A Feast of Identity

As I write this I am wondering if anyone will find it interesting. I have been asked several times how we went about planning the road trip of Europe (part 1) but I have no idea if those people were being polite by showing interest in my obsession or were actually curious. So, in the case that someone out there wants to understand our schema for the trip we planned I am going to write my “big picture” answer down here without continuing this apologetic prelude. 

In the beginning when John and I realized that we were about to be given a rare and once in a lifetime opportunity to travel with our “large” family (if you knew my crowd you’d know why it’s appropriate to use quotation marks even though according to the NYTimes we fall into .05% of families in the USA having eight of us under one roof) we sat down that night  and sketched out a brainstorming page about what we would do, see and experience. It was crazy how absolutely in line we were in our priorities. It was easy peasy to set out a basic scheme. And in execution it looks remarkably similar to that very first flurry of ideas and enthusiasms.

I say it’s crazy because there are an enormous amount of good reasons to travel and to lap up an opportunity like this. There’s the much sought after growth of open mindedness - expanding our horizons by encountering the other and finding in it the familiar at the same time. This is a very good motivator for travel and one I’m happy to have been able to give to the children, having had the opportunity myself growing up. There’s language acquisition in a natural environment (though most of the our time this year will be in England). In addition, cultivating a sense of adventure can certainly spice up life. Chasing beauty in art, music or nature is an excellent reason to travel. And there’s the allure of Living History which is the flame to my moth of a homeschooling heart. And then there’s the FOOD. That alone…

But, there is also a weird Travel Worship thing that makes me uncomfortable. An idea that it’s a wasted life to stay home and run soccer duty and do the conventional thing. As if you are not REALLY living unless you are traveling and experiencing all that life has to offer (which even on a budget is out of reach for moderate to large families the vast majority of the time). I find that insulting and narrow, actually. As if the only way to broaden one’s horizons is to go beyond the horizon. If you’ve ever read the children’s book Toot and Puddle you will have come to the conclusion that I have come to. Toot travels all over the world (loving every minute) and Puddle stays home and enjoys the finer things of the domestic life (loving every minute). There’s nothing wrong with either emphasis. If one wants to traipse and alight here and there and everywhere then, OK. I am certainly more of a rooted sort of person. I want to be making the home that you will come back to eventually. I am more a Puddle then a Toot. But hey- I’m not going to turn down an opportunity to Toot! And Toot the heck out of my children, that’s for SURE.

In the year leading up to leaving I thought a lot about what our emphasis for our trip would be - where to focus our energies and attention. When Europe is laid at your feet the only problem is narrowing down to the most perfect exciting and amazingly interesting things out of the amazingly interesting things. When we looked at our brainstorming we discovered that everything fell into one of three “tracks” for our journey. 1. Family History 2. Saint Patrons and 3. Cultural Highlights. It wasn’t until we were actually weeks into our big road trip that I tuned into the common denominator: developing a sense of identity. John and I had both been shaped in significant ways during our travels in highschool and college and intuitively knew what we wanted to give the children before it was even explicit in our own minds. 

The idea of answering the question, “What makes our family different then every other family on the block?” was a really helpful exercise offered in the book, “The 3 Big Questions for a Frantic Family”, by Patrick Lencioni. Lancioni guides your answer by saying that if it’s only your religion then that’s too easy an answer, even if it’s true. (Or, as another friend told me the other day, “You need to give them more then Catholicism so that they have something else to rebel against.” #realism) Lencioni suggests looking into what made you fall in love with your spouse and he said that will be a good starting point to identify what you most desire to pass onto your children. This trip was an amazing opportunity to be able to pass on in really tangible ways pieces of our identity.

We were able to pass on to our children a sense of family pride. John’s grandfather was a distinguished admiral who commanded the naval forces at Sicily, North Africa and finally, and most grandly, at D-Day. My Great Uncle died for his country in the unfortunate last gasp of the Nazis in the Battle of the Bulge and we were able to visit his grave. We were able to visit the place that John’s mother made her first communion in Germany  - where all the gruff men in town toasted her as they slung her up onto the bar in the pub after what was the first of many communions - a defining aspect of her life to this day. We were able to weed and and tidy the forgotten grave of my Great Great Grandfather and Great Great Grandmother in Vienna, praying for their souls and thanking God for their role in bringing about each of our lives. Leading up to the trip we read books about the relevant battles and the kids are now writing papers and following up with more research and reading family memoirs by some of John’s family. Knowing where we have come from often leads to a greater knowledge of where we are going.

