Traveling & Traditions

For me, holidays are synonymous with travel. It’s not unique. It’s a common-known phenomenon—highways congested, airports overloaded.

It’s my own fault. I’m the one who left home. For school, for work, for love. Because home felt elsewhere. Or because home didn’t feel like home. At different points, different places. I guess I shouldn’t complain, I brought it on myself.

Packing up clothes and packages, newspaper clippings I’d been meaning to send to my father, gifts and toiletries, that shirt I borrowed from my sister, it’s slow-going getting ready. Slower going loading the car. But luckily for me I live where most people go. For instance, this weekend, Columbus Day weekend, most people are heading to see the foliage. We are heading south on the highway, for the most part avoiding traffic, for a quick dinner with my father, my nephew’s football game, a visit with .

We used to stay with my sister, but three now, we have overgrown our welcome. Not that she wouldn’t let us stay, we’ve done it before. Her family upstairs, ours in the basement with the air bed and the pack-n-play. Now though, with Georgia growing, the need for routine and time away from stimulation is obvious. Last night alone after a day of visiting, at dinner, she got so slap happy I knew it was only matter of time before her giggles and smiles turned south into frowns and wails. But, blaming the baby entirely would be unfair, our need for a restful night’s sleep is palpable.

So here we sit, and here I write this. From a hotel room. Our day stretching full and loaded before us. Our luggage—multiplied 175 times now with baby—strewn around us. And I wonder: Could we do this if we had another baby? We’ve already decided that Thanksgiving will be too much this year. We have opted instead, to cook our own Turkey—our first one!!—and invite family up north. Not all of them will come, stuck in their own traditions. And so we start our own…

I am beginning to understand how families break off into smaller pods. As families expand, Thanksgiving, Christmas, the Forth of July evolve. I don’t take it lightly, these are the days my child will remember. These are the bonds that will mean the most. We are a family in transition. Traveling. Trying out new traditions.

(Check out my 31 for 21 blog challenge for Down syndrome awareness at my regular blog.)