I used to be a traveler. No, I didn’t get paid to travel the globe, writing for glossy magazines or Lonely Planet. I’ve just travelled to many places and have a LONG list of places that I want to experience.
I made the gradual progression from backpacking through Western Europe to a strong fixation on Eastern Europe to discovering Asia, with a few foreys into Latin America. Eight months in Thailand, volunteering at a community college, was a turning point for me. I kept saying to my husband, “We are going to go back to the ‘real world’ to work for 30 years so that we can eventually come back and do what we are doing now.” Which we agreed is total bullshit. (My husband/soul mate lusts for wandering just like me.) There was no way that we would wait 30 years to do it again.
We spent the following year at Oxford, where my husband earned an MBA. We met so many impressive, exceptional people. We were pretty mediocre by comparison. And when we would meet fabulously accomplished couples, and exchange the usual “what do you dos,” I was intimidated. “I worked for an energy company, owned a travel company, had a few gigs teaching English to European business people, then….” Their eyes would glaze over. They were expecting “I’m a lawyer.” So I started giving them, “I travel.” They’d laugh. I’d go on to explain that travelling inspires me. That I am willing to give up home ownership, car ownership, and fashionable clothes ownership to make travel happen.
I finally realized during that year that don’t need a career to justify the zillions I spent on an MA from Yale. I just need the smells, sights and exhilaration that comes when you touchdown in a new place. Oh, and there was one thing that I wanted that didn’t neccesarily jive with the new country every year thing:
A baby.
And therein lies the conundrum. Yes, travel to me is like air. But so is the peace that a predictable, daily 2 hour nap brings. I am a mother who screws with her son’s schedule very, very grudgingly. And you can’t go anywhere good (read: outside of the U.S. — you needn’t read on if that sentiment bothers you) without messing with the sleep patterns of a 2 year old.
So, I have two plans to make this situation ok.
1. I am getting involved with an organization in Costa Rica that helps women and children. Much, much more on this in subsequent posts.
2. We are moving to China with WanderBaby and unconceived second child in 2012. And I plan to research and plan the crap out of it during the next four years. Which is a crazy amount of time to plan. But I’m that crazy.
