A week ago we had planned (no.1 lesson. leave the plans in the storage bay with all the other unnecessary "things"), to leave. One severe nappy rash on baby Lucy (changing Lu definitely needs to be considered as an Olympic sport?), feeling unwell with constant nagging/throbbing head pain (or was that just the week?) and then Jake arrives home from his camp only to trip and gouge a hole across the front of his tiba seconds before we drove out the driveway. An ambulance trip to A&E, many stitches and tears later, we decied to try again!
There are lessons everyday to learn, some I truly believe we ignore and believe we can do better, others we put down to inexperience (much the same thing) then there are those like the one we are embarking on together which will change you, move you, stress you and leave memories you can never forget.
Only a day into our trip and we have memorable memories. Whilst moving out of the house was never going to be easy, considering the "stuff" we had acquired, ridiculous amounts of "things", too many, then leaving pets, saying goodbye to friends, working through the proceses of packing, what do we need to take, what we don't need (more importantly), the extras we had never considered, the tips, making lists and notes and more lists, then tossing them and learning to get in touch with our instincts more. What ever happened to those all those thousands of years ago (must be the budding anthropologist in me always tapping into our roots), we push them all aside for logic, reasoning, planning, organisation. We stop living and starting existing, surely it was never mean't to be that way.
So we have just made no 6 stop only 3 hrs into our trip. Stop to say goodbye to Ben, our son who died nearly 10 years ago from a brain tumour at 3 and half years, stop to pick up school work, put a stop on our junk mail at the post office, stop for food, stop for toilets, stop to plug in the power adaptor to the PC (how I love this technology driving and tapping into the wide world at the same time), stopping to change drivers, stopping to sort kids arguments (I wonder if I should keep a tally?) oooh...maybe that was more than 6 stops. Must go I am changing to driver.
Already missing friends, a little anxious, where will we go, can we get there without putting anymore cracks in our sometimes fragile relationships (as families are). I can only hope we will laugh, we will learn, we will live and create the best memories of our lives after feeling like we have lived through so many moments we wish we could forget, moments we wanted to have more of, people we dream of meeting up again with one day. Life is truly so short, we never know how long we will get, what we can do is choose the way we live it and what better way than taking a drive to visit a friend, family, and deciding to take the long way home?
