A match made in heaven
Good travel companions are hard to find. If we like waking early to haunt the local coffee shops and watch the sunrise, our travel mates prefer staying in bed to hide from the daylight and watch cable reruns. If we enjoy hiking the neighborhood trails, our companions want to luxuriate at the spa and go shopping. If we crave drive-thru and a quick burger, they want sit-down and four courses.
But now, as we near the end of our sixties, I think we’ve found a solution, and our perfect travel match. It’s the grandkids.
We’ve discovered that we now have a lot in common with individuals under the age of seven, in terms of daily lifestyle. We all rise early. Grandparents wake with the birds and roll out of bed and alleviate some ache or pain that manifested itself in the night. Grandkids pop out of bed to be sure they don’t miss something exciting.
We all like breakfast. With bacon. And when it’s time to get dressed and head out for adventure, we all tend to struggle a little, getting in and out of our clothes. Snaps are hard. Buttons are harder. We prefer elastic-waist pants and comfy shoes that slip on, no need for laces. We can spend half the day with our shirts on backwards or wrong-side-out and never know the difference. We misplace our socks.
On road trips, we require the same number of snacks and the same number of pit stops. We all get excited about spotting cows, horses and rainbows along the highway. And we’re equally entertained by games of “I, Spy” and “Slug Bug.”
By noon, we’re ready for lunch. Grandparents and grandkids alike can be a picky about food, but for different reasons. We struggle equally to keep spaghetti off the front of our shirts and finish an ice cream cone before it melts in our laps. We like to use a red crayon to solve the maze on the kids menu. We can guess the dot-to-dot picture before it’s even finished. And if we walk out with a piece of candy or two in our pockets, nobody points any fingers.
Grandkids are always ready to go outside. We all enjoy sunshine, hiking trails, and picking up cool rocks along the way. We like asking to pet someone’