From a Plane, Next to Annoying Teenagers.

Lately, when I travel, I am struck by two things:

How lucky I am... and how much I hate flying.  The second is neither here nor there (But I do.  I really hate flying.  And, like the traveller version of Benjamin Button, I seem to be going in reverse: the more I fly, the more I hate it.  I have never grown into it and am still not yet growing to love it).

But I digress- yes I have flying.  But it is that flying, those flights, that serve as a very blunt reminder of my luck:

I get to fly.

I get to leave Stavanger, Norway on a random Friday morning and fly to Dublin, Ireland for a combination concert/girls' weekend.  (It might seem somewhat insignificant, but give it a minute to sink in.)

I get to hop around Europe and play.  And that for a lot of people- hell, for a lot of people I know- is not necessarily a normal thing.  It's a lucky thing.

And all of this luck is a circumstance of something else.  It's a rambling something else, but go with it, I promise not to ramble too long.

On my first trip to Norway, much to my chagrin, I met a man.

By the end of my second trip here (I say 'here' meaning Norway even though I'm sitting, as aforementioned on a plane, next to annoying teenagers), again to my chagrin, I realized that I was in love with said man.  And for whatever strange twist of fate and reason (he's a quiet, reasonable, calm engineer to my wild child, nonsensical, non-linear whatever-I-am) he fell for me, too.

So then fast forward a move overseas and up major latitudes; some adventuring; and a shotgun wedding... and here's why I can't help thinking about my luck, and why it matters so much when I fly:

I got to marry the man I love.  It's this man that anchors me, and has given me a home in Europe- a home abroad.  I'm lucky because I get to travel with my best friend; I get to travel without him; I get to come home to him when I'm not with him.  I get to move through this world knowing that I am satisfied, regardless...

Dublin, Stavanger, Amsterdam, Budapest, Peru; husband, solo, with girly best friend; I am satisfied.  Life is good.

So I fly and I hate it.  But I get it.  And I'm thankful for having these sorts of problems day to day- versus the sillier and the worse.