Rodin sculpture, capturing my frame of mind early in this latest journey

It was 4 a.m. and my head was resting on the table at an all-night restaurant in The Hague, my ears still ringing from the bar where we had just been dancing. I was so desperately tired that when one friend mentioned an after-hours party, I pleaded for mercy. "Please, please take me home and let me go to sleep. I need sleep. I have to sleep. I'm begging you." The three of us had been going for 14 hours at that point, and this was day four of too much fun and not enough sleep. My friends have family commitments, hold down day jobs! How do they do it? It was clear that I was outclassed. I was in over my head. I had stumbled onto the express party train, when I can only handle the local.

Just a few days later, the world was a different place as I took the regional train to a small Normandy town for two weeks of good, clean farm living. I signed up as a volunteer with WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) to help out at an organic garden specializing in herbs, salads, and edible flowers.

The field in the morning, still a little misty

The farm's owners, Mike and Renate (who are not French at all, but English and German, respectively), showed me to my room, tucked under the eaves of their lovely old stone farmhouse. I would be fed and sheltered in exchange for my labor in the fields and greenhouses. I would work hard. I would eat well, and sleep long. They would take care of me. Life would be simple, scheduled, healthy. I sat on the clean, spartan futon that first day, overwhelmed with gratitude, exhaustion, I don't know what all--and tears streamed down my face.

The Hewitt's restored farmhouse. It dates back to either the 18th or the 19th century.

From my journal, August 9:

"Worked in the garden from 8:00 until 1:00, and from about 2:30 until 4:00. My hands feel hot and sore, and my knees are a bit raw. Being out in the field is so soothing--I feel sheltered from the decadence of recent life by the quiet, the jewelled colors of the leaves, the sun and the breeze. The colors in the garden are so vivid that the scene reminds me of some kind of underwater picture, with limey greens and magentas, and inky dark purples.

Flowers: beautiful and tasty!

"I weeded. First, I cleared around a patch of red leaf lettuce. Then I weeded two really unusual crops: a land-based algae that looks like a thick, dark green, delicately ferny sea plant; and a succulent plant with a slightly furry surface, thick but not as thick as an ice plant, and bluish green in color. Its edges are slightly ruffled. Both of these are Asian greens, and Renate says they go well with fish." [Mike and Renate will be shaking their heads as they read this; I cannot remember these plant names. Hopeless.]

August 10:

The tunnel, where I did much of my work

"It rained today, and I worked in 'the tunnel,' a long greenhouse-like structure that's open on the sides, but roofed over with plastic sheeting. The tunnel shelters three long rows of crops from the elements--and it sheltered me from the rain today. The raindrops pattered on the roof. I did some weeding around the tomato plants, and I also completely cleared a bed almost the whole length of the tunnel. Then, even as it rained outside, I watered. Mike said today was the first real precipitation they have had all season. At 4:00 p.m., after a full day of rain, the soil was still dry less than two centimeters below the surface.

"We had a spinach, tomato, and chevre puff pastry pie for lunch. Late in the afternoon, the rain tapered off and the three of us drove to the home of some of their friends. There, Mike collected some manure from the paddock where they keep two donkeys--Raku and Hyssop--which he will use later in his own garden. Meanwhile, Renate and I picked black currants from half a dozen bushes taller than we were, heavy with ripe, black fruit. We filled two bowls with currants, and I'll use most of them to make a black currant tart.

"Today I learned that arugula is also called rocket, and that there is a perennial variety of it. Tiny, starlike yellow flowers float on long stems above the peppery, fingery leaves. Right now I am sitting in the living room, listening to the old clock tick. This end of the house is very quiet. I am feeling much more solid today. I am reminded of how much the passage of time affects my outlook. How I feel about life works just like the weather. You know the expression: if you don't like it, just wait. It will change!"

