7 Months Abroad: The Good
On our last night on the Kerry coast, Laura and I sat with our toes in the sand. The Irish sun was beginning its slow descent. Three kids ran and played and laughed, calling to each other over cold Atlantic waves.
Two thoughts landed:
It was over. This epic trip that felt so endless back in January was coming to an end.
The bigger adventure — this phase where these little ones are “ours” — that’s got a shelf life too. And it’s shorter than it feels right now.
I've been trying to capture the ‘big takeaways’, and there definitely are some of those.
“You can do big, hard things” “There is good all over the world and God (and his church) will meet you wherever you go.” You can lean on one another.”
These aren’t platitudes for the kids- they’re what we lived.
But when people ask “how was your trip?”, sharing a few big takeaways honestly just doesn’t seem to cut it.
I want to tell them the little things. To let every piece of gold spill out on the floor so they can see for themselves the treasure we’ve been given.
“How was our trip?”
Our trip was the wave of relief as we opened the envelope to French visas in December. It was the pit in our stomach as we walked out of our house in January. It was last hugs from cousins. It was Lisbon rooftops and biking past Portuguese farmers. My daughter's seventh birthday at the pizza place on the corner in Sevilla.
It was the pesto and sun-dried tomatoes from the Cefalù deli👌. It was wild rosemary and thyme crunching underfoot on our first climb behind the house in Aix. It was insane onramps in eastern Sicily. It was aperos with Manque and little Cleo and Lorenzo, our neighborhood sommelier. It was Adrien and Big Fluff the friendly dog and Sicily Laura. It was high-energy Manuel taking us over the Spanish border. It was Lydie and Alexa, Anne, Lance, Jeannette and the church, Aaron and Tiffany, and all the familiar faces of Occitanie. It was Christian and Barbara and our favorite Austrian grandma offering us a beer in their meadow as the pink sun hit their mountain across the lake.
It was tears of frustration at the Dingle golf course and laughter at getting stuck in the Spanish rain. It was the cheery songs of a Dublin pub, it was the hushed French of a late-night Parisian lounge. It was churros, gelatos, Butterscotch Murphy's ice cream, and croissants without end.
It was the winged Nike statue and Vincent's starry night over the Rhone. It was sneaking into Oxford colleges and it was kids falling asleep on me as we waited for the Eiffel to twinkle. It was playgrounds and 'our' cafes in every town. It was crowded trains, and the pilot who changed his mind 3,000 ft above Marseille.
It was butterflies in our stomachs as we walked on Portuguese ocean cliffs. It was Spanish pigs trotting through the pasture and Irish sheep clinging for dear life to green cliffs above the swirling ocean. It was the dead quiet of Sénanque Abbey in the middle of the night. It was the roar of the La Liga crowd when Sevilla took the lead.
It was sunsets — from Provence to Cefalù, Etna to Salzburg to the far reaches of western Ireland. It was fish and cider with Olivia's family. It was winding around the Nimes colosseum with Ryan, Erica, and the kids. It was breakfast in the rain with Francis and Hilary. It was the joy of seeing Grandma at the door and white-knuckling Palermo traffic because I brought her to the wrong airport to go home. It was Grammy walking her 600th step down from mountaintop Taormina to Isola Bella. It was saying goodbye to her in a Provençal night.
Memory Dividends for a Lifetime
By the time a kid walks across the stage at high school graduation, they’ve already used up around 90% of the in-person time they will ever have with their parents. Every holiday after that, every visit, every phone call for the rest of your life — that's the last 10%.
Our little ones are nine, nine, and seven. We're sitting right in the fat part of the curve. For now.
Shared experiences are the building blocks of relationships and novelty is the tripwire for memories. Keep life steady and it flies by in a blink. Try something new and memories are made- and time slows down.
There have been a lot of hard times in my thirties. Times I wished would just go faster. Now though? We’re realizing that what feels like forever is just a few short years. How do we maximize the time we have?
The Worth of a Trip
I mentioned our crappy minivan in the first post.
I wrote that the cost of this trip cost was about the same as a slightly newer model. Not a new van. Just slightly less used.
I've thought about that newer minivan since we got back. The one with a few less creaks would be nice. It’s the kind of purchase people make all the time.
But life is tradeoffs. For us, we asked ourselves a year ago what we wanted more: a slightly newer minivan or this trip in this season.
Which one would you choose? For us it is not close. It is not remotely close.
Conclusion
I'm not telling you to go to Europe for seven months. Exploring Europe is our jam and we found ourselves in the fortunate position to do it (plus go read part two — our voyage had real challenges). This trip that was so joyful for us would be torture for most people.
What I am telling you is that whatever window you're in right now has a shelf life too. A marriage still young, parents still sharp, knees that still work, kids who still want you in the room. These don’t last forever. You already know this. We all do. But knowing it is not the same as acting on it.
We took a shot on something while our window was open. We came home tired and sunburnt and “purple” and sad and glad. We found memories that meant something to us — and will mean something to us. Did this trip cost a lot? Yep, I don’t even want to add up all the points, dollars and hours.
But for us, it was the deal of a lifetime.
"Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is... because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace." - Frederick Buechner
