to trust, or simply harder to read were easier for me to walk away from.

I am beginning to think that may have caused me to overlook some people worth knowing.

That does not mean outgoing people are shallow or quiet people are good.

Character does not work that way.

Hardship does not automatically make someone grounded.

Privilege does not automatically make someone shallow.

And being reserved does not automatically make somebody deep.

But there is something I increasingly notice in people who are secure in themselves.

They do not need to keep reminding everyone that they are somebody.

They do not need every room to recognize their accomplishments.

They do not need another person’s money, attention, status, or admiration to validate them.

They can simply be present.

That is attractive to me.

Someone who can sit beside you on a trail.

Eat at a little roadside restaurant.

Talk with somebody whose English is imperfect.

Laugh when plans fall apart.

Bring flowers because somebody’s mother is having a birthday.

Help somebody because they need help.

Hold a crying baby without worrying about how any of it looks.

Enjoy the experience without constantly asking what it says about her status.

Maybe that is what I have been trying to describe all along.

I do not want somebody impressed by my life.

And I do not particularly want to be impressed by hers.

I would rather discover somebody.

Slowly.

I would rather learn how she treats the waiter, the hotel clerk, the stranger asking for directions, the family member who cannot do anything for her, and the person who does not belong to her social circle.

I would rather learn whether she is curious about the world.

Whether she can laugh.

Whether she notices small things.

Whether she can appreciate an ordinary day.

And I suppose I would rather she learn those things about me the same way.

Not because I posted a list describing who I am.

Not because I told her what she was supposed to admire.

But because she watched.

Maybe that is why tonight brought all of this back.

I was sitting outside with a bag of Reese’s, thinking about neighborhoods where Halloween once meant everybody being outside together.

For most of the evening, almost nobody stopped.

A couple of young girls came by early. Later, two teenagers walked right past even after I offered them candy.

Then the neighbors across the street came home.

Their daughter is a teenager now, probably close to driving age. She was dressed up, and when she came over she looked at the candy and said, “Oh, you’re my favorite house. You’ve got Reese’s. That’s my favorite.”

I laughed and told her to take as many as she wanted.

I probably should have just handed her the whole container.

Reese’s used to be my favorite too.

But tonight I didn’t really want the candy.

I wanted somebody else to enjoy it.

And for a moment, that felt a little more like the Halloween I remembered.

You walked down the street.

Somebody opened the door.

You were happy to see what they had.

They were happy you stopped.

Nobody needed to impress anybody.

Nobody needed an invitation to belong.

You laughed.

You talked.

You moved on.

Maybe what I miss is not really Halloween.

Maybe I miss places—and people—where belonging does not have to be earned by impressing anybody.

And maybe sometimes it still shows up in something as simple as a teenager crossing the street because you happened to have her favorite candy.