The Travel Bug
Jul 11th, 2008 by Bethany
My mom calls it the travel bug. Someone else in the family calls it the travel “itch.” It’s what many descendants of my paternal grandfather have–the almost constant desire to travel and see the world. Grandpa has this thing about staying put. He just doesn’t do it very well. He’s really been everywhere, including living in Nigeria for a couple of years (more than once!), Polynesia, Pakistan, all of Europe, Vietnam, India, Egypt, Israel, China, Japan, etc. He wears my more homey grandmother out on these trips (she’s told me more than once that she’d like to live in a cabin in the middle of nowhere with a good book for the rest of her life), but it’s just got to be done. My dad took his growing family across the world multiple times as an archaeologist, and now that he’s an accountant he still encourages all of us to join him on cross-country exploration on a slightly smaller scale. My aunts, my uncles, my cousins live all over and go on expeditions of all kinds all over the world. Of my grown-up sisters, one has lived a year in Germany, another spent a summer in Uganda, and another took a long tour of Europe as a graduation celebration (with one of my travel bugged cousins, of course). It’s inexplicable, but most of us have the bug and our spouses are either infected too or simply very understanding and cooperative (like my grandmother).
As I mentioned, I spent much of my childhood abroad, but since then haven’t spent much of my time exploring. I got a degree in International Studies, planning to spend my life as a travelling diplomat, but marrying and having kids slowed that aspiration down. I rearranged my furniture often, quelling my restlessness. I read travel magazines when I can get my hands on them and watch the Travel Channel on TV. It’s a little pathetic, but it’s how I deal with my travel bug when I can’t go anywhere. I take any chance I get to visit my local airport, and have been known to say that I wouldn’t mind living in an airport. I admit that I’ve been jealous at times of my more mobile relatives, and anxiously watch for opportunities to go on trips close to home.
I found a National Geographic Expeditions magazine in my in-laws stash today and flipped through the pages of exotic trips to see gorillas in their natural habitat with gorilla experts, to see Sicily by boat with a local guide and archaeologist, and to visit Antarctica with some of the famous explorers of our time. To my surprise, I wasn’t even tempted to wish I could come up with the $7000+ it would cost to go on one of those trips. The thought of amazing, educational safaris through jungles didn’t make my mouth water as usual. In fact, the only thing I felt was a wave of exhaustion at the idea. And a little nausea, but I always feel a little nauseous right now.
So, the cure (temporary though it is) for the travel bug is pregnancy! Whenever I’m pregnant, I have no desire to leave home. I want to stay put. I avoid stuffed suitcases and unfamiliar food at all costs. Although one of the few medicine-less things I’ve found that decreases my nausea is air travel, I do not want to face my normally-beloved airport. I don’t want to deal with cultural customs that aren’t part of my culture. I get impatient with jokes I’d normally enjoy, because I don’t want to use the energy to process the subtleties of the banter. Imagine how I’d feel about dealing with communicating in another language! Nope, travel takes energy and pregnancy takes security and predictability, and never the twain shall meet…pleasantly, anyway.