Morgan, Colly, Kyle and I each sat down and wrote letters reflecting on the experience, showed them to no one else at the time, sealed them up, and then opened and read them out loud over dinner in June on our last night before driving home. Now, the letters sit on my desk as reminders of what the round-the-world trip was all about. Today, for a couple of different reasons, I re-read them to reflect on how the 10-month trip affected us individually and as a family.

One reason is the snarky backlash, prompted by the film release of Eat, Pray, Love, to long-term travel for the sake of change, education and self-reflection. (I haven’t seen the film and don’t really want to since I liked the book and hear the film adaptation doesn’t do Elizabeth Gilbert’s writing justice.) As a Salon.com critic dismissively puts it in an article about “The New Colonialism of ‘Eat, Pray, Love,’” the new breed of travelers “want to spend a year in a faraway place on a ‘journey.’ But the journey is all about what they can get. … I don’t want to deny [Elizabeth Gilbert] her Italian carbs, her Indian oms or her Bali Hai beach romance. We all need that sabbatical from the rut of our lives. But as her character complained that she had ‘no passion, no spark, no faith’ and needed to go away for one year, I couldn’t help wondering, where do those people in Indonesia and India go away to when they lose their passion, spark and faith?”

Okay, that’s a fair enough question to ask, but I object to the idea that families taking long-term trips similar to ours, and living a significantly different lifestyle in the process, are doing it because it’s “all about what they can get.” Our motivation was much more, “What can we give up?,” “What can we learn and teach our kids?” and “How can we better connect with each other and with others?” It was, to a great extent, about thinking and acting more openly, more mindfully and less materialistically so that we have a better chance of functioning well as a family, and of raising kids with a socially responsible world view and a heightened appreciation for our privileged lives back home.

The other reason I reviewed our time-capsule letters is because tomorrow, August 15, marks the anniversary of our departure. Having just returned from a shorter trip, we are taking a deep breath to get back to school and back to productivity, all the while trying not to lose the lessons gained from the journey.

So the year away is really over. Was it worth it? (Yes.) Where do we go from here? (Still figuring that out.) Those letters provide additional clues and details. I decided to excerpt some short passages here to highlight some aspects of long-term family travel.

Colly in Malcesine, Italy

From Colly, age 11 at the time, on what the trip is all about and how it has affected our family:

“Some of the words people might think of when they think of this trip are ‘fun,’ or ‘cool,’ or ‘relaxing.’ To me, those words suck. As Mom and Dad would say, those are dull words that don’t describe a tenth of what’s going on. I don’t think there’s a single word that can even start to describe our trip! But, if I had to sum up our trip all in one word, I think that word would be ‘trying.’ We are trying new foods, we are trying new places, every day we are trying new things, and those things don’t always work out but at least we’re trying. Our trip has changed all of us so much. I am reading way more than I would in Piedmont, we all need less stuff, and, well, Kyle is still in love with ice cream. I think that this trip has without a doubt made us more of a family. We are definitely closer than we’ve ever been before. All in all, I am tremendously grateful that this trip is happening and I do not regret it at all.”

Morgan near Karamea, New Zealand

From Morgan, age 43, on whether this trip represented a “midlife crisis”:

“I bristle at the term ‘midlife crisis’ for the connotations of a somewhat selfish and sad desire to recapture a moment of youth. The term ‘midlife opportunity’ is a much better term. There are many opportunities in life that people never take, and can spend the rest of their life agonizing over whether they should have. They key to the midlife opportunity is recognizing that such opportunities actually do exist, and having the guts to make the wrenching changes necessary to seize them. Taking this trip was seizing hold of an opportunity to do something different with the remainder of my life. Now, with half the trip behind me, the question becomes: was it worth it? The answer is an unequivocal yes. It has taken me five months to slowly unwind the feelings that I have about what I left, and to get excited about a different future. The process of travel itself has allowed me to slowly change my focus from the past to the future. Travel forces ‘the new’ upon you on a daily and moment-to-moment basis. Trying to figure out how to order in Spanish, or work a foreign ATM or get a phone card in another country, or figure out what’s on the menu, all combine to make change a constant in your life — and a pleasure. Rather than fearing change, I’ve come to live with it on a daily basis involving all the small things in life. This trip for me has been much less about any particular place or thing, but more about the process. I hope the remainder of this trip continues the process of future-thinking that has started to take hold.”

The kids and me about to board a bus for a 17-hour ride to Mendoza, Argentina

From me, age 40 at the time, looking ahead to our return:

“When I reflect on our five-and-a-half months of travel, one thing that hits me is how much I love spending time together as a foursome. I thought I might yearn for more time alone, but the opposite happened: I’m happiest when we’re together, in a small space, such as the car or hotel room. My main hope pertains to this summer and beyond: that we don’t lose the closeness — the bond — we’ve strengthened during this journey; that we don’t lose the ability to be flexible and free-thinking; that we don’t get stuck in a rut and become more materialistic.”

Kyle on the Colorado River

And from Kyle, age 8 at the time, on the joy of discovery through travel:

“I have been to many places and a lot to come. It feels a long time from rafting [in Colorado at the start of the trip], but I still remember it because it was so fun. I also loved the dulche de leche from Argentina, and I really liked Patagonia with all the dogs. And luging [in New Zealand] was so fun and fast. I hope we get to Australia safe. I really hope I discover new ice cream flavors. This trip was fantastic so far and I’m excited for new things to come.”

A week ago, an article in the Sunday New York Times called “But Will It Make You Happy? Consumers Find Ways to Spend Less and Find Happiness” did a much better job, in my view, of portraying the meaning of long-term travel than the critical response to the film Eat, Pray, Love. The Times story detailed new research supporting the not-too-common common-sense wisdom that happiness comes less from acquiring material possessions and more from meaningful experiences, such as travel, and from cultivating positive relationships. Amen to that. I’d much rather spend disposable income on family day trips and saving for travel than on replacing our faded sofas and buying new clothes.

According to the Eat, Pray, Love critics, we’re guilty of taking a journey to discover happiness. We got rich from experiences, knowledge and relationships. I’m not sure that makes us selfish and self-centered, but it certainly makes us feel lucky and grateful.

Related posts:

1. Eat, Run, Love
2. How To Plan A Year-Long Family Travel Itinerary
3. A Typical Atypical Travel Day

I wanted to hear their breathing and feel their closeness one more night before everything changed back to our non-traveling life — before the movers came and filled our house with so much of the furniture and boxes of stuff that I now feel ambivalent about owning, and before my kids moved back into their own rooms and we all established our separate domains in this house that feels too big and fancy. I wanted to curl up in my sleeping bag and fantasize we were camping the way we did on the banks of the Colorado River or on the beach of New Zealand’s Abel Tasman Park.

