The trip. What to say about the trip? It was lovely. And just a little insane (bad laundry experience and a transit strike will do that). And I really hope it wasn’t a once in a lifetime thing. There were still so many incredible things left to see and do and taste that I can’t bear the thought that we’ll never go back.
I came home sad, as I posted in the Lushary on Monday. A little sad that the vacation was over, but more sad that I had to come back to my life. The life where I miscarried in September. The life where we’ve been trying for so damn long to have a baby. The life where my SIL is due with her oh so precious girl (after two boys) in a matter of weeks. My imperfect, slightly depressing life. A life without the promise of a much needed vacation. Our trip has been my distraction and motivation since February. It’s what I spent most of my day dreamy hours on. What now?
Anyway, the trip itself was lovely (did I already say that?) and a little bittersweet (which I’ll explain later). I have pictures to share and I know you all will forgive anything if I share pictures, right? Keep in mind when viewing that these pages were created to share the trip with our families, including DH’s family who live several hundred miles away and are two things – serious travelers and serious picture people. They have taken at least 6 trips to Europe in the 6 years we’ve been together and have the piles of photos to prove it. It was my way of being one of them.
The photos don’t quite do it all justice. We laughed a lot and smooched a lot and really enjoyed the adventure of being together in someplace different. We’re big Amazing Race fans, and have been watching it in reruns for months. We took turns narrating the trip as if we were Phil, as in “In this leg of the race, teams must exit the airport and find their way to the destination using only public transportation. Who will reach their destination first?” and a lot of “In this detour, teams must choose between two similar tasks – taking the bus or the metro to get to the Louvre.” Every time something would get a little boring or tense (such as when we were a little lost on occasion), one of us would break out the words of Phil and we’d both be cracking up.
On our last night in Paris, we celebrated our fourth wedding anniversary with a fancy dinner a few blocks from our hotel. I can’t believe four years have passed since we stood in front of all of our friends and family and tearfully pledged to spend our lives together, good or bad. Whenever I think about it now, I think about how innocent and naïve we were then. On that day we dreamed of the children who would someday come. We’d already chosen their names and often referred to them as our pretend children, Grace and Charlie. So much of what we chose to do that day revolved around the stories we wanted to tell them someday. It’s so darn hard to watch each year pass and not know when we’ll get to meet them. We’ve been waiting all this time to be the people we thought we’d become – parents.
When we got married we agreed to wait to TTC for a year to give ourselves time to get settled before starting a family. The year passed and we were conflicted about TTC or traveling a bit. I decided the only place that I’d want to see first was Paris. As the discussion evolved, I decided that having children was more important to me than traveling the world so we started TTC as planned that winter. Years of anguish followed. Last winter I decided I’d temporarily had enough of the darkness and we took a break. The break led to a vacation, which led us to Paris. Going there was my consolation prize. Some moments were tough to enjoy knowing that if things had just gone another way, I’d be at home with my kids.
Being home means I have to decide what to do next. How long do we try on our own before going back to the RE? Now that our insurance has changed, which RE? And how much testing do we do, knowing that there is a lifetime cap of $5K staring us in the face? How am I going to cope when the new niece arrives in a few weeks? How am I going to get through the holidays, including hosting Christmas?
Fun and games as my grandmother would say.
