Abe and I have very different philosophies and approaches to travel. In addition to navigating our faith journey, we are enjoying the bonus of exciting conversations around negotiating these differences too. Woohoo!
All joking aside, working things out with Abe, while hard for both of us when we have strong feelings on a subject, is its own type of joy. He is wise, rational, level-headed, a great listener, introspective, self-aware, and unfailingly kind. And when he’s talking,half the time I am wondering why I feel any differently because he articulates himself so persuasively and well.
Abe values routine and comfort more than going new spiritual, mental, or physical spaces. He functions better when he is operating within his usual rhythm, and we feel equally invested in his health–so giving space for his routines is something we both want. And his reference point for international travel is that he never did it until college, and when he did take a Europe trip with his friends it was extremely uncomfortable for him. He felt guilty about spending the money and out of his comfort zone encountering new cultures and people and places. So for him, international travel is uncomfortable–and for our kids, mostly unnecessary.
My reference point is pretty different because my family spent two months every summer traveling, and every other year we spent those months abroad. My dad also spent a semester teaching in Italy, so I did preschool there–and my parents put a lot of energy into camping with their very young children all around Europe. Although I don’t remember much from those earliest trips, travel always felt like a part of life’s regular rhythm. In college I did three study abroads and traveled with friends and with my cousin, and I always assumed I would raise my kids with the same travel patterns my parents gifted me.
Up until now, international travel has not been a financial possibility (or if it has, I have not been creative enough to figure it out!). But now that it is, we have another issue to surmount, which is time. Abe can not take more than two and a half weeks (at the very most) off from work, and I can’t imagine compressing an international trip into that amount of time, especially considering that by the time I was Lydia’s age I had spent almost a year abroad.
Last year we fixed the time issue by just having Abe join us for just part of our summer trip, but when I imagine toting four young children through Europe by myself, my heart fails me just a bit. Ammon, who is addicted to wandering off on his own any time we are in public, would most certainly get lost. Or Clarissa, who always wants to immerse herself in water, would end up in the Thames, the Seine, the Arno or the Danube.
And having meaningful conversations about art or history with the older girls would be impossible because all of my energy would be directed at keeping my younger kids alive and in one piece.
The only solution I can think of is to take the older girls and hire a day-time nanny for the younger kids here at home, and then have Abe and the younger kids join us for part of the trip. Ever since I’ve landed on this solution, my heart kind of does this somersault when I am cuddling or reading to or playing with or watching Ammon and Clarissa. I keep remembering a line from Lincoln in the Bardo when one of the ghosts says of her three children, “They were London, they were Paris, they were Rome!” (or some phrase like that.)
Would I rather be staring at a painting or watching my babies grow? For me, personally, I’d be content to just watching my babies and never leave my home again. Reading widely largely fill that travel thirst for me, and my kids delight me in ways I never imagined before motherhood–and this delight repeats itself multiple times a day, every day.
But I really can’t imagine having Lydia and Mary being almost graduated by the time we finally take them abroad. That sounds insane, especially since Lydia has always been intensely interested in other cultures and Mary is a little budding artist who loves art museums.
So anyway, right now the plan is for me to take them abroad for a month or so while Abe works and keeps to his routine, and Abe and the little kids will meet up with us in Greece and Israel. Of course, we are going to have to wait until the travel bans are lifted and the pandemic is under control. It’s hard to know when that will be, but we’re tentatively planning this trip for the spring of 2021.
So basically the picture is of us planning our trip, which we have spent a lot of time doing this week.
Here is another picture of the girls Abe took outside. They picked the first tomato of the season this week!
