"The Juggler's Children" by Carolyn Abraham

"There may be no better remedy for the genealogy blues than the Internet and several uninterruped watch-the-sun-come-up hours of clicking into the abyss. The sensation that you may be just a link away from pay dirt never leaves you. This must be why family-history hunting can be as addictive as gambling, why it rivals online gaming as one of North America's top pastimes. Keep plugging your ancestral particulars into the machine and some primitive region of the brain -- perhaps a Pavlovian instinct conserved from a day when persistent spear throwing eventually led to dinner -- suggests that your numbers will soon come up."  -- The Juggler's Children, p. 221

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If you've been reading my blog for awhile, you'll know that one of my hobbies is genealogy. I like to think that while I may not be growing my family tree into the future by having children, I am growing it another way by revealing & preserving my family's history. 

Delving into my family's past has been fascinating. When I started researching my family tree in earnest, some 30 years ago, I spent long hours at the library and the Archives of Ontario, scrolling through endless reels of microfilm until my head spun.

Since then, genealogy research has been transformed by the Internet. There are increasing numbers of records available online. I resisted the lure of the Internet for a long time (after a lull of some years after we moved out of the city), but finally succumbed. ; ) I bought a genealogy program for my computer, and have subscribed to Ancestry.com on & off. I find it pays to keep going back again & again to sites such as Ancestry, because there are always new records coming online, and always something new popping up to ponder over.

Today, genealogists have another new tool at their disposal:  DNA, which can be used to help you confirm or rule out a relationship with a potential relative.  Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. has used DNA to interesting effect on several of his PBS programs, including "Finding Your Roots." 

Carolyn Abraham, a medical reporter with The Globe & Mail, used DNA as well as traditional research techniques to help her untangle the mystery of her family's history, and has written a memorable book about it:  "The Juggler's Children: A Journey into Family, Legend and the Genes that Bind Us."

As a child growing up in Canada, Abraham would get asked by her schoolmates -- and, in turn, ask her parents: "What are we? Where did we come from?"  Simple questions -- but the answers she got were vague and complex. Abraham's last name would suggest Jewish heritage -- but she was born in England, attended Catholic schools and had brown skin. Her parents had come to Canada from India -- but her grandmother had insisted there was no Indian blood in the family (some Portuguese, perhaps?).  "Anglo-Indian" and "Eurasian" were among the suggested labels. Her mother's grandfather, according to family lore, was a sea captain from Jamaica. Her father's grandfather, on the other hand, was thought to be a circus juggler who came to India from China -- possibly on the lam.

Armed with DNA testing kits (at one point, she improvises with Q-Tips), Abraham, her husband and parents travel to India & Jamaica, as well as genealogical DNA conferences, in search of their roots. DNA testing, combined with traditional research, brings Abraham some answers, some surprises (some pleasant, some less so), and even more mysteries. Some get resolved, some don't.

She delves into the science of DNA, how testing works, what it can tell us (and what it can't), in a (mostly) understandable way.  Even as she researched her genealogy & wrote this book, new developments were unfolding that expanded the scope of what her family's genes could tell her.

By the time you reach the end of the book (Abraham's daughter gets the last word -- and it's a great summation), you realize that for all of us, the answer to the question "who do you think you are?" may be less definitive than we think.

Part family history, part science textbook, part history and part mystery -- I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

"The Other Mothers"

Justine had a great Mother's Day post:  instead of writing about her mother, or about her own take on motherhood, or infertility, she chose to honour "The Other Mothers" -- women in her life "some of whom have no biological children of their own, but who have been mothers to me when I've needed them most."

She asked us about the "other mothers" in our own lives.

