THE DELICACY

The ant in my basil chicken rice, languishes in the gooey sauce, antennae swept back as if Brill Creamed, limbs spread out unnaturally, one stuck to the white plate, two stuck to a spicy red chili, and another stuck to a wilted green basil leaf.

“There’s an ant in my rice.”
“That’s nice honey.”

I realize I’ve graduated from tourist to traveler as I shovel rice to cover the body. It doesn’t work. The head pops out from under the pile, then an antenna, a hair thin limb, the red torso, a black eye.

I burst out laughing.

“What’s so funny.”
“The ant . . . I . . . can’t cover the ant.”
“My God, it’s humungous. I thought it was a regular ant.”

Once I would have been the typical obnoxious American tourist: “I’m not happy with my meal, please take it back” I’d have tried to explain. But even if the beautiful, smiling Thai server would have understood the words, they wouldn’t have made sense. Thais buy bags of ants for snacks from street vendors and eat them by the crunchy handful like we eat popcorn. Ants are a delicacy, as are fresh maggots and warm snake’s blood.

But after months of traveling by car, bus, plane, train, tuk tuk, metro, truck, speed boat, ferry; sleeping under mosquito nets, on grass mats, on rope mattresses; eating food cooked in huts, over fires, on the street; discovering the hundred ways to flush a toilet (17 in Europe alone; and washing my underwear in the sink, my standards have changed.

I’m in Thailand with my husband, on a verandah lined with tropical flowers and palm trees, overlooking a white sand cove with lime green water bleeding to brilliant turquoise, sparkling azure, deep cobalt. And it will be another 3 weeks before I’m facing traffic on the 91 freeway, trying to please an unreasonable condescending client, shopping for groceries at Von’s Pavillions, picking up dry cleaning at the Continental Cleaner’s, and wearing a suit, hose, high heels, and lipstick. The ant just doesn’t matter.

I had the capacity to experience life in a different way. Not just from an American perspective of the need for conformity of products and services, an inordinate need for cleanliness, and a focus on material things.

I began to focus on experiences, people, and places and find a richness to life I never imagined existed. I found that I can be enormously happy with just what I can carry in a backpack (o.k., what my husband can carry in a backpack!).

My husband and I chose to live a life that is not typical of Americans. What we call: an extraodinary life. We traveled five months a year for five years and worked as consultants the rest of the time. This is just one lesson we learned. There were endless lessons, that we will treasure always.