August 14:

"More rain today. I trimmed the sorrel and marjoram, cleared more weeds around the tomatoes, and nipped the dead heads off the marigolds. In the evening, we went to a nearby village and attended a paella dinner and movie night at the town's Salon de Fete (every town has one--this one looked like any American Moose Lodge or fire hall, but with twinkly lights hung in the rafters.) I peeked in the kitchen door while the cooking was going on, just as the chef was adding a full grocery sack of clams to the mix. The paella pan must have been three feet across, with four handles, one at each compass point. We sat at a long table with some of Mike and Renate's friends, and other village locals. With his usual dry, British wit, Mike called this a gathering of deepest, darkest Normandy: plain, strong faces. Work-worn hands. Practical cardigan sweaters and no-nonsense haircuts, with a few ladies making exceptions and wearing fancy dresses and hairdos for the occasion. Children ran around the room while parents sat with food and wine at the long tables for two noisy, convivial hours." 

August 15:

"I planted some new seeds in starter flats. I worked at a formica counter in one of the farm's several stone outbuildings, under the yellow glow of a lamp clipped up on the wall, powered by a long extension cord running out the door to the little greenhouse down the path. The rain beat down on the roof. A transistor radio murmured BBC news as I dropped three tiny lettuce seeds into each cell of damp soil. I tried not to itch the spot on my wrist where a red ant gave me a couple of sharp stings while I was weeding earlier. The ant got caught in the cuff of my glove. Later I asked Renate about it, and she showed me a plant that I could have rubbed on the sting to cut the reaction immediately. It was a plant that I had been stepping all over, that grows as strong as iron right on the garden path.

"Mike and Renate told great stories about the volunteers they've had over the years. They've been cultivating this piece of land for about 15 years, and inviting volunteers for nearly that whole time. There was the lady who claimed to be 59 on her application, but must have actually been north of 70. She had a posh British accent and fancied herself a dandelion expert. She applied again the following year, still claiming to be 59. Then there was the Korean princess with an eating disorder. One day she told Mike she did not like what he was cooking for dinner before she knew what he was going to make. She kept asking if she could just eat something 'later,' and Renate finally told her, 'No. What would your mother think?' Plenty of rotund, easily exhausted Americans have come through; couples who have to be given jobs on different parts of the property so that he stops trying to 'help' her; and a hard-working Canadian who keeps being welcomed back, though he always eats absolutely everything in the house."

August 18:

"Oh, I will sleep well in just a minute. Today I picked amaranth, shiso (red and green), lemon verbena, magenta, and perennial buckwheat. Earlier, I cleared about a third of another row in the tunnel. My biceps and back are sore. My fingers are sore, and stained red from the magenta leaves. I found a baby hornet spider crawling up the underside of the wheelbarrow when I dumped a load of weeds on the compost pile. The big stripey mama spider disappeared from her web a few days ago--well, almost all of her disappeared. One of her legs was left tangled in the web."

August 19:

Green and purple basil

"Today, I spread compost, raked, and watered the bed that I'd cleared. I weeded the basil out in the field, and I cleared a path next to a field row that was overgrown with, among other things, stinging nettle. Long sleeves made no difference. My forearms are still tingly, many hours later. The last two days have been sunny and spectacularly blue, clear, postcard-pretty. We sat around the dinner table until around 10:30, with Daisy the cat in my lap. It feels great to be tucked in bed, clean, warm, and sleepy."

At the end of two weeks, I was ready to go. I'd gotten just what I needed: a regular schedule of hard work, delicious and healthy food, and plenty of sleep. The repetitive nature of the garden work and family life is exactly what makes Mike and Renate's operation work so well--and it was starting to get to me. My three weeks in Europe ended up being beautifully balanced: a week of gleeful urban excesses, followed by two healthy, orderly weeks in the moody, lovely Normandy countryside. To discover balance, one must lean first to one side, and then the other. Cementing both feet down in the safe, predictable middle is not going to do it: not at all. In these three weeks, I reached to one extreme, and to the other, and I found a measured middle.

