the travelers.

we are sprawled across our kitchen floor and sprawled across each other, watching the globe your father gave you one birthday when you were a boy.  there's a game we play.  we spin the globe, create a life, create tales of happiness in exotic lands.  we're playing it now.

-

the globe spins.  my finger lands.  lithuania.  i smile and tell you about a boy i knew who made the best lithuanian honey liquor.

"brewed it in my kitchen in the midnight hours of my youth.  that's what we'll do there," i say,  "be brewers of krupnikas.  it is, the sweetest drink your lips will ever taste, my sweet.  tastes like christmas."  

"and our house?" you ask, "our family?"  

my eyes close, i bite my lip, then smile.  

"we will live in a little village, on the baltic sea of course.  nothing spectacular, a small blue cottage.  but it will be home, my god it will be home."  

i tell you about our children, a boy and a girl.  the boy is named matas because that is, after all, the only lituanian name i know.  the girls name is arabella.  they are beautiful.  

matas likes to go out to the shore and scan his golden eyes across the water for hours on end.  when he comes home he tells us, over a warm meal, that one day he will sail across those waters.

"all the way to america!" he exclaims.

"that far?" you ask, with a grin.  our son nods.  his sister folds her little arms across her chest and shakes her head.

"you won't! you won't do it!" she says, fear and wonder in her eyes. "you won't leave mam and pa and me.  you can't.  you're a brother, brothers have to stay."

-

you smile at me.  "i like lithuania," you say.  "where next?"

my finger lands on malaysia, but you shake your head no.  

"spin again," you say, "not malaysia.  malaysia doesn't belong to us."  

you tell me about her.  the girl you loved before me.  how she was grown from the malaysian soil and how it wouldn't be right of us to take it.  i think of texas and understand.  we spin again.

this time it lands on the congo.  you ask if we'll be missionaries.

"of course not," i say, "didn't you ever read the poisonwood bible?"

you admit that you haven't.

"well, we're not going to be missionaries.  besides, neither of us are religious."

"i went to catholic school" you tease, and i dig my fingers into your ribs until you're laughinglaughinglaughing, begging me to stop.

"i've heard stories about what you learned in catholic school mister, i'd hardly call it religious."

you grin your impish grin and, i tell you about the school we'll build in some rural, poor area of the congo.

during the day the walls ring with laughter.  you teach them math and science and i teach them english and french.  more importantly, we teach them that it's okay to be silly, it's okay to laugh.  we let them spin our globe.

we have our own apartment above the school and sometimes at night we climb onto the roof and look at those untainted stars.  we don't make wishes on them, we have everything we need.

you ask about our children.

"the schoolchildren are our children," i say.

"but won't we have children of our own?" you ask.

"no, not in this life."

you stick out your bottom lip.

the stars twinkle above us.  

-

"my turn," you say.

you spin it, and cheat, placing your finger on fiji.

"fiji!" you exclaim, flashing me a toothy grin.

you pause and i know you're picturing me in tiny little swim suits so i give you a push.

"tell me our life!" i say, pretending to mind the way your eyes dig into me.

"okay, okay," you say.

and you tell me about our mansion overlooking the clear waters.  we are insanely rich because some long lost uncle left you his fortune when he passed.  we are so rich we don't have to work.

"i'd get so bored!" i protest, interrupting your story.

you shake your head, ignoring that.  you tell me how we spend our days.  

we wake up every morning to a gorgeous view, the white beaches, the azure waters.  it is a never ending honeymoon.  we stay in bed until the afternoon, making love.

"as i was saying, i'd get bored."

you mutter something under your breath that sounds like 'sass' and i kiss your lips and laugh and then promise to be nice.

"i'm kidding darling.  continue please."

when we finally get out of bed we make breakfast together.  you make the pancakes and i make the eggs.  the children help make the toast.

yes, children.  four.

"four?!" i groan.

"look missy, i would have said two but you denied us of offspring in the congo.  i had to make up for it.  now quit interrupting."

this is our life.  there are three girls and one boy.  the youngest two are twins, cora and lilith.  they are rambunctious, loud, fun.  they cause us a lot of trouble.  then there is ava, so unlike her two sisters.  quiet, shy.  while the twins run up and down the beach, she sits beside me in a beach chair, reading her books.  the oldest is trent.  and he is just like his father.  not just in looks, with his shaggy blond hair and electric blue eyes, but in his mannerisms.  the two of you go out sailing on the clear waters and come back, grinning from ear to ear, showing ava and me your catch of the day.  two tuna and a dolphin fish.  ava squirms.  the twins run up, excited by the dead fish.  they want to play with them.

"what good fishermen i have" i tell you, and you stoop down and kiss me long and hard, unembarrassed.

ava looks away disgusted.  the twins giggle, half mortified, half amused.  trent is already halfway down the beach, talking to the neighbors daughter.

-

you grow quiet and i understand why.  i turn the globe and point to that little state wedged between virginia and south carolina.  it's where we are.

"we will get married," i tell you quietly.  "we will live in a little house, it won't be much but, we will have each other.  and maybe one day we will have children too."

i curl into your side, we're still on the floor.

"we won't need this silly globe.  we don't need to travel to exotic lands to be happy."

i can feel your skin tingling, pushed close to mine.  it's all the proof we need.  here we are, together on the floor.  not in fiji, not in lithuania.  in north carolina.  and we are happy.


"you are my exotic lands," i whisper.