Anticipation

I'm planning a trip. The journey's months away, details have yet to be hammered out, but we—me, husband, and daughters--are going.

The anticipation's delicious.

Cloudless skies, intriguing cities, and charming towns await us.

But only if we thwart missed connections, pickpockets, and food poisoning.

Kecia Adams recently returned from a family ski vacation. It prompted her to write about expectations versus reality. http://keciaadamsauthor.wordpress.com/2012/01/19/expectations/

I don't want to set myself up for disappointment, so every third time I squee with excitement about the upcoming trip, I make myself envision a hitch. This isn't hard as past family vacations are littered with them.

In New Orleans, as we crossed the street amidst a throng of tourists heading for the Café du Monde, my younger daughter became separated from the rest of us. I thought she was holding my husband's hand; he thought she was holding mine. We didn't realize our child was missing until we settled in chairs at the café. Twenty-odd years later, my throat tightens when I remember how we lurched toward the street calling our little girl's name. A lady clown approached, hand-in-hand with our daughter. "I asked her where her parents were, and she said 'Beignets,'" the clown told us.

My older daughter was in her terrible teens when we took a trip to Big Bend National Park. OD didn't just refuse to hike, she refused to get out of the car.

On a trip to Germany, my younger daughter lost her passport.

The New York City sight seared in my family's memory isn’t the Statue of Liberty, and it's not the Empire State Building. Instead, it's a rat rooting around the subway tracks. The upside is that now we know what David Letterman's talking about when he rants against rats in his monologues.

We've learned from the big and small hitches and know our trip won't be perfect. So what? We'll see places we haven't seen before--and we'll learn things about ourselves and each other.

I'm planning a trip.