Sitting at my familiar dining room table, at our comfortable home in Hawaii, I alter between clicking the battery icon at the top of my laptop screen, checking how much time remains on this faulty battery, and gazing out at the soothing, persistent rain on our lanai. I am waiting, waiting for the part of me that my friends, family, and virtual friends keep gently insisting should write a book, to show up. But only my melancholy, ill-adjusted, travel-blues-riddled self seems present. I remain sitting here alone. Yup, alone. Kiko is working and the kids are at their first organized activity since our return, 1/2 day tennis camp. That in itself is enough to send me whirling in a mix of high and low emotions after spending a year almost exclusively within an arms reach of each other.
It has been over a month, actually 40 days, since we have returned home. Whatever adjusting I had expected to happen should be all finished up by now. But if anything I feel it more intensely. Funny how a feeling can be so strong yet so difficult to aptly explain to someone else. A recurring , descriptive image keeps popping into my head and although inadequate, it seems to be the best way at the moment to convey my current feelings .....imagine a head and inside that head is everything witnessed over the past year, landscapes, people, food, sounds, monuments, smells, customs and they are all trying to find their place to settle in, but communication between these foreign bits and fragments is difficult at best, and there are a lot of pieces that just aren't able to fit along side others, but they each keep trying to get their points across, trying to find their place, in the big chaotic mess called my brain.
Believe me I know I sound like a little travel snot. I can hear that too, even through the muddle. "Oh, I just got back from traveling the world, to beautiful Hawaii, and I am so confused and depressed".... and spoiled. I know. But it doesn't make the adjusting any easier. Does it make it less annoying, if I acknowledge it myself?
Mixed in with all that is the fear of "loosing" all of last year experinces as we settle into a routine, that is astonishingly similar to that which we left last year. But when I take the time to look past the day-to-day and to think of actualities I realize that our travel experiences are forever part of us, an us that is so much stronger than it was before.
It has been over a month, actually 40 days, since we have returned home. Whatever adjusting I had expected to happen should be all finished up by now. But if anything I feel it more intensely. Funny how a feeling can be so strong yet so difficult to aptly explain to someone else. A recurring , descriptive image keeps popping into my head and although inadequate, it seems to be the best way at the moment to convey my current feelings .....imagine a head and inside that head is everything witnessed over the past year, landscapes, people, food, sounds, monuments, smells, customs and they are all trying to find their place to settle in, but communication between these foreign bits and fragments is difficult at best, and there are a lot of pieces that just aren't able to fit along side others, but they each keep trying to get their points across, trying to find their place, in the big chaotic mess called my brain.
Believe me I know I sound like a little travel snot. I can hear that too, even through the muddle. "Oh, I just got back from traveling the world, to beautiful Hawaii, and I am so confused and depressed".... and spoiled. I know. But it doesn't make the adjusting any easier. Does it make it less annoying, if I acknowledge it myself?
Mixed in with all that is the fear of "loosing" all of last year experinces as we settle into a routine, that is astonishingly similar to that which we left last year. But when I take the time to look past the day-to-day and to think of actualities I realize that our travel experiences are forever part of us, an us that is so much stronger than it was before.