I have been blessed to have some wonderful older women in my life as friends, family and mentors. Let me tell you about a few of them:   

Mrs. S, my best friends' mom from across the street, when I was in grade school. I have actually referred to Mr. & Mrs. S. as "my other parents" -- and I do call them Mr. & Mrs. S.  At the time my sister & I grew up, children did not call adults by their first names -- and in any case, Mr. S was the vice-principal of our school. Calling him by anything but "Mr." would have been weird -- even disrespectful.  So -- even though Mrs. S eventually did ask us to call them by their first names, or even "Aunt" & "Uncle" -- we've never quite managed to do so, even to this day, after almost 45 years of friendship between our families. We did eventually manage to shorten it to "Mr. & Mrs. S" -- think of how Fonzie on "Happy Days" shortened "Mr. & Mrs. Cunningham" to "Mr. & Mrs. C." ; )

Miss A (and we always did refer to her as "Miss," never by her first name) was a retired schoolteacher who lived down the street from us when my sister & I were toddlers. Born in Prince Edward Island, and a cousin to Lucy Maud Montgomery (she had a beautiful first edition of Montgomery's novel "The Golden Road"), she came to Saskatchewan as a young woman to teach in a one-room schoolhouse.  Her house was tiny and not well heated, and in the winter, she closed up part of her house and lived in just two rooms -- the cheerful kitchen and a small combination bed/sitting room.  She had a lovely garden, with poppies growing in colourful masses along the fence. She never married, had no children, and her extended family lived far away, but she "adopted" our young family and took us under her wing. Like many schoolteachers, she was a font of stories and wonderful ideas for crafts and activities. She introduced our family to the delights of waffles with whipped cream and freshly picked berries (and, when we moved away, she suggested to the church ladies that a waffle iron would be an appropriate farewell gift -- my mother still has it). She served my sister & I tea in real china teacups, along with oatcakes and peanut butter cookies (I have the recipes), and then gave the cups to us as presents when we moved away. Her sister was a missionary in New Zealand for many years, and she always wanted to go there;  she finally did when she was 80.  I decided then that if I had to be 80 someday, I wanted to be just like Miss A.

I last saw Miss A. when I was a teenager, although we exchanged Christmas cards for years, and my parents & grandparents stopped by to see her on a driving trip west. Occasionally, at work, I had reason to call the bank branch in town (the same one where my father had worked), and I would enquire about how she was doing. I heard that she had finally given up her tiny little house and moved into the seniors home -- that, sadly, she had dementia. Then one day, I got a note from her niece. She had been going through her aunt's address book & letting people know that Miss A. had passed away. I don't remember how old she was, but she was well into her 90s by then. 

My godmother, C:  My mother never had a sister, but she had the next best thing -- her cousin, C, four years older, who grew up in the same small town (their mothers were sisters).  C is one of my two godmothers, and I like to call her my "fairy godmother," because she's always been extremely generous to me.  I've also called her "Auntie," even though she is not really my aunt. Her two daughters are about the same ages as my sister & me, and we had fun hanging out together in the summertime when we visited our grandmothers.

C. is a good listener, and always has an apt observation, encouraging word or piece of wisdom to share. She also has exquisite taste and has given me some treasured gifts over the years -- a handcrafted ceramic jewelry box with my name etched on the underside -- with a lovely pin inside;  a wooden Christmas plaque that reminded me of a similar picture in my grandmother's house;  a crystal lamp, given to us as a wedding present, annual Christmas cards with long, newsy, handwritten letters inside. She doesn't always send birthday gifts, but has always marked the milestones. For my 40th birthday, C sent me $40 (in U.S. funds) & told me to take a friend for lunch -- and to have dessert, because we women so seldom ordered dessert. ; )  The exchange rate on the U.S. dollar at the time was such that I actually managed to take two friends to lunch, and we all enjoyed dessert & toasted C in thanks. :)

My other godmother, Aunty M:  My other godmother, my Aunty M, is my dad's older sister. She had three sons but no daughters, and I like to think I've always had a special spot in her heart. ; ) When I was a kid, I had some health issues that required me & my mother to come to the children's hospital in the city for a few days every year or so for testing and outpatient procedures over a couple of days. We would stay at Aunty M's house in the north end of the city and make the trek to the children's hospital by bus, transferring two or three times along the way. When the building next door to the hotel we were staying in burned to the ground on a cold December night, and the halls of the hotel filled with smoke, Aunty M took us in in the middle of the night.

