I have had the great fortune to have already traveled quite a bit. I've been to some wondrous places, seen people and done things that are incredible. Unfortunately, I do not remember 90% of these trips, as I was too young, or too uninvolved to capture complete memories. In my first passport, I was 2 months old. My entire body fits in the frame, and I'm sitting in my father's hand. When I was 5 months old, my family went to France and England. I sat up in London for the first time, and with this new ability almost fell out of my stroller and off the towers at Notre Dame de Paris. I went on several school organized tours from middle school through high school, always over Spring Break. We got an exchange student from France, Florence, and our mothers became good friends. So we began to travel to France in the summers to see them. They took us all around to wonderful places that most tourists don't go. But I have very few memories of those places. I wish I had kept better travel journals, but I was just a kid. I couldn't have known how much I would want those memories later, or how easily they would slip away.
I didn't come away completely empty handed, however, and I do not mean to discourage anyone from traveling with children. Something very valuable can be gained by introducing kids to the world. These early experiences surrounded me with art, culture, and tradition far different from my own. Appreciation is perhaps an overused word, but it applies in this instance, because I understood that the world did not consist of my hometown, and that I was a piece of something much larger than myself. I may not have great memories, or be able to recall the names of the churches and the hillside villages and the famous sights, but I do have a familiarity, and a respect for them. Because my emotional reaction to what I was seeing has stayed with me longer than the details of where I was. I wish to never cease to be amazed by everything.
Aside from my spontaneous few hours in Paris (from my first post), there was one other trip before that tilled the soil in which I planted my solo travel seed. When I was a junior in undergrad, one of my favorite teachers from The University of North Texas, Professor Cynthia Mohr, organized a trip to Florence and Rome for a small group of students. She provided travel planning and the hotel; we were to build our own itineraries. If I wanted to sleep in and eat gelato 24/7, that was my business. She was the safety net, and we were the acrobats, flinging around through Florence at our own whims for 7 days. I planned on a few museums, picked out some nice walking tours, and was looking forward to a week of exploration. Upon arrival, I found my two roommates hadn't planned anything at all, and so I became a tour guide for them, taking them to the places I had planned, and reading my walking tours out loud instead of in my head. And while it was nice to have such eager company, I was still bound to my companions, and my ability to react to my own desires was stymied by the presence of others. (One of those roommates, by the way, purchased a pair of gorgeous Salvatore Ferrigamo's for her tiny size 5 feet, while I tromped around in my size 10 clunkers. This was also the trip where I was removed, by store security, from Versace, after I backed into a mannequin wearing a $2,000 dress and knocked it over. Thank goodness it didn't tear. There is no humor in Italy, where fashion is concerned.)
So here I am, with some photo albums to prove that I have been and that I have seen, but no substantial cognitive evidence. As I venture into the world again, this time, at my own discretion and for my own reasons, I hope to see the world fresh and new, as if it were the first time.
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