Appointments For Adventure 3: Travel Plans
This afternoon, I had an appointment. With my husband. We had a ‘meeting’ to decide what to do when we go to Europe in June. You may ask why we haven’t worked that out already, but if you know us, you’ll know that we work on big picture and let the details work out later.
Don’t be a tourist. Plan less. Go slowly. I traveled in the most inefficient way possible and it took me exactly where I wanted to go. Andrew Evans
I’m heading back to to Tuscany in June to participate in The Art of Writing retreat for the second year running. This was a decision made only last week and the motivation was to finish a novel I started in 2010 in Tuscany. It’s a full circle thing.
While I’m in Tuscany, my husband will be chasing colours and climbing waterfalls in Iceland.
We will then meet up in Paris and for a few days so he can celebrate his birthday in his favourite city and then…? That’s the dilemma. What do we do next?
I know, I know, I’m so lucky so what’s the big problem? It’s not just a first world problem, it’s a privileged problem.
What you might not know is that when my husband asked me to marry him, he promised me that we would travel. I had decided I was going to quit my job an backpack around the world and he persuaded me to get married and travel with him.
Well, we travelled a little—to Esperance, Tasmania, and other places in Australia, but we never REALLY travelled–TOGETHER. He went all over the world with work, and when he came home, he loved being at home and didn’t really want to go anywhere.
Anyway, there’s a whole story in that journey that I’ll leave until another day!
On our twentieth anniversary, he gave me twenty cards, and in them he told me we would be going on our first, big overseas trip. I cried. I’d almost given up on the dream of travel, but here was confirmation, in writing, that we would be travelling in the US for several weeks. After that trip, we haven’t stopped travelling.
Making an appointment with my husband to make travel plans is an adventure in itself as we look at maps, road trip ideas and imagine all the places we could go. The dreaming is as much fun often as the actual trip.
All those unfulfilled years of dreaming, hoping and wishing for travel have slid into the past and now I get to live my dream. The takeaway lesson?
Dream anyway. It’s fun imagining all the places you could go while living life well where you are now. I had to let stop myself resenting my husband and to enjoy being home with my children, my job and the life I was living then.
When I finally got to travel, it was as if all the wanting and waiting became a lesson. Once I let it go, I finally got to go.
Bizarre travel plans are dancing lessons from God. Kurt Vonnegut
