Travel
We started early with you, Bobo. You were three months old and we tossed you on an airplane with us and want to Hawaii. We took your brother and sister and went over to Oahu and visited your Grandfather and Grandmother. Traveling with a 3 month old was actually alot easier than I’d anticipated. Granted, at that age, you’re still breastfeeding, so your food supply is always right there. But as soon as that first trip was in the books, we were already thinking of what else we could do. The following August we’d take your sister to Costa Rica for her high school graduation / 18th birthday trip. We’d leave you with grandma as you were still too young to go out of the country like that. Plus you’d just gotten out of your cast from your hip dysplasia operation. I’ll leave that story for a different entry.
That same December, when you were 15 months old, we’d take you on your first (of many) trips to Disneyland. You were too young to really know what was going on, but it was wonderful to have you along. As it always was. As the vacations piled up, you really became our ride or die. After that first trip with your Sister, we wouldn’t take another trip as a family without you along. It always made sense to bring you. You were the best sidekick I could imagine on those trips. I don’t know if you particularly enjoyed yourself all the time, but you did seem to enjoy the adventure.
Disneyland, Hawaii, Yosemite, Lassen, Monterey, Arches, Zion, Canyonlands, Capital Reef, Grand Canyon, Vermillion Cliffs, Hoover Dam, Las Vegas, Portland, Washington, Mendocino, Morro Bay, Santa Barbara, Cabo San Lucas, Sunriver, Wyoming, Salt Lake City…..
I’ll bet I’m missing some. Road trips were your expertise. You’d sit in your car seat, eat your snacks that were packed for you, play with your iPhone/iPad and any toys we had back there and go where the road would take us. The adventures we’d have were always enhanced by having you there. You weren’t always agreeable with what we chose for dinner or what we chose for the daily itinerary, but you’d either adjust, or we would. Some of the tragedy lies in the fact that you could never tell us if you were having a good time or not. We’d infer by either your agreeableness or your irritation with what was going on. But more often than not, even if you weren’t super excited about it, you’d still hang in there with us. And I’d like to think that you, like us, were just happy to be together. To be connected and to be gifted with each other’s company, that was the goal. And we hit it much more often than not.
To think of travelling now without you will be a study in loneliness. Your mom and I have each other, of course. But once you arrived, you completed the traveling group. We’ve been two places since you passed. Once after you were cremated, to South Lake Tahoe, and once to Mendocino. Both times were to run away from home. Not in a vacation type way, or a “let’s spend time together” way (which was generally why we went with you) but in a “We can’t be home right now, it’s too much” kind of way. In staying home those times the grief would surely overtake us and we’d do our thing which included sitting in the living room with what’s becoming a shrine to you, and alternate between crying, talking about you, and silence.
The thing that I keep going back to is this, Bobo. We had you, you existed, and ultimately made our lives so much better in ways neither of us even knew could occur until you arrived. And we are eternally grateful for that. The trick will be carrying on in that for as long as we live, and not falling off into the abyss of sadness that your loss has created.