Progress

Planning a trip or an event is so nerve-wracking.  What do I need to do?  What will I wish I hadn't done?    What will I wish I had done? Will I pack too much or too little.  What goes in the hand luggage?

Good grief!  I have traveled all my life.  Since I was 10 months old.  I traveled as a child, letting my mother have all the worries.  I have traveled as a newlywed, clueless.  I, ( have traveled to exotic places) wondering "when does it get exotic" and my husband looks out the car window, mouth open in awe of all of the exotic sights.

And I have traveled with children.  One at a time we kept adding to our family until there were five children.  Diaper bags to back packs.I feel like I have done it all.

But somehow, this is different.  More exciting.  I have not traveled outside of the US since 1998- well a road trip to the Canadian side of Niagara Falls doesn't count.

And I am flying with my sister and her two granddaughters.

The time to go is getting close.  The time we are going to be in Norway will go so fast!

We will be arriving in Oslo.  Traveling to a relative's lake house in Sweden- with her Children.   We are going to Tromsø, a place we lived almost thirty years ago.

I have been in touch with some of the people I was friends with way back then.  We used to get together for coffee and play group for the children.   All of the children are now grown, of course.

I have even been in touch with the guys who live in the house we lived in back then.   They have invited to come see the house.   I know that there will be ghosts.   Ghosts of my in labor, crying in the bathtub trying to make it stop.   Ghosts of all of the times we watched the boats and ships go by.  Birthday parties and baking bread and being a family.  A house is just a thing, I know.  But it is also a space we occupy and make memories.   It will be all different.  The furniture and carpet and drapes, it will all be different.  And I will probably say "that's where I used to sit to write letters", or there are the stairs Morgan rolled Darcy down in a blanket".

I am so excited!  Did I say that?  Well, I am.

The reason I gave this post the title "Progress" is that I just got off an hour long phone call.  I was making sure that our hotel in Tromsø had enough beds.   The reservation says "one queen bed".  Not enough for two adult women and two growing girls.   We will have a king sized bed and two singles.  Better!

These pictures make me think of the song "our house is a very very fine house".    Ah, how many houses we have lived in and made into our home!