EDINBURGH SCOTLAND 1980

Rudy's Rules for Travel

MOST HONEYMOONS DO NOT START THIS WAY.

I tell myself there are good reasons why I have crawled out the attic window at midnight and am now lying outside on the sloping roof in Edinburgh dressed in a light cotton nightgown, somewhat secured by a bed sheet strung round my waist and tied to a handy balustrade. It is, after all, a record-smashing heat wave in the Scottish capital. Hotels and air conditioning are not in our budget, and all non-attic bed and breakfast rooms were reserved weeks ago. By others.

I know all that, but I also know that the real reason I am on the roof, clutching my pillow and my groom, is because of one of Rudy's Rules for Travel, perhaps the most significant one of all. Rule One: Adapt.

* * *

Before that scorching summer of 1980, Rudy and I had traveled together several times. (Notice I say "traveled" and not "vacationed." There is a reason for that.) I had learned that he had many rules, and that some were easier to follow than others. Following the rule about choosing lightweight luggage was, for example, easier than following the rule about adapting.

* * *

Rudy knew a lot about rule making: he had been raised in a German home and was a school principal nine months of the year. Each school holiday, in a transformation not unlike that of Clark Kent to Superman, he exchanged suit and tie for battered jeans, faded navy captain's hat, plaid shirt, and backpack, leaving razor and dress shoes scattered behind. Even his eyes changed: in the school year, the deep blue eyes could be narrow and fixed unwaveringly, sternly, on sixth-grade boys who would destroy classroom peace. But when ready for travel, the blue eyes danced.

My fearless half was made for adventure travel — not the climb-Everest kind of adventure, but the can-you-make-your-own-way adventure. In fact, in the late twentieth century, when we traveled, you did not need to dive, climb, or kayak to feel a surge of explorer's adrenalin. When a traveler descended the steps from the airplane and walked onto a foreign tarmac, it was without online reservations, GPS, Google maps, ATM cards, translation apps, Uber, Skype, or Trip Advisor. There was no CNN, nor were there online state department bulletins to warn of global hotspots.

Most importantly, yesterday's traveler ventured without a cell phone. When you were lost, you were lost alone. This was not entirely a disadvantage: no demanding boss could find an escaping worker, and news of tragedies across the world was kept at bay, restricted to the daily English newspaper — if and only if the traveler chose to read it.

In those years, contact with home meant writing postcards that, with luck and first-class postage, arrived two weeks later. Or it meant spending hours in a local phone booth pleading with an operator who insisted, in perfect English, she did not speak English. One was simply "abroad."

* * *

RUDY and I were a picture of contrast. He was tall, thin, farsighted, confident — an artist and scholar. I was not. Not any of that. We were of different generations and mind-sets. As I was being born, Rudy was flying one of his first bombing missions over Germany. As my parents were pushing my stroller in a Victory Day parade, he was in the middle of the Atlantic, coming home in a troop ship with his wounded comrades. And as I was walking to kindergarten clutching my nap-time blanket, he was one of those GIs who had never dreamed of college yet stood smiling in cap and gown. For him, travel was a way to piece together the parts of his life. For me, travel was a way to make the storybook pictures come alive.

Most significantly, my new husband and I lived at opposite ends of the risk-taking continuum. Imagine a horizontal bar, if you will. On its far left is the ultimate risk-taker, and on the far right the ultimate worrier. I am the one clinging to the bar on the far right, while Rudy is dancing on the left edge. You get the picture.

A similar continuum shows our typical thought patterns. While I pondered my latest catastrophic awareness, Rudy could take a spontaneous leap straight off the edge. Put in neurological terms, I had an overly developed frontal lobe and he a damaged impulse-control center. Put in astrological terms, I was a Libra, he a Taurus. When we met, I was a newly hired psychologist in his school district. Before long, he was explaining to friends that we were ideally matched: I needed an administrator; he needed a psychologist.

Many of our differences can be traced to the brown chair that sat near the front door of my childhood home. Under the surveillance of our half-Irish mother, the chair governed the comings and goings of my younger brother Donnie and me. We could be racing through the house, grabbing textbooks and snacks, catapulting toward the front door, but we were captives until we had each placed our bottom in the chair and taken three deep breaths, 1 ... 2 ... 3. ... Forgetting a homework assignment or lunch pail restarted the cycle: racing back into the house, mother watching for bottom to hit chair, then chest heave three times before the race to school could resume.

"You'll see the good luck," Mom would call after us. "Stay composed."

Rudy had never sat down to gain composure. He had, instead, an ease with exploration that came naturally and at a young age. By age four, he completed two transatlantic crossings, the first in 1921 while carried in the womb of his mother from New York City to Hamburg, Germany. His papa, a Danish seaman, was an admirer of German culture who harbored two dreams: one, that he would father a German citizen and two, that he would own a saloon on Hamburg's lively Reeperbahn. Achieving the dreams meant nothing when his wife, Rudy's mother, died suddenly. Papa found foster care for the toddler and headed back to sea. Years later, he sent for Rudy to join him in America.

And so it was that the four-year-old experienced his first independent international travel. Dressed in a tiny sailor suit, blonde curls escaping a...