Everyone has been asking how it feels to return home. The short answer is: weird, and tiring! I haven’t felt this conflicted and unsettled since … well, since we pulled out of our driveway to start the trip on August 15, 2009.

The penultimate stop: We drove through Yosemite on our last day and arrived home about four hours later.

At first, we were giddy with anticipation while driving back from the Eastern Sierra and seeing familiar landmarks that meant we were getting closer to home. Kyle even pointed to a freeway barrier and exclaimed, “I remember that wall!” We collectively felt the poignancy and optimism of starting a new chapter in life as Morgan heads down a different career path, I start some new projects, and the kids fix up their rooms and gear up for school.

Finally we reached our freeway exit and drove the final mile. The kids literally were shrieking with excitement and I held my breath as we braked to turn left onto our street, knowing our house would come into view and signal that we really had made it back, the round-the-world odyssey really was over. How would it look? How would I feel?

And then we made the turn, and what I saw caught me by surprise and deflated the moment in the most fitting and funny way. There at the edge of our driveway, like a monument or middle finger, stood a big ol’ porta-potty for use by workers at our neighbor’s house. How perfect: a harbinger of all the crap — of all the moving boxes, bags of mail, health insurance headaches and wood rot in the windowsills — waiting for us once we started to unload and settle in. I had to laugh.

This all happened three weeks ago. It has taken me this long to start to get my head around the transition and to return to this abandoned child of a blog.

We arrived on the Summer Solstice, when everyone was taking off for summer vacation. By contrast, we’d experienced summer all year long, having been in the Southern Hemisphere October through February, and it felt to me as though summer should be ending and we should get back to productivity. My daughter, let down by the realization that many of her friends had left town just as she was returning, unknowingly expressed my mood by what she wore her first full day back: she dressed all in black and donned an absurd Santa hat she found in a moving box, and she glumly hobbled around on crutches, having dislocated her knee the prior week, like a bird with newly clipped wings.

It felt so odd and slightly stressful to move our furniture back and confront the detritus of our past lives — the boxes and boxes of clothing and memorabilia I had forgotten about. I don’t need this I said to myself repeatedly — I don’t need the uncomfortable dress shoes I bought for a job I no longer have, the boring coffeetable books I displayed but never looked at, the 12 extra tea cups I saved for brunches I never hosted, the dusty picnic basket I put on top of the fridge for decoration even though we never made time for picnics — so I started a give-away pile that continues to grow.

And all those linens for our one bed — Morgan and I shook our heads as we unpacked giant boxes filled with the down pillow-top mattress cover, the thick damask duvet and the nine pillows. What bed needs nine pillows? We added the down pillow-top cover to the give-away pile because we’ve grown accustomed to futon-style thinner bedding while traveling, but we spread out and tucked in those expensive sheets and stacked all those velvet pillows in their place. Then Morgan put his hands on his hips, stuck out his chest and theatrically proclaimed, “I feel like a little prince!” which gave me another fit of crazy crying-laughter because this bed — this epitome of our union in comfort and luxury — no longer seemed like a cozy fit. But how long could I justify sleeping in my sleeping bag?

Everything in the house seemed to grow while we were away because our sense of size had shrunk; my bureau dresser, for example. It’s about 4 feet tall, with three columns of drawers in ornately carved mahogany. I began unpacking my things into the drawers on the right-side column because that’s what Morgan and I did whenever we’d unpack in a rental — I’d take the drawers on the right and leave him the left — and as I tried to remember how we divided the drawers in the middle column, I had a going-down-the-rabbit-hole moment of jumbled perception and jarred memory when I belatedly realized that Morgan in fact has his very own dressing area in the adjacent room with his own drawers, and this entire bureau is mine to use. I had totally forgotten this fact of how we used to live. I’m supposed to use this all myself? Why do I need all these drawers? Does this mean I can’t share space with Morgan anymore? I don’t want to unpack here, I never liked these frou-frou brass handles … all those hyper doubts and complaints sped through my mind as I unpacked two pairs of jeans and left the lower drawers empty. Only the drawer for running clothes had enough to fill it.

I was unpacking the clothes from two giant suitcases we used for storage — massive suitcases with wheeled bottoms that we bought long ago, before we realized the benefits of smaller, non-wheeled luggage. “I can’t believe we ever used to travel with those,” Morgan said. And then he looked at the one wheeled suitcase that we had taken on our trip, which was sitting near the bigger ones from storage — the black suitcase we used as a communal school supply and gear bag, which we derisively nicknamed “The Tick” because it looked so bloated and would stick to us when we wanted to get rid of it. Around the world we complained about The Tick, since it seemed so heavy and unwieldy compared to our lightweight clothing packs.

The one regular suitcase we traveled with in addition to our packs, aka "The Tick," flanked by the larger suitcases we used to use.

“Oh my god, did The Tick shrink?” Morgan asked. Indeed, it seemed like it had shrunk when we placed it next to the suitcases we used to use. Travel, I realized, truly had changed our perception of size and necessity. All my negative feelings toward this scuffed-up, black-sheep suitcase that we had lugged around the world melted into feelings of fondness and the realization that it symbolized our simpler-living, road-schooling nomadic life. I declared with sappy emotion, “I love The Tick! I want to keep it forever.”

In addition to moving back in, we faced the reality of literally plugging back in; that is, of re-establishing accounts with service providers such as electrical, trash, phone and cable that all generate bills from which we had been liberated. I cringe daily at the sound of the mailman on our porch delivering junk mail and bills.

We got a new SIM card for Morgan’s cell phone (the old one being leftover from Europe) and for over a week we shared that one phone, since I didn’t want to deal with setting up a land line and didn’t really want my own cell phone. I had this reclusive feeling of not wanting to hear a phone ring and not wanting anyone to contact me — not yet, anyway. The funny thing was, the new SIM card came with a number still registered with someone else’s name, someone named “Dorothy Bean,” which the phone company can’t seem to clear up, so all our outgoing calls show up on caller ID that way. I sort of like the element of disguise. Now I can call Morgan “Mr. Bean” and remember all the times he acted like the bumbling Brit on our travels by circling repeatedly around round-abouts while we hastily determined which exit to take.

I’m afraid I’m coming off like a complainer, and I’d like to say “yes!” when people ask, “Is it good to be back?” In many ways it is good, especially from the kids’ perspectives, since they’re happy to reconnect with friends and walk freely around their familiar neighborhood. And what a gorgeous neighborhood it is. I have renewed appreciation for how lovely these landscaped gardens and well-maintained homes are, having unpacked in so many modest abodes in areas with crumbling infrastructure. And some of the unpacking and settling back in has brought genuine joy. I was happy to  unpack my kitchen tools and restock our pantry, for example, since I’m eager to cook recipes we haven’t tasted in a year.