A little more than a year after I lost Katie, she lost her husband. She came to visit me a few months later. She helped me line the bottom of my kitchen cupboards and knitted dishcloths for me.  I always thought I got my camera bug tendencies from my maternal grandmother, who gave me my first camera... but Aunty M is also quick to pull our her camera & share her latest photos. I also tend to credit my maternal grandfather for my interest in genealogy -- but Aunty M has taken it upon herself to document the family history for my dad's family.  She has compiled an amazing, massive scrapbook, filled with just about every wedding invitation, birth announcement, funeral card & newspaper obituary my family has ever produced. The older I get, the more I think I look like her too.

Aunty M will be 80 this year -- something I find hard to believe. . She recently applied for a unit in the seniors residence in her town -- an assisted living unit. She is still full of energy, but decided she would make the move now before the decision had to be made for her.

Aunty D, my dad's younger sister, who was a teenager when I was born. She lived closer to the city centre than Aunty M, and when I got to be a teenager, I stayed with her and her growing family -- like Aunty M, she also had three boys -- to attend debating competitions and science fairs. Recently, one of her sons moved and now lives about a half hour from me with his family -- I am tickled, after 25+ years of living so far away from my family, to finally have a relative so close by. As a bonus, Aunty D visits a couple of times a year.

My work friend P: P was one of the first people I spoke to when I started my job 27 years ago this summer. She contributed data for a regular feature in the employee newsletter I worked for. After several years of chatting on the phone and mailing material back & forth to each other through the interoffice mail (this was pre-Internet), we decided it was high time we met. She worked in a different building a few blocks away, & the next time I was in the area, I dropped by to say hello. She was just as delightful in person as she was over the phone -- frank, funny, unafraid to speak her mind or go to bat for what she thought was right, full of stories about people at the company, and happy to dish out advice. We began having lunch together every few weeks. After several years, her department moved to a satellite office in another part of the city -- but whenever we had to visit each other's offices, we made a point of scheduling our meetings close to lunchtime. ; ) When she finally retired a few years ago, I attended her farewell party. She still drops by to see me -- sometimes unannounced -- whenever she is downtown.

These are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head... I'm sure there are others.

I hope that someday I can be as great a mom/aunt figure to some young person as these women are to me.

Voldemort Day 2013

(Voldemort Day = The Day That Shall Not Be Named.  My preferred label. You all know why, lol....)

• Is it over yet? :p  ;)
• The day here has been cold, grey, windy & rainy (altnough I am hearing reports of both hail & snow, not too far from us). Matched my mood. :p
• It's not like it hurts so terribly much anymore... it just makes me tired. Very, very tired. I can only read so many Facebook posts wishing people a happy you-know-what-day and photos of pancake breakfasts and presents received before I just want to turn the computer off and dive under the covers and stay there all day. :p 
• I didn't, though. Although I did wind up hiding out in the dark at the movies (my preferred strategy of avoidance, lol) -- "The Great Gatsby," which I also just finished reading. Review of both movie & book to come...
• CBS Sunday Morning had numerous topical stories, of course. :p  But, surprise!  The lead story was about childless by choice couples. (Although it started off --for contrast's sake, I suppose -- with the infamous Duggars of "19 Kids and Counting.")  On the one hand, I really, really wish they had at least nodded to the fact that there is a vast grey area between the Duggars and couples who make a conscious, deliberate choice not to have children. On the other hand, I was amazed that they even tackled the subject on Voldemort Day at all, let alone gave it the lead story spot in the lineup. Overall, I thought it was a reasonably well balanced examination of the subject (at least, as well examined as you can get in just a couple of minutes). There was no video posted on the site (at least yet), but here's the story stemming from that item.
• A huge thank you to the deadbabymama friend on Facebook who posted a link to this article, "For Women Who Dread Mother's Day." It was exactly, exactly what I needed to hear/read today. Sample passage:

