Thursday, July 22, 2010

baby's been bit by a bug

Yes I know a terrible and manufactured attempt at alliteration. I guess I'll get a "b" for the attempt. Maybe something less for the humour, oh well.

My baby girl, aka my daughter and youngest child has developed a wonderful love for travel. I suppose we are to blame, but she has taken the flights to new heights and breadths. When she was young we took regular trips to Florida and even took her to Cuba. But she has been to farther fields than I have ever been and she is still very young.

Just this summer she has been to (in order): England, Denmark, Germany, France, Italy, Ireland (she had to visit the places I walked and where I went to school and where I was born, then back to England to make the uneventful (and parental demanding) trip back to Canada.

And now there's more, she wants to see Canada, at least the western portion before she returns to Ecuador (on yet another missions trip) and all this before she attends school in Virginia (in her brother's footsteps) to study to be a nurse. In the spirit of Tolkien and my summer reading plan, "the road goes ever on and on, down from the door where it began" at least for her.

Me, I'm gonna go from the bedroom to the deck to the kitchen to the next comfortable place to sit and rest because her trips tire me out. Oh, the good news, she paid for and will continue to pay for all these trips herself. I guess this is one person who understands self reliance (inside joke for some of you who know me in a different world).

So, what's the point of this post? I love my kids, I love my wife more and to be honest, I have truly enjoyed empty nesting when it arrived earlier this summer. But(you knew there had to be a but), I worry. I know I profess faith and with that faith worry is not exactly a positive virtue. I think about her (and her older brother) when they travel and wonder and worry about their safety.

Letting go gets harder as they grow older and there's no antidote for this bug, oh bother!

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