“Be a good guest.” That was advice from the late beloved chef, writer, and traveler Anthony Bourdain. He urged us to set aside our squeamishness, our judgments, and eat the food offered up by our hosts, drink their drink, smoke their smoke, watch their hogs being slaughtered.
I am not a good guest. Just last night I ate dinner with a fellow camper. That day she had tried her hand at a beef stew that she would have loved to share with me. But it had beef, and I’m a vegetarian. It had potatoes, which are not on the food plan that keeps me from a return to obesity and food obsession. So I brought my own partial dinner, then weighed out some of the fresh vegetables she had ready, and we ate parallel dinners. We didn’t exactly break bread. Fresh Persian cucumber slices were the common denominator.
I recall a moment when a loved one who was cooking his first Thanksgiving dinner in his new place held out a spoon so I could taste the stuffing. I could not. What a great loss of shared humanity in that moment.
I am not a good guest because I have addictions to some foods and drink and smoke, and aversion to others. I don’t want to set those aside. I want to be sober and abstinent. I don’t want to return to the hell of active addiction. I don’t want to hurt my heart by eating animals.
I’m also not a good guest while staying in people’s homes. And I have such generous friends and family. “Come stay in our guestroom,” they say. “We’d love to have you.” And I would love to. But I can’t. So much is expected of guests. You have to talk and make conversation. They want you to have breakfast together, and go somewhere for lunch and an adventure, and then they might have some friends over for dinner. I can usually handle approximately one of those social activities in a day, and then I’m spent. I am no Anthony Bourdain.
What I’ve known for years is that I’m borderline agoraphobic, which the Mayo Clinic describes as being afraid to be out in public or where I can’t get relief from the overwhelming world, to be afraid to leave home.
I like to be home. I need to be home. Home is where I’m centered and happy and safe and nurtured and at ease. Home is where my fabrics are and my bedding and essential oils and my dog’s food and cookies and her bed, and my dishes and chopsticks, and my clothes and my files and my tools. Home is where I meditate and journal and process all the thoughts and feelings I collect in a day. It’s where I pass those sacred silent hours to weave all my frayed threads back together, with new threads and colors interwoven with yesterday’s inner fabric.
Yet—and this is a BIG yet—I also like to travel. I like to visit in person these loving friend and family members who have invited me into their homes. I like to go places with them, to enjoy the delights of their towns, to visit their farmer’s markets and history museums and their beaches and lakes and movie theaters. I like my dog to hang with their dog.
I guess I want it all: I want to be home, and I want to be out and about.
And that’s how I came to live in a tiny house, and to pull it behind me. Even though I had never towed anything before this, and even though I have my massive burden of special needs that require hours of treatment every day just to stay sane, I find myself living in and towing a camper.
I’m shocked and amazed that I found a way to make my life work, to create happiness for myself in spite of it all, in spite of myself and my history and my scars.
Here is my favorite scenario:
- Find a campground in my membership that is within an hour’s drive of a friend or family member.
- Find a lovely, level, shady, gravel-covered site that has both privacy and a view and is not too far from fellow campers.
- Set up my standard camp with my awning and rugs and hippie panels and dog fencing and stay at the site for 3 weeks.
- Do my writing work during weekdays.
- On weekends and evenings, visit said family and friends in their own environments.
- Have them visit me at camp, or even camp with me in their own rigs or tents.
- Go on local adventures and see the sights, especially those that allow dogs.
- Or put the dog in a daycare while I sightsee.
- And then (still my beating heart) go back home to The Tiny at night, cook my lovely, abundant, abstinent dinner, gaze out the window as the setting sun sparkles the trees and their leaves, and marvel at this amazing life.
As I mentioned to a friend today, I’m not really qualified for this lifestyle. But I want it. I want my psyche shaken up by travel, but not so much that I’m in a panic. Thus, The Tiny. And so I do what it takes to overcome my shortcomings. I work hard to stay mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually, and financially fit so that I can enjoy and grow from this way of life.
I’m not a good guest, as some would define it. But I do the best I can to be a good traveler and an interested and caring visitor. And that’s good enough for me.