Easy Does It

Hard-committing to ease this year.

Yesterday Isla and I traveled from Orlando to Denver. She’s well traveled for a three-year-old, something people tend to be surprised by because three is a short number of years and also they’ve been largely Covid years. We live far from our family, so your drives are often our flights and they’ve added up. Anyway, despite her great attitude it’s still a lot of effort, especially now that I’m on my own.

We packed light for ten days of travel - 8 visiting family/friends in Florida and two days just for us in Denver (more on that later), but packing light looks like this:

• Isla’s small roller

• Isla’s backpack

• My small roller

• My backpack

• A weekender that sits on top of a roller for some overflow items

• Her carseat

And since she is really close but not quite to where she will wear her backpack for more than minutes or pull her suitcase anywhere but around our house, I manage all of that, plus her.

So yesterday we drove almost two hours from our airbnb to the Orlando airport in our rental car which I’d accidentally routed on all small roads. Finally we arrive and find the rental car return, and I park the car and begin to gather our things. “Oh!” the rental car women finds us to check our car in. “You’re flying Southwest? You’re in a different terminal. You’ll have to take the train there with all your things before you can check bags.”

So Isla and I, and our two suitcases and two backpacks and a weekender and carseat that weights upwards of 30 pounds, walked through the parking garage and up an elevator and to a train platform and then from the train into our correct terminal where I finally go to put all the things down.

This is where I’d like to mention that my word for the year is “ease.”