Dreams – pirates and gypsies

The first thing that Karl said to me this morning was that he was tired from driving all night.  He went on to explain that all night, as we slept, he drove a big rig semi-truck through the jungles of Venezuela hauling styrofoam plates and grain to a meat packing plant.  I never have such creative or random dreams. I’m glad he does, though, because he often starts my day with a smile and a shake of the head as he relates where the night took him.

Tomorrow, a different sort of dream is taking Karl and me both on an adventure.  Five years ago this summer we arrived for the first time on St.Croix. We fell in love with the place, and we fell in love with who we are while we are here.  As we walked through the next year of coming back again and finding and buying our house, a dream began taking shape.  In November, when we retired and came here, the first half of our long-term dream took place.  Living on St. Croix.  Now, tomorrow, the second half of the dream will begin.  We fly off from here tomorrow to go to Virginia.  There, tucked safely into the trees at our son’s house, waits our fifth-wheel camper trailer and our pick-up truck.  We are trading our pirate life for a gypsy life for the summer.

The plan is to spend the summer months doing a second thing that we love as much as being on island.  Travel, exploring, camping and four-wheeling.  Also in the mix is seeing all three of our children and their families, who have followed their own dreams far from where they were raised and far (in miles) from their siblings.  We have a map filled with places to visit and people to stop and see.  We have a few obligations already on the calendar – a much anticipated wedding this weekend, another wedding in August, rodeo tickets, a family meeting… but mostly, we are going to go on vacation from retirement with the intent to wander and explore and to meet nearly each day with no plan.

But, if I’m honest, I have to admit that the closer it gets to us leaving, the more nervous – maybe anxious is a more precise word – we both have become.  Several times this week, as we have been making plans for being gone for several months, I’ve thought maybe I didn’t want to go. Then, I realized that Karl is feeling the same way. This is a puzzle to me.  Karl and I’ve both talked a lot about why we feel hesitant to embark on this second half of our plan.  Maybe it is because we have struggled in the past six months to understand what retirement is and how to live here, and now that we are getting the hang of it we are leaving.  Maybe we just aren’t all the way finished nesting here. Maybe we are getting old and set in our ways (NO  NO  NEVER THAT I HOPE!). Maybe since we are both very much planners with an eye on the clock and the calendar and our checked off lists of things to do, we can’t exactly imagine a plan-less existence.  Maybe we are just nervous because we’ve never done this before. Most probably though, the hesitation comes from a small worry that since the first half of the plan has turned out so beautifully that maybe the second half will be a flop and failure.

One way or the other, we are off on a new adventure.  We’ll button up this house – the tortoise is already at the neighbor’s hanging out with another tortoise friend named Percy Shelly and my potted plants and orchids are sitting happily in another neighbor’s garden to be nurtured until we return. We will get on a flight tomorrow and on Wednesday morning, my birthday in fact, we will  unbutton our little gypsy wagon and get ready to hit the road.  A new adventure is beginning!  Despite the fears and hesitations, I can’t wait to see what we are going to discover!