PACKING FOR MEXICO

The anticipation of leaving the country sent chills down my spine this morning when I came across an old scuba diving video of Travis and I. It was taken when we were living in Thailand in 2008. Since then we've had two beautiful kids, changed hundreds of diapers, washed hundreds of dishes, worked hundreds of overtime hours at both of our jobs, bought family-sized vehicles and gotten firmly rooted in our hundred year-old home I call the Little House. We're living the American Dream!

Yet I long for the open road. So much of who I am has been shaped by the years I've spent in other countries. I crave the smell of salty hot winds dangling beneath breathtaking sunsets. I cherish the days when all of my belongings fit into one backpack. I long for the sound of languages I don't understand, signs I can't read, mysterious food I can't identify... and how it all keeps me so full of the present moment. I want to be migrant again, with no laptop and no cell phone and no agendas and no deadlines. I miss the present moment.

Whether I will experience any of that again as a working mother of two seems unrealistic. But I'm convinced it's possible. I've seen droves of people from other countries backpacking with small children and they make it look easy. Like that French couple I met in a restaurant in Vietnam who had two very young daughters in tow. Or how about the South African mother I met in Thailand who sailed around Africa with her elementary-aged kids for an entire year. I'll never forget the Swiss women I met in an ashram in India, who were travelling as a group of mothers with their tween daughters. If the French, South-Africans, Swiss and all the countless Aussies, British, Germans and Kiwis I've met on the open road can travel with their kids, then maybe I can too.

Just watch me try.

- Katie

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