Reconnecting with friends and neighbors has been the best part of this transition. Several families invited us to their homes for dinners, coaxed us to return to our annual tradition of building a 4th of July parade float, and paid us the ultimate compliments when they said we seemed more mellow and happy. Then, one week after our return, seven extended family members came to stay under our roof for several days, delightfully filling up this house and making it feel more like a home again.

Morgan used our moving boxes to take the lead on building the annual neighborhood float ...

... while I worked with my sister-in-law and Colly (she's in a Wilma Flintstone costume) to put finishing touches on it.

Morgan and two neighbors show off the end result: a Flintstone-themed parade entry for the 4th of July. This is the kind of community fun we missed while traveling, and which eases the transition back home.

Round-the-world travel gave us so much, and yet we missed the connection with local community and extended family. But it still feels weird to be back, and oh how I miss discovering new places, people and perspectives through far-flung travel. I’m trying hard not to lose touch with the positive ways that travel changed our behavior and awareness. I really don’t want to stir up the manic, multitasking, materialistic, controlling, bitchy and provincial parts of my personality that long-term travel helped me tame, nor do I want our stronger family bond to weaken.

I’ll try to write about the challenge of “maintaining change” (that’s not an oxymoron, is it? I hope not) in a separate post. For now, I’m happy to report we haven’t lost that awareness or closeness, and we’re really trying to live differently than we did before the trip — though I admit, that bed and all those pillows feel pretty darn comfortable.

Related posts:

1. “Back to School” Becomes “Leave to Learn”
2. The Sappy Departure
3. One Year Later: The Time-Capsule Travel Letters and the ‘Eat Pray Love’ Backlash

As we stood ordering bagels, we suddenly remembered we had eaten lunch at the same Noah’s on the day before we flew to Buenos Aires in early October. “I feels like we were just here,” Colly said, and I agreed while my chest hiccuped with anxiety.

It felt as though all those months abroad — which had stretched so elastically and netted so much in a single week, so that on the first of every month I’d express disbelief at how much we had experienced — had snapped back and condensed into a blip to make mental space for the task of reorganizing our lives and getting ready to move back into the house.

Checking out of a hotel in Marlow, England, on our last morning before flying back to California.

I’m feeling profoundly mixed emotions upon our return and need to think more about the transition before trying to write much about it. I got weepy on our last night in Marlow, a lovely town outside of London, as we checked out of a hotel a final time and toasted our trip; then, I got teary with joy as we approached my hometown of Ojai last weekend for a reunion. I also am in the process of thinking through the next phase of this blog, so stay tuned and thanks to all of you who’ve read it regularly!

In the meantime, I’m publishing the following list as proof and as a reminder to myself that we really went to all of these places. We called this our “sleepover list” and had fun updating it as we traveled. Most are linked to previous blog posts if we wrote about that destination. Three places are listed twice since we visited there twice, so the number of places totals 83, but the bottom line is that we moved and unpacked 86 times!

The Sleepover List: August 15, 2009 – June 15, 2010:

1. Claremont hotel, Oakland (slept there the night before we left since our house was all packed up)
2. Holiday Inn Express, Fallon, Nevada
3. Days Inn, Delta, Utah
4. My brother and sister-in-law’s cabin on Last Dollar Road in Telluride, Colorado
5. Colorado River campsite during rafting trip
6. Holiday Inn Express, Moab
7. Mountain Village condo near Telluride
8. Mesa Verde National Park motel, Colorado
9. Double Tree Hotel, Durango, Colorado
10. Pearl Street rental home in Boulder, Colorado
11. Quality Inn near Black Canyon National Park, Gunnison, Colorado
12. Telluride family cabin again
13. Red Feather Inn near the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, Arizona (what a dump!)
14. El Portal Hotel, Sedona, Arizona
15. Holiday Inn Express on Route 66, Barstow, California
16. Morgan’s parents’ house in Pacific Palisades, California
17. Casa Ojai Best Western, Ojai, California
18. Embassy Suites near LAX
19. Recoleta apartment, Buenos Aires, Argentina
20. Llao Llao hotel, near Bariloche, Argentina
21. Cabaña at Villa Huinid, Bariloche, Argentina
22. Guardianes del Bayo, Villa La Angosturo, Argentina (aka the place with all the gnomes)
23. La Comarca Suites de Montaña hotel next to the gnome cabaña,Villa La Angosturo, Argentina
24. Overnight on the bus to Mendoza (this link is to Colly’s great blog post about the experience)
25. Casa Glebinias, Chacras de Coria (near Mendoza), Argentina
26. Meridiano Sur hotel, Santiago, Chile
27. Quay West apartment, Auckland, New Zealand
28. First night RV: Waiwera Holiday Park, North Island
29. Second night RV: Beachside Holiday Park near Paihia in the Bay of Islands, North Island
30. Third night RV: Kerikeri Top 10 Holiday Park, Kerikeri, Bay of Islands, North Island
31. Fourth night RV: Kauri Coast Top 10 Holiday Park near Dargaville, North Island
32. Last night RV: Orewa Beach Top 10 Holiday Park, Orewa, North Island
33. Cabin at Blue Lake Top 10 Holiday Park, Rotorua, North Island
34. Van der Boom’s house, Whakatane in the Bay of Plenty, North Island
35. Great Lake Motel, Taupo, North Island
36. Holiday Inn, Wellington, North Island
37. Cabin at Harris Hill farm, Nelson, South Island, New Zealand
38. First night campground in Abel Tasman National Park, South Island
39. Second night campground in Abel Tasman National Park, South Island
40. The Barn backpackers’ lodge, Marahau, South Island
41. Abel Tasman Marahau Lodge, Marahau, South Island
42. Chelsea Gateway Motor Lodge, Westport, West Coast of South Island
43. Karamea Last Resort, Karamea, West Coast of South Island
44. Charming Creek B&B, Ngakawau, West Coast of South Island
45. The one and only Blackball Hilton, Blackball, West Coast of South Island
46. Greymouth Gables Inn, Greymouth, West Coast of South Island
47. Flock Hill Lodge along Arthur’s Pass, South Island
48. Kirkpatricks’ guest house, Queenstown, South Island
49. Meriton apartment, Sydney, Australia
50. Jemby Rinjah Eco Lodge in Blackheath by the Blue Mountains, Australia
51. Albury Country Comfort Motel, Albury, New South Wales
52. Jubilee Lake Holiday Park, Daylesford, Victoria
53. Anchor Belle Caravan Park, Phillip Island, Victoria
54. Apartment at 1 Esplanade, Lakes Entrance, Victoria
55. Cabin at Batemans Bay Big4 Holiday Park, Batemans Bay, New South Wales
56. United States Embassy, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory
57. Apartment at Clifton Suites, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory
58. IBIS airport hotel, Sydney (what a dump!)
59. Kowloon Shangri-La hotel, Hong Kong
60. Oakley Court Hotel, Windsor, England (barely 14 hours between flights)
61. Apartment in the Barri Gotic quarter, Barcelona, Spain
62. Aiguaclara Hotel in Begur, Costa Brava, Spain
63. Renaissance airport hotel, Barcelona
64. Apartment in Rome, Italy
65. Apartment in Venice, Italy
66. Albergo il Focolare, Treviso, Italy
67. Hotel Du Lac on Lake Garda, Malcesine, Italy
68. Apartment in Vernazza, Cinque Terre, Italy
69. One night in the awful hotel-that-shall-remain-nameless, Florence, Italy
70. Hotel Loggiato Dei Serviti, Florence, Italy
71. Hotel Hermitage, Prato, Italy
72. Hotel Campione near Lugano, Switzerland
73. Hotel Cascada, Lucerne, Switzerland
74. Hotel Splendid, Interlaken, Switzerland
75. Apartment on Lake Geneva, Montreux, Switzerland
76. Hotel Perren, Zermatt, Switzerland
77. Hilton Garden Inn, Bologna, Italy
78. Hilton Airport Hotel, Rome, Italy
79. Marriott Grosvenor Square, London, England
80. Oakley Court Hotel, Windsor, England
81. The Grand Hotel, Brighton, England
82. Silverdale B&B, Seaford, England
83. The Compleat Angler, Marlow, England
84. Morgan’s parents’ house, Pacific Palisades, California
85. Lower School dorm at The Thacher School, Ojai, California
86. Morgan’s parents’ condo in Mammoth Lakes, California