"We are a sisterhood, all of us who just want the day to pass. We are a sisterhood of women who have learned so much the hard way, who know that life doesn't hold guarantees, who in our better moments understand that love isn't about what you get, but what you give... Sisters, you aren't alone. There are vast numbers of us. Maybe that's what we can do, too: reach out our hands to each other--in real ways, in cyber-ways, in any way--and say: I understand. I stand with you. This day shall pass, life goes on, and there are always, always reasons to be grateful."

Post-Voldemort Day ramblings 2012

You-Know-What Day (2011)

Mother's Day 2010

Pre-MDay 2009

Mother's Day 2009 (Baptism)

Mother's Day 2008

Pre-MDay 2008

Once more unto the breach...

Thank you all for your kind words of support on my last post. It was a looooooonnnnnnggggg week, and by Friday night, I was utterly exhausted. :p 

Needless to say, it was not my most productive week at work -- thank goodness we are not overly busy at the moment. I told my immediate manager and a few others about what had happened, and before long, word had spread.  Everyone has been very kind. My senior manager has been checking in on me and how I/we are doing, and my director called me into his office on Friday to say he'd heard, he was sorry, he understood if I felt less than kindly toward the company at the moment (since it's also the same company that fired my husband), and to feel free to take a mental health day if I felt I needed one. It's nice to know that MY part of the organization, at least, is being supportive. :p

Dh said that Friday that it was just starting to hit him that he's effectively retired -- "now what?"  I was struck by the parallels between now and that period of our life, 12 years ago, when we realized we were done with infertility treatments and, most likely, would never be parents. "Now what?" indeed?  The scenario is very similar -- grieving a major loss (of a child/of the dream of parenthood/a longtime job/routine/relationships with coworkers), grieving for the future we thought was ours (parenthood/early retirement on our terms). Trying to come to terms with the new world & life situation we've been suddenly thrust into (permanent childlessness/extra-early retirement/commuting alone).

Losing a job, like losing a child and winding up childless, is one of those things that you know happens in this world -- more often than most people think -- but always happens to someone else. Until one day, it doesn't.

Of course, although losing a job is shocking, difficult, unpleasant and life-changing, it pales in comparison to losing a child. As I've said, we've survived worse situations than this one. We'll be OK.  But it will take time to adjust and figure out the lay of the land.

(To add insult to injury, we had our air conditioner serviced on Saturday, and learned it's on its last legs and should probably be replaced -- sooner rather than later. And earlier last week, we mailed in our income tax filings -- along with our cheques. Yes, we both wound up paying. If bad luck comes in threes, we've surely reached our limit, haven't we?? :p )

Three more years... three more years... ;)

Ready or not :p

"It seems like no job is secure these days," I wrote in response to Mali's recent news that her husband had been made redundant at work.

Maybe I should have knocked wood. 

Yesterday morning at precisely 9:36 a.m., I got a call from dh. He was at the security entrance to my department -- with an escort. 

He'd been let go. After 24 years. His performance was not the issue. "Reorganization," they said. The escort was assigned to see that he made it downstairs to the concourse (if not completely out of the building). He wasn't even allowed to return to his desk to get his jacket;  one of his co-workers retrieved it and brought it to him.

I think I was more in shock than he was. He has not been happy with his job for a very long time. It's a familiar story these days -- fewer and fewer people to do more and more work, enormous stress amid constant rumours of "reorganization." He is at an age where he is eligible for early retirement, and we've been working and saving with that goal in mind.  He just hadn't planned to do take it yet, until I could retire along with him -- not for another few years.

Well, our plans (or part of them, anyway) just shifted into fast forward mode. 

