The reluctant traveler

 

My children on the steps of my childhood home.
1340 Madison Park, Hyde Park/Kenwood, Chicago.

For me, traveling is a big damn deal. I do not do it easily. I begin packing a week before departure, and I think of every possible thing I could need—along with every possible catastrophe that could happen. It’s amazing, but the older you get, the more stuff you have to take with you. By departure, I am a walking example of high anxiety. And of course I’m one of those who clutch the arm rests in a plane. And when I return home and sleep in my own bed, I breathe a huge sigh of relief.

That is not to say that I have not had some wonderful trips in my long life. A highlight was the ten days that Colin, Megan, and I spent in Scotland. We visited the MacBain Memorial Park in Dores (outside Inverness), we walked the Culloden battlefield (not very far—it was wet and cold much of the time we were there), we went to the Isle of Skye and took a rinky-dink ferry back to the mainland, we visited a castle a day (at Colin’s insistence). I ate haggis, though the kids refused to join me. The trip now is a wonderful memory that I sometimes pull out and relive in my mind. Another highlight: taking all four of my children to Chicago to see where I grew up—we stayed in a suite on the twelfth floor of the Drake Hotel (a symbol of high luxury when I was a child) with a marvelous view of Lake Michigan and the North Shore. The kids cheered when we drove under a bridge bearing a sign saying, “Welcome to Hyde Park/Kenwood” and when we stopped in front of my childhood home, there were astounded exclamations of “Mom!” They expected a shack and found an 1890’s Chicago version of a brownstone. We toured Hyde Park with its beautiful old houses and the University of Chicago, where I went to school. And we ate—and ate—and ate, everything from Berghoff’s to the Palmer House, where we had a tour of the hotel and heard about its history. Another memory I treasure.

I have been to most of the United States, Canada, two Hawaiian islands, and two island countries in the Caribbean. So it’s not that I haven’t traveled. There are still a few places on my bucket list—the New England states (I have never been north of the Thousand Islands in New York), Alaska for the salmon. I’d like to go back to the foothills in North Carolina, where my parents retired, and I’d like to go to Chicago again. I’d like to go to New York City to see the New York Alters and have one of their fabulous tours of the city. I don’t care much about California, except I haven’t been to San Francisco, and now that I have a child in Denver, I’d like to go there. I was once, briefly, in Mexico with a writers’ group, but I have no desire to go back, unless I could go to San Miguel.

But now that I rely on a walker for mobility, travel is harder. Jamie wants to take me on a cross-country train trip, but I don’t think I could handle the physical aspects of a train (I went to Canada by train a lot as a child and loved it). I get so nervous about flying, that I have pretty much decided I’m not going to fly again. Besides flying is not the wonderful way to travel it once was, and first class is too expensive.

All that said, I am getting ready to travel: about a four-hour car trip to Tomball, Texas, to spend Thanksgiving with my oldest son and his family. He, good boy that he is, will come get me and Sophie tomorrow and bring us home Saturday. The Burtons will have to hold down the fort alone. I talk to Colin at least once a week, but it will be good to spend time in his company and I want to catch up with his wife and two of my grands—Morgan is a freshman at Texas Tech and Kegan is a junior in high school. And I want to sit by their tiny lake in the evening with a glass of wine and watch the sun set. I even have the spot in the “great room” where I set up my computer.

Easy and wonderful as all that Is, I still have found for a week or so that travel is on my mind. I make lists, I pack a bit each day, I plan excessively. I tell myself I can’t write anything significant because—hey!—I’m going on a trip. Once in Tomball, I’ll forget all my anxiety, relax, and enjoy being there. And Saturday, when I’m home again, I’ll be full of good memories and tell myself next time I won’t be so silly. But I will. It’s who I am.