“Let’s go to Tajikistan,” my boyfriend declared at a Tajik teahouse in Berlin. We sat on pillows next to a low table while our drinks steeped. The room was a relic of the GDR, a gift to the East Germans from the former Soviet republic.
“Yes, absolutely,” I replied, spooning a heap of rum-soaked raisins into my mouth. I stretched my legs out on a Persian carpet and looked up at the ornate carvings that danced along the room’s sandalwood columns and ceiling. I imagined arriving at such a place after hiking down to a valley from a rugged treeless mountain, where locals played austere folk music on fretless lutes and sang in a language unknown to me. Tajikistan was everywhere I’d never been, an undiscovered clue capable of unlocking the great mystery I’d spent my life sleuthing. The liquor-infused fruit and promise of future travels made me giddy. Maybe we could save up and take a trip the following year.
I returned home to Boston, where reality’s vice grip clamped down: work, college loans, my car’s recurring flat tire. In my free time I googled Tajikistan. My boyfriend became my husband. We paid off my loans; kept fixing that flat. Had a kid. Tajikistan was still a possibility, but far off, like a star that I wished upon. My absolute yes became a maybe: maybe my parents could babysit while we traveled; maybe in a couple years we’d go, when I had more vacation time to burn; maybe when the conflicts in Central Asia simmered. While Tajikistan stayed put, it was also moving further and further out of reach as the roots of my responsibilities grew deeper, keeping me stationary—a state of being that I’d spent years actively resisting.
Growing up in a tiny mountain town in upstate New York, I dedicated a good portion of my teenage life to scheming how I was going to light out for the territory. In the pre-Google era, I thumbed through road maps and scanned the world atlas. With my index finger pressed lightly on my family’s globe, I would close my eyes and spin the sphere. When it stopped, the location under my fingertip wasn’t just Saint Helena, Shanghai, or Anchorage: it was a prospect, the future.
I worked double shifts as a waitress, saving my tips for a trip to New Zealand. I painted houses for cash to fund a summer in Idaho, Montana, and British Columbia; I studied abroad on the western coast of Ireland and hitchhiked in the central Mexican highlands to witness the monarch butterfly migration. In my twenties, I rambled through the western U.S., working for AmeriCorps, a bookstore, a plant nursery, and a farm along the way. I pawned my clothes for gas money. One year, I moved eight times.
It was that same year that I delivered a car to my brother in Boston. I stayed for a weekend that turned into a decade, exhausted from the constant motion of the preceding years. I worked the 4 a.m. oven shift at a bakery and spent afternoons shelving textbooks at a college bookstore before landing a job that afforded me health benefits, weekends off, a decent apartment, and retirement savings—things I hadn’t paid much mind before. I found a loving community that grew larger and stronger with each passing year. My friends surprised me with a bicycle they built from found parts, something that remains one of my most prized possessions. I met the man who became my husband. My urge to wander became more local; it was an itch that could be sated by nighttime bike rides with a dear friend to the North End, where we ate gelato-filled sugar cones and pretended we were in Italy, or to neighborhood bars, where we listened to local bands and danced until closing time. When we called ourselves townies, we did so with pride.
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