Home elsewhere

Four + years ago we had a series of dinners at Adrian and Leslie Danzig's house with Blair and Sheri.

As the kids played raucously upstairs we adults sat around the table with a map of the world imagining a trip. Envisioning all three families out of our familiar Chicago routines, on the international road seeing the world together. Over food we talked about places we'd love to see, methods for schooling on the road, budgets and logistics.

In no small part that vision came true last week when all three families spent a week together on the Lofoten islands: dinners, hikes, kids and adults four years older and living a dream that was no less sweet for it's more humble than imagined final manifestation.

It takes courage to step out of bounds together. And it takes work to make dreams come true. I'm proud that we made it happen.

This super fun week was the product of both dogged persistence and opportunistic piggybacking on each other's existent plans.

It was like a relay race - different people planning different parts of the trip and adopting the necessary sense of urgency when others were necessarily focused on other priorities. When one person flagged another person jumped on board. And let's just say it clear: it's the women who plan so well, they're the ones who help the rubber meet the road and make the inspirations a realities. And for that I am so grateful.

This jubilee has been about the three of us making some space and leaving home, and our deep roots there, to travel together. But to share that, to bring some home to this foreign soil, to be together elsewhere is such a blessing.

I love these people and am proud and happy to call them friends.

To Adrian, Leslie, Simone, Ezra, Sheri, Blair, Abraham, and Silas!! We are so grateful to have had you join us on this, our jubilee.

- david