This is the hottest part of Saudi Arabia's year: mid-July, and the afternoon temperature hovers around 120 degrees fahrenheit every day. Stepping out the front door feels like stepping into a clothes dryer. The sky is a bleached-out off-white, and I can feel the heat of the pavement through the soles of my shoes. My skin is sucking up moisturizer, the humidifier in the bedroom is cranking out about half a gallon of water every night, and my nose still feels crunchy in the morning. The flowers I bought at the market two days ago have already dropped all their petals. What was I thinking, anyway, buying flowers? This is the desert, no joke.

Many of the expat mothers and children have decamped back to their home countries for the summer, and what was already a sleepy little compound is now even quieter. A few new families have recently arrived on camp, staggering under the blast of their first Saudi summer, having to adjust to the heat along with culture shock and new jobs and everything else all at once. Michael and I are sticking it out right here for the month of July. It's our first summer here, and there's a bit of a learning curve.

For example, walking the scant quarter mile to the grocery store and back is just not something you do in the middle of the day. For one thing, your groceries will be wrecked: anything frozen will be melted, and anything refrigerated will be warm. And as for you: after the walk you'll probably need to sit on the couch in the air conditioning and drink a few glasses of cold water to regain equilibrium. A healthy, active life that includes outdoor sports and play is not to be had here in the summertime. One of my yoga teachers in India told me that I need to be outside every day. I need to garden, get my hands and feet in contact with the earth, to "ground" myself for my own good health. Sounds great, but seriously, it's not going to happen right now. 

So, what to do?  A few times, I have gotten up at 4:30 or 5:00 a.m. and gone out for a walk or a bike ride just after sunrise, before the heat of the day takes hold. This is a beautiful time: the soft light blushes the sand into the colors of a peach, and the sky is a clear, pale blue. Later in the day, colors seem flat and bleached out, but in the 5 o’clock hour, on the silent ribbon of road around the back of town, the palette is fresh and subtle. Also, the birds are especially chatty. I always see hoopoes and bulbuls on my morning outings, and the trees in my neighborhood are noisy with birdsong just after sunrise. It’s nice to listen to the desert quiet punctuated by the bright sounds of morning birds. 

So I can get up early. Oh, but I am not at all a morning person. I am always glad when I have gotten up to enjoy the early hour, but making myself get up is nearly impossible. I must give myself a stern talking-to! This is one of those things, like any personal discipline, that I don't have to like, I just have to do. And by doing, I inevitably reap a reward greater than I had expected.

The other strategy is to go outside at night. It's still hot, indeed. But it's not as blistering, and plus it's dark. There is something soothing and cooling about being outside at night. Michael and I have vowed to sit outside more after dark. It's nice to sit together outside with a dessert or a cool drink just for a little while. Having a time-out from the air conditioning feels good, at least for a few minutes.

Aside from the issue of getting outside, there is the question of what to do with all of our inside time. There's not a lot of night life going on around here! There are no new restaurants to try, no concerts or art openings, no bands playing at the local bar. The World Cup games were a great distraction, but now they're over, and there's nothing! Plus, with so many people gone for the summer, there is hardly any social life happening even in our neighbors' living rooms. I imagine that getting through a summer in Saudi Arabia is a lot like getting through a winter in northern Canada, or Scandinavia. You hunker down. You get creative.

I am learning French using Rosetta Stone. I have taken on some more writing work. Michael and I are playing a lot of chess. My computer rings a little alarm every hour to signal me to drop down on the floor and do push-ups, sit-ups, crunches. I read. I do Sun Salutations. I write. I cook. There are actually plenty of things to do, and I'm not getting bored. But my brain feels a little staticky; there is definitely a short circuit that happens when I go for days without leaving the house. My fuse gets shorter. The people closest to me start giving me cues that I am being intense, argumentative.

This is, in all seriousness, a beautiful opportunity to learn some self-control, some self-discipline, and to Get Things Done. I think I'm doing a fairly good job of it, all things considered. But I sure am looking forward to August 1st, when I fly out of here once again. Next, I am going to Brussels to visit a friend for a few days, then to Paris, and then to a farm in Normandy, where I will be weeding and helping to harvest organic produce. There! Plenty of dirt under my fingernails in a few short weeks.

