I was raised with travel stars in my eyes. My maternal grandparents seemed to travel the world in my childhood and their house was filled with National Geographic and Life magazines. Plus, the drive to their house on the north side of Chicago from ours in the suburbs meant passing by O’Hare Airport and all the billboards beckoning one to travel to the Bahamas in the winter and advertising new service to Warsaw. Our family summer vacations were by car (after all, there were four of us kids) until Mom went to work for the original Midway Airlines while I was in high school.
But each time I start packing to leave as an adult, I find myself filled with anxiety about, well, leaving. It’s ridiculous, but somehow I find that I get rooted into my routine so easily that it’s hard to pull myself out of it. And this was made worse by the pandemic when Greg and I couldn’t make our several trips a year to LA. When we finally could make a trip, I was a wreck, but I knew it was important for me to go, to pull my root out of the ground.
The more I travel, the more I realize how important it is for me, that it makes me more adaptable to situations. And it makes me appreciate my routine at home that much more. Travel helps me bend more. And I know that by bending more, I’ve also had so many opportunities I wouldn’t have had if I stayed home.
I keep pulling the root out because I know I want to make the most of this life I have, because I want to experience new things, meet new people. Creating– via writing and sewing- are mostly solitary activiities– but there’s a balance to that of experiencing the world. After all, those travels keep inspiring me to create more.