We will be OK. For all my deep-rooted (if perhaps irrational) fears of winding up a bag lady (shared by many women, I think), we are a lot better equipped to absorb this blow than many other families are right now, and I am very thankful for that. (We later learned that two other people from his team were let go the same day.)  I am thankful that the work-related stress that's been plaguing him for the past several years in particular is at an end. And I am even thankful right now that we don't have children. It would be a much, much different story if they were here.

He's talking about going back to school this fall, spending some more time with his dad;  eventually, perhaps, getting a part-time job. He's even offered to learn how to operate the washer & dryer. ; )  I may hold him to that. ; )

As for me, I'm going to have to get used to commuting to work by myself, to carrying my own briefcase, to going through the day without the security of knowing that dh was close by if I needed him. I have been spoiled, people, I admit it. We've been doing this for 23 years, ever since we moved from the city to the suburbs. 23 years!!! And I don't do well with change. :p

I have to admit, that phone call brought me back to that awful day, almost 15 years ago, when *I* was the one making the phone call(s), when our lives changed forever. Then I thought of other days & other out-of-the-blue phone calls I've received, and made.

This was not, by far, the worst news I could have received. Not the best, mind you -- but definitely not the worst. 

But it reminded me, again (as if I needed reminding...), of how life can change in the blink of an eye, and how none of us is immune to change, whether we like it or not. :p

Not Mom Me :)

My blog & I are featured today at The Not Mom, a blog/site devoted to the 1 in 5 women who are childless/free for whatever reason. A big thanks to Laura LaVoie for the interview! & I love the photo chosen to illustrate this entry! :)

Home and the world

One of the persistent assumptions/myths/stereotypes about those of us who are childless/free (whether by choice or not) is that we all travel a lot -- because we can! 

Well, as is often the case, some of us certainly do, but some of us don't. Msfitzita had a great post recently about why, for now at least, she has chosen to stay close to home.

Her post resonated with me, because I recently returned to work after a week's staycation. (Boo, hiss...) Highlights included trips to three different mega-bookstore outlets and one of the new Target stores that just opened here in Canada. ; )  We both did a lot of reading, & I got caught up on a lot of blogs.

And then I went back to work. And people ask me, "Oh, you were on vacation? Where did you go?" I feel like I'm disappointing them when I tell them, "Nowhere." (Or joke, "I went to Target!")

When did it become the mandated norm that you MUST go somewhere when you take vacation time??

I admit... I love a good staycation, now & then. There is nothing better than being at home in the middle of the day (while everyone ELSE is at work!!), sitting on the loveseat with my laptop or a good book and a nice cup of tea in hand, with the sunlight flooding into my living room. It looks like a completely different place in the daylight. When you spend 6+ months of the year going to work in the dark & coming home in the dark, it's a sight that's meant to be savoured. And I like being able to sleep in and setting my own schedule, not HAVING to constantly be at a particular place at a particular time. (At least once in awhile.)

Msfitzita wrote eloquently about what home has meant to her these past nine years since the death of her son, Thomas. "Home" has always been a word charged with special meaning for me too... maybe because, as I grew up, "home" was generally someplace different, every three years or so.  The longest I ever lived in one place before I left my parents was six years. By the time my parents celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary, our family had lived in 11 different houses in 7 different towns in two provinces.

My dad worked in the branches of two different Canadian banks over some 30 years (until he chucked banking altogether and went into real estate) -- and in those days, when the bank decided it was time for you to move, you didn't have much say in the matter. He often had very little notice (a few weeks, tops) before he was expected to report to the next job, and usually spent the first few weeks or months living in a motel & eating out -- and these were generally very small towns with few choices for lodging or dining -- looking for a place for us to live, and driving home on weekends. 

