Daydreaming

On the way home from Mass yesterday morning, our 9-year-old said wistfully that she’d love to move to Hawaii or New Orleans. She didn’t seem to care very much which one, but both seemed exotic and exciting to her.

Her father and I joined in her game of make believe and talked about the places we’d go if we could sell everything and just pick up and go. He talked of mountains or wide open spaces, while I dreamed as always of the ocean.

It’s a funny thing to think about such grand adventures with a household full of children, and one about to head off to college in the fall. Perhaps it’s her own excitement over her life that has us daydreaming about all of the things that could be.

I was surprised by how much the idea of owning nothing appealed to me, how much I longed to sell everything we own and walk away with only suitcases of clothes and plane tickets to somewhere else held tightly in our hands.

We are the descendants of wild adventurers. Our people left homes in Europe for the great unknown of the New World, and then moved every few generations for newer opportunities, and to see what lay just over the next mountain. I think we both have a little bit of wanderlust bred into our very bones. While I’ve always been a little bit of a rootless gypsy at heart, he’s taken a little longer to wonder what else might be.

Just for fun last night, I made a list of “chuck it alls,” the places we would jump at the chance to be…even if it were for a short while. Watching our eldest starting out in life has me wishing we were doing the same. I wouldn’t be 17 again for all the world; I’ve fought hard for the knowledge I have and 39 suits me just fine….it’s the possibilities and the excitement I envy. It’s the starting out instead of ending up, I suppose.

I spent this afternoon sorting through the things in my closet and the playroom, I had planned to do it anyway, but there was a dreaminess to it as I packed some things away, and sent others off to St Vincent de Paul. I made believe that we were leaving in a few months to go somewhere foreign…somewhere warm…so all this stuff just had to go. Before I knew it, hours had flown and I’d made three trips to drop off our donations of extras from around the house. I sang this afternoon in my own awful way, and smiled. A lot.

There has been a lot of hard in this house in the past three years. We’ve faced Juvenile Arthritis, awful accidents, and personal tragedy. It’s no wonder that I dream of running away. It would be lovely to have a holiday from real life and get to take my people with me for a long and extended stay. For now, it will get to stay my favorite daydream….

Unless…

You know someone who desperately needs a brilliant computer guy and his writer wife. If they don’t mind us bringing along a half dozen children and there’s a beach involved….we can be there Tuesday.