My memoir — Tracy Travels Everywhere: My Journey through the World and Back to Myself — coming soon!
Click on the excerpts below to read more
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I wasn’t on the guest list. No one slipped an invitation across the table. No one leaned in and said, You should come. But when Cheryl and Stacey said, “We’re going to Ireland,” something in me answered before I could even think, “I’m going too.” I don’t know what it was. It certainly wasn’t bravado. Not even certainty, because I’ve told them I was going on trips with them before and had cancelled. But this time was different. I knew that if I didn’t go, if I stayed home, I would spend the rest of my life wondering what would’ve happened if I’d gone.
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The air thrummed with a million contradictions, with the smoky smell of grilled pork skewers, the tang of lemongrass, pungent diesel, and then something warm and sweet—maybe coconut or burnt sugar—in the back of my throat. Street vendors’ open-air kitchens filled the sidewalks, flames dancing up from woks. Hawkers shouted in a flurry of Thai, unperturbed by my incomprehension. A woman cracked an egg with one hand and scooped change with the other, not breaking stride. Every which way I turned, there was noise, too, honks and shouts and laughter and chanting and sizzling and wafts of music coming from nowhere. And through all the chaos, I felt an unfamiliar peace.
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In the end, I chose a map of the world, small but detailed, with a tiny heart etched over Iceland. And just beneath it, the words: Not all who wander are lost. The same words that were printed across the map Jeremy had given me for my 50th birthday. The irony wasn’t lost on me. A gift from someone who didn’t really see me... now inked onto my body as a message to myself. This time, though, it wasn’t about him. Or anyone else. This was only about me.
The Souvenir Shelf
Stories of travel, belonging, and finding myself
Every shelf tells a story. Mine is lined with the souvenirs I’ve carried home from years of travel. The Souvenir Shelf series is my way of pulling a few souvenirs off the shelf and sharing the stories behind them, one object at a time.
San Francisco, mid-90’s
Trading the East Coast for the West Coast
This piece has followed me for decades. I bought it in San Francisco in the mid-90s, when I was 22 and had just left Buffalo behind for California. I’d left in the midst of a storm brewing, also known as my older brother Jim. The fight with him was so memorable that I can still see the shadows on the wall, cast from the single bulb hanging above the landing at the top of the staircase. My brother was at the foot of the stairs; I was standing near the halfway point.
My oversized, plush loveseat that I was leaving behind took up too much space in my sister’s living room. But it was beautiful furniture, and I couldn’t bear to sell it, not yet. I didn’t know how long I’d be gone. I just knew I was going. A few days later, I got on a plane with barely a word to my family or friends.
I landed in San Francisco with no plan beyond staying at my ex-boyfriend’s uncle’s house, the same ex-boyfriend who had cheated on me with my best friend. The same ex I cried over years later when he died, and I was married with my third child on the way.
It’s funny how a souvenir can evoke memories that have little to do with the souvenir itself. That fight with my brother has haunted me for years, because it told me that I wasn’t allowed to choose what made me happy. I often think back to what my life would have been like if I had stayed. Would I have extended the generational poverty of our family, or would I have broken its grip on us?
I think I was searching for belonging even then. Leaving was the only way I knew how to find it. I only stayed in California a few months—long enough to get my appendix out, date a cute sailor, and buy this souvenir. Now, when I look at it, I don’t see something I picked up in Chinatown. I see freedom.
