We're down to our last week before leaving on our long-anticipated trip to Great Britain. We're just about packed and have everything in place. Some people ask us as we explain where we're going for a month, "Why Great Britain"? So here's a little background on the planning of our trip.
About two years ago, I accompanied our youngest son Brian to Italy with his high school chamber choir on a 10 day tour. We had a great time seeing the sights and hearing the choir perform in 500-year-old churches. And while I was away, Marilyn decided to occupy some of her evenings by watching the BBC miniseries version of Pride and Prejudice. The scenes of the English countryside and manor houses and cute villages started an idea in her mind that grew and grew as the week went by. So, when Brian and I returned home from our trip, Marilyn took me aside and said, "I'm going to get even with you. You're taking me to England!" Always the willing traveler, I promptly agreed, and so the planning began.
I’ve always felt that planning and anticipating a trip is half of the fun. As we began the planning process, we started to imagine ourselves standing on a windswept moor, walking the halls of an elaborate manor house, or standing on the turret of a medieval castle. We began to watch BBC miniseries about life in England in the 19th century, we read all of the Sherlock Holmes series, we listened to Celtic music. Suddenly, we were no longer thinking of the mundane tasks of life, like working, paying the bills, taking care of the yard. We were taking little mini trips in our mind, particularly at those moments when life appeared to be very dull. Then we started studying about British history and geography, what to see and do. We searched out our ancestors, where they were from, and read their stories about their life in England. We discovered that all of Marilyn’s ancestors trace their origins to Great Britain, and all of mine except for Walter Peter Monson’s ancestors, who came from Scandinavia.
As many of you know, dreaming about a vacation doesn’t necessarily make it come true, but it’s a start. Many other things have to line up in place to make it possible. For us, it was the fact that we were now empty-nesters, with our youngest child on a mission and all of the rest married and having families of their own. And I also need to thank my father, who left each of his children some money from a life insurance policy, which is helping to make this trip possible. So, thank you, Dad, and thank you, our children, for having stable lives and allowing us to leave our home for a month without any worries about you.
