Best of Beth Ashley: Marin may be home but the world owns the heart

Editor’s note: The IJ is reprinting some of the late Beth Ashley’s columns. This is from 2016.

We’re already scheduled to go to Ireland in the spring, and to Dubai and Venice in 2017, but my husband has itchy feet.

“How about a cruise to Mexico?” he asks. Or “Paris-London-Berlin in 12 days — how does that sound?”

It’s not as though we had money to burn, but we both have a great thirst for travel: just name a far-off place and we’re ready to go.

He’s still bouncy and strong at age 90; I, however, am beginning to totter.

When I protest his latest itinerary, he pooh-poohs me: “Hey, you’ve got me to lean on.”

True, I lean on him a lot, but airports and escalators and alien hotels can be daunting.

Rowland’s answer is to buy me bigger canes, stronger “walkers,” a motorized chair.

Motorized chair? Good gawd, that sounds like a bit of overkill. Can’t I just walk beside you, I ask him, with my arm laced through yours?

“You’ll love this chair,” he assures me. My son Gilbert calls it my “electric chair,” and the thought occurs that it may even kill me.

We haven’t exactly settled on what devices we will use, but we have decided that — by hook or by crook — we’ll go someplace. We are not ready to close the door on the rest of the world.

What’s this travel bug all about?

Mostly, I like to think of myself as a citizen of the world, not just an American, proud as I am to be one. Rather, I want to see myself in people of every color and size, language and ethnicity. I am your brother, will you be mine?

When I was a college student and editor of the student newspaper, I advocated for an international student organization that would link to colleges all over the world, particularly those struggling in the destructive wake of World War II.

After graduation, I traveled to many California campuses, speaking at student assemblies, trying to raise funds to help put these colleges back on their feet.

I’m not sure how effective I was, but my heart was in the right place, from which it has never strayed.

When my boys went to Redwood High School, my family became involved in its student exchange program. Two of my boys spent their junior years In a German town called Preetz; they learned another language and a lasting viewpoint. Germany and foreign travel are now in their veins.

We had exchange students in our home, for a year, six months, three weeks. In 2015 Uwe Richter of Freiburg, who stayed with us 30 years ago, came for a visit. He is now a professor at Oxford.

When Rowland and I travel, we often seek out a school to visit. We sang with the students at a village school in South Africa; we attended a school assembly in North Korea.

Mostly, we look for opportunities to meet with people. I remember dancing at a tribal sing-sing in Papua New Guinea, and attending International Women’s Day in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

We don’t qualify as ambassadors, but we act as friends; we try to fit in.

The payoff may be insignificant, but for me it is huge.

My home is in Greenbrae, but my heart is all over the world.