That’s it! Next stop, on June 20, home in Piedmont, California!

Related posts:

1. Eat, Run, Love
2. Playing Around Rotorua
3. Two Months To Go

A view from the Cinque Terre coastal trail, with the town of Vernazza coming into view.

Last night I read Goethe and ate divine pesto, and this morning I ran across a mountain and climbed back into bed with Morgan.

It’s all about life, Italy and the pursuit of happiness.

(Bear with me while I explain what Goethe has to do with it …)

I didn’t expect to pick up 18th-century German Romanticism more than twenty years after my last college lit class. I’ve been eating up delectable novels and memoirs like Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love and told myself I should ingest some historical fiction or classics (similar to how I reach for bran flakes and skim milk to balance out the pasta and wine).

Then, around the same day, we serendipitously stumbled upon Goethe. His name was everywhere. We were in the town of Malcesine on Lake Garda, a giant drop of blue in Northern Italy hanging like a bead off the skirt of the Alps, and were spending five nights there for no better reason than because three months earlier, in New Zealand or somewhere, Morgan had looked at Italy on Google Earth, saw the splotch of blue and the steep topography around it, and said, “I wanna go there!”

Kyle on a snowy ridge in the Alps above Lake Garda during a hike he took with Morgan.

As we drove the freeway up from Verona and the steep mountain pass down through Turbole, we started noticing inns and restaurants named after the German literary great.

Once we settled into our lodge, Morgan logged on to research why Goethe was such a big deal in this neck of the woods. “You gotta read this,” I soon heard him say.

We found ourselves following in Goethe's footsteps.

I looked over his shoulder at a newspaper article from 1986 about local bicentennial celebrations of Goethe’s sojourn to Lake Garda: The 37-year-old Goethe set off for Italy from Weimar at 3 A.M. on Sept. 3, 1786, in the midst of a full-blown midlife crisis. Impulsively, he took a short leave of absence from his post as the right-hand man to the young duke of Saxe-Weimar, jumped into a coach without a servant or much luggage, assumed the name Filippo Moller and left for what turned out to be almost two years of renewal in the Mediterranean. … In Italy, Goethe experienced what he called a rebirth, living a life “exactly like a youthful dream.”

I wound up entranced by Goethe’s early novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther, and learned more about his Italian journey while touring the 6th-century Malcesine castle, a place he explored after docking his boat there due to bad weather.

The castle and town of Malcesine, which Goethe visited 224 years ago.

Ever an artist, Goethe pulled out his sketchpad and settled in to draw the castle. An exhibit at the castle detailed how the stress of Goethe’s job left no room in his life to pursue artistic interests, and how by radically changing his circumstances, the poet hoped to get closer to the meaning of his existence.

It will come as little surprise to those who know us that Morgan and I could appreciate the motives behind Goethe’s odyssey, much as I could relate to Elizabeth Gilbert’s decision, detailed in Eat, Pray, Love, to spend a year of self-inquiry through travel. It’s trite but true that the most satisfying kind of travel involves contemplating the meaning of life, and discovering and pursuing new interests along the way. It’s part of what we’ve been doing, and with a mere six weeks remaining until we return to California, we’re spending more time reflecting on where we’ve been — not just in the past year, but in the two decades we’ve been married — and what we might do next.

The topic came up again over dinner on the patio of the apartment we’re renting this week in Vernazza, one of the five impossibly beautiful villages that make up the coastal region known as Cinque Terre.

The town of Vernazza, with our apartment in the corner of the building on the far right, directly above the cafe umbrellas (that's our laundry hanging out the kitchen window).

The patio has a staircase that leads two flights down to the small town square and harbor, so the kids periodically ran from dinner to the beach. We opened a white wine harvested from the hillside outside our window, and served a rotisserie chicken and baguette from a deli downstairs. For the side, we cooked fresh pasta, covered it with locally made pesto, sautéed green beans and sliced an heirloom tomato (which isn’t labeled “heirloom” here — it just is). An outdoor restaurant sits right on the other side of the apartment terrace, and at one point a waiter, who had been observing our family meal with some amusement, came over and handed us a giant bowl filled with a couple dozen garlicky steamed mussels garnished with lemon wedges, compliments of the chef, just to be nice.

We lingered over the plates covered with mussel shells and chicken bones and looked across the water at the steep hill, where innumerable layers of dark gray rock stretch across in diagonal lines and then curve, dip, and rise again, as though charting geologic time, and we wondered how many millions of years it took the hill to push up from the sea. Then we looked over to the 14th-century church, so pretty against the pastel-colored buildings around the town square, and peered down to check on our kids, who were climbing on boulders protruding from the water, and we heard their giggles float up on the wind.

