To the Edge of the World

Over the winter holidays, I learned my ancestors have a tendency to travel alone, and to disappear.

The family had convened in San Antonio, and after returning from some feast, we settled at home and passed around chocolates. Our nonagenarian Uncle Leo genially suggested nightcaps. Piled around the room on whatever furniture we could find, we were all listening to my grandma weave an image of our shared past.

My cousin Luc brought out a camera and began to film: a precious, if haphazard, record of this rare occasion. The clip is unsteady—it flies from face to face—but it caught the lamplight, the sense of leisure and attention. Grandma is beautiful, cropped hair curled by the stylist every week, a bit of lipstick, deep laugh lines by her eyes. I have heard some of these stories before: at her home in Denver when neither of us could sleep, just the two of us in the buzzing fluorescence of the kitchen. I love her stories; they are caring and precise.

We pieced some things together that night—where who was born and how who died, little anecdotes that give our amorphous forebears some individuality. In Luc’s film, you can hear someone ask, “Who was it that disappeared?”

It turns out there were two. The first was Cathy. One year as winter set in, she took one last trip to the summer home in Utah, and just vanished. Grandma told us, “They went to the house. Her purse was there, her things were there, there was nothing missing but Cathy.” It was 15 years before they found her; she had gone walking alone and fell into a ravine.

Then, several years later, a young man went to Israel on tour. “The last they heard of him he was buying something in a camera shop. He never joined the walking tour, and nothing was heard from him for years. Finally, they found the remains somewhere. He’d gone on a hike by himself, in Israel, and fell into a ravine. And that’s where he died.”

On the video then, someone laughs and says, “So the moral of the story is stay away from ravines.” But Grandma is still serious. “No,” she replies. That’s not the moral. “Don’t go off by yourself.” I’m sitting next to her and she turns to me. “Really, I think that’s important to know. You guys do a lot of traveling. Don’t anybody go off by themselves.”

I know what this look means. She let me go off last year on some great adventure to East Africa, and now that I’ve returned, my wanderlust should be satisfied. In a few months, I graduate, and where I end up afterward will determine, at least to a certain extent, my future course.

For Grandma, this is the way it should be—family gathered in one place, everyone safe. Maybe it’s about women’s progress and change, unhindered ambition, a shifting attitude about family, but the life I’m heading for is very different from the one my grandma has led. I haven’t finished going places. Living, as she has, for 87 years in the place that I was born, is unfathomable.

I’m heading back across oceans, among strangers, where ravines line every road, and I’m on my own. I can’t help it, even if it means that for the next however many years my grandmother cannot watch me age except in pixels, cannot hear my voice or touch my hair. And that I, too, cannot help her up stairs, help her when she gets sick, or show her how I’ve learned to cook. She looks at me to say, Consider this. Life is more complicated than limitless adventure.

I can’t help but wonder if she’s right. Maybe 30 years from now I’ll realize my naïveté and want nothing else than a gathering of family like that one. Being nearby, keeping in touch, carving our lives out of something closer at hand but just as valuable. I can’t shake the feeling that I’m headed out despite the risks, and in 30 years I suppose I’ll know who was right.

As the evening ended, we gathered our coats and bags to return to our hotels. Grandma hugged me and said into my ear, “I’m so glad you’re back from Africa. I was so worried about you. I’m so glad you’re back home and safe.” I held her and smiled, but I had no idea what to say.