Trip Anxiety

Now that the taxes are done, the grandbaby got herself birthed, the Navy son is back on his feet (albeit in a brace), and assorted other tasks and commitments have been tasked and committed, I'm looking down a clear path, knock on wood, towards the BIG TRIP. And I'm starting to get two things. Excited. And Nervous.

Most of you know what BIG TRIP I'm referring to, but for those of you who might have stumbled in here from less Laume focused locations (and if so, then thank you so much for coming to visit. Let me take your coat. It's so nice to meet new friends. Would you like a cuppa tea?), I'm referring to a month long trip William and I are taking to, first, New York for four days with friends and then three and a half weeks in England. And Scotland. And Wales. Maybe Paris. We leave in ten days.

One day about four or five months ago my husband announced that homeschooling William should have a big "experience" before he goes to public high school in the fall and becomes a completely new and alien creature. Honestly, I don't really think he'll become as estranged as all that, it's not like he's our first or anything - teenagers do have redeeming qualities if you have the energy for them! But, whatever. Hubby not only wanted him to have an "experience", but he wanted it to be England. And since he's afraid to fly, he wanted me to take him.

It's not like I've wanted to go to England forever. Yet it's not like I didn't want to go either. Stonehenge, Tower of London, Stratford on Avon, Bath....yeah, sure. Why not! But since that time, I've been so busy with other things that my only relationship with the trip has been a rather frustrating amount of work and time trying to check off everything on a very long Things-To-Do list in order to make the trip happen.

For the last few days I've been feeling incredibly happy and relaxed, even excited, finally, at the prospect of such exotic travel. Yeah, yeah, I know. Exotic? They speak the same language over there. Mostly. It's not like I'm gonna go back pack into some tropical forest to visit a long lost tribe or travel across a continent sized desert to drink mare's milk from something that was formerly an intestine. But, not counting brief excursions north to Canada or south to Mexico, this will be my first trip to another country. I'm going abroad.

This morning I woke up expecting to find that buzz of excitement waiting for me, sitting there next to my toothbrush, ready for me to pick back up and wear for another day. Instead I found a mild panic. Mainly about how to get from one place to another without a vehicle. How to budget our time and money. How to decide where to go and how long to stay and what if you can't get to there from here or if I accidently get lost in the middle of a bad part of London or a field full of sheep with 60 pounds of baggage each and no one to help. Lions and tigers and bears, oh MY!

I know. Silly. Silly, silly me. Especially since I consider myself on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being "I'd rather stay home" and 10 being "Will go anywhere on the spur of the moment with no clue what will happen or where we're going or how we'll get back", as being somewhere solidly between 5 and 10.

I think it's the same thing as like when I was pregnant with my second child. I was quite good at one child. And I was happily anticipating the birth and arrival of the second one. Until one day, in my ninth month of pregnancy, OUT OF THE BLUE, it suddenly occurred to me that I would have to figure out how to take two children to the grocery store with me. I started to think about how in the world that could possibly be done!?! If you take the older child out of the car first, then he could run off in the parking lot while you got the baby out of the car seat. If you got the baby out first, then what do you do with it when you go back in for the older child? Put the baby in the shopping cart? How? And what if the shopping cart rolled away!!!!? What if someone came up and grabbed it with your beloved baby in it while you had your head back inside the car getting the other child!!!? And how would you go and GET a shopping cart in the first place with your children still in the car!!!!!!!?

I remember feeling absolutely panicked at the thought of accomplishing what most of you know to be, typically, a fairly easy task. I remember thinking that it was too late to not have the baby. That it was too late to find out the solution. (although why I thought this is a mystery as I could have asked a dozen friends who had already given birth to their second child. In my pregnancy induced panic, I could think of nothing to do but wait out those last few weeks until the birth in dread of what would surely be the end of my ability to cope. Eventually I did give birth and not long afterwards I took them both to the market, still unsure how I would manage such a seemingly unsolvable logic problem. And then, in that moment, in the middle of the parking lot, it all just came together and *SNAP!*, just like that, I couldn't understand why I had been so frightened of managing it!

In fact I ended up doing a lot of things that by most people's standards would be an logistic nightmare. Like taking both a two and a half year old and week old baby in a sling to a Christmas Tree Farm by myself, cutting down our tree, and getting it us all home in one piece. (I also fell down a hillside during the adventure, but that's another story). Four children later, by the time William was the newborn, I was up and carpooling when he was three days old. My point here is that after I had tackled and solved that first scary new task, I can't remember ever being really worried about how I would tackle a similar one again. Not that it wasn't sometimes challenging to do so, but after that I never didn't feel up to the job.

I think this trip anxiety is like that. As soon as we are on the road/in the sky/on the train, we'll figure it out and we'll probably have a good time doing it. It's just getting past that first challenge.

The other thing is that although I'm an adventurer, I am most comfortable with the security of my own transportation. Even more then that, I like to be the one driving the transportation. As long as I've got my car, I'm good to go. I've only rarely had to go off on an adventure without my mechanical security blanket and the few times I have I've had to tell myself, in a stern voice, to think of it as challenge to my need to be in such control of everything. Generally, once I was on my way, I was fine with my carless situation, but I know it's one of the main reasons why I'm feeling nervous now.

In fact, I'm feeling much better about things this evening. I went out to run some errands today, tour books and brochures in hand. I stopped at a favorite coffee shop and over soup and salad, sat for several hours and read the tour guide. It's so cool! They have, like, suggestions in those things! And tips! And advice! Whodathunk!!? I came home and told William all about this incredible discovery and he looked at me and smiled, like a parent does when a small child gets excited about something like riding on an elevator or successfully tying their shoelace or learning to open a combination lock. Apparently he'd been reading the tour guide for months. In fact I knew he had been reading it for months. It just hadn't registered that he had understood or retained any of the information in it. Uhm, I think I have to upgrade my age assessment on this "child". Blush.

So, I'm gonna keep reading the tour book, a little bit here, a little bit there, for the next ten days. And I'm gonna break in my new tennis shoes. And my new sandals. And my new capris. And reserve a B & B for our first night on the other side of the pond. And make lists. And.....

Oooooh! I think I'm getting excited again!