It's Almost Over

Edinburgh, Scotland

We are approaching the end of our planned year of travel. We have had a lot of fun, but sometimes I catch Ronan when he thinks no one is looking, clicking through slideshows of homes for sale in Idaho Falls. Ha! Kris and I were talking the other day that a couple years ago we were dreaming of the day we would no longer own a home and we could travel the world free of the encumbrances of home ownership but that now we dream of having our own home again; of sleeping in our very own beds with our pillows and our blankets, of cooking in a kitchen that is all ours using utensils and appliances that we understand and can find, and of shopping in familiar stores where we know where to find what we need and where we know that we will find what we need. Traveling like this has really been fabulous in so many ways but it has also had its challenges.

Most of the challenges fall into a category of minor frustrations and inconveniences. For instance appliances that don't function or which are significantly different from what we are used to and thus require a steep learning curve to utilize. A good example being the radiant heating systems in our European homes: turning on the heat in one of our apartments included three different switches in three different closets in two different rooms, all this before turning the dials on the individual radiators in each room could be expected to do anything. In our flat in London, turning on the water to the shower unit (because yes, we had to actively switch on the water), turned off the heating system and if we forgot to turn the shower system back off, then the apartment would be freezing when we returned. Oh, and every single outlet in the houses here has its own off/on switch, no big deal once you know that (and judging from the sparks that fly if I plug something in when the switch is already on, probably a good idea), but confusing before you figure it out. We have experienced dryers that don't work, kitchens that have almost no supplies, kitchens that have bewildering supplies, homes that are just plain dirty, homes that are full of cockroaches (but not necessarily dirty... cockroaches are just a fact of life in Costa Rica). Sometimes we cannot find the house easily, or the directions to get in don't work, or the key isn't where it should be. I used to tell the kids about the horror of growing up in a family of seven living in a one bathroom house, well these kids have lived that horror now many times over. Our housing is usually small, and someone ends up sleeping in the living room. We have been wearing the same few outfits each for a year and most of us are ready to never see these particular clothing items again. We usually have no car and we often hike a mile to and from a grocery store, returning home each laden with full to bursting bags over both shoulders.  Shopping in a foreign country means giving up your favorite peanut butter and being prepared to experiment somewhat with foods that may not be familiar. And every couple weeks we pack everything back in our two bags each and take off  by foot and bus and train and plane dragging all our belongings behind us or on our backs. All of these though truly add to the adventure and are at worst minor frustrations and are frequently even entertaining (including the cockroaches).

But there are real challenges too and they are mostly about what we left behind. We left behind a community. Our dentist. Our ward. The YMCA. Our library. Familiar streets and stores and parks. There is a level of security in knowing where things are, when things are happening, and what you can expect from certain people and knowing that they know what to expect from you. We get a tiny bit of that feeling of community when we go to church each week, where it may not be the same people from week to week, and the meetings may not even be in English, but the basics are at least familiar. Besides that and one visit with cousins in England, we have been largely surrounded by people we do not know, who do not know us and who we are unlikely to meet again. It can be a tad isolating sometimes to always be in an introductory mode with everyone around you and to always be unfamiliar with your surroundings. It makes a simple trip to the grocery store just a little more complicated, a lot more if you also throw in a foreign language.

We left behind a home. Our home isn't even waiting for us to return to, all that remains to us of what was our home in Colorado is a ten by ten storage space behind a big orange door. We aren't even completely sure of everything that we will find when we start to open up those boxes stacked there. In fact I have a persistent fear that I probably got rid of something that I am really going to wish I still had and that I will only realize it when I have unloaded and sorted through it all. My other concern is that I will discover I saved stuff that I don't care about, so I guess the real fear is that the me a year and a half ago saved the wrong things for the me now. We miss having our own space though. Some of our homes this year have been great, some of them have been truly terrible, but none of them have quite been our own.

Most of all, we left behind people we love. Of course we have each other, and we have certainly drawn closer depending on one another for everything. And we have a technological connection (for which we are extremely grateful) to anyone we want. We text and call and skype friends and family daily. But it isn't quite the same thing as playing basketball at the park together or sitting next to one another at the movies or staying up late playing games and we really miss and crave those in-person connections. All year long Ronan and Liam have done an online seminary class, again a technological advantage for which I am extremely grateful, but I worry a little too, that they have missed out on sitting in a room of friends learning and goofing off together. Fionnula talks to friends through a computer, but I worry a little that she doesn't get to giggle and laugh and play on a playground with them. We are really looking forward to seeing, in real life, not on a computer screen, at least some of our favorite people in just a week. Sadly, some of our favorites will still be far away from us when we buy a new house in Idaho, but I guess in those cases there continues to be the technology advantage, and hopefully the occasional visit too, since we will at least have an address again.

We truly loved our year of being nomads, and we do not plan to completely give up our traveling ways, but rather to strike a balance wherewith we can explore far and wide and still have our very own pillows waiting for us when we return.