Letter to my Children: Travel Thoughts

Dearest beloveds,

The fun thing about where we live is that very different places are within half a days drive. For one week north to visit a different country, a new city, and practice another language. For another week southeast to eat freshly shucked oysters, watch sea birds, and do puzzles when it rained. Back to back. As my dear friend E said, This sounds like one of those ideas that seemed perfect in December.

Be that as it may, it has given your mother ample time in the car to contemplate travel: why people do it, the point of it, and the different tourist modalities.

The week to visit to our northern neighbors was an escapade - a complete skylark and caper. We visited so Dragon could attend ice hockey camp while Bean and I were tourists. After dropping Dragon off at the rink - commuting a main city artery with street lights, left turning cars, parking cars, city buses, veering bicyclists, darting pedestrians, and translatable street signs (Arrêt) - Bean and I would look at each other and dive into an unknown city.

We visited the MMFA to gaze upon Flemish triptychs and crucifixion scenes - having conversations like this.

“Okay Bean, there are two women in this picture with Jesus. One of them is Mary mother of Jesus and one of them is Mary Magdalene - back then the church said that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute - but your mother, and other people that I trust, believes that she was Jesus’s wife.”

“What is a prostitute?”

Oh shit. Short and sweet then change the subject.

“A prostitute is a person who sells their body to another person for money for snuggles or kisses. Mary Magdalene is normally shown wearing red and Mother Mary is shown as wearing blue in these paintings - that is how you can tell them apart. See, in this one, they are outside of the cave when Jesus came back to life after his death. This one was done by Peter Paul Rubens, he is a very famous artist and a big deal.”

We ate poutine, croissants, levain, and pie for breakfast. Bean stood erect and focussed as subway trains pulled into stations waving energetically at the drivers. “Momma! That was the fifth one! Five drivers have waved at me!! Isn’t that awesome!?”

We held hands and negotiated crossing streets, “Momma, the light isn’t green!”

“I know, but darling, your mother is incapable of not jaywalking when walking in a city. I am sorry. It just gives me such joy.”

“Fiiiiinnnnneeeee,” accompanied by your blue eyes rolling skyward, “Can we get more poutine before we leave?”

Then we drove 4 hours in a different direction to visit a beloved island… where we learned how to entice a frog to jump off a lily pad.

Dragon hunched over the pond, eyes focussed, diction terse, as his hand waved a long grass stalk over a sitting frog. “Momma… if I wave the grass right… in front… like this… the frog… will… JUMP!”

We snuggled with second cousins and walked on land where our forebears swilled champagne. We jumped over seaweed and squealed in the brisk Atlantic waves.

We chased pickleballs and gorged ourselves on local cheese and oysters.

It was wonderful.

It was also, for your mother, confusing. We have a comfortable, peaceful, and beautiful life at home. I have been talking a lot to Aunt L (now age 91) and her discussions of how busy life is now versus when she was a younger adult/child. I can’t help but think that travel adventuring in a certain sense is a variant of FOMO. Are we all tripping over ourselves to cross off bucket lists that are terrible for the environment and deleterious for our wallets because David Sedaris goes on a Safari? Perhaps.

The nice thing about traveling is that it gives you distance from your life - a break from weeding - and organizing closets - and tripping over projects. One can see one’s life from afar and reexamine whether it is working and what serves and what doesn’t serve.

That part is loverly for sure.

Oh children. When I was young I thought the adults in my life knew how life worked. The stages of growing up are manifold - but I think one of the first ones that happens is that you realize the adults don’t know how “life” works.* Once that shoe drops, it becomes apparent that many of the “rules” and unwritten assumptions that you were taught as a child are actually meaningless and in some instances harmful. Once THAT shoe drops the fun begins.

How do YOU want to live your life.

Do you want to spend your time and energy making money so you can go on vacation to stay in rental apartments with 10 pm floodlights where you end up sleeping like Pippi Longstocking? Is the adventure worth the disruption in your sleep cycle? I don’t know. Yes? Maybe?

One thing I know for sure, we are privileged to have the choice.