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What We Carry: Wednesday Writing Prompt

What We Carry: Wednesday Writing Prompt

Last updated on: June 6, 2018 at 1:24 pm by Erin Wathen

What We Carry: Wednesday Writing Prompt 2018-06-06T13:24:07-07:00 Erin Wathen

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The only thing better than going someplace new and exciting is going somewhere you’ve been before.

Maybe that means I’m getting old? But more and more, I prefer vacations to known locales. A place with favorite restaurants, familiar places to stay, and maybe best of all, family stories of “that other time we were here, do you remember …?”

Last week, my family took a trip to our favorite beach. I almost hate to tell you where it is because what we love about it is how chill and uncrowded everything is, so you can see my dilemma. But what the hell, I might as well tell you so that you can enjoy it too, until the hipsters show up and gentrify everything (which I already see happening, but don’t get me started). Whenever we can, as often as we can, we head to Carlsbad, California, where we park it for a week and do as much nothing as we possibly can.

When we lived in Phoenix, this was an easy trip. About a five-hour drive through the Palm Desert, which is lovely provided your a/c works and you don’t run out of gas, in which case you are coyote food. We’d hit the L.A./Orange County area and visit some friends from home, and then head south to the REAL happiest place on earth. These days, it’s a bit more of a haul and we only get out there once every couple of years.

Since my family has been going there for so long, I tend to remember these trips in terms of milestones. I remember the first trip that we didn’t have to pack diapers (that was amazing); the first year the kids would actually play on the beach without eating the sand; the first year we didn’t have to haul a stroller or plan days around nap times …

When I think about past vacations in these terms, I realize how much you can tell about our lives, at any given moment, by the things we take with us. Or don’t.

The packing list is not the only measure, of course. For instance, I’ll remember this trip for many other reasons. I’ll remember this as the year my son (age 7) learned that he loves–listen, LOVES–hiking. He declared himself chief Ewok Scout, ran ahead, and blazed a trail to the top of the mountain. He was ecstatic when we got there. I’ll also remember this as the year my daughter (9) said “Mom, do you want to come do ballet on the beach with me?” and OF COURSE I DO. But as milestones go, this trip will go down in infamy as The Year The Children Packed Their Own Damn Suitcases.

I’m totally serious. Hear me out there, parents of babies and toddlers with all the paraphernalia implied–this day is coming for you and it is glorious. My kids packed their own stuff with very little input or adult supervision. (Other than telling the boy he might need to see about getting some laundry done if 2 pairs of underwear is all I can find. Ewok Scout= commando).

In any case, all those years of hauling ALL THE THINGS made me especially grateful for their mad packing skills this time around. The years of diapers and strollers; breast pumps and bottles; a thousand changes of clothes, endless piles of books and toys,… I felt wonderfully light and free on this trip, not having to deal with all that, AND having kids who are big enough to pack (and carry!) their own stuff.

That lightness is what I most love about travel. Yes, there have been trips where I’ve wound up hauling way more stuff than necessary; with much more to carry than was comfortable or practical. And yet, there’s something about the process of gathering only what you will need for the next few days and walking away from the rest. It is liberating. Even if you overpack, what you carry in your bags is just a small sampling of what you’ve left behind at home.

It really makes you think about how much you have that you could do without.

With that in mind, there were some things I intentionally left home this trip. For instance, I packed only swimsuits and comfortable clothes. No fussy outfits, no pants with buttons and zippers, no underwire bras. You know that’s going to be a good week. I also didn’t pack any shoes that weren’t Tevas. I had pool Tevas; hiking Tevas; throw-on-with-a-decent-dress-but-they’re-still-Tevas Tevas. But no heels and no strings. That’ll preach.

Knowing what the salt water does to my hair, I left my straightening iron at home, because why bother when you have Monica’s vacation hair? But it was so freeing I’ve decided to give up that vice for the summer. (And who are we kidding, the humidity makes the whole hair smoothing routine fruitless anyway).

And you know what else? I didn’t take my laptop.

Vacation, after all, is not just a break from your space–it’s a break from your stuff, and from the endless tasks that all those things seem to demand. A trip to Elsewhere is a blessed invitation to not only lay down those things for awhile, but to evaluate how you might shed some of the excess on reentry.

So here’s your writing prompt: describe your dream trip. Where are you going, what’s the weather like, what will you do there, who’s coming with, etc? And then–write your packing list. What’s on it? Perhaps more importantly–what’s not? And is the thing left behind something you’ll have to pick back up eventually? Or can you just, maybe, take a permanent vacation from those uncomfortable shoes (or whatever)?

Maybe you want to write a song or a poem about what you carry, wherever it is you’re going. Maybe you want to write an ode to the things left behind. Or a prayerful liturgy about what you might bring back with you. Maybe you just literally want to write your actual packing list for your real life road trip and I’m trying to be too precious about it.

In any case– get to writing. And report back!

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