The church and hillside vines across from our apartment at sunset.

It was in so many ways the most satisfying dinner, and the potency and transience of the moment made me teary.

It’s not just that packing up and leaving home — and in the process leaving the security that comes with a familiar routine, a generous income and a solid reputation — forces change and exploration (of self as well as of surroundings) in a way no amount of therapy ever could. What moved me is the way in which this journey has delivered constant reminders — in the form of spectacular natural history as well as human artifacts such as Roman ruins and medieval castles — of the brevity of our time on Earth and the degree to which we’re microspecks in the millennia, so what can we do but seek happiness through relationships and experiences, and do the best we can with our greatest gift and trace of immortality — our children — during the limited time that we do have?

Kyle and Colly hanging out at the harbor after dinner while we watch from our apartment above.

I paused after that paragraph for a two-hour run. While Morgan and the kids slept in, I climbed the narrow coastal trail linking the towns of Cinque Terre.

I’m running more these days in part to prepare for a 35K trail race on my 41st birthday two weeks from now, which will be through a valley outside of Florence. Morgan is caring for the kids and arranging transportation so I can do the race, which is really giving me the gift of all the drama and endorphins that go with a tough mountain run, and what can I possibly give him in return on his birthday in September, after all he has given me? I smiled at the passing idea of a Rembrandt hat and cape so he could dress up like Goethe for Halloween.

But the main reason I’m running more, just as I’m letting myself eat and lounge around with Morgan and the kids more, is to soak in the sensations of these destinations and explore them as fully as possible before we head back home.

Kyle and I make a toast to each other with gelato cones.

As I navigated the rocks on the tapering trail and glanced over the edge to the ocean below, I considered something several people have said in casual conversation: “You must be sad the trip is coming to an end.” Oh yes, I really am, I automatically reply. But as I ran that cliff edge, I realized that assumption is only partly true; more than sad, I’m fundamentally grateful we’re heading home in mid-June.

Our days like this are numbered.

I’m thankful the trip has an endpoint because it is that very ending that enables me to so fully appreciate these numbered weeks. It’s that return date on the calendar that made Colly reach for my hand and squeeze it as we walked along the lakefront in Malcesine, and prompted her to say with maturity and tenderness beyond her 12 years, “I’m going to miss this so much.”

Along my run, I met an Italian man on the trail who had a creased face and a cigarette dangling from his mouth. He was carrying a gardening tool and looked stooped over as he walked toward a row of vines on the steep terraced hill. Generations of families have carved out a living by working the soil in this remote corner of the country, and it’s a safe bet he was carrying on a family tradition. I said buongiorno as I ran toward him, and he smiled and raised his eyebrows, a look of admiration crossing his face as he paused to study me and perhaps imagined what it must be like to run for fun. I wish he could have known how much I admired him at that same instant; he might be surprised that in that moment, I wanted to be less the fleeting, carefree passerby and more the local with a harvest to reap.

Morgan and I have talked over dinners and during runs about how we really can’t see our family joining the growing ranks of modern-day gypsies who travel indefinitely and call themselves “digital nomads” as they work and homeschool via the Internet wherever they might be (though anything is possible). We want to go back for the kids’ sake. This trip has been undeniably beneficial for their personal growth and education, as well as for our family bond, but they yearn for the friendships and familiarity that only their school and neighborhood can give. And we want to get back to aspects of life that we put on hold: maintaining a home, reading the local news, lending a hand to help in the community, socializing with friends, developing and finishing projects, earning the satisfaction of a job well done. Those things all really matter. The challenge, we know and vow to remind ourselves regularly, will be to preserve as much as possible the values and visions, and the rhythm of life and closeness with each other, that we rediscovered between Argentina and Italy.

Morgan took this shot of me near the north end of the Cinque Terre trail near Monterosso before we turned around and headed back.

Related posts:

1. One Year Later: The Time-Capsule Travel Letters and the ‘Eat Pray Love’ Backlash
2. 83 Places, 5 Continents, 10 Months
3. Some Days Are Like That, Even In Switzerland

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Rotorua Tourism Board will probably be upset to hear me say these activities generally seem overrated and overpriced. Our best times around Rotorua involved spending free time for free. We rented a low-cost cabin outside of town at one of the best “holiday parks” we’ve come across yet (a glorified RV park and campground), on the edge of Blue Lake by a vast forest preserve, and passed the time reading, homeschooling, running, researching, cooking and playing with the kids. Morgan and I took turns doing long solo runs through the Whakarewarewa forest, aka The Redwoods, which seemed like a fairy-tale hybrid of Hawaii and California because it had the ferns, dampness and fragrance of an island rain forest amidst groves of century-old redwoods.

Then we experienced Kiwi hospitality firsthand when a mutual friend of some Northern California runners, Paul Charteris, invited us to his hometown of Kawerau near Rotorua and took us on a hike to Tarawera falls.

Tarawera Falls near Rotorua, where we hiked and picnicked.

The double-barreled waterfall shoots out of the middle of the volcanic mountain, from a fissure created by lava, rather than cascading over a cliff. The kids didn’t mind hiking uphill for an hour because the reward was so great: first the falls, then a sky-blue swimming hole with rope swings.

Colly and Kyle couldn't get enough of this rope swing at the Tarawera swimming hole.

Paul then hooked us up with his friends, Mike and Sarah van der Boom and their two school-age girls, in the beautiful Bay of Plenty beach town of Whakatane. Their family hosted us for a couple of nights, gave us a barbecue and took us trail running. Believe what you hear: New Zealanders really are that nice!

At our hosts' house, the kids just played and played.

Morgan and me on a run above Whakatane in the Bay of Plenty with Sarah van der Boom, who took this picture.

All of this — not just our time in New Zealand, but the ways in which our lives have changed through travel –  has made me think more about the subject of play and the choices we make about how to spend time and money, particularly as a parent. Forgive me as I digress and risk sounding simplistic or superficial as I try to condense a big topic into a blog post.

We’ve been away from home for four months now, and I’ve noticed that Colly and Kyle are playing more than they have since preschool, which has been a profound and unforeseen benefit of this long-term travel. By “play” I mean filling their time imaginatively and physically, making use of whatever is around them. After we’re done schooling or sightseeing, they still have hours of unscheduled free time to fill up, and TV or the Internet are limited because of our circumstances (few TV channels, shared computers and limited WiFi). So they wander outside, often to a play structure or trampoline, but they don’t just swing or bounce. They make up a game or start playing characters. They get in arguments, work it out or forget about it, and then start something new on their own, or they might meet other kids from other countries and start talking to them. And they constantly are together, so much so that they joked they’re developing twin telepathy.

