Resetting our Trip Odometer
You know that little gauge on your car, the one that indicates total overall mileage for your vehicle? The one that can also be set to tabulate how far you’ve travelled for a specific trip? I used to be strangely obsessed with not resetting it, and would make a point of asking anyone who drove my car not to mess with it so I could continue seeing how far I had travelled, how much distance I had covered (also because I’ve always bought used vehicles and the odometer never really reflected my own travels). Neurotic much?
As the world is opening back up, I’ve started thinking more about our family’s travel meter. I knew that taking our first major family plane trip after the pandemic would be a notable milestone, irrespective of the distance travelled or the destination. We went from a family for whom air travel was practically a way of life, to one grounded in a sudden and unexpected way. As I sit here staring out at a vista so radically different than our view at home, I find myself still reflecting on our journey here - how surreal the act of flying is, in and of itself.
My daughter took her first flight when she was under three months old, when we flew from DC to Denver to visit my husband’s family for Christmas. Despite the fact that we were upgraded to first class (we like to say that that set the tone for her travel expectations in life…) it was not the easiest flight, but the first leg of my journey to becoming an expert on flying with babies and children. My son’s first flight was from London back to Ottawa when he was seven weeks old, to visit my parents for the remainder of the summer. I think I must have taken my own first flight around the same age, likely from Canada back to India for the first of many annual family visits. I used to fly internationally on a monthly basis for work, something that I actively chose to pause after having children. My husband didn’t have that choice and continued with his work travels, and our family life adjusted to the reality of him flying off regularly and suitcases being permanent fixtures in the hallway. Flying, the act and investment of time and effort and even the end goals, has always defined our lives in some ways. It created a certain relationship with home, and a distance and longing that coloured our relationships with these places.
So to be thrust into a pandemic context, one in which we suddenly stopped flying, truly altered our lifestyle - and more importantly, our perspective on home. My husband had to take a few trips over the past months, but the children and I had not boarded a plane since we returned from France in March 2020. We considered many options before deciding to take the family on a trip to the Dominican Republic as our inaugural reentry into the world of travel. We could drive to Montreal and take a direct four-hour flight, and reasonably manage our own personal comfort levels with ongoing risks and travel. But it would be disingenuous to gloss over the stress involved, managing the stuff and the kids and the masks and the exhaustion for our group of newly unaccustomed travellers. It made me realize just how much I did before as a frequent flyer mother, how hard I used to work for the sake of this international life and lifestyle. How much we gained at each destination, but how much I gave of myself as well. Our trip back to Montreal from the Dominican Republic was easier, and I expect each successive flight will help us get our air-legs back, so to speak. But with all my pandemic nerves I had forgotten that I still don’t enjoy the physical process of flying, headaches and motion sickness and dehydration.
Moving back from Europe to Ottawa means that we no longer fly to see my aging parents, or to spend quality time in our home environment. We have shorter flights to see my husband’s family in Colorado as well. It’s no mystery that global fossil fuel pollution was drastically lowered when we were all involuntarily grounded for a while, and as much as we missed freedom of movement it offered me an opportunity to reset the proverbial trip meter for our family and to consider how often, why, and where we will travel in the future.
Appreciating home more, but also appreciating the travel that we had come to take for granted as well. Considering travel decisions beyond the calculus of time and money, and moving forward toward a more thoughtful approach to how I earn my air miles. For me personally, the pandemic gave me the luxury of travelling less and investing more in my home life. Something I had always longed for, but never had the opportunity to fulfill. Trip odometer has officially been reset.