My mother was left to deal with selling the house, purging and packing up, dealing with the movers -- and dealing with my sister & me. The older we got, the harder it was to cope with leaving our established lives and friends. Today, kids can easily keep in touch by with texting, e-mail and Facebook. Back then, all we had was Canada Post and maybe (if we were really good) a few precious minutes on the telephone a couple times a year. (Long distance back then was considered expensive.)  The friend factor aside, it was hard to adjust to a new school.  Both of us were generally good students, but, for example, I'd find myself bored silly in my new English class, where I was light years ahead of my classmates, while struggling to keep up in math, because the curricula were so different. When I was in early grade school, we moved from one town to another where all the kids were sports crazy. In one of our first phys ed classes, we went outside to play baseball. I had never played baseball before. I got sent out into the outfield with a borrowed glove, and spent most of the next half hour praying that the ball wouldn't come anywhere near me, because I had no idea what I was supposed to do with it. When I failed to pick up the ball with due haste and throw it with enough force in the right direction for the pitcher to catch, the wrath and scorn of my classmates descended upon me. That set the tone for the rest of my school phys ed career and my ongoing relationship with organized sports and physical activity generally. 

(I digress....)

Fortunately for my sister & me, most of these transfers occurred in the late spring/early summer, so we were always able, at least, to finish out the school year. Many of my closest friends were the children of RCMP and air force officers (one of the places we lived was home to an air force base), who knew & understood what it was like to move around and be the new kid in school.

(I have a theory that my packrat tendencies are rooted in a desire to cling to the familiar, everyday things in my life, since my surroundings were constantly changing. Dh, who lived in the same house in the same city with the same people around him for almost his entire pre-marriage life, is much more of a minimalist and much more inclined to throw things away. I am sure there is a PhD thesis in there somewhere...)

I can remember talking with my parents about where they wanted to be buried when the time comes. "Where is home?" my dad asked, rhetorically.  He left branch banking almost 25 years ago -- he and my mother stayed in the last town where they had been moved by the bank, and have lived there for almost 30 years now. You might think they would want to buried there, but they've decided they want to be cremated, and their ashes interred in the small Minnesota town where my mother grew up -- not far from where my father grew up, just across the border, and where my ancestors (on both sides) were among the early settlers. That place, more than anywhere else, I think, said and still says "home" to me, in a lifetime of moving around.

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Anyway, as usual, I digress. The above is a long & roundabout way of saying that I understand the pull of home that Msfitzita expresses so well in her post.

At the same time, I do get the itch to travel. 

Travel -- not world travel, mind you, but spending long hours in the car as my dad drove us hundreds of miles across the open prairies, through swirling snow in the winter and blazing hot sun in the summertime (and most cars in those days had no airconditioning) to visit family and friends (back in those towns we had left behind) -- is a big part of my childhood memories. The towns we lived in were pretty small, so driving was a part of life. We thought nothing of driving an hour or so to shop or go to the movies in a bigger town down the road. When I was very small, we took the train to visit our grandparents, but as we moved around (and as more and more passenger rail lines shut down), we drove to visit them, at least a couple of times a year. When I was in junior high, we finally moved to a town that was JUST a two-hour drive away, so we got to see them more often.  (Packing for a trip does not faze me -- I usually don't start until the night or day before a trip.  I was packing my own suitcase from the time I was in grade school, so it is no big deal to me.)

When I was 7, our family took a trip (by car, of course) to visit Calgary and Banff, and when I was 14, we drove all the way to the west coast.  In Grade 12, I won a trip from the Rotary Club to spend a week in Ottawa along with a couple hundred other Grade 12 students  from all across Canada. It was the first time I had ever been in an airplane, and it was a life-changing experience for me. A few years later, when I graduated from journalism school in Ontario, my parents & I drove to my convocation -- through northern Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan on the way there, and across the top of Lake Superior on the way back (where some places were so remote that we couldn't even tune in a radio station).  Along the way, there were school band trips around the province, and camping trips, and treks down to the Twin Cities to see relatives.

I wasn't alone among my peers, at that time & place. For most of us, "travel" or "vacation" meant a trip to the closest city, or camping in a provincial park -- maybe a trip to Calgary or Vancouver or (slightly more exotic) Toronto (haha). Once in awhile, older friends of my parents would go to Las Vegas or Reno, and I remember one couple that went to Tijuana. I knew only a very few lucky "rich" kids who got to go to Disneyland (in California -- Disney World in Florida was just getting off the ground) -- and that was considered a once-in-a-lifetime experience. These days I read about parents who take their kids on a Disney cruise EVERY YEAR. Needless to say, I can't relate.

