11.11.16 - Darn dang it! I'm ready!

11.11.16

“Darn dang it!  I’m ready!”*

We aren’t much for the dip the toe in the water style of living - there is no slow acclimating to the temperature in this team.  The girls are flinging themselves into the pool without hesitation even when the sun hides behind the clouds and the wind whips leaves across its surface.  They come out gasping and flailing and do it over and over and over and over.  

And that’s how we travel.

Before we’d even experienced an international trip with two barbarians, before we’d suffered the ignoble fate of 6(x2) ice creams in a day, before we’d(I’d) carried a 62 pound child across four countries on my poor, hunched back, we bought tickets to Italy.  

In all transparency, post-summer trip, we were feeling pretty nervous about Italy.  The problem with traveling is that last leg as you head home tends to be the lowest point.  We were used to the European short flights and train rides.  We were semi-at-home on the road, and at the same time, some on the raiding party were more than semi-ready to be back at our home home.  The gap left to leap was a 10 hour flight with a layover in SLC and a 2 hour flight from there to LAX.  

That left us all a little damaged.  

Unlike the girls shivering in the pool with smiles on their faces, we came home knowing that we wanted to go on this trip, that we’d have a great time, but we dreaded the unavoidable shock of diving back into the water.  

“Are we really doing this?” is the most frequently used line in relation to this trip.  With the end of summer and the second quarter of the school year marching forward, there hasn’t been much time to wrap our minds around this adventure and maybe that’s better.

Maybe it’s better to put your mind elsewhere and just jump in - to embrace joy even if it’s a little uncomfortable.  We can all swim.  

...

Tickets were bought.  Apartments were reserved.  Time passes.  And here we are, 30 some days out from getting on a plane and heading for Florence.  We are swimming.  Cold water or not, we are jumping in.  

Smiles on our faces, we don’t wade but leap.  We embrace the experience with every ounce of ourselves.  

We just go.

* This line was uttered by H2 when I asked her if she was ready for K.  I then made her say it repeatedly as I laughed on our drive home from preschool.