Blog 2505 – 09.04.2022

“A Little Traveling Music, Please.”

I am so glad and grateful that this go round I have traveled far and wide visiting all fifty of the United States of America, five of the provinces of our northern neighbor Canada and even by cruise ship our southern neighbor country, The United States of Mexico. I have also been in and seen nine other countries around the globe.

My travels have been on hold since shortly after I retired last December. On our last big road trip, my wife Linda and I drove from Houston, Texas to South Carolina to visit our family there and to bring her mom back to Houston with us. About a month after that, in early February, and after a short but painful bout with Shingles, Linda’s wonder lust and adventuresome spirit hit that proverbial brick wall that awaits us all. She still walks at all hours as if she were on guard duty but except for walking in nearby parks and car rides around the neighborhood the idea of travel that once thrilled her now seems to feed her anxiety and fill her once intrepid heart with fear.

Sometimes when we walk together she stops and spins like a child enjoying the breeze, lifting her arms as if ready to fly. As children, both raise in the same narrow Christians fundamentalist sect, we were taught to sing: “Some glad morning when this life is ore, I’ll fly away, to a land on God’s celestial shore, I’ll fly away.”

Linda has returned to the faith of her childhood. I observed her just yesterday saying a long silent prayer over a glass of chocolate milk that she had asked me to make for her, before taking a sip. Her mind sometimes seems to have already taken flight and with it her voice and then she comes back to me.

For years one of Linda’s favorite movies has been Nicholas Sparks’ The Notebook. It is the story of a beloved woman who late in life has Alzheimer’s and whose loving husband reads to her from a notebook helping her to remember their love story.

I believe we are all travelers in time and space. Many like my dearly departed beloved mother do most of our traveling in books and only dream of seeing far away places. As today’s picture quote says, “to seek other states, other lives, other souls.” My dad was a sailor, a soldier, and a truck driver. He did a lot of traveling in his life and his stories of the road inspired both of his sons to be travelers too.

Bon Voyage to each at all especially to my Angel resting her wings a bit for that flight that awaits us all.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David White

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HM7aWHayhA0HwKeBRtBXmSi06LgQepnY/view?usp=drivesdk

Travelin’ Man