Next year, Michael will probably be able to take his annual leave during the high summer season, so neither of us will have to slog through another Saudi July. I am glad to have this opportunity to experience a Middle Eastern summer, but just the once'll do it.

An important measure of the level of a nation's civilization is how well its citizens can flirt. Using this yardstick, Spain is very, very civilized. I thought a lot about this during my recent visit to the Basque region of northern Spain. Here, a simple hello involves a kiss on each cheek. Women of all ages carry themselves with ease and pleasurable confidence. I believe this is because they are used to receiving attention from strangers, and they are not afraid of it. Sure, there are some catcalls, but generally it feels good-natured rather than threatening. Like, my friend Michelle and I heard "Hola, fea" as we walked down the street one evening. It's a joke: it means "Hello Ugly." The man grinned and raised his glass as we passed his table at a sidewalk cafe.

I got the impression that men there expect a woman to know how to flirt. It's a social skill. They expect a woman to know what to do with an invitation to dance, a glass of wine, a half-serious proposition. It strikes me that women in Spain are confident enough to take pleasure in these kinds of exchanges without taking them particularly seriously. This is a bit different from my perception of the norm in the United States. There, flirting is often more heavy-handed and fraught with meaning. Women who enjoy making the flirt a two-sided game are seen as easy lays by men, and looked at with fear and suspicion by other women. In my new home of Saudi Arabia, of course, the Mutawah (religious police) would blow a gasket if they witnessed such behavior, and any woman involved would be labeled as a whore. Charming.

It's not fair to compare Spanish attitudes about gender and sexuality to Saudi Arabian; it's just too ridiculous. Talk all you want about the Moorish influence on southern Spain, but the life that is being lived in the shadows of all that gorgeous Islamic architecture is nothing, nothing like life on the ground in Saudi Arabia. In Spain, nudity (on the beach, in art, in advertising) is seen as beautiful, and also as normal and not particularly noteworthy. Sure, sex sells. My impression, though, is that there is a fairly universal recognition in Spain of the human form as a lovely thing, and not something to be snickered at or denigrated. To react at all to a topless woman on the beach, for example, would be the utter height of loutishness.

In the United States, we are considerably more skittish--the human body seems somehow a bit shameful. A beautiful woman in a tiny bathing suit might well get some rude and unwanted attention, including catty remarks by other women. The female body is the ultimate advertising sales tool in the U.S.: it is appealing, and also naughty. An irresistible combination! And a rather schoolboyish attitude.

In Saudi Arabia, Muslim women are expected to cover themselves completely in a long, billowing black robe (even when temperatures top 130 degrees fahrenheit.) Not only is the female body off-limits in art and advertising, but even women's faces are blurred out in posters and print ads. They look like they've been photographed through a foggy window, or else their face is heavily pixellated so as to be unrecognizable. Possibly this could be construed as a way to use the mysterious feminine "mystique" to sell widgets. But it also points to amazingly unsophisticated gender relations. Men are unaccustomed to actually seeing women and interacting with them on the street and in everyday life. So there is this notion that the very sight of bare skin would send a man into a rage of adolescent lust. It's laughable--and pathetic.

All this rumination (and admitted over-generalization) about flirting around the world was pleasantly instigated by a night out with my friend Michelle. I met Michelle at yoga teacher training earlier this year in India, and recently we spent a week traveling together around the northern coast of Spain. A couple of those days were happily whiled away in San Sebastian, the urbane sea resort just south of the French border on the Atlantic coast. That night, we had a gorgeous dinner at a little restaurant in the cobblestoned section of town called Parte Vieja (according to Lonely Planet, Parte Vieja has more bars per square meter than anywhere else on earth). We lingered for three hours over a meal that included cod in a traditional, thickened olive oil sauce called "pil-pil," an arrangement of perfectly steamed fresh vegetables, and a light, naturally fizzy bottle of white wine. We talked about the definition of love, the meaning of marriage (Michelle is a newlywed), and the role of religion in shaping sexuality. You know, normal dinner conversation for a girls' night out!

