Birthdays

On By thestampsinmypassportIn Uncategorized2 Comments

Birthdays, love them or dislike them? I happen to like birthdays, mine and celebrating others. I know it is not something everyone enjoys doing, and as we are getting older it could be a reason to not want to celebrate, but I would argue that we should always want to celebrate the day we arrived into the world.

I wonder what age one changes from loving the celebration to dreading the day each year. When we are young, we want a theme that is a current trend or fad, book a venue, party supplies, loot bags, the cake. What about the cake? Probably the most exciting, chocolate or vanilla, cupcakes or sheet cake, pink or purple (and of course now no more candles).

At some point I decided to combine by love of birthdays and my passion for travel and start to celebrate my birthday with a trip. The first time was in 2006, for my 35th birthday to Paris. I am sure I have written about it before, but on my birthday we went up the Eiffel Tower during the day and the Moulin Rouge at night for my birthday. I will never forget that birthday. I was reminded of our Eiffel Tower experience over the weekend.

Other birthday trips that followed were a couple of birthdays in Los Angeles, one of them at at spectacular chocolate afternoon tea at the Langham hotel in Pasadena, New Orleans, Savannah and last year Jamaica. Savannah was fun, eating at Paula Deen’s restaurant as part of my birthday request. Each experience was memorable and I am reminded how grateful I am for having the opportunities I have had over the years to travel and how much I have seen and how much more there is to see.

You may be asking why I am writing about birthdays today? Well, today is September 8th, which is Heath’s birthday. The night before he passed away we had a few conversations, and one of them was our birthday plans for our 50th birthdays, which are in 2021. I told him that I found the trip we would take, and we would be able to put a deposit on it in the coming months. It is CRAZY to think that if we had put the money down on the trip, that it wouldn’t actually even be happening, after booking it more than three years in advance. It was a two week cruise to Australia and New Zealand.

I can’t end this birthday post without the mention of my #16plus30 birthday, which was the birthday that really changed my life. It is hard to imagine that a year before the party I thought of the idea, celebrating not 46 but the 30th anniversary of my Sweet 16. It was capped off by Heath being able to come in for the weekend and celebrate not just the party, but a really cool weekend of celebration. When he left, I knew I had a new friend for life.

Cheers to you, my friend. You are missed every single day, but you already know that.

Pressing Pause

On By thestampsinmypassportIn Uncategorized3 Comments

Think back to March 2020. If you have children, you have just been told that there will be an extra two weeks of March break just to ensure that there is enough time to be safe if anyone has travelled outside of the country for the break.

For those of us in the tourism industry we were already knee deep in the s**t that, at the time didn’t have the name covid-19.  Then came March 26th, when I was laid off, for the first time.

It was a brutal blow to me. I was having a great time being a travel artist. Each trip at Goway is a customized experience based on the clients requests and desires. Each inquiry a blank canvas to create the piece of art that would become their experience. I proved to myself once again that there is a reason why I survived thirty years in this industry. I may not have always liked what I have done, but I have always been in love with travel.

At the time of the initial lay off, everyone was deep undercover, in isolation, in their homes. Most people were not going anywhere, for any reason. It was the first time that the borders of every country were closed.

I found myself tuning in at 11am each day to listen to the Prime Minister speak to the country and try to provide updates on what the government was doing for its citizens. This is not a political post so I will end this with the thought that my Prime Minister was doing the best he could at the time with the information.

A few weeks later the PM announced the CEWS (Canada Employee Wage Subsidy) a benefit for employers to hire their staff back at 75% pay from the government. I got a call, telling me about this opportunity. I would be working on behind the scene projects helping benefit the company for when travel would open up again. The option was to stay laid off, or work from home on projects. I was home anyways, so why not?

I had put my work computer off to the side of my desk when I was laid off, so I moved the desk around and started to work on the project the following week. The project was to build an internal training manual that would be used for new staff and existing staff to have everything they would need/want to know about all the countries we sell to. I was very happy to be given the country of Italy. If it wasn’t already my passion country, it is now.

Week by week, region by region, city by city, I built training manuals for every major city in the country from Milan and the lakes in the north, to the stunning island of Sicily in the south, to the Apulia region in the East. Every time I finished a region I was left with the desire to travel there.

This project was supposed to take us to when the government money would end. It was extended until August 31st. We were given our second project. This was external, content writing destination guides that will live on the Goway.com website. I was very excited to write content that, when the world will be ready to travel again, people would read. I was tasked through July and August to learn, educate myself on Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Hungary.

The destination guides of these countries were very interesting to me. To learn about the Baltic States, their history and their connections to each other. Of course, having a Polish grandfather, and being Jewish I thought I knew a lot about Poland, but now I have a greater understanding of the country, the people and the history from where I came from.

There is a section in the destination guides with essential foods to try in the country. Again, as a child of Ashkenazi heritage, so many of the foods in the Baltic States are similar to those in our history. Different names, slight variations, cousins part of the large Eastern European family.

