My mother read my blog post from yesterday about my memories of the trip I took when I was in college to Egypt and Turkey. I told her I wasn't altogether certain the college trip had been the most memorable or most influential in my life because it rivaled my memories of the ten-week trip we took to England and Scotland the summer I was eight.
It's hard to compare a fourteen-day trip with ten weeks of travel and the age difference from eight to nineteen was also a significant factor. When I was eight, going on my first international flight, to spend weeks in a foreign country on a summer abroad program was at that age, the trip of a lifetime. Indeed of a lifetime that spanned only eight years.
At the time, my parents were college professors. They were two of the teachers who went with a collection of college students on the "London Abroad" program. As it turned out, years later, I would attend the same college and would go on my Egypt and Turkey trip, but that was years in the future. At the time, I was a child in Europe, experiencing a different culture and country.
There are so many memories I have of that time. So many good memories. I have a special place in my heart for England probably because of that very trip. I've told my husband if he ever wanted to relocate out of the United States, and wanted to go to England, he need only say the word and I'd start packing.
We did a lot of things while we were there. I have my memories but something I didn't realize until my mother told me today was how many plays my parents went to while we were on that trip. She said my father likes to tell people how they saw thirty-five shows in ten weeks. She said he also has the Playbills for each one.
I had seen the stacks of Playbills at some point or another, and I knew as a child they got them when they went to see a play or show, but it had no meaning to me other than that. I spoke with my father this afternoon and mentioned the trip to England and Scotland, the shows and the Playbills, and he told me something even more interesting: my father has the Playbill for every show he's ever seen, starting from when he was fourteen.
Our lives are each complex and intriguing in our own ways. There is much we don't know about each other, even though we've known each other for decades. I had no idea about the Playbills. I told my father I'd like to see the collection. I'd be interested in what show's he's seen. I remember a few of them, mostly Marcel Marceau, the mime they took me to while on that trip to England.
That was a show that went horribly wrong for both of them and me. I was what was termed, "hyperactive" back then. Put me in a show that's silent with a single man on the stage, and I couldn't stay still, I was bored. I needed to move. I unintentionally annoyed the people around us so much my mother had to take me out of the theater.
I was upset and embarrassed, but I don't think I could have stayed still if I'd tried. I guess I did try very hard, but I just couldn't do it. Back to the Playbills, I'm going to have to check his collection out the next time I go to the mountains to visit my parents. My father told me tonight he's still trying to get the slot machine working. Maybe we can get that going and reminisce about our trip to England and Scotland when I was eight-years-old.
The Big Boy Update: Thinking of the Marcel Marceau story, I should remember that my son is like me in that way and sometimes he just can't stay still or sit at the table or listen to you without wiggling or doing flips over the sofa. He's probably trying, just like I was, only his body can't.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: Shane heard my daughter wrote her a touching send-off letter. She messaged me and asked if she could take my daughter out to get ice cream before she leaves to go traveling tomorrow. My daughter put on her unique necklace that says "Munchkin" in braille Shane had custom made for her and was ready at the door when she arrived. I told them to have a good time and not hurry back, that it was a special night.
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