The kids keep exploring and trying new things together.

I really didn’t appreciate how much our family life has changed until the other day when I opened my calendar from seven months ago and literally shuddered when I saw the lines and lines of daily scheduled activities and obligations, much of which involved the kids. Well-intentioned parents (like me) sign children up for sports and recreational programs because we don’t want them to “miss out.” We want them to have fun and develop their hobbies (and to be honest, we want them to stand out as stars on the stage or on the field), and we want someone to watch them and keep them safe while we go about our lives during the day. We also are susceptible to the marketing of many extracurricular “enrichment programs,” believing our kids need the help of tutors and other professionals so they can reach their potential. Ironically, all this scheduling and transporting kids to programs often makes families more stressed, more financially stretched and less available to spend time together.

Kids become so accustomed to being told what to do, and when and how to do it, that they complain about being bored if they suddenly find themselves with free time. Parents admit to looking forward to summer or winter holidays ending so they can get their kids back on a schedule and in those programs.

That was how our family was before this year away — and it may be us again when we get back. I hope not, because we were not a terribly happy bunch back then, but those real-world dynamics of our community and demographic are incredibly hard to resist. Of course we’ll plug back in to it all on some level, but I’m already trying to envision a middle ground that will preserve the kind of play and togetherness we’re rediscovering.

Before this trip, I was familiar with  studies touting the importance of play and warning about the downside of kids’ over-scheduled, over-hurried lifestyles — but it took a genuine change of circumstances and simplifying of our lives (what travel blogger Christine Gilbert has called a lifestyle redesign) to make me fully appreciate the importance of free time and family time.

This is us on an impromptu roadside hike.

I watch Colly in particular as she revels in being a kid. Yesterday she spent most of the afternoon with Kyle doing nothing more important than digging in beach sand to build castles, and when we went inside she became absorbed in a book. Her sixth-grade friends back home, meanwhile, are managing a mountain of homework and other responsibilities while preoccupied about their appearance, friendships and who’s dating whom.

What a gift, I realize with gratitude, that this year away has extended her childhood by a year, and given us more time to enjoy her — and really get to know her — as a goofy girl who’s content to play with her little brother. It may be we’re just delaying the inevitable and that she’ll turn into a teen overnight as soon as she’s sucked into the vortex of seventh grade. I hope, however, she’ll be better equipped to navigate the pressure of adolescence fortified by this year — a year of living more simply and becoming more self-reliant while seeing how people in other parts of the world make do with less; a year of  just being herself and being incredibly close to her family.

The same could be said for all four of us: I sincerely hope we will re-enter life back home permanently changed and fortified by this year.

Sometimes you just gotta let go and go for it.

Related posts:

1. 83 Places, 5 Continents, 10 Months
2. When It Rains…
3. Our 3-Day Kayak Adventure Around NZ’s Abel Tasman Park

All packed up and ready to go. Goodbye, home!

“Why are you crying, Mom?” Kyle asked this morning as I pulled away from my next-door neighbor’s hug. “Are you sad or happy?”

I thought about what had unleashed the tears: the final walk through our bedroom, where the hardwood floors echoed from emptiness because nearly everything is in storage. Then the last good-byes. It hit me that I will miss our home and neighborhood terribly. It also hit me that everything we had planned during the past six months had come down to this moment, and all the work and difficult decisions had made us ready to go — and we really, finally were ready to go — so I was crying tears of relief. And also, I was indeed happy that at this crossroads in our lives, when a great deal is transitioning personally and professionally, we had chosen to go in a direction that Morgan and I believe will keep changing us for the better even after the trip is over.

“Both,” I finally answered.

“Well,” Kyle said, “if you’re sad and happy, that makes you sappy.”

I am sappy, so much so that the family began mocking my sentimentality last week. “This is the last time we’re going to Crogan’s,” I said the other night as we approached a favorite pub. “Awww,” said Colly, her voice dripping with pity, “and this is the last time we’re touching this crosswalk button!”

“The last time” became a running joke until Morgan got the last word on our final morning at home. He marched to the bathroom after coffee and Cheerios and proclaimed, “This is the last dump!”

Over PB&Js on paper plates, Morgan and I held a meeting in our kitchen to determine how to pare down and securely pack essential items such as passports, credit cards, cords and plugs.

I cleaned out every closet and drawer, handled the logistics of turning the house over to tenants, and made final decisions about what to pack and how to make it fit. The kids bounced around friends’ homes and perhaps wondered why Mom was letting them eat so much ice cream, watch so much TV and play so much Wii (on their friends’ Wiis, that is. We don’t have one. My philosophy last week: Let them enjoy time with friends to the fullest, and the more they can take care of themselves, the better.)

Stuff in storage.

We’re planning to go away for just 11 months, more or less, and yet … who knows? Anything can happen, which is why tears of anxiety contributed to the crying. Allow me to linger and prolong this goodbye once more by digressing to something that might seem a tad off topic. Let’s talk about the subjunctive tense in Spanish, okay? I like the subjunctive because it acknowledges the inherent uncertainty of circumstances. If you use the subjunctive when you’re supposed to (as is the case when you ask someone to do something, or you express a hope or desire), then you’re essentially admitting that you don’t have control over a situation. You’d like it to be a certain way, and you think it might likely happen that way, but you really can’t say for sure. Cuando ( “when”) triggers the use of the subjunctive, as in, Cuando volvamos a Piedmont … ( “When we return to Piedmont …”). Changing just one vowel (volvamos instead of volvemos) speaks volumes. It means we can’t be sure of our return.

All the stuff we're taking. (It includes extra stuff for the dog and Colorado. We'll lighten the load when we go abroad.)

So we pulled out of the driveway and headed toward Colorado (first to my brother’s in Telluride, then to Boulder), where we’ll be until we go abroad in early October. I had anticipated a potentially awkward silence in the car, as the four of us worked through feelings. (Perhaps I should say “five of us” since Teddy the dog, who’s traveling with us until we go to Argentina, seemed extra clingy and concerned). I purposely held back from trying to fill the silence, and I refrained from suggesting that the kids do anything in particular. I vowed, starting today, to be more of an equal and less of a manager in our foursome.

Teddy didn't want to be left behind!

We had gone scarcely a half hour, over the Benicia Bridge, when Kyle asked how far we had to go. I stopped myself from telling him the answer, passed a map to the back seat and said, “Here, see if you can find where we are now, and then find Highway 80 to 50.” Colly and Kyle unfolded the paper and became confused but started laughing, as if they couldn’t fathom the inefficiency and antiquity of tangled lines on folded paper in an age of Google maps. Again, I stopped myself from “helping.” I listened to them work together to figure it out, and as I closed my eyes while Morgan drove, I thought, “This is going to be good.”