As each week moved on and the August 31st deadline neared, I felt that the end was coming. Again the CEWS program was extended, but with stricter restrictions making it harder for employers, especially those in tourism, to continue to pay their staff.

Last week, my education came to a close. I was laid off for the second time during the pandemic. This time, it is different. I don’t see a return to the career I have had for thirty years coming back for a very long time.

I have been asked so many times over the last ten years or more, what would you do if not travel? That has always been the impossible question. Travel Lisa and Lisa Lisa are conjoined twins. We are connected at the heart, by the love and passion for the world. What will one do without the other? I don’t have the answer for that, yet.

With this I am going to press pause for a few weeks. Pause on what’s next. I think I had been blocking out the thought of trying to find not just a new job, but a new career during a pandemic.

For the members of my Goway team that find themselves taking their own pause, you are not alone. Reach out, let’s have a coffee, or ice cream, or a double Caesar, extra spicy.  We need to lean on each other and rise each other up. I hope I can do that for any of you. I am only a call or message away.

But for now, I am pressing pause.

Stay safe everyone,

 

Dear Sunshine

On By thestampsinmypassportIn Uncategorized1 Comment

July 24, 2020

Hey Sunshine,

Here we are again. This is now the second trip around the sun without you. What a crazy year this has been, that is for sure. When you hear that a lot happens in the course of a year, that is very true. I was with a friend last weekend and she thought you had been in my life for about five years and was very surprised to hear that it was less than two. Crap, you have actually been gone longer than you were in my life. That sucks.

We were talking about if we had met some of the people in our lives earlier how much longer we would have been happy. But it isn’t like that. We know you meet people when you are supposed to meet them, and they come into your life for a reason and change it. I will forever be grateful that you booked to come on that cruise at the last minute. Much like meeting someone at a black jack table, I never imagined I would get lucky in life, twice.  I am counting on you to make sure that happens again. Things happen in threes so now you have a challenge.

You tell stories like I do, so let me tell you some stories of the past year. I know when you are around so I won`t tell you what I think you already know.

Last September just before your birthday I started a new job. Yeah, the job at the charity wasn’t quite the dream job you and I thought it would be. It was hard to go, but I think you would have been proud of me and my integrity. For a long time I really thought I would go back there some day, but they are in a big heap of trouble right now, so I think the sun has set on that idea.

This was back in the travel industry…yeah, I know, you don`t have to say it, I already know what you are going to say. But this was different. Out of all the travel jobs I have had in thirty years, this was something new and exciting. This was actually customizing people`s dream trips to Europe. You know, the ones we talked about, going to the Vatican in Rome, eating gelato, pasta all over Italy, tapas in Barcelona and so much more. I was finally the artist and creator of my client’s travel canvas.

It took a while to get started, but once it did, I was on fire. For the first time in such a long time, my passion came back. Right before my birthday I actually had the courage (probably a push from you) to buy myself a freaking ticket to London. Can you believe that, I am FINALLY going to London and added Dublin to go with it. Happy birthday to me! Haha, right, you know what happened just three weeks after I bought my ticket. Yes, friggin’ covid happened. Instead of ‘cheerio merry ole England’, it was the borders are closed, the airports are shut tight and you are staying home.

You know all about the past four months. For the longest time one of the hardest parts of you being gone was not talking to you, FaceTime more than anything else. If I have to thank Covid for one thing, it would be that I have connected with people on FaceTime and it has been amazing. My two nieces have been in contact with me almost daily for the whole pandemic. I feel that just like with you, it strengthened our relationship in such a way that it didn’t matter that you were thousands of miles away. For a few friendships, for the first time ever, we connected face to face, and it was great. I wondered why we never did it before. I hope it continues long after this crazy time in our lives.

Let’s not get started on your land of the free and the home of the brave. Some nights when I am watching the crazy that is going on down there I think about us probably have very loud FaceTime conversations about the crazy. It makes me miss you even more, the way your southern “Bless your heart” charm would come out more when you talked about certain topics.

Then it is quiet. The quiet is hard, and really when I think about you the most. Like your house in Wanette. I was telling a friend recently that the first night I was there I had a hard time falling asleep because of how quiet it was. I wonder how you would have fared in shut down all these months. You wouldn’t have been making that drive to OKC each day, and picking up food on your way home. You may have starved, lol, who I am kidding…you would have bought out the dollar general store if it were opened. You would have loved being at home with Abby, as most of my friends have loved the times they have had with their dogs during the pandemic.

Much like our marathon conversations I wish this could go on forever. But here we are.

I think I will end it here with words from your college mate Kristin Chenoweth:

I’ve heard it said
That people come into our lives
For a reason
Bringing something we must learn
And we are led to those
Who help us most to grow if we let them
And we help them in return
Well, I don’t know if I believe that’s true
But I know I’m who I am today
Because I knew you

Because I knew you
I have been changed
For good