Arrivals and Departures

I’m a lover of new things and a devourer of experience, born with the eye of a writer and a statue-like tolerance for adversity. At least I used to have those things. Well, a version of them.

Home, the one I’ve created and earned with family and friends is a place I’m happy to come back to. And also, happy to leave.

My husband and I began our travels like most young people in love do, on a budget and uncaring beyond simple accommodations. Though he denies it, we didn’t mind the graying towels and cigarette scarred bedspreads at the Motel 6.

Iceland, 2019. Photo credit: Me, as I catch up after getting distracted.

When kids showed up, we did the calculation. We’d be empty nesting in our fifties and ready to hit the open road. Seemed like a reasonable age to explore the world while waiting on some grandkids. I admit to banking on keeping up my twenty something energy, but I do alright. The party’s over by 8:00 now, and I’m happy the band plays on.

My father died offensively young. I wasn’t then, nor am I now, about to miss that flight, no matter where it’s going. I was enamored of the world and didn’t want to wait. As long as there was a decent bed at the end. And ice cream.

We dragged our toddlers, who became preteens, and then overly righteous teens, everywhere, much to the confusion of people we knew. 

“Why take someone under ten to Iceland or France?” people asked me. “What will they remember? What can they absorb?”

My kids agreed when they hit their opinionated teen years. “No, I don’t remember that crepe place,” my youngest would say. “Or the play we saw in London. I remember sitting on a plane for a very long time and there was no wifi.”

Please don’t tell anyone this. I wouldn’t want you to imagine I wasn’t thinking about my children 24 hours a day, but we wanted to see the world, even if it meant several pit stops to playgrounds and children’s museums, sporting events and way too much ice cream.

I bet if you asked him, my son would remember that Chelsea game we took him to, or the dinner cruise in Amsterdam where he and I watched this couple have a wild fight behind my other son and husband’s shoulders. We tried to point it out to them as casually as possible, kick them under the table, but it was no use. They were so concentrated on the canal science, they missed the whole thing, and we laughingly explained it to them later.

Last winter I was at home due to poor planning and a sick dog. It was too cold to move, too frozen to make it out. I worried about the weather and the cold and my dog and my everyday and were my children ok? Did my husband veer off course and actually stockpile the rock salt that wouldn’t hurt the dog, or the bees, or the birds like I asked him? By the end of February, we both agreed, though we are a hardy couple and sworn never to snowbird, we’d be better off if we took a few week long adventures a season.

For me, a successful vacation includes some variations of the following:

1. Visiting people—my very favorite pastime. 

2. A challenge for myself. One more battle against demons, getting quieter with each pass. These are mostly physical now—skiing, hiking, biking, getting into a bathing suit.

3. An event—a wedding, a baby, a party, Bono’s one man show. Just ask me, I’ll be there with bells on and sporting the proper foot ware.

4. All of the above is the dream.

With the ability to work from anywhere, this winter we hit the road in a big way. I’m looking for another moment of awe to link the long chain I’ve been collecting like snow globes throughout my journey.

I have landed back home finally, though I wish it had been more graceful. I was jaded and itching for my own space. As the bears come out of hiding, I look back at my winter and realize I got more than my share. Between panic attacks, as usual, I loved it all. The thing is, I’ve been on such a roll, I’m tired. 

Being in my own bed, the new dogs waking me up with wet noses the way my kids once did, as if they’d only been waiting on my cue for the show to begin—I’m not sure how I ever leave.

I’m craving the sweet comfort of routine in my everyday. Spring has reached out her pollen swollen fingertips, and growth is bursting on the wind. I want to go back to feeling bad about not being fully unpacked two years after the move, about avoiding laundry as if it’s gardening, or vice versa. 

I appreciate sleeping in my own bed like I never have before. All the things I need are lined up. Lamp, charger, Kindle, Alleve just in case, better-than-hotel moisturizer and a nice, refillable bottle of water.

In the mornings, the dogs drag me down the stairs for some breakfast and the sunrise. I sip coffee on my deck, draped in a blanket until the sun burns off the chill, birds flitting from one tree to the next and onto my feeders, where they know me well enough to ignore me. There are four seasons in a year, three months to each. You can’t predict how many moments of awe there are to be had, but just the seeking has led me to find them everywhere, even while staying put.

It’s true there’s a lot to get done here, and it’s true most of it won’t happen today. But I’m happy to have slowed down. At least until we head to Illinois for graduation in two weeks before going to meet our new nephew on the west coast. It is a good life, no matter how often I try to convince myself differently.