Leaving On a Jet Plane

Normally, I'm fine with our fairly settled life. We lived in Charlotte for about ten years, and we've been in Athens for two years and will be here for another two. I like the familiarity of a local grocery store or knowing the barista at my local coffee shop. I like having a local coffee shop. I enjoy bumping into people I know at the Farmer's Market. It's a solid feeling that makes me feel I am home. 

And then I go to the airport and am immediately caught up in the flow of movement. The frantic rushes to the security check out. The flurry of trading tickets for boarding passes, of loading ones suitcase on a scale to be sent to the bowels of the monster (hopefully to not be lost). I am charmed once again by the different faces and languages that wave over and around me. As I watch out over the planes lined up in front of  me, I feel the stirring. The wanting to wander, to go to new places. 

I start to dream of once again going to out into the world. I don't think any longer that it will make smarter, classier or better. Of course it will open up new experiences but I understand now in ways I didn't before that being a world traveler is not going to open some new door to the middle class. Now that I am older, I want to travel to see new things, to experience food, music, and places in ways that one quite can't do through a book or a documentary.

And now I want the beasties to do this as well. I watch as they look over across the tarmac to the planes sweeping by, faster and faster until they jolt up. I remember that feeling of being pushed back into my seat as I impossibly lift up from the Earth. Of all my beasties, Umberto is the only one who remembers this sensation of becoming untethered.

Today I am able to still these feelings with the promises of some trips in the future. We are planning (and hoping) on a big stay in Cuba which is something H and I have dreamt of for awhile. And perhaps a winter trip to Mexico. It is enough to think of those future designations. A long with those thoughts, put away for later, are the immediate pleasures of exploring a city we still have yet to fully discover. It is nice to be thrust out of the familiar after all even if that thrust does not push us many miles.