Travel With Fran

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I have been thinking. Plenty of time to do it. This flight is fourteen and a half hours long. How many dumb movies can one watch? I just watched one of the dumbest, “Nights in Rodathe” with Richard Gere and Dianne Lane. Even their pretty faces can’t save this badly written, badly acted bottle of artificially flavored syrup. I didn’t read the Nicholas Sparks novel (and wouldn’t admit it if I did - what pablum!) but I still knew everything that was going to happen in the movie and the sequence of these events before the initial credits were done being listed. Yes he dies. Sorry if I spoiled the ending. I’ve also been unable to read in the dark cabin as I keep falling instantly to sleep. I have been reduced to just thinking and so I’ll write. This little piece is about my traveling with Fran.

Fran is a reluctant traveler. She loves, not necessarily in this order, her house, her studio, skiing, New York, her grandchildren, her dogs, and I’m confident that I fit in that list somewhere. Traveling the globe is not high on her list of things she wants to do. Ok, it’s not even be on her list.

I’m the travel instigator. Her first reaction to any of my trip suggestions is to roll her eyes. That, in any language means, “oh shit, not again.” Then I embark on intense efforts at persuasion using every technique at my disposal, also known as begging, and more often than not she acquiesces. Once on the trip though she’s enthusiastic and very sunny and when it’s over she seems to have enjoyed it. If that sequence reminds anyone of anything else in a marriage, it’s purely coincidence.

We’ve been traveling together for 30 years and on each trip I am always shocked and surprised at how much we enjoy spending 24 hours a day together for days and days and sometimes weeks. Let me be clear, it doesn’t surprise me that I enjoy being with her. The surprise for me is that she always enjoys being with me and hardly ever seems to find me annoying or worse. Wow, writing that last sentence made me stop, and I assume it makes you stop too and ask, “what’s he smokin?” And that’s a legitimate question. The sentence was probably a bit overstated. In the 30 years we’ve traveled together there have been a few incidents, but objectively, I am sure she enjoys being with me. She’s not faking it Men can always tell. That’s a little joke. Any minors reading this should just ask their mothers to explain.

So if you’ve stayed with me through all of the four preceding paragraphs and you care at all, you might be wondering what’s with this guy? Here’s my answer. First, the pathology of this neurosis is beyond the scope of this blog and second, it’s none of your business. But I guess what brought this whole subject to mind is that that I’m not so worried this trip. It’s as if, after hundreds of trips together, I know we’ll love every minute together. Who was that British guy that wrote, “methinks he doth protest too much?”

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Comments

[Tom Drum]

You should have been an author!
Very well written David, and most enjoyable too! Happy Travels!