I woke up this morning with that familiar jump start. I ran through the possibilities: Is someone I love sick or in need? Is there a work deadline? Something else I have to do?

Oh, that’s right. I’m flying to Africa today.

While the exquisite shorthand of modern travel means this requires very little effort on my part (I live less than 15 minutes from Dulles International Airport), the decisions, postponements and preparation it took to get here have occupied me for more than two years.

This journey, then, begins not just with a single step but with a series of partings, reunions and reflections. They have brought me here, to this point of departure, to this familiar action, boarding a plane. But the plane will take me to another continent, one I’ve never visited before. A universe of its own with customs, climates, peoples, beliefs and practices I can barely begin to fathom.

Travel is, at best, about possibilities. I begin at home. I will land, God willing, in a faraway place, a continent so vast that our country would be swallowed up by it. It’s a place my daughter has come to love. I go there to see her world.


(Photo: Katie Esselburn)