The Wanderlust in Me
I was born into a family of travelers. My maternal grandparents sailed around the world seven times on cruise ships back in the 1950’s and 60’s before “noroviruses” were a thing. My grandfather was an inventor who created and patented a timer that went into space with the first American unmanned spacecraft. As children, my brothers and sisters and I would follow my grandparents’ itinerary with a magic marker on a map and consequently we became more knowledgable than most in geography. (In fact, once upon a time in American grammar schools, geography was considered a basic subject.)
While our friends were playing with Slinkies, Playdoh and Spirographs, we played with mancalas, marionettes and an actual rickshaw. I realize now what a privilege it was to have grandparents who enlightened us to the ways of the world. We were taught at an early age to appreciate other cultures and more importantly, we learned that we were not the center of the universe.
As a teacher of English for over 25 years, I used literature to expose my students to as many different cultures as possible. I taught grades 6-8 in a school district in NJ that trusted its teachers to choose whatever literature they saw fit to use in the classroom. Thus we read about Apartheid in South Africa, Slavery in America, The Vietnam War, The Jewish Holocaust, the struggles of Native Americans, the plight of young women in modern day Afghanistan and Pakistan. We had pen pals in Zimbabwe; we participated in the Great American Mail Race, competing by classes to see who would hear back first from a middle school in every state in the country. We had maps on our classroom walls dotted with a ton of push pins to identify the settings of every book and story that we read.
Oftentimes when my students returned to school from summer or winter breaks, they would boast of their travels, much to my envy. I vowed to myself that I would catch up someday!
Fast forward to my retirement years where I now have the time and the money to travel the world. I am not rich by any stretch of the imagination, but I have the wanderlust in me, most definitely passed down from my grandparents and so I have made traveling a priority in my life. Thank God for my teachers’ pension and social security!
Planning every detail of our class field trips for 25 years, gave me the confidence to book my own transportation and travel accommodations for most of my personal travels. All it takes is a computer, reliable WiFi, a bit of patience and a whole lot of wanderlust.
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