We were just finishing our desserts (profiteroles for me, and an impossibly moist apple cake for Michelle), when a gentleman from the table across the way approached us. He said that he and his seven friends were out celebrating the fact that one of them had just become a professional golfer. He invited us to join them at their table for a drink. This was a very nice restaurant, and the table of men looked respectable enough. Plus, it was clear that they were already having a riotously good time. Michelle and I accepted his invitation.

We joined the eight men, all from Barcelona, at their table. Before we could sit, every one of them greeted us, all of us craning across the big table full of dishes and glassware for kisses on both cheeks. As we finally took our seats, the ringleader admitted that their friend was not actually a professional golf player and in fact had played the worst game of all of them that day. Our "pro golfer" graciously admitted that this was so, and they continued busting each others' chops, in between asking us about ourselves.

The group had travelled to San Sebastian for a weekend of golfing. They go somewhere to golf every year, and have done so for over ten years. Michelle currently lives in Aranda de Duero, a small town pretty much out in the middle of nowhere, a couple of hours north of Madrid. When the group learned this, one of them teased her about it. He said that next year, if the money is good, they plan to go to Pebble Beach to play golf. If it's not a good money year, they'll go to Aranda de Duero. A couple of them have been to Saudi Arabia on business, and they did not joke about it. The fact that I live there drew the now-familiar sharp inhales and queries about how I manage. 

When the gents learned that Michelle and I are yoga teachers, well, that tipped the merriment right off the scale. I mean, now we all had a great story to tell: we had drinks with eight men! They spent the evening with two American yoga instructors! Sweet! I told them how good yoga can be for golfers, improving focus and concentration and balance. One of them took his shoes off and made a show of flinging a shoe over each shoulder. I told him to stand up so I could teach him the tree posture. So we stood in the middle of the (now otherwise empty) restaurant and did the tree. Except he kept tipping over on purpose. 

Later, they paid their bill and invited us to join them for a drink down the street. We said sure, and all of us headed down the narrow stone alleyway to a little bar that was playing--what was that? Spanish dance hits or something. One of them ordered a round of tequila shots for everyone, and mine was in my hand and then down my throat without a second thought. I don't even like tequila shots! After the one shot, Michelle and I said that we really prefer wine, and then there was no more pressure to drink what we didn't want.

We closed down the bar (though bars in San Sebastian close surprisingly early for Spain: we were out of there by 2 a.m.) Then there was the elaborate two-cheek kissing process to say goodbye to all of them (some of them needed a double set of kisses), and we were on our way. Nobody tried to get us to go back to their hotel with them. Nobody even tried to get our contact information. It was just a fun and sociable night out in San Sebastian. I don't think a night like that would have been as lighthearted and low-pressure in the U.S. And, of course, nothing like it would ever happen in Saudi Arabia.

I know there are a million stories about those treacherous Spanish lotharios, and I'm sure most of them are true! That said, flirting itself is high art in Spain. When a man flirts with me there, I don't feel like he is insulting me or objectifying my body. It just feels like he is saying, "you are beautiful."

Returning to Saudi Arabia after seven weeks in India was surreal. We flew out of the steamy and decrepit Kolkata International Airport, smelling slightly of mold and sweat, and changed planes in Dubai. During our layover, we did some window shopping in the airport and saw a 24-karat gold cell phone on sale for $30,000. The Dubai airport was immaculate, echoey, modern and freezing cold. I probably wouldn't have even noticed except that, well, I just came from Calcutta.

While I was away in India, our shipment of household goods had arrived in Saudi Arabia. So when Michael and I walked in the front door, I was greeted with all of our familiar things: a house full of the objects we have collected and lived with during our sixteen years of marriage. There was the threadbare red velvet sofa (with some dog hairs still stuck to the front of it. Oh, I miss my dog! He's back in the States living with his best doggie friend.) There was the Art Nouveau china cabinet and the Danish modern dining room set--both second-hand finds from years ago. My ergonomic office chair! And our bed, oh yes. The most comfortable bed I have ever slept on in my whole life, yes, there it was, made up with the blue cotton sheets that are soft from many washings.