Dh & I spent our honeymoon in Banff & Jasper (we couldn't afford a big trip to an exotic location, and anyway, I've never seen the point of going to Jamaica or Hawaii in the middle of July...!). We've been back to the Rockies and out to the west coast (British Columbia, Washington & the Oregon Coast) a couple of times, with family members. We spent a wonderful week in Nova Scotia a couple of years ago for our 25th wedding anniversary. I did a bit of business travelling to some major Canadian cities, about 20 years ago (which mostly meant seeing airports, hotel lobbies and board rooms).  And we've taken a lot of long-weekend/mini-vacations, to Ottawa (must get back there again soon, it's been too long...), Michigan, Niagara, Stratford, Kingston, cottage country resorts, etc.

But I've never been to Europe (although I've dreamed about it for years). I've never been to Italy (dh has, to visit relatives when he was a boy, but not in the last 40 years, and never to any of the typical tourist spots).  I've never been to New York City, or to California, or Florida, or to Mexico, or to the Caribbean. I've never been further south than Iowa.

*** *** ***

So why haven't we travelled more...?

Time and money were big factors in the early years of our marriage. Starting out in our respective jobs, we only got 2 weeks vacation (the mandated minimum here in Canada). I think that increased to four weeks after we reached 10 years of service, and five weeks when we hit 20 years (which is the most you get, no matter how long you stay with the company). And, because I live 1,000+ miles away from my family & like to see them now & then, most of my precious vacation time in those early years was spent travelling to & from my parents' home, or hosting my mom (with or without dad) here. A few days or a week at Christmastime, a week or two in the summer & poof, there goes your vacation allotment. I don't think people who live close to their families quite "get" that sometimes.

These days, we both get 5 weeks per year -- but we still haven't done a lot of travelling. Money is part of the reason, I suppose. Many of our peers use(d) their income tax refunds or bonuses at work to fund vacations (or put them on their credit cards...!), but until we had our mortgage paid off, any extra funds we had or came into went toward that goal. In recent years, saving for what we hope will be an early retirement became the priority.

(FIL did have a house in Florida for a few years, back in the 1990s = cheap accommodation -- but they always had a huge mob staying there with them whenever they went. Sharing a bathroom with 15 other people wasn't my idea of a vacation, so we never made it there before they sold.)

Also, having the vacation time is one thing;  working around our coworkers' vacation schedules is another complicating factor. We both (but dh especially) work on teams that are pretty thinly staffed and in posts that require some backup. It's understood that if we want the same week off as one of our immediate teammates, it's not very likely that we're both going to get it. This recent "staycation" came about after dh spent the week of Ontario spring break covering for not just one but two of his teammates. "I need a vacation," he said to me, but when we looked at our respective vacation schedules & the time off booked by our respective coworkers, we realized it was either the first week of April, or... mid-June. :p

Then there's also the issue of getting dh to agree to travel, to where and to a plan. He likes the idea of travel, in theory, but getting him to commit to a time, place and agenda is sometimes another story.  

Perhaps we'll get to travel more once we retire, when we're not as time-restricted and don't have the everyday pressures of work to clutter up our thinking on the matter. Europe is high on my list, & there's still so much of Canada I want to see.

But time just keeps flying by, and while retirement is looming in the not-too-distant future, I don't want to put all my travel eggs into that basket. As Mali recently put it, delayed gratification can be overrated.

I remember one of my aunts telling me how glad she was that she & her husband took a few big trips together, including one to England & Scotland for their 30th wedding anniversary, and a long-desired driving trip to California shortly after they both retired at age 65.

Less than a year later, shortly before my aunt's 66th birthday, he was dead.