Letters from Our Children

While The Great BZWZ gets ready to leave tonight on a 6PM flight to Amsterdam and on to Nairobi, The Great PunkyDunky and family are in Mexico to attend two good friends' destination wedding. Both kids have the knack of writing letters from their various travels that make this reader want to hop on the very next flight. Here's part of yesterday's letter from P-Dunky in Valladolid, a small town midway between Merida and the Caribbean, in the Yucatan:

"Suffice to say the baby has been the hit of the party. Everyone knows her at our hotel in Playa Del Carmen. She´s been sitting in the high chair and allowing her humble mother and father to eat dinner!!! She even slept well last night. Isabella LOVES the pool. She doesn´t like the taste of sand. The beach made her cry. She didn´t get sunburnt. She loves bananas. In the plaza tonight she turned her head up to the sky and watched and listened to the thousand birds singing in the trees and flying overhead. The stray dogs that live in the Plaza made her giddy.

"We´re once again remembering that life in Mexico is just great. I don´t think we´re going to be pushing very hard. This siesta speed suits us just fine and when the baby is happy, Mommy and Daddy are happy."

At the end, he says: "...We´re wonderfully removed from internet and phones and all that. It feels like we have an unlimited amount of freedom, even though we´ll be back in L.A. in about six days."

The Great Plotnik thinks that last sentence just might sum up the whole point of traveling to faraway places. Plottie hates flying for hours and hours, but loves being in the airport about to take off on a long journey. Why? It's liberating.

Getting off a dusty bus and looking for a place to eat. Staring at a placard in a train station written in an indecipherable language. Climbing a mountain and looking down on a new river...or paddling the river and staring up at a new mountain. Meeting three rappers with sagging pants and a new CD in a jungle hut. Finding the common bond (almost always music or food). It's all about that unlimited amount of freedom...even though you'll be back in L.A., or SF, or NYC in six days or six months or the rest of your life.