Looking out over Omaha Beach near the American cemetery.

Descendents of the Head of the Western Task Force and the Admiral of the D-Day ships. And they better never forget it!

American Cemetery at Utah Beach. Acres of sacrifice.

Another part of our family are the Saints. We each have several patron saints and being able to take the kids on pilgrimages to each of their name saints (we aren’t quite done yet but the ones we have done have been so absolutely worth they hype) is just an astounding opportunity. I could cry thinking about how meaningful it has been. We also visited lots of saints that are more peripheral for us but are very meaningful to our friends and so we are enlarging our sense of family all the time - both on Earth and in Heaven. Opening up wider and wider to bring more people into our fold both those in the Church Triumphant and the Church Militant (which sounds significantly more brutal then it is). We carried with us the prayers of hundreds of friends and communities and we lit candles all over the continent for those intentions. Space and time shrink in eternity and spending time with our friends in the Heavens have brought us closer to our friends on earth.

Patron Saint Therese of Lisieux, France. 

In front of the kitchen hearth at St. Therese's family home.

In the garden behind the house. 

The basilica of a tiny little nun who is now a doctor of the Church.

The family home of 3 saints (at least). St. Therese, and her father and mother Sts. Louis and Zelie.

At St. Therese's parish church. Praying for all our friends and family who entrusted their needs to us.

The third track was things that have been significant in Western Civilization. It could be musical, artistic, nature, historical. Oh my. This is sort of a catchall except that it’s not when you are focused on developing a sense of identity. What do I want to pass on to my children? What is significant to my sense of self and valuable enough to make room in a packed itinerary? This is how we ended up seeing a Mozart concert in Salzburg, visiting Monet’s Water Lily Gardens in Giverny, seeing Corrie Ten Boom’s house in Haarlem, and spending a wonderful week soaking in the beauty of Venice. We were certainly limited in what we could do given the ages of the kids (for example my husband took just the three older kids to Auschwitz and took them on an abbreviated tour that hopefully had the effect of pointing their moral compass true north but won’t cause nightmares and PTSD) but we didn’t just tour science museums and parks either. Seeing Mozart’s house made them more interested when I put on Mozart for music study. It was worth putting up with a lot of whining and bellyaching for certain culturally significant things and not for others (sorry Schonbrunn).

Monet's house in Giverny. You can barely see it for all the flowers.

While the boys ran hither and yon exploring the incredibly expansive gardens the girls and I sketched the pond. The amount of tourists that took our picture was hilarious. All over Asia we are memorialized in photo albums.

Just me and my girly on the Japanese bridge. Chilling next to this poor lady who immediately dropped that phone in the water after the picture was taken.

Monet's incredible kitchen in his incredibly colorful house. He was certainly no "starving artist" when he went.

We were really living the dream, that's for sure.

I don’t know how much of it will stick, certainly more for some then others. But I also don’t know how big the seeds will grow. During this school year we are following up on a lot of the things we just saw. Reading and researching and writing and watching documentaries. I feel so incredibly grateful to have been given the opportunity to superintend this rich feast that has been laid before my children. It’s up to them to partake but it has been offered and we will continue to nibble away at it for years once we are back in the cozy confines of our personal Woodcock Pocket, like Toot returning from his journeys.

P.S. Italy houses SO MUCH of what we want to share with the kids that we are hoping to take a full month there in the spring. That is why Rome and Florence are so underrepresented in my examples.

P.P.S. Upon re-reading this post I think it is clear that John and I thought more about the opportunity for forming our children then about the pure enjoyment of any particular place. Well, yeah. Anyone who has travelled with children to anywhere except Disney (and maybe even there) knows that they will suck the joy right out of anything with their demands and varying levels of interest and disinterest. And when there are six of them then you are guaranteed to have at least one very unhappy, obstinate person with you at all times - no matter how much ice-cream you feed them.

Also, there was very little leisure for “soaking up” any particular environment. If that is what you are trying to do then I’d certainly wait to take a trip when the kids are older or gone :) Verily. However, we both had pockets of time alone and together to breath deep and take a good look around. The kids really needed objectives to enjoy themselves - we would have been more content with wandering and eating. That will have to be a different trip though. No one here is disappointed with what the trip was and wasn’t. Life with these little folks has prepared us well for travel with them. They are the same kids here, there and everywhere. For better or for worse.