It’s that time again. The harvest is winding down. Jim bought a small basket of red and green chile so we can roast, peel, and freeze a few baggies to pull out in the middle of winter, when our bodies crave the chemical capsaicin (which produces the heat in chile). The air conditioner is closed up, and the heater turned on.
But it’s also time for one of my frequent journeys to Vietnam. I’ve stopped counting how many this makes — surely I’ve used up the fingers on both hands and am now onto my toes. I can tell you that each time I prepare for another trip, I go through the same bizarre process of mental gyrations.
Roma’s Five Stages of Travel Preparation
Stage One: Avoidance. As soon as I know I have to go on a long trip abroad, I put it out of my mind. After all, the trip is weeks, maybe months away. I sometimes neglect to tell even my family; I don’t want them to fret any earlier than necessary. Although I’ve gotten better about this, it would not have been unusual a few years back to hear the following conversation in my household:
ME: Hey, Jim, I did tell you that I’m leaving on Monday to (fill-in-the-blank-country)?
JIM: What?? No, I had no idea.
ME: Oh, I’m sorry. It was spur-of-the-moment.
JIM: You mean, they only gave you four days’ notice?
Stage Two: Nostalgia. I walk around my house, the patio, my yard, the girls’ rooms with a sweeping sense of loss and dread. How can I leave all this? I don’t want to go. Don’t make me go!!
Corrales Growers Market with the iPhone, all photos © 2010 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.
Stage Three: Guilt. Surely my children will be damaged by all my globe-trotting. Don’t people ask me every time I tell them I’m off again, “What about the girls?” I rush around like a crazy woman, trying to make my absence more bearable. I take Em’s Halloween outfit to the seamstress so it will be ready by the time I return. I hang up Dee’s clothes in her closet so she could find them easily while getting ready for school. Jim gets a homemade apple pie–his favorite. So this is what inspired Superwoman, I think.
Stage Four: Panic. This is the frenzied state I find myself in the day before I leave, my suitcase still not packed. I am relieved to find that my multientry visa is still valid. Whew! It would have been disastrous had it expired. (Been there, done that.) At 8 pm, the hour I should be hitting the sack given that I have to wake up at 3:45 am, I start flinging clothes into my suitcase. It’s cool in Hanoi, hot in the south. Whatever I forget to pack, I’ll just have to buy there. Hmmm, was that a goosebump I just felt?
Stage Five: Calm. Bags are checked, boarding passes in hand. I got an upgrade on the leg from ABQ to SFO. Wandering through airport stores, it dawns on me that I forgot to pack my neck pillow. Pick up a super soft one to add to our collection back home. Also picked up two books I’ve been wanting to read: lit by Mary Karr and Louise Erdrich’s The Plague of Doves. Between the books, my writing and doodle journals, plus a presentation and a bit of writing for work, I will make good use of my alone time. I’m ready for this. Let the fun begin!
A Sampling of (Recent) Vietnam Posts
- Vietnam As Destination, Vietnam As Muse
- The Mekong Delta Through A New Set Of Eyes
- Children In Vietnam
- On Being A Mother Who Travels (Or A Traveling Mother)
- Local Color — My Favorite Shots From Ha Long Bay
- Vietnam — On The Road To Change
- Vietnamese Painter Pham Luc & The Gift Of Happiness
- Burro On An Airplane
This is luscious stuff! the fruits of the garden, sensual to the max….Love the grower’s market, contrasted with the Vietnamese counterpart – not so different, after all….food is a universal theme.
I appreciate your quandary in dealing with the travel – I think you are remarkably strong and flexible to stay the course with home and family while toeing another line.
I never could have done it, honestly.
The stages of your emotional landscape are funny and sad, I just love the first one, “what, they only gave you 4 days notice?” hahaha well, not really….And admit it, in the end, you are having a blast. WTH?
Blast Off!
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Ho ho, Lupo, I’m trying to blast off. A first for this particular flight — San Francisco to Hong Kong — the plane had a mechanical, we had to switch planes, new crew, new pilots. The whole group of us are here in the United Lounge, they let us all come here, which is pretty nice. We’ve been nibbling carrots, celery, pretzels, cheese.
Our new departure time is 8p, seven hours later than the original departure time. Well, I got to talk to Jim as he watched Em’s cross-country race, plus talk to our little runner, and Dee. That was a treat.
And yeah, I am having a blast in the end. I’m doing what I dreamed of doing with my life. As my blog partner recently said, and it was so profound, there is no such thing as balance. (I’m paraphrasing there, but the gist is that we do the best we can to do everything we love–all of it–and along the way we make sacrifices.)
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i thought for certain we were gonna see a picture of your beautiful toes you now have to use to count. : )
hope you have a safe trip.
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ybonesy, are you there yet?! Sounds like quite the delay. I’m just getting a chance to catch up after flying back home from Wisconsin after a writing retreat. And just in time for you to take off to the other side of the world.
Love this post. Visuals organic and delicious looking. I have the same sense of dread when I am getting ready to travel. In fact, we were talking about it at the retreat. It takes a lot of work and effort to pack and leave home. No matter travel half way around the world or one state over — you are still leaving family and home.
