Prelude to a family vacation

I miss it: The packing and list drafting and three-week foresight that comes with travel. I crave those restless nights that come before departure. I would find myself shifting all night in bed, sleepless due to excitement or the morphing list of things that still need to be done.

Distractions ensue, and the result always seems to be me dashing out the door in house slippers and breakfast on my chin. But I love it.

Midnight in Venice, Italy

I’d give anything to wake up to pitch darkness and the kind of silence that signifies how the world around you is still asleep. I embrace that feeling of being suspended in my 4 a.m. preparations, moving through an early-morning resistance as if the night thickened while we REMed. I love taking my shoes off at security, even though I can feel the cold of the tile seeping through my socks, bringing with it some backpacker’s athletes foot or toe jams or whatever nonsense feet absorb and disperse. I even love sitting next to that one passenger, the one who talks incessantly about nothing at all because that’s the ridiculousness that I remember when the movement has ceased.

The stories I could tell you that have taken place during transit, oh, they range from embarrassing to heart-warming. From hair products mistaken for sex toys to old Korean men who have offered the type of kindness that breaks harbored stereotypes.

I just love to travel.

Bag piping in Edinburgh, Scotland

I’ve grown accustomed to traveling alone, navigating and getting lost and discovering things by myself. This trip I’m taking, the one that starts on Friday, is of a different design and for an alternative purpose than what I’m used to. This week, I’m going on a family vacation.

Three weeks gone with parents and siblings and relatives and cousins. Three weeks with agendas and meal plans and beds that don’t have bugs and rooms that don’t house strangers. I’ll get room service and fancy dinners, a pirate-themed party thrown by a family-friendly Disney. Someone else will navigate and someone else will get lost, and I’ll be the one tagging along in the back, just along for the ride.

Lost in the outskirts of Seattle

Though it sounds like a trip induced by leisure, it’s in fact a result of family deaths and cancers and sicknesses. Like a home-owner investing in a house alarm after being robbed, my family is taking action. Together, we will experience the nuances of being related. I haven’t done this since ’96 and I have no idea how it’s going to go down, but I have my brother and an ID that says I can buy alcohol, so I’m well-equipped to endure anything.

Three days until I’m gone. Three weeks until I’m crazy.

Florida, Bahamas, Pennsylvania, Las Vegas. Oh good gracious, here I come.