IDEA TO REALITY

The sky opened up and overwhelmed us with a deluge of rain today. I decided to wait for the rain to subside before I drove to work.

In the meantime, my son texted me a snapshot of an assignment for his World Geography class. His task being to plan a trip. To pick three destinations in Central/South America, find flights, look for places to stay and eat, find activities and fun facts about each place, and then present his work in a slideshow before posting it to Google Classroom.

How interesting, I thought. This is exactly what I’ve been doing these past few months and earlier in the year when planning our other trips. It has become a growing interest. To plan and research new places to see. New activities to experience. And to document everything along the way as I make plans and then change them.

As tempting as it was to start researching places in South America, I had to refrain from doing so. First, it was my son’s assignment and I would be there solely to guide him when he needed help. Second, I hadn’t yet finished planning our winter trip and there is still much more to do.

Once I arrived at work, I stayed in my office for a while and finished what needed to be done. I enjoyed watching the gloomy skies from my windows. A much nicer view than the one I have at home. Before heading home, I stopped by Trader Joe’s to get some food.

After my son came home from school, we talked for a while about his project. I asked which countries he would like to focus on, but he let me know that he had a few weeks before the project was due. We also talked about our trip. The things we still needed to buy and things we’d like to do.

‘I didn’t think we would actually go’, he confessed.

Truthfully, I didn’t think we would go either, I thought to myself.

‘I thought it was something you said but didn’t actually do’, he continued.

When I asked him if he’d like to go to somewhere very cold for Christmas, I admit it was merely an idea at first. There was that something that took my curiosity and realised an idea to reality. Something that dared me to go beyond my comfort zone and to explore a new experience.

As the day drew to a close, we enjoyed dinner and then watched a few new episodes of Bob’s Burgers. Something we hadn’t done in a long time. A nice ending to this gloomy Thursday.