I knew our first stop could set the tone for the first leg of the trip by virtue of it being the first stop. The old debate re-emerged: Taco Bell or McDonald’s? I didn’t chime in because to object would make them want it more. Kyle said he felt carsick. Morgan said he’d pull off at the next exit. We got off in Newcastle (just south of Auburn) and hung a left at a tricky intersection, inadvertently passing the cluster of gas stations and fast food. We got on a side street headed who knows where. And then we arrived on Main Street, where a line of 19th-century fruit packing sheds stood near the railroad tracks. The long rectangular buildings looked like giant boarded-up chicken coops with weathered wooden sidewalks. There was a junk emporium (its sign really advertised “Junk!”) that conveyed unwarranted cheerfulness, and a shuttered gelato stand that expressed dashed optimism. In between them stood the Newcastle Cheese Shop & Deli, “Home of the Rat Trap Sandwich.” Eat there? Hell, yes!

Colly at our first stop: The Newcastle Cheese Shop & Deli, "Home of The Rat Trap Sandwich."

We did not order The Rat Trap (a sandwich with a sampling of every kind of meat and cheese). But we did get some of the freshest, largest, most satisfying deli sandwiches on crusty bread that I have tasted in recent memory. I closed my eyes again as Morgan drove and thought once more, “This is going to be good.”

Now we’re in Fallon, Nevada, at a dog-friendly Holiday Inn Express. We didn’t want to drive very far the first day because nobody felt up for it. We plan to take Hwy 50 to Colorado and arrive in Telluride on Monday.

One final thought: What helped make the past couple of weeks manageable and so memorable were certain friends who took time out of their routines to cook us dinner, have us over for lunch, watch our kids and run favorite trails with me. You know who you are, and I’ll miss you!

Related posts:

1. Eat, Run, Love
2. What A Long, Strange Homecoming It’s Been
3. One Year Later: The Time-Capsule Travel Letters and the ‘Eat Pray Love’ Backlash

My "roads scholars" pictured earlier this summer near Tahoe.

I know it’s kind of crazy, because we’ll encounter extraordinary educational opportunities at every turn. Plus, most wise people recognize that learning takes place all the time and is more apt to blossom outside the confines of a classroom. So why the worry and resistance to the idea of homeschooling?

At the root is my fear of being inadequate as a teacher, and anxiety that my kids won’t “keep up” with their peers. My knee-jerk response to anxiety is to try to control the circumstances and outcomes; hence, I got our school supplies in place, got the kids working on academic review workbooks, and envisioned us sitting around a table starting a half-day, five-day-a-week schooling routine on the same day their real school back home reopens (August 26). In other words, I felt determined to replicate their 3rd- and 6th-grade classroom experience during travel.

Thank goodness I had an epiphany (or more of a “well, duh” moment) that my approach might cause us to miss a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for us all to learn in a different, potentially better way. I came across information and encouragement, highlighted below, that has made me less stressed, less rigid and much more excited about our adventure in “roadschooling.”

First, some background on how “school” will work for our family this year: We are fortunate to be in a high-quality public school district that granted both kids independent study contracts for the school year. Kyle has a 3rd-grade teacher assigned to him from his elementary school, and Colly has a 6th-grade teacher assigned to her from the middle school. Last spring, we all met and devised a plan for the coming year. (This was fairly simple because, as luck would have it, another local family did this same thing the previous year and paved the way for us to follow their example.)

Under the contract, the kids will follow the core curriculum, communicate with their teacher approximately once a week via email and periodically turn in a sampling of work — enough homework and special projects so that the teacher can see the child is following the program and meeting the standards. It’s up to Morgan and me to do the bulk of instruction and review their work. We see it as a win-win: our kids get an educational plan designed to meet grade-level standards, plus a teacher to help them long-distance. They also get to feel like they’re still a part of their school. We parents get the structure of the curriculum and expertise of its teachers, and we avoid the bureaucratic and legal hurdles many homeschooling parents face when they pull their kids out of school. The school district, meanwhile, gets the daily attendance money from the state that it would otherwise lose if our kids un-enrolled; plus, the district gets two kids who will re-enter school the following year more likely to succeed, having followed the school’s program during their year away.

Kyle's summer workbook (click for amazon link). Colly did the Grade 5 - 6 one.

Sounds great, doesn’t it? My doubts crept in, however, when I grappled with how and when to teach my kids. As a warm-up, I bought them each workbooks in the Summer Bridge Activities series to review the basics they learned the previous school year, and to get us all used to “doing school” at home. The workbooks themselves are quite good — a nice mix of language arts, math, science and history, formatted in a manageable “daily dose.”

But after about a week, our workbook routine began to devolve from enthusiastic and fruitful (concepts reviewed, discussions sparked) to laborious and futile (kids groaning and rolling eyes while saying, “Do I have to?” … me hovering and overly correcting their work, repeating “Just get it done”). I see in hindsight I was too authoritative about determining when they should work during the day, and I set arbitrary deadlines for when they should complete the lessons. I beat myself up: In a mere matter of weeks, I made them view academic work as a chore and to dread having me as their teacher.

I took a deep breath, cut myself slack and tried to open my mind. (Easier said than done!) Here is some of the advice that helped me regroup and take a fresh approach to this year of schooling:

