We had a lovely evening with very good friends last evening. S & G have been good friends for a few years now and one of the things that made us enjoy their company so much was that they have a really great sense of adventure and have done a lot in their lives. They have been in some wonderfully interesting places. They've lived in the North (the far North) and they have taken kids to Africa several summers in a row and now they have just come back from a trip to Europe. It is their kind of life that makes me so wish that things were a little different for Teapot and I.
It all started a long time ago... when I was 14 years of age that I developed a deep interest in traveling. I was on the verge of a terrible year of surgery and body casts and lying on the flat of my back for many months and then rehab, rehab, rehab. My Mom and Dad knew it was coming and so decided to take me on the vacation of a lifetime. My older sister, who was in University at the time, was excluded from this trip and my grand parents came to stay with her as she was writing her first year exams. My mother, father and I jetted off to England, passports in hand, to stay with my Father's cousin in Old Harlow just outside of London. I won't go into details because it would take too long to talk about all the wonderful experiences that once-in-a-lifetime-trip would afford me. What I will say is that it initiated in me a love of traveling that has never really been fulfilled.
Later in my teens and early adulthood, I had the good fortune to date a fellow whose parents were loaded and would take me on wonderful trips jetting to Toronto and Florida to stay in condominiums and time shares. I also went into Travel Counseling after high school with the thought that I would travel all over the world.... this never happened although as part of my course I had a wonderful trip to New York city where I got to see all the normal touristy things including the World Trade Towers. Then I met and married Teapot and we travelled across Canada in a two seater convertible twice which also turned out to be wonderful trips. Then we had our children and other things became our priorities. Our travelling years and in particular mine.... came to a resounding end. The reason? Money....
Teapot and I were almost thirty when we met and we were no where near career oriented... we had wasted many years in University floundering around trying to figure out what we wanted to do with our lives... (and if truth be told we still don't know what we want to do with our lives). So when Teapot got the opportunity to work in north western Ontario on an native reservation, we jumped at the chance. The job was a normal paying job commensurate with any starting wage in the teaching profession, but there was no pension at all and we had huge student loans between the two of us which we knew would have to be paid off first before we could go forward with our lives. But even before we paid them off we knew that we wanted a family and so children came into the picture. All the while I held out hope that some day we would be able to afford opportunities to travel all over the world... but as the years have gone by, that has not panned out.
Now that is not to say that I am unhappy (or Teapot either for that matter) with what life has offered us... absolutely not. We are very happy and thank God for all the wealth we have both monetary and otherwise. We both look at our lives and feel relatively satisfied with all that we have done.... but always we have regretted not being able to travel... especially home.... the girls have no knowledge of Newfoundland and have no interest in it at all.
So it was that we went to our friend's house last evening and looked at their photos with envy and awe. They had traveled to Boston, Amsterdam, Switzerland, Italy, back to Switzerland, back to Amsterdam, on to Poland, and then on into the Netherlands. Their pictures are wonderful... their pictures make me want to cry... how is it that I am now in my 40s (almost 50s) and travel is not likely to happen for Teapot and I any time soon? Teapot has 12 and a half years till retirement... I can't see anything on the horizon for us any time soon.
Teapot missed his chance to go to Australia this summer with the Rangers because he did not get his passport in enough time....but he has had opportunities to travel within BC. Daughter #1 has had opportunities to travel with the Junior Canadian Rangers within BC and Alberta too. I even get to drive to Olds once a year and that is a wonderful trip.... but Daughter #2 goes nowhere (and that bothers me more than anything). Each year we hope that we will be able to go on a little trip all of us together but it never seems to pan out.
And so I sat in the dark last night watching our friends pictures roll through the slideshow presentation that they had put together and I drooled and wished that the Daughters could have that kind of worldly exposure.... that Teapot and I would not go through this life with a limited view of the world. That new cultures and interesting places would capture our imaginations and lead is to a higher understanding of this planet we live on.
So to show you why this is so important to me I will tell you a little about the trip our friends took and how it set me on fire for something other than my own corner of this planet. Stay tuned for the next post.
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