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Trippin’
I’m back in the County. Like the song lyrics say, “Gee, but it’s great to be back home.” Vancouver is a wonderful place. CFB Shiloh is an interesting place. But home is where my pillow is. Home is where my coffee maker is. Home is where my laptop is. Home is where my kitchen is set up the way I set it up. And, believe it or not, I actually missed the summer traffic noise of the County. It is much noisier here than it is in the apartment in Vancouver.
Oh ya, in Vancouver you might hear more emergency and police sirens, but in the County there’s a continuous drone of traffic from the twofour weekend until Thanksgiving. Even our Toronto visitors have commented about how much more street noise there is here. In Vancouver, between the “whoop, whoop” of emergency vehicles and patrol cars, the only other noise we dealt with was the evil crow that had taken up residence in the fig tree just off the balcony. Mostly, it’s quiet in Vancouver. At CFB Shiloh, the noisiest it got was when the little ones across the street, played in the early morning before heading to school. Whoddathunkit.
So, home in the County it is. The first time LOML and I went to British Columbia was in 1973. I vaguely remember having a bit of jet lag at both ends of that trip. We arrived back in Toronto on a Sunday afternoon and I had to go to work on Monday. More than one coworker mentioned how tired I looked. I was thrilled to tell them about my firstever plane ride and why I looked the way I did. By the end of the first day, back at my desk, I had no choice but to perk up.
A job is a job and there was a lot of catching up to do. I soon forgot about the jet lag and just got on with my life. Oh, travelling when I was in my twenties was such a piece of cake. Forty-three years later, LOML and I are still making trips to the west coast to visit our family but now we have added a stop in Manitoba to visit our daughter and her wife.
Another airport, another household and more confusion for my sixty-something brain. If I don’t look in a mirror, I don’t think about being in my sixties. However, the mirror and the bags under my eyes aren’t the problem these days. Nope. When we get home, I find it difficult to remember what city I’m in when I wake up with a start at three o’clock in the morning. And for that moment, while I stumble around, I often wonder where we left the car and if we have to pick up our checked baggage. I like to think my temporary lapses of memory are happening because I have so much more to remember, but I know better. I’m not twenty anymore. I’ve got travel fog.
For those of you who know me and those of you who can’t wait to know me better, travelling, for us, is as much a passion, as it is a necessity. If LOML and I want to see our oldest son and youngest daughter and their families on a regular basis, we have to travel. These days, rather than be upset by the “where am I now,” “is the car at the Park ‘n’ Fly” or “which way to the bathroom,” we just chalk it all up to jet lag. You know, the kind of jet lag that might last for weeks or months or even years. This may become my permanent state of mind— foggy with a chance of confusion.
More trips? You bet. We’re heading to the UK in the fall to visit one of the brothers. I can hardly wait for a spot of tea to go with my fog.
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