Wander Lust

In case you didn't know, the spring always wants to make me travel.

I typed it that way on purpose. It doesn't "make me want", it "wants to make" me, and I say that because the desire to pack up my bags and leave is palpable and unignorable in the spring. It's like April, the greening-up grass, the fragrant soil, is purposely releasing a chemical it knows works as a travel aphrodisiac to me. The month hooks its unfurling, viney claws--fertile tentacles, if you will--into my flesh and brains and bones, it pulls and aches and yearns; it's a terrible, terrible feeling and I don't wish it on anybody.

It makes me cranky and uneasy in my own skin. It's a hedged in, trapped feeling. It threatens to make the everyday routine feel less like a routine and more like a prison.

Then I think about my parents, who have never been to Europe, and how at least I've been twice--once in high school and once in college--and I think about people who can go whenever they want, who hop a jet to Paris like it's the A train to midtown, and sometimes that all just seems too painful, you know?

For a long time I was trying to figure out how to be grateful for what I had, and sometimes that felt like giving in. I felt like I had to be one or the other: grateful or yearning. But you know what? I'm both. I am grateful for what I have.

And I really, really want to go to Europe.

So there it is. It's a Thursday in April. Dewy and cool. The sky seems bluer than it did last month, doesn't it? The flowers coming up make my heart happy. This October I will plant bulbs, and next April I will watch my own flowers grow. And maybe I can plant the travel seeds now, too.

And maybe next spring, my travel-buds will blossom with the tulips.

You never know.

I am Vesuvius and will you forgive me for being sentimental in the spring?