Feeling my age and wandering through time

I'm more than halfway to 47 years old. More than halfway through my life span. Each day at my job that I work on documenting the lives of people who are long gone, it hits me. Our time is fleeting and we often leave those who knew and loved us very little to help preserve our stories. Who were we before they knew us? Who were we when we were apart during our shared time on this Earth? 

And so I find myself thinking about legacy time and again. I don't know that I will have much in the way of financial support to leave or nostalgic artifacts that my children and any of their descendants would want. But I do have my memories here and now. I can write them down so that should I not be here to share the story of my life, they have a reference point from which to begin their examination of who I was, should they be so inclined to be curious. 

Last weekend, one of my newly adult sons was here at the house with his lovely girlfriend. We had a nice conversation around the kitchen peninsula about where we had traveled in our lives. We even shared pictures with each other. His girlfriend was born outside of the US and though she travels regularly to see family in her country of origin, she hasn't been anywhere else but our current home state and her place of birth. My son decided to make himself a list of the countries he's been to in his 18 years: USA and several US territories (Puerto Rico and St. Croix), Canada, Iceland, England, Wales, France, Italy and Vatican City, UAE, Kenya and Tanzania. This summer he will be traveling with his brother, uncle and Nana to Costa Rica, bringing his number of countries explored to 11+. The conversation got me thinking about the privilege of travel - the way it shapes your perspectives and can open new opportunities. I suspect the recognition of this privilege is why my son's girlfriend aspires to be a commercial airline pilot. And I hope she achieves her dream. 

But I also realized after this conversation that I haven't been keeping track in any meaningful way my own explorations. And those memories are far more valuable to me than stuff physically collected. As the oldest child in a large family, we never went anywhere we couldn't go in our trusty station wagon or 12 passenger van. But my parents did make it a point to take us on at least one week long family vacation each year that I was a child and I have very many fond memories of trips to other parts of New Jersey, New York, New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine. After becoming a parent at 16, I decided that it was important to me and to our family culture to take at least one trip a year too - to explore new places and to spend quality time together. Once I was 21 and living on my own with Corbin, I began taking us on trips. 

I love everything about taking a trip - from researching the area, the culture and the attractions to selecting accommodations and activities to wandering around and photographing everything to help me recall the experience later. COVID disrupted the last large trip abroad that I had planned. And I'll be honest - life has become more fiscally challenging over the last five years making travel feel very out of reach. No, not because of any political administration or a global pandemic and the ensuing global inflation. Because of my own choices - to have another child at 40, to move to a bigger and more expensive home, to take a job that resulted in a pay cut and necessitated full time child care during the summer... I've been working hard to be more mindful about our spending and to pay down debt that we'd accrued. Any trips that we've taken since 2020 have been to places we can drive to and whenever possible we stay with friends or family. We're finally started to feel like we can breath again, which means we hope to resume our travels. 

I want to begin the documentation of where I have been and where I hope to go. I want to document what I did while there and who I was with and why the trip happened. To date, I have been to 31 states in the US and 2 US territories (Puerto Rico and Saint Croix), and 12 other countries (Canada, Scotland, France, Spain, Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Costa Rica, Iceland, England, Wales, and Italy. I want to celebrate my history and look forward to the future. Because in the end, memory is all we have. 

"Not all those who wander are lost..." — J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring