Last year's life plan was aiming for a bigger house and another baby by 2020 (even has a note about how women's fertility goes down exponentially at 38). But lately, Jen and I have been talking more about maybe not having a second kid. Making it easier to have adventures with the adventurous kid we already have, to have quiet, to host exchange students, to include friends, to be alone if we want. This summer Jen took this famous travel blogger out on a sailing trip with Marita and Sophie. We follow her on facebook now, and the other day she shared this article by an Austrialian mom that does extended travel with her six-year-old daughter. My heart-rate quickened as I read it and explored her blog. The same sort of breathlessness I felt when I searched for flights to Europe on my kayak app the other day and realized I could fly to see my friends in November for less than $600. Now I'm wondering if 2020 is maybe the year that Oscar and I should go overseas together. January in Hawaii (with an extended layover in LA to visit Davi), February in Austrailia, March in Southeast Asia, April in Tbilisi and Lisbon, home for our birthdays.... These are all places I often dream about traveling to and/or returning to. My friend Jaime lives in Waimea, Hawaii with her husband and two kids (one a year older and one a year younger than Oscar). She posts the dreamiest pictures on facebook of their everyday life--making mudslides in the jungle, hiking on lava rock, babies on the beach. It was also in a past life plan that we would fly there last April, before Oscar turned two and could still fly free. Then we had an abysmal blueberry harvest and I had to send Jaime this email: "I feel like throwing a toddler tantrum right now because I SO want to come and reunion with you, but I really don't think it's going to be possible this year. Getting vacation time is NOT the problem... my schedule is pretty flexible and that time of year especially is the best time to be away, but I don't think I'll have the money for a flight+... the farm had it's worst season season since my brothers and l have been salaried and we likely won't be getting our salaries again until next spring (which is about a third of jen and my's monthly income) and all of our savings went into building the washhouse this summer... (we have a shower!) i know i'll be able to pick up some work this winter, substitute teaching if nothing else, and we'll be able to pay our bills and eat and go on close to home vacations, but if I'm being honest with myself, Hawaii is a luxury I can't afford this year... WAHHHHHH!!! it's a good life though. i chose to be a farmer and mom and live where we do. and i have no regrets. just wistful longings for reunions with friends, Hawaii vistas, and a shopping spree at REI... ha.. someday. how long are you planning to live there? Of course if you ever want to reunion on Lake Superior, there is a ton we can do and I would LOVE to plan and coordinate it all." And she reassured me, we still had time: "The kiddos and I will come visit you sometime soon... don't you worry! I love me some great lakes action! Also, I'll probably grow old in Hawaii. There's time for you to visit here, too. : ) My sister's farm took a huge hit this year, too, on account of all the rain. It must be so stressful to be so reliant on uncontrollable circumstances . . .I really really commend you and your positive attitude about it all! We can have many many many more reunions all over the world. Love Love Love!" I regularly fantasize about (and googlemap) vacations that connect the dots between people I'd like to see and places I'd like to explore. A road trip we did when Oscar was 5 months old was like this, a night of camping in the U.P, breakfast with my college athletic trainer (and the first lesbian mom I knew) at a diner in Flint, Niagara Falls, meeting up with my college roommate and staying for a long weekend with my Uncle's family in Ithaca, back through Ohio to see Lex, and Oberlin, and then of course Chicago, Davi, Sara and Lauren. Really though, it was a bittersweet trip. Beautiful in the U.P and Ithaca, but too much time on the interstate in between (googlemap hours do not equal real travel time, especially when traveling with an infant). Nice to reconnect with people from my past, but often difficult to line up our travel schedule with their work week. Sharing a drink in the evening and being able to introduce Oscar was so special, but left me wishing for more time and less distance. Could around the world be better? International flights and Interstate highways can be equally overwhelming and stressful. The longer flights call for a longer stay, so more time to be with friends and also more time to miss Jen and the rest of home. I was an exchange student in Australia when I was in high school and haven't been back since, partly because the flight and jet leg were so hellish, that I've vowed I'd need to go for at least three weeks, to justify it (and well as the expense), and fully be able to reorient night to day, summer to winter. But I never thought it would take me this long to return. My mom grew up in Papua New Guinea and attended