My Irish Lassie . . .

“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.” – St. Augustine

My Irish lassie has been on my mind since the moment she flew off twelve days ago.  She's on the trip of her twelve year old lifetime, making memories she'll hold close forever; but she is a long, long way from her Mama!  My Molly Murphy is the incredibly lucky granddaughter of two people who appreciate travel as much as I do.  She is one fortunate little one.  The good thing about it, though, is that she knows that - how cool.  

“For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.” – Robert Louis Stevenson

She has emailed and skyped and texted of her adventures and we have reveled in it all.  Seeing her happy face with the verdant rolling hills of Ireland as her background is amazing, and thinking about her rejoicing at the wedding of our dear friend, Karl, is even more amazing.  This mother is a thankful one.  

“The journey not the arrival matters.” – T. S. Eliot

I'm imagining I'll be even more thankful when she is stateside, in my view, and we are laughing through the stories over Mexican food somewhere in the Atlanta area!  (That's always been a tradition in my family - if you go away somewhere far away, the part of the family who picks you up takes you for Mexican food.  Nice tradition, huh?)

“Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quiestest chambers. The mind can never break off from the journey.” – Pat Conroy

I cannot wait to hear the stories, to watch her eyes light up as she describes what she has seen.  I look forward to knowing what she now knows, to seeing the ways that her life has just gotten larger and to hearing how she describes what she now has filed away.  Travel grows a person, adds new chapters and gives a soul a new understanding of what living on this big, blue ball means - how I look forward to meeting the new parts of Molly and throwing my arms around that sweet neck I know so well!

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”  - Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad/Roughing It