TRAVEL ANYONE?

Picture of the village square in Denholm, Scotland

Hello, Ladies. This is my first blog, and truth be told, I’ve been going back & forth as to what to write about. Ponnie, bless her, has left the subject matter up to me – more fool her, me thinks!

Anyway, a conversation I had with my mom earlier this afternoon finally cinched the topic matter for me. She was telling me about a conversation she’d had with a colleague of hers this morning about her upcoming trip to England (a Christmas present from my sister and I) – she’s going to visit friends in various parts of the UK for 10 days, and her coworker was just shocked that she is going alone on this trip. Her coworker, apparently, won’t even go to see her son in Virginia unless someone goes with her – her husband, her daughter, her friend, anyone. That got me to thinking….

I remember my first solo trip. I was 8 years old, and we were living in a little village called Denholm, in the border region of Scotland (about an hour southeast of Edinburgh). It was – and still is – a lovely village, with a beautiful village green, a post office, a school, and a couple of little stores. We lived in an old brick house that had once been the police station for the village and surrounding area – our downstairs bathroom had once been the jail cell!
Mom was ill – or maybe she was busy with my younger sister & brother – either way, she couldn’t go herself; I don’t remember now where my dad was, but he wasn’t around to go run errands for my mom. Nor do I remember what it was that I was going into town for – although it must have been for things we couldn’t get at the village store, or I would never have gone.

What I do remember is how special and grown up I felt. Here I was, 8 years old, taking the bus from the village into Hawick – the closest sizeable town, about 20 minutes away – all by myself. I had a shopping list of things I needed to get for mom, plus the money to get them, plus the money to pay for the bus each way. I was being trusted to do this all on my own, and it felt great! I made it into town and back again without incident, and successfully brought everything back – including the change! – that mom had asked for. How much better could it get than that??

What I didn’t know – couldn’t possibly have known – at the time was that that was the just first of many, many solo trips I would take in my life.

We moved south to Hertfordshire, a small town called Turnford about 45 minutes from downtown London, shortly after my foray into the world of solo travel. Turnford was a big change for all of us: we went from a village of about 500 people to a town of about 15,000 that was part of the London conurbation (one of my all-time favorite words, by the way!), and that naturally changed the rules. We were no longer in the safety of the Scottish borders, we were now in the “big city” – or so it felt!

I suppose I should explain a little of how we ended up in the UK. My mom is American, my father was Scottish (he passed away 10 years ago); they met when my mom – ever the intrepid solo traveler herself – moved to the Scottish Highlands to work in a hotel for the summer. Dad followed her back stateside, and spent several months working just across the border in Canada (Mom was in our home state of Minnesota at the time) until he could convince her to marry him. We spent the first two years of my life in Minnesota – we had moved house 5 times by the time I was 2 – and then my parents decided to move to Australia. Mom was a teacher, and the Australian government was calling out for teachers at the time; Dad had always wanted to live there (it’s a big destination for the British), and so they signed up for a two-year stint. It didn’t work out for them, however – Australia was simply too far removed from the known world for my mom (we are talking about 38 years ago, remember: communication & travel were not what they are now), and it was just w-a-a-a-a-ay too hot for my dad, so at the end of the 2-year contract, we moved on to Scotland, my father’s birthplace. He was an only child, and so we moved there to be closer to his mother.

And that’s just the start of the story. As Ponnie is writing about the joys of being single, I am going to be writing about the joys of traveling – alone or with other people. So many people miss out on so much by not wanting to do things alone: I’m hoping to share my absolute joy of travel with you in such a way as to light your interest in going yourself – or in nudging your fledglings out of the nest to go on their own adventures!

God has been so good to me in my travels and experiences: may He help me to share them with you! After all, didn’t Jesus and the Apostles – and Paul, for that matter –travel all over the then-known world, alone & together??

Blessings & Hugs
Esther-Marie

Tune in Thursday, February 25th for my next adventure!!

Friday's blog: Ponnie is doing a special blog about "The Kitchen Table" you won't want to miss it.