Traveling with Hockey

My son has garnered more passport stamps in sixteen short years than I had in forty plus. He learned to walk in Paris. He learned to whistle in Germany. Just this weekend, in Boston, he learned the fine art of balancing a profound wanderlust for this wide planet with the delicate yearnings for home:

“Can we come back again, but next time with you?”

And so, for all of the advice out there, I will simply say this: Find a way.

Find a way to travel with your kids. Find a way to make it work. (But they won’t remember it!) Of course they might not remember it. But you will.

You will remember how uncomfortable it felt to have throw up on you and all down the airplane window jostling a motion sick 9-month-old, the graciousness of a stewardess bringing you a plastic bag for your dirty clothes. You will remember the kindness of strangers carrying your suitcase down airplane ramps. You will remember running out of breast milk somewhere in Berlin; you will remember the resourcefulness of a t-shirt.

You will remember it all.

This world unfolds in ways not unlike the very map we use to navigate it with. Travel stretches us. It is taxing at times, and achingly beautiful at times, and we will always, always return home a bit crumpled but a lot changed.

We can do this anywhere: the crumpling, the changing. We can fly across the country for hockey, finding provisions for players.

You will remember it all.