Leaving the Comforts of Home Behind
by Charlotte Temple
I jammed the huge suitcase, along with my carry-on and my more ordinary bag, into the tiny, caged elevator of my Paris apartment building. Opening the door of my apartment, I gave the bags a push and pulled the door closed behind me. “Home!” I said to myself, breathing a sigh of relief. I kicked off my shoes and wheeled the bags into their appointed places—beside my desk for my carry-on with camera equipment and electronics, my bedroom for the green bag (clothes), and the living room for my red suitcase.
I always come to Paris with the red suitcase. It is not my only suitcase but carries the random things that I find to make my apartment there home—on this occasion Ziplock bags, Trader Joe’s dry roasted almonds, a pitcher I picked up in Waco, Texas (still bubble wrapped for shipping) a couple of tiny vases (also bubble wrapped), a yardstick, and on top a couple of framed engravings I bought at a gallery. And to finish it off, maybe a bathrobe for padding. Not that I can’t find some of those things here (my usual Ziplocks excepted). But it’s just easier to get them at home in the usual places. I’m not charged exorbitant sums for my bags, so, to me, the red suitcase makes great sense, giving me comfort and convenience.
Landing the red suitcase means that I have reached my other home, my nest. It’s a place where I can slip into another skin, be present and at home in another culture, another language for a time. I have brought with me pieces of another home; they will become French as I do. Deep inside I know that I will always be a tourist, an American, but for a bit I will try to absorb this country, its sometimes-aggravating ways, and its joys.
When I travel to unfamiliar places the red suitcase does not go with me. I am working and moving, absorbing as much as I can, staying in places not my own. These are stranger places, bereft of the comforts of home but giving me unlimited rewards. For these I leave behind not only my red suitcase of comforts, but my preconceptions, my views of what people and places should be. I am the receiver of gifts if I am free of my own necessities.
Even traveling light, I have what I need: cameras, notebooks, and pens for remembering, alcohol swabs and hand sanitizer to clean dishes and keep me healthy, Cup-a-soup, instant oatmeal in case the food is bad, and books for relief from the intensity of my travels. I have a good hat for the sun, altimeter and warm clothes for the mountains, and sunscreen. I know how to find the hot boiled water tank in a hotel for my freeze-dried food, know that there is always rice to eat, and I drink good tea. I have a window with a view of the mountains or of children playing in the street. At the Chinese truck stop where we spend the night I am given (with great graciousness) a clean towel to cover my (used) pillowcase, and I pay for privacy by buying the other beds in the room. When I go down for breakfast, I am fresh and rested. The sun shines on the day’s adventures.
I consider comfort expendable. I know that the rewards of discomfort are great, taking me to wide vistas and hidden villages. I know that wherever I go, from the tents of nomads to urban apartments, I will usually be met with a tradition of hospitality to the stranger, the foreigner.
In South China a family has welcomed me over many years to their low wooden house in a Miao tribal village. I am a queen in their household, and that is a generous gift. There is neither the need nor desire for the red suitcase. I go with my hosts for a day with an aunt’s family, riding in the back of a jitney to a nearby village. The road is dusty and rough as we bounce along on the hard seats of the jitney. The smell of manure rises from the fields as we travel. But yellow flowered rapeseed brightens the rice terraces, while the tall pines crest on the hillside, shadowing villages that disappear into the landscape as we ride.
We are greeted by neighbors and family and ushered into the low wooden house. I am not allowed to help as the women light fires and begin to cook. The children take me to their hideouts in the fields and laugh at my awkward steps along the edges of their flooded terraces. The mothers call out, and we gather at the long table, where I am served with great ceremony. The honor that is paid me overcomes my doubts as to the cuisine, and I am at home, with family.
I still take the red suitcase with me to Paris, then back home to California filled with foreign treasures-- the catalog from a beautiful exhibition, an old print for which there was no wall space in the Paris apartment, some magical potions from the French pharmacy. I feather my nest with good memories and useful items from afar.
But to connect to unfamiliar and more distant places I know that I must travel light, taking only what I need to sustain me. I will leave my expectations at home in my red suitcase and seek the joy that I find in new places and new people as I travel, uncluttered--free to learn, to understand, and to delight.
© 2023 Charlotte Temple
Charlotte Temple is a photographer and writer who began her work in China in 1985, as the country was poised on the threshold of rapid change. Traveling 100 miles west from Shanghai or Beijing, she experienced rural China as it might have been a century ago: the further the journey, the greater the feeling of going back in time. Fascinated, she began a 40-year photographic project to document China’s disappearing rural cultures and the changes that have marked them. A graduate of Duke University, Temple holds a MFA in Photography from the San Francisco Art Institute, where she was awarded the Fletcher Cup for excellence at graduation. Her work has taken her to China, Cuba, Southeast Asia, South America, and Europe; has been featured in solo and group exhibitions in the United States and in Mexico; has appeared in Travel + Leisure, Doubletake, Pacific Horticulture, and the book Mooncakes and Hungry Ghosts; and is included in the Emerging Artists collections at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. A resident of Napa Valley, California, she is currently working on a book of photographs of the diverse regions of China.
Website: www.charlotte-temple.com
Contact: hello@charlotte-temple.com
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