Last evening, Mark and I finalized our travel plans for Christmas.
Over the last couple of weeks, we had considered several options: Mark’s father lives in Decatur, Illinois, about a seven-hour drive from us. Mark’s brother lives with his family another hour north of that. Since we hadn’t seen either since last spring it seemed logical, reasonable, to consider spending Christmas in Illinois. ~ Seven hours in the car is long. Mark and I are wonderful travel companions, and the Lexus is as comfortable as cars get, but sitting still for such a long time is hard, even with breaks in between.
Another option was to spend a few days in a hotel in either St. Louis or Springfield, Illinois, to explore the city - both cities are on the way to Decatur. From there it would be only one or two hours to run up to Decatur for a shorter one-day visit.
Then there’s my sister in Minnesota, “four feet south of Canada” as Mark likes to say. She moved there two years ago and now lives in the boonies, a bit north of Bemidji. We’ve been invited and we know she’d love to have us. I haven’t seen her in two years (she stopped by on her way from Arizona to Minnesota when she moved), Mark has yet to meet her. So many good reasons to go.
It’s a good 15 hours to Bemidji, you can make it in one day, two are better, which makes four days traveling which would leave one day to actually be there. We looked into flying to Minneapolis and taking a rental car from there. Either way, we’d have to deal with the weather in Northern Minnesota. Lately, my sister has posted several pictures on flickr of her thermometer, showing an outside temperature of, oh, 20 below, then a couple of days later, 30 below. With snow, of course. Lots of snow. 15 hours in the car is long. But 15 hours of contending with undoubtedly hazardous driving conditions would turn the pleasure of traveling - “it’s the journey as much as the destination” - into a 15-hour nervous “Are we there yet??”
Aside from the traveling - flying? driving? both? - there was the issue of money. We have a diabetic cat who needs her insulin, twice a day. Anytime we want to travel and stay overnight, we have to make arrangements to board her at the pet hospital.
Last year, when I still lived in Manhattan and Mark still lived in Overland Park, we divided our Christmas break between Manhattan and Overland Park, leisurely traveling back and forth, taking my son Jonathan who had driven up from Emporia with us. We did a lot of leisurely and enjoyable cooking (no need to impress anyone but us) and baking. We watched special movies and videos, among them La Traviata - three hours of opera. We went for walks, we napped, we talked, we laughed, we talked about the past, about the future. At home.
So.
We did a bit of soul-searching. Was it truly the obstacles and travel hazards that after a while made us say, “Honey, how about staying home?” or were they merely a convenient excuse to indulge inertia?
There’s a bit of pressure to do something special for Christmas. Staying home - is that enough of “something special”?
We decided it was.
Our travel plans for Christmas then, this year, are to stay home.
Season’s Greetings to all!
