Keeping Track

 My daughter, Alison, just asked me how many times she had been to England.  With one grandmother on the West Coast and the other in England, my children grew up thinking everyone went to see Grandma on a plane! We took our children to England to see my family as often as we could afford it. In order to answer her question, I counted up on my fingers, but then I looked for a spreadsheet I made many years ago to confirm my answer*. 

I grew up in England and never expected to travel much by air. My first flight ever was a solo charter flight to California from England on the now defunct British Caledonian airways, when I was 20. It was on this visit to my dad's cousin, Bernice, that I met Rick, and my life took a different direction. Pen-pals were a thing in the 1970s; I had pen-pals in France, Japan and Canada at various times and it was through Bernice that Rick and I got hooked up and began our correspondence. Rick and I had been pen-pals for about 18 months when we met. The rest, as they say, is history.

My next flight was a one-way ticket from London to San Francisco after our English wedding. We had to spend a day of our honeymoon at the American Embassy in London to get my immigrant visa sorted. I remember that they sent me to a basement office a few blocks away to get a chest x-ray (to prove I didn't have TB, I think). I was the only immigrant on the 747, so I was directed to wait alone while my papers were processed. By the time I was done, Rick had collected the bags and met his aunt and uncle who had come to pick us up. His aunt, a British transplant herself, gave me a hug and said, "Welcome to America, honey!"

Because flying was still a novelty to me, I started keeping track of the trips I took. There was our first Christmas when we went back to England to spend the holidays with my family. We were living short-term in Chattanooga TN, where Rick was working and we flew, Chattanooga-Atlanta-Washington DC National-taxi across the capital to Washington Dulles-London. In all we were in transit for 16 hours and flew on three different airlines!  In 1990, the four of us flew to England to surprise my mother on her 70th birthday and in 2002, Rick and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary in Florence, Italy.

When I found my spreadsheet, the entries ended in 2015. It seemed a shame to let it end there so I have spent a couple of days over the holiday weekend bringing it up to date. It was a trip down memory lane as I went through my photographs and journals to figure out the trips, the years and the airlines. We have been fortunate to travel as much as we have and we plan to keep going as long as we are able. Airline travel is a bit more stressful than it used to be but it's the only way to see as much of this big, beautiful world as possible! Our 50th anniversary is in two years. Maybe that will be the next big trip!

*Alison has been to England 9 times, if you were wondering.