If Not Now, When?

It’s crazy to think that if everything goes according to plan, this time next year, I’ll be in some other country halfway around the world at the start of something my husband, Rick, and I have dreamed about for a very long time. 

The first inklings sprouted over two and a half years ago as I watched the beautiful country of Scotland shrink from my plane’s window and I barely suppressed the insane urge to run into the cockpit so I could tell the pilot to turn the plane around (not the most intelligent idea in these times of tense air travel).  I had just gotten used to being part of the country, to fit myself into the ebb and flow of Scotland’s people and culture.  I thought, "Two weeks was barely enough.  If only I could have spent just a little more time.  A month, maybe?"

One night, on one of our daily evening walks together, I tentatively broached the subject to Rick.   Instead of giving me his patented I-think-you’re-insane-but-I-won’t-say-it-out-loud look, he nodded and said, "I know exactly what you mean."

Soon the idea that had started life as just a passing longing, had grown and grown until we realized, flabbergasted, that we were really going to take a complete year off, to wander the world.  I kept asking Rick, "Are you sure about this?  Are you absolutely positively 100% sure that we should do this?"  He shrugged and said, "If not now, when?"  And I took a deep breath, "Ok."

I’m a planner by nature and there’s a lot of planning ahead of us to prepare for a year-long trip anywhere. Not only that, being the keeper of all things financial, I have the additional burden of making sure we won’t end up beggars on the sidewalks of some country thousands of miles away.  Some of the time, ok, most of the time, I think of everything we have to do, to prepare, the sheer amount of detail we must attend to in less than a year’s time, and I reel back overwhelmed. 

Then I think of Rick and his smile and his "If not now, when?" and I forge ahead.