• Have confidence that the kids will learn not only what they’re “supposed to” learn, but immeasurably more; and that what they learn on the road and through their own volition is more likely to stick and positively shape them. This point is emphasized by homeschooling experts such as Helen Hegener, who wrote that her children taught her to “relax and trust that learning was always happening, with or without my help, and the learning that happened without my assistance was much more likely to be useful and relevant.” I also heard this point made by other round-the-world blogging families such as The Andruses of Utah, who wrote: “On the road, school is a round-the-clock, ever-changing experience, a 7-day-a-week field trip that teaches them more about the world and themselves than they could ever learn at home.”
• Try not to always measure their progress and productivity by traditional, quantitative means (e.g. minutes spent reading, number of answers correct), and don’t keep comparing them to their peers back home; rather, embrace this chance to let them learn individually and independently, more in tune with their own pace and learning style. Measure their success as much by the spirit of the process as by the end result. The confidence and love of learning they gain will pay off in the long run. I know this advice is hard for me to follow, so I’ll re-read those lines the next time I grow impatient by how long it takes my daughter to do a page of math problems or exasperated by how many seemingly simple words my son misspells in a paragraph. If she “gets it” and feels good about it, that’s great, no matter how long it takes; if he has bright thoughts and clever word choices driving those misspellings, then that’s terrific.
• Stop thinking of myself as a teacher who can dump facts into my kids’ heads, as if I could program them to download information at my command. It helps me to recall a moment when we were in the Smithsonian last Spring Break. The kids kept wanting to run off and see something that caught their eye. Their voices bubbled with interest, “Look, Mom, check this out!” But instead, I held them back; I said, “No, wait, come here and listen to this,” and I would proceed to read out loud each exhibit’s caption. They grew bored and stopped listening to my lectures. Then they lost their eagerness to run and explore other exhibits — they just wanted to run away from me. It’s an all-too-typical example of how I can be overly controlling and fall into power struggles with the kids. On this trip, I’ll try to follow their lead more often, and to think of myself as a student alongside them, hopefully sharing and supporting their curiosity.
• Be flexible with expectations and scheduling so that we can learn by exploring our surroundings, and by letting the kids follow their natural interests. (See point above.) How silly it would be to say “no” if the kids wanted to take a special hike or see a performance one weekday morning because we set a schedule to get through a textbook chapter during that time slot.
• Try to practice the principles of Positive Discipline by Jane Nelsen. This involves using encouragement and abiding by the belief that kids do well when they feel well; balancing kindness and firmness; coming up with solutions together to resolve conflict instead of threatening consequences; and letting children take risks, do things on their own and learn from mistakes. This book is one of the best and most effective parenting books I ever read. But it’s counter-intuitive to the way I’ve always done things, so I need to re-read it and keep working on it.
  

  One of my favorite parenting books, which helps with teaching too (click for amazon link).

We’re taking risks and have lots to learn. I’m sure we’ll make mistakes all along the way. But I’m going to try to view that as cause for celebration, not concern.

Related posts:

1. Two Months To Go
2. “Home”schooling So Far
3. Playing Around Rotorua

Then, life took a turn. Or you could say my husband Morgan and I both switched off the autopilot and had one of those “blink” moments where we knew what we needed to do, and it felt strangely right. Instead of hiring a decorator and moving furniture around, we researched countries on five continents, purchased One World airline tickets to sixteen destinations, developed an independent study plan for our daughter and son, and found tenants to rent our house for at least 10 months.

We're packing up and leaving our home sweet home in Piedmont.

Now it’s summer — the kids just got out of school — and my stomach feels knotted when I consider the two months left until our departure, which is August 15 (give or take a day). The details to debate and arrangements to make leave me short tempered and quick to cry, like an amped-up wedding planner in her third trimester of pregnancy.

Between now and August, we will clean out closets, pack away personal belongings and repair miscellaneous broken things. We’ll organize finances and copy important documents, and plan and scan the kids’ lessons for their 3rd and 6th grade curriculum. We’ll go to the dentist, get shorter-than-usual haircuts and fill prescriptions for things like Cipro. We will synch and streamline our laptops and cameras, untangle and condense all the cords that go with them, and smartly pack our suitcases with multipurpose, easy-care outfits that we will find time to buy.

We’ll try not to drink too much when we throw a goodbye party, and try not to cry when we give our dog to my in-laws. And in my free time, I will practice Spanish, learn new software and read novels set in countries we’re visiting.

(If I say all this like I believe it, perhaps it will increase the chance of these things actually getting done.)

People keep asking where we’re going, which is easy to answer (check out our map) — and in some ways not as relevant as it may seem. Going anywhere is the point. We will try to follow advice we read somewhere that travel, to be meaningful, should be less about where you go and more about what you do and how you interact with the people and environment wherever you find yourselves. The more interesting question — what we’re still sorting out — may be, how did we get to this point? As David Elliot Cohen described in his book One Year Off, it’s one thing to dream about chucking it all and going around the world; it’s quite another thing to actually decide to do it and get ready — and not chicken out before you go.

On some level, nearly everything we’ve been through and all that has shaped us for as long as we’ve been together (nearly 25 years) pointed us in this direction. On February 10, we sent an email to family and friends with the lofty subject line, “big news — a dream is coming true.” It read in part: “For a number of reasons, we have decided to travel for an entire academic year, August ’09 through summer 2010. Several factors make this the best and most practical year to do it with the kids. …We feel strongly we want to get out of Piedmont, broaden our perspectives, experience adventure and have a year of learning on the road — quasi-homeschooling — before the kids are too old.  … The itinerary is a work in progress; we’re choosing a number of destinations where we would like to get to know the community. … We’re going to spend a lot of our savings and offset some expenses by renting the house. As you might imagine, this trip is linked to potentially big changes in Morgan’s career and his position at the firm. … We’ve both thought long and hard about the concept sometimes called ‘repotting’ — of needing to uproot, replenish and settle into new circumstances enriched by that change — and his view is, if not now, then when?”

My schedule would be full enough without this trip preparation; I need to transport the kids to summer camps, plan meals and cook, do laundry, pay bills, run, walk the dog, volunteer and write. I thought that making lists would foster a greater sense of control and well being. Instead, more often than not, I wake between 3 and 4 a.m. envisioning cross-referenced and overlapping lists with bulleted points that feel like they’re firing at my brain:

• the big to-do list on my laptop’s calendar (“review insurance and get traveler’s ins.” … “prep for renters — give away old stuff, transfer utilities, make repairs, etc” … “clean out files and destroy old docs” … “make evite for party” …)
• the daily to-do list on my laptop e-sticky note (“dog to vet” … “set phone conf with CPA” … “stove repair” … “Spanish lesson, tengo que estudiar!“)
• the kids’ schooling list (“get access to online versions of textbooks” … “relearn 6th grade math” … “school supplies??” …)
• the packing list, with cross-ref’ed categories (“computers/photography/electronic stuff” … “clothing” … “meds & first aid” … “other toiletries” …)

Enough already. (Basta ya.) As Morgan said recently, “We’ve got the lists down; now we have to start checking things off.” I remind myself of what he is going through, which gives me a kick in the pants to get stuff done. He is dealing with complicated issues at the small law firm where he is a partner, and he must navigate a transition that is difficult for all involved.

It could be that I’m obsessing about the lists to divert my attention away from underlying fears about this transition and the impending departure from our comfort zone. I admit it: I crave control, follow routines and fear flying. Which is why this trip may be the hardest and most important thing I’ve ever done.

Related posts:

1. 83 Places, 5 Continents, 10 Months
2. “Back to School” Becomes “Leave to Learn”
3. One Year Later: The Time-Capsule Travel Letters and the ‘Eat Pray Love’ Backlash