Displaced

Hi there. It’s been a while. How’ve you been? How’s your uncle’s health? That thing that happened to your foot, is that all sorted out? Great. I’m so glad.

I’ve been busy. Globetrotting busy. Sorry I couldn’t take you along, but I had a small companion with me who, while adorable, would’ve gotten you up at 2AM or 5AM depending on where we were that week, so you should thank me for not inviting you.

You’re welcome.

My little family on Zurich See.

We were in Zurich, Paris, Brussels, and Brugge in early October (with side trips to Copenhagen and Berlin for R.), then New York for 48 hours in the middle of the month (for a wedding and, let’s be honest, to see if I could outrun Sandy, which I did, by the way – last flight out, so high five to me. No high fives for global warming and devastating the city I love.) Then Roatan, Honduras for a week of friends and diving last week.

It was all very glam and exhausting and fantastic and over-luggaged, and, truth be told, I’m happy to be home for the holidays. I’ve got my sights set on a tapas Thanksgiving which will include things like stuffing meatballs and mini pecan pies. Maybe. It may also include a loss of eyebrows and a visit from the fire department. Who knows? An all-flambe Thanksgiving could be fun, right? One thing is for sure, we’re getting a Christmas tree Thanksgiving weekend, and this year I’m going to water it come hell or high water.

Actually, come high water, I will stop watering it. You don’t want to overdo it.

In the interests of making your future traveling life simpler and easier than my recent one has been, here are

The top seven things I learned from our trips to Europe, Central America and pre-Sandy New York:

1. If a hurricane is approaching your intended destination, you might want to reconsider your trip, as it may take you forever to get home. Unless they have Dunkin Donuts where you’re going, in which case you should definitely go. Or a really good friend is getting married. That too. You should go to that. Get a coffee and donut on the way. And a case of bottled water. And a generator. You’ll be the life of the party, maybe literally.

2. When you book a trip to a third world country, you should plan on getting immunization shots. And by “plan” I don’t mean ring up your doctor and your child’s pediatrician in a panic five days before the trip to find out if you will come back with yellow fever, malaria and rickets. (Rickets is still a thing, right?) And you need those shots about six months ahead, not six hours, for them to be effective. Just FYI. (P.S. I don’t have malaria. Yet.)

3. I know you love French cheese. It’s because it’s unpasteurized. And illegal, which makes it more thrilling. (As thrilling as sitting perfectly still with a dairy product, a small, non-lethal knife and a baguette can be, but the point stands.) No matter how much you love it and how willing you are to brave questions from humorless customs’ agents who probably want that cheese for themselves, do not bring seven pounds of it home. Unless you sent out invitations for a cheese party before you left, you will not eat it before it starts resenting you.

4. If you have a tiny portable speaker to broadcast rainshowers all night to keep your toddler insulated from startling noises and reliably asleep and that speaker has a small, essential cable that charges it and connects it to your iPod and you lost that cable on your last trip, only to rediscover it after extensive searching only the day before the current trip, do not for any reason detach that cable for fear the connector might snap off in your luggage and store it “someplace safe.” This is the equivalent of just going ahead and running it down the garbage disposal and checking yourself into an insane asylum for a few days, as you will a.) never find it again (again), and b.) will lose your mind trying.

The reason I dive.

5. If you are claustrophobic and nervous about people/yeti/sharks/the Mafia sneaking up on you while on land, you may want to reconsider diving in the open ocean. They have sharks there. Also, adorable turtles and seahorses and what not. But you will see them while under 40 feet of water and breathing dry oxygen from something that makes you look like Bane to your small daughter while you’re getting re-certified in the pool before you went out there, which makes you worry that she too will start sitting with her back to the wall and facing the door in restaurants because it’s good to know what’s coming and be able to see your exit. Which, for the record, is above you if you’re diving. Which is not normal and counterintuitive and weird. Like breathing underwater. The whole thing is weird.

6. United Airlines is a terrible, terrible company that turns what are probably perfectly nice, normal people into super-annoying and bizarrely unsympathetic employees who park their beverage/ice crusher truck next to your sleeping toddler’s head TWICE, ruin your luggage, do not apologize, offer more trips on their terrible airline as compensation and generally show almost no human characteristics. You should avoid flying United if you possibly can. But you knew that.

And finally,

7. Even with all the lost cables, panic attacks underwater, terrible airlines and weather, weather, weather, travel is good. You should go. It may be tiring, it may be logistically challenging, it may be expensive, but you should still go. You get to see your cool friends, you get to see the American election from outside the country (thank God), you meet a turtle or two. It gives you some breathing room and some perspective, that time away. You’ll like it. Just go.

Even if you get rickets. Which you probably won’t. But get some sunlight and Vitamin D anyway. And a donut. Donuts help with everything.