I travel to discover how huge the world actually is.

I travel to realize that it is not that big after all.

I travel to be an outsider, a stranger completely ignorant of the local dialect.

I travel to understand that there is a universal tongue: a smile, a nod, a small attempt by someone to help me find my way.

I travel to be a stranger, an American, carrying the weight of that stigma.

I travel to maybe show a different face of my country’s reputation.

I travel to sleep in a bed lovingly made up for me by the hostess of the house.

I travel for the sweet, weary moment when I come home and fall onto my familiar mattress in my own bedroom.

I travel to see the history of a city, one that is thousands of years older than my own.

I travel to appreciate my relatively new hometown, one that is small enough to recognize my individuality.

I travel to indulge my senses – to taste an array of cheeses: raw milk made of cow, goat and sheep, and bleu varieties injected with blue veins of famous bacteria.

I travel to spend weeks without seeing a fast food chain or box store.

I travel to let go. To ride in a taxi that stops and starts and careens across the Roman night, swaying and weaving in a dance between motorcycles, cars and pedestrians. I absorb the blur of color and light, letting my spirits fly and my adrenaline soar.

I travel to appreciate the calm and tranquility of my sleepy North Carolina hometown’s cadence.

I travel to take advantage of the fact that I am able to do it, that I have a husband and kids who push me along, sometimes beyond the limits of where I want to go.

I travel because I was luckily offered the opportunity through my husband’s work.

I travel to get lost, to reinforce the fact that getting lost can happen anywhere, in any city.

I travel to appreciate that desperate rescue, those arms that hold me tight as I shiver and cry because I can’t find the way back to our apartment.

I travel to be a part of a large, Italian extended family, to experience a meal that has been lovingly assembled over the entire day.

I travel to appreciate my blood family, with our peripatetic planning of quick leftover meals and sporadic get-togethers.

I travel to come upon an unexpected pomegranate tree, plump and red tucked beneath old, gnarly branches.

I travel to remember those same exotic trees when I shop – their weird, bumpy fruits in the small bin at Whole Foods, with the knowledge of just how far they have travelled.

I travel to see a region where life is literally squeezed out of ancient plants, plump grapes and firm dusty olives, slowly ripening on the sunny hillsides.

I travel to expand my own limited palate. The drip of different olives, sweet and green and musky black, and the assortments of wines from last year’s harvest of grapes.

I travel to better experience the bitter fact that over-imbibed, limoncello is a poison, no matter how yellowy sweet and innocent and pretty it’s colorful bottle.

I travel to validate the idea that what is shunned in one culture may be treasured in another. That the feral cats that we euthanize, are protected cat communities, in Rome, not to be disrupted.

I travel to do the things that people recommend for me to do, but also to ignore those dictums too. The Roman Coliseum is just as impressive seen from a hillside, without paying the the ticket price and waiting for hours to go inside.

I travel to do all of the kitschy tourist things too. There’s a reason why millions of people travel from far-flung places to experience them, after all.

I travel to shop for things I wouldn’t dream of buying at home: outrageously priced Italian shoes and bags, a handmade artisan candle in Rome.

I travel to give myself permission to be a more colorful version of myself: More chic, more cultured (quoting Fellini) and someone more gastronomically sophisticated.

I travel to make myself vulnerable: to always feel like I’m on my toes, alert, not completely comfortable. Maybe it might help with the aging process?

I travel to broaden my view of what the world can be. So when I am home, cooking, doing the dishes, or running on the trail, or just daydreaming, I can summon up memories.

I travel to somehow, in a tiny way, share a larger community in this wide, juicy, delicious world.

To venture out, to risk, with the hope that when I come home, completely saturated and sated, I might still be ready at some later date down the road, to go adventuring again.

I travel to lose myself, and also to find myself when I am lost.