Souvenirs for Life

I have only two memories of my trip to Washington when I was 10: the FBI tour, where I learned the gruesome details of how fugitives try to alter their fingerprints, and Mount Vernon. My parents and I were winding our way down a narrow back stairway when my mother turned to me and, wagging her finger, said, “All you want to do on this trip is go to Woolworth’s and buy sil-venirs.”

She’d nailed me. It was true. I would have much preferred being in a five-and-dime buying a bronze miniature of Mount Vernon than being at Mount Vernon itself.

Three years later, a trip to Los Angeles was a great success due in large part to my landing what I thought was the most exotic memento possible: a wooden platter from Mexico painted in a huge, bright floral design. I bought it at the Mexican shop in Knott’s Berry Farm. It was, I was sure, the closest I’d ever get to Mexico itself. Being 120 miles from an international border held great import for me. At the time we were living in a small town in Alabama, and I was sure that possession of such an object confirmed my rep as someone with big-city style (after all, I was a native New Yorker).

As a grown-up I continued in the exotic souvenir mode. When I finally got to Mexico, I returned with fanciful papier-ma^che animals for the coffee table and wildly embroidered huipils to hang on the wall.

There was, I always knew, something stagy about these souvenirs. They never quite meshed with the rest of the decor. They were, I now see, more trophies than mementos, a silent boast to company: “See where I’ve been. Aren’t I special?” But I thought that’s what people were supposed to do on foreign trips: buy folk art as proof of their treks to strange places.

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I now regret the time I spent on some of my souvenir shopping. In Peru far too much time went into finding the perfect Machu Picchu T-shirt for my 5-year-old (in tow) and his friends back home. These shirts did make an initial splash, and Alex was the only kindergartner in his school with three T-shirts emblazoned with Inca ruins (of course, he was also the only kindergartner who had heard of Machu Picchu). But three months later they were faded, too tight and ready for the rag pile.

Still, lesson unlearned, two years later in Kenya I left no curio shop unexplored for wildlife T-shirts. All this T-shirt hunting required excessive time and doubling back because even when I found a nice shirt (even a very nice shirt) I had to check every other shop before I made a purchase.

One lesson learned was not to buy everyday items abroad because it is my nature to horde them at home. Case in point: packets of exquisite writing paper and paper napkins (the English do these so well), which were always too precious to actually use. They remained stashed away for years and eventually looked so drawer-worn, I threw them out.

In Barcelona I spent my last day in a shop that the guidebooks touted as selling the most authentic espadrilles in the city. These were the real thing, not a Ralph Lauren interpretation; with the flattest hemp soles, this very style had been worn, unchanged, for centuries. For some reason I bought six pairs, in red, orange, turquoise, black, purple and green. I wore the black ones a few times; the red ones, once. They were $5 a pair--that’s my only possible defense. Major mistake. Ditto for the lace fan and mantilla.

When I got smart about souvenirs was on my trip to Australia. I bought a raincoat. Not because it poured one day but because the Aussies have what amounts to a national raincoat: the Drizabone, as in dry-as-a-bone. This is a brand name that has become generic, like Kleenex, and all the cowboys wear them on stormy days in the Outback.

This was a major advance for me. The raincoat, while distinctive, is not so unusual (refer to the espadrilles) that I feel self-conscious wearing it in L.A. Every rainy day for seven years, I have reached into the closet for my Drizabone, arranging the cape-like collar, snapping shut the back flap and feeling like I took a real piece of Australia home with me. Do I regret not buying a boomerang with authentic Aborigine decorations? Never ever.

In Rome I bought bath towels. Every time I step out of the shower, I flash back to the little side street off the Campo dei Fiori where I bought them. Sometimes, if I’m in a very nostalgic mood, I can clearly remember looking from the shop windows back at the Campo and the late afternoon sun. I bought the towels because a few days before, in a pensione in Florence, our room was stocked with thin, waffle weave towels, which I too quickly dismissed as cheap substitutes for terry towels we would have gotten in a more expensive hotel. But the waffle weaves were so much more efficient, I discovered, that I had to buy some to take home. Now they are a daily reminder of that summer’s trip.

In Venice my major purchase was an address book. (I call $64 for an address book major, almost the cost of my Drizabone.) Again, I can picture the shop; I stopped in to browse several times before I made my purchase. This memento, too, has become part of my life.

I no longer bring home folk art from Mexico. But when I visited Oaxaca, I tracked down the exact woven checked fabric used as tablecloths in thousands of Mexican cafes. It’s a smart-looking check that I know is typically Mexican but doesn’t shout Mexico. It looks great on my table.

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I like to think my hard-earned savvy has given me a handle on traveling with kids, at least better than my mother’s. My four simple rules: 1) allow for unlimited time in the souvenir shops; 2) give the kids money to spend and don’t ask how; 3) don’t call it junk; 4) admire their taste.

My son and I went to Maui for a week when he was 10. We stayed in Lahaina where the main strolling street is lined with trinket shops. Six branches of the same outfit, if I remember correctly. Selling the same shoddy stuff. Alex went into every one. I would say, “Take your time. I’ll wait outside.” My noblest moment. No back-stairs-at-Mount-Vernon memory for my kid to hold against me 30 years later.

In Mexico City, when Alex was 16, I told him he’d have to do the bargaining himself if he wanted that hand-tooled leather wallet at Xochimilco. Funny how the kid who was too shy about his Spanish to order lunch managed to rattle off counter offers like a rug merchant in a bazaar.

Letting a kid decide how to spend his money means more than watching that money go down the drain. At Mexico City’s huge Sunday flea market, Alex found not Mexican artifacts but hippies from San Diego selling incense. It occurred to him if there was this one intriguing stall, maybe there were others.

I was petering out, so we decided to split up. Twenty minutes later, I saw him coming at me with a goofy, self-satisfied grin and an obviously heavy package. He showed me a white Buddha statue (“only 200 pesos”; dare I tell him it’s plastic, not ivory?) weighing 20 pounds, at least. Not the kind of souvenir a seasoned traveler would bring home.

I didn’t want to dampen his enthusiasm. I was able to sputter, “How unusual” in an ambiguous tone that he was able to interpret as complimentary. And he carried it home, even though it was like transporting a bowling ball without a case.

It was, after all, his trophy, a lesson learned, a story to tell.