boarding school in Brisbane. Her family moved back to the states when she was 18. She also thought she would go back someday. She finally made it to Austrailia in 2014, when she was 65. She says she'd like to go again. Maybe she'll meet Oscar and I there in 2020. I thought of her so much during my first time there: These are the birds, the flowers, the upside down constellations of her childhood. Some I knew for sure, because they will still in the songs she sings (Kookaburra) or the potted plants in our living room (Hibiscus), but what about the familiar plants and animals that we just know from growing alongside, not remembering or ever knowing the name. I so want to be there with her. To have her point out the parts of her I never knew. And I want her to meet my Australian friends and host family, to know the bit of Australia that is now a part of me. Southeast Asia is a place I have never explored, but been more and more been interested too. Kate left yesterday for a month-long biking trip in the mountains of Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand. Michael leaves tomorrow for three weeks along the coast of Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Both of the women travel bloggers I've been reading seem to spend more time in this area than anywhere else. I've checked out the website on the International School where the Australian mom blogger enrolls her daughter for a month. Maybe? Kaite's been and wants to go back (this will link to her story of amazing beauty and near death encounters when she finally writes it). Jaime's suggested it as an adventure destination. Maybe Oscar and I have friends meet us there? There is a ring I wore in high school that I found in my mom's jewelry box. She bought it, she thought, in the Philippines, when her family made some extra stops on their trip back to the states, after they left New Guinea. From Bangkok, we'd fly to Tbilisi, Georgia. My dad has traveled to this country over a dozen times during the last fifteen years. First on a volunteer assignment with Farmer to Farmer, in which he suggested blueberries might be a good crop to introduce. Then a couple years later, he was asked to come back as a consultant on a three-year USAID project to introduce blueberries. During that time he invited Gio, the son of his closest friend and stakeholder, to stay with my family and work on our blueberry farm for the summer. I was home from college and glad to have a friend on the farm. When I graduated from college a couple years later, I had money saved to reunite with Steph and Annalisa in Europe, but they had conflicting schedules and only a week of overlapping available vacation time. Gio would always ask me in emails, "When are you going to come visit my crazy country?" So I emailed back some dates, and booked a flight Tbilisi instead. We drank lots of wine, I learned to toast (which was a great skill to have as my close friends started to marry a few years later), I watched really bad music videos (the ones the station could afford to buy, Gio told me), visited some crazy old ruins, and bonded with the family that was my dad's home away from home. The other day, pruning blueberries across the row from one another, I shared my round-the-world fantasy trip with my dad. He has already signed on for the Georgia leg. From Tbilisi, it will feel like a short flight really, to get to Lisbon. As our time together in Austrailia was coming to an end, Steph (from Germany), Annalisa (from Italy), and I made a pact to not say goodbye and instead plan our next trip. A year and a half later. Summer 2002. We could borrow one of their parents' cars and make a big loop: Spain, France, Germany, all of Italy to Pantelleria, a small island between Sicily and Tunisa where Annalisa's mom had grown up, then Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Portugal, where Steph's mom was from and that side of her family still lived. Would we be able to drive across Northern Africa we wondered? Would it be safe? My mom did it, Steph offered. We didn't have the time and money for the big trip we planned that day, but we did meet up for three weeks in 2002 to complete a smaller loop: Cologne, Amsterdam, Berlin, Prague, Salzburg, Brescia, Venice, Frankfurt. And we continue to meet up. In Seattle. In Sicily. For our weddings in Wisconsin, Cologne, and Pantelleria. Last summer they came and met Oscar. In three days I'll fly to Germany and meet Luisa, Steph's baby. We still haven't made it to Portugal. We somehow knew to save that one for the kiddos, maybe.
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AuthorsMagdalen Dale and Kaite Sweval grew up a layer apart, overlapping and paralleling. Belonging to the shores of Lake Superior and yet not quite belonging. Laughing and dreaming on the bench outside the ferry booth as Mag passed the time and Kaite chose her time. Left to explore as soon as they could. And then as adults returned home, perhaps to their surprise. But glad to have each other... ‘cause we know there is strength in the differences between us and comfort where we overlap. Archives
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