Once I get through security and next to the gate, I relax. Until then, it’s nervous stomach all the way. We were on the shore of Lake Michigan. I expected Fall weather but it ended up being near to shorts weather. Sounds like you have to decide how to pack for the different regions of Vietnam, too.
I hope you have a great trip. Doodle and write your heart out in the spare time. I really do think there is no such thing as balance. At the last retreat when I wrote down my new goals for the next six months, I put them into categories by what I love: Memoir, Art, Photo, Practices, Business, Essays. And I’m going to rotate between them.
At the last retreat, I kept it simple. This time, a lot of different goals are coming together. So I’m juggling. Trying not to give any one thing up. Just rotating. I believe the balance thing is kind of a crock. It’s almost moment by moment and reassessing and prioritizing every day. Yes, we do the best we can to do what we love and to love who we love. It’s all love. See you when you check in!
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Hi QM. Yes, I finally made it! I landed in Ho Chi Minh City at about 5a (normally I would have landed at 10p the night before) and so far I’m holding up OK. We’ll see how I feel at dinner tonight. But it was nice to be able to talk to Jim and the girls as soon as I landed, and to wish them all a good night.
You’re right about all the effort and work it takes to go somewhere. Do you always feel the need to get certain things in order? Like bills or maybe cleaning or certain chores? I do, and that’s all on top of the actual packing. And I do just hate the good-byes. I’m much better at the hellos. 8)
QM, when you all set your new goals, do you also look at your past goals and see how those ones turned out? At work we use a pretty simple yet effective tool where every four months we set our goals for the next four months, and we “grade” the goals we’ve just completed. Sometimes the goals from before get moved forward, if they were longer term. Others are gone and come off the list altogether. It’s a great way to keep focused and to maintain momentum.
Hope to check in more from Vietnam. I head north tomorrow. I hope to check in on painter Pham Luc (link to a post about him at the end of this post). Meetings on Monday and Tuesday in Hanoi. I look forward to getting to know that city a bit better. It’s such a beautiful place.
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Ha ha, Julian, you foot fetishist, you. 😉
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Stage 6: Bliss.
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My “Bliss” stage doesn’t come until I am back home. Then there is bliss…for about 5 minutes before the panic of all I have to catch up with hits me in the face!
I could definitely relate to this one, even though I don’t do that much traveling, especially now.
The photos are gorgeous, as always.
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Safe trip and great adventures to you.
Like you, I deny that I’m going anywhere for as long as possible. I dislike leaving home, but am fine once I arrive at the place I am going. For me it’s leaving the familiar and going to a new something that requires me to leave behind the place I know in my bones. I usually enjoy the new place even if I’ve been there several times.
When I come home, I wonder why I left for awhile before I think of going somewhere else.
Look forward to stories and photographs from this trip to Vietnam.
About the goals QM mentioned: we discussed whether we had set goals for all seven times we had been together. We couldn’t remember if we did the first time. I think we did. We report on our goals the 15th and last day of every month until we meet again and then we make new goals which may or may not include previous goals. Sometimes old goals have become practices that we don’t restate every time. Someone is currently looking to a list of all of our goals for the last 3 years so we can look at them and see how we did. It is an process that keeps me aware of what I am doing.
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yb, I could be wrong, but I think down deep you’re a wandering soul with a great love of adventure. Your family, especially your sense of responsibility to your children, keep you grounded…and yes, sometimes feeling guilty. But I think if you couldn’t travel, you would feel unsatisfied.
I’m so glad you have a wonderful, self reliant Husband that can take care of the home world while your gone. Your Daughters, in the long run, will be so proud that they had a strong, independent Mother as their role model. The time they have with you will be that much more important. I also think it’s great that they get to have a close relationship with their Father because many people our own age never did.
You go girl. If I had my way, I’d leave my house (and cats) in my nieces hands and be driving around the world right now. 😉 H
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Hope your travels are going well, ybonesy. Planned to write a piece last weekend and out of the blue came the transplant for Louis! Amazing happening. He is doing well. I want to write a piece about it. Maybe some space to write this weekend.
With the goals we set, after I set new goals, I don’t look back. Unless it’s a wider goal that I want to carry over. I’ve found that my bigger projects spread out across a year, a year and a half. Big creative projects take time in a busy life.
Jude did dig out and send out all of our goals from over the years. I haven’t had a chance to look at them yet. But it should be interesting. I like setting 6 month goals for my writing and art. I am finding that I plan out a year ahead for my retreats and big art events or shows. Pencil them in well ahead of time. I look at time by months and years.
Last time the Midwest Writing Group met, I set simple short goals and I managed to meet most of them. This time, I have 5 sections of goals with different lists under each one. A bunch of different things are coming together. We’ll see what comes to pass.
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[…] I’d love to know more about the Vietnamese Lunar New Year celebration. I am a Moonchild, and after receiving your card, I researched a little bit about Tết Nguyên Đán (also known as Tết). I wonder if it ever came up in the comments on ybonesy’s many posts about her journeys to Vietnam. […]
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