It was great to come back to all of this, and air conditioning, and my own kitchen, and the stereo, and the shower with the great water pressure and all the hot water I want. Oh, heaven! Even all these weeks later, I am still grateful for such luxury. Also, I'm still aware that I can live well without it.

Back in this comfortably feathered nest, I can sit and consider my biggest question: what is home?

I am sheltered here. All my stuff is here, and (more importantly) my husband is here. Is this home? Oh no. We live in a comfortable little bubble here, but we will never be able to call Saudi Arabia home. The cultural disconnect is too vast.

So, home does not equal "where your house is." There is a cultural component to it.

What about my hometown of Greenbelt? Most of my family and friends live there. The farmers market I helped to start still thrives on Sunday mornings, and the yoga studio I built still holds classes there. My sister lives there, in our childhood home, down the street from some of my favorite friends. My in-laws live there, too. This friendly, tightly knit safety net awaits me. This is where my roots are. Is this home? It was. It may well be again. But right now we don't have a house there. We don't have a place that belongs to us, so I don't think of it as home.

So, maybe home is where your house is plus where you feel culturally connected. This has possibilities. 

Then there's Santa Barbara. I have been yearning for California's central coast for quite a while now. Maybe home is Santa Barbara, where my husband has family, where I went to college. The city got its hook in me, and I remain hooked. Some places have a pull of their own. They feel like home even even before the real estate has been purchased, before the roots are down.

So what is home? Is home where your house is, plus where you feel culturally connected, plus where you feel some kind of magnetic attraction to the geographical place itself? Hmm....

As I spin out this Sesame Street-style exercise (to the tune of "One of these things is not like the other"), I wonder what I even mean by "home." What am I looking for? This is not such a random exercise in navel-gazing if you consider this: If you know what you mean by "home," then maybe you can create it. Wherever you go. What if "home" is something you can take with you? Yeah, yeah, "home is where the heart is." Or as the Temptations said, "Papa was a rolling stone. Wherever he laid his hat was his home." But what if that is true? 

And here we are, crashing back into yoga again. One of my yoga teachers often said that during a difficult posture, "you can always come back to your breath. Just come back to your breath." This is also good advice during challenging moments of life generally. When I'm angry: come back to my breath. When I'm afraid, or about to say something I shouldn't: come back to my breath. (I need to keep practicing that one!) Just stop whatever it is I'm about to do, and breathe. Actually feel the air filling my lungs, the breath coming and going from my body. Whether I am aware of it or not, my breath keeps cycling through me. My heart keeps beating too, of course, but my breath is something over which I have some control. I can work with it. I can let it work on me. I always carry it with me. My body is the home of my breath. What if my body is my home? Is that enough?

I am a nester. I love fussing with the furniture, choosing paint colors, hanging pictures, finding new pieces to bring into our house that are reminders of places I've been or have shapes or textures that I find beautiful. So it's hard to reconcile the fact that I take such pleasure in feathering the nest, with the notion that home can be as portable as I am.

I also love cooking at home. The smell of good food being prepared in the kitchen is another big signpost pointing the way towards home. Almost every day, I use my grandmother's iron skillet to fry onions, or scramble eggs, or make a batch of cornbread. Three generations of women in my family have used that skillet in their kitchens. That kind of continuity is a deep, important anchor to home.

Next week, I am traveling to Spain to visit a new friend from my yoga teacher training. She should have some insights on this question of home. She is an American from Kansas, who met her Irish husband while teaching English in Korea. They are now living in a village north of Madrid. Where is their home?

I want to find "home" and settle there. And I am becoming ever more aware that in order to do that, I need to push a little more on the boundaries of what's comfortable for me, what's physically and emotionally possible. To figure out how to get back home, I need to keep venturing away from it. The road towards home continues to twist off into the trees. It's a beautiful day for a drive.