GLOBETROTTERS NOVEMBER CHALLENGE

Gratitude for Travel Starts at Home

The gift that passes from one generation to the next

No shit Sherlock! Look at the Unsplash picture I selected at random. The focus is on India and the Indian Ocean. Now if that’s not a sign about where I should begin, what else is?

Thank you, Pa!

I know I didn’t get to choose my parents or the family I was born into. But my gratitude starts at home. Traveling for leisure and recreation is a privilege, but traveling for a livelihood is a necessity for many people like my father.

As a chief engineer on board a commercial fleet of ships, he sailed all around the world. He wasn’t the captain sitting on the bridge navigating the ship but he toiled away in a really loud engine room making sure the engines were working. As children, my brother and I spent our summers traveling with him. I saw the hard work that he put in and the hours that he worked up close and personal.

His focus when we were with him was to engage us in conversations about places and being our teacher. He explained how the locks worked in the Panama Canal. He told us stories about his ships passing through the Suez Canal. Do you know why a ship doesn’t sink even though it’s heavy?, he’d ask before he went on to explain the laws of buoyancy.

Pa (as I called him) didn’t come from wealth. He was the first in his family to travel outside the country (India). He was the trendsetter, he was the explorer.

Pa was interested in places and he took the extra effort to show us these places. Many of my pictures as a child show me holding a brochure or pamphlet about the places I was visiting. It was like gaining an education on a field trip, except it was with my father.

The travel bug was planted very early.

Thank you, life!

I am thankful for the life that I have had and the experiences I could afford. I have been able to continue to travel and explore places with my family and children. If it weren’t for all the travel, I am not sure if I would have been open to relocating to different countries as an adult.

I have been able to pass down the gift of travel to my children, just as my dad did for me. The same education, the same passion, and the same gratitude.

There is more meaning to the phrase “wordly wise” than I can fit in with words right now.

The great difference between voyages rests not with the ships, but with the people you meet on them — Amelia E. Barr

Travel for me is all about the people I meet along the way and the experiences of seeing the places with changing perspectives. I am ever grateful to my father AND for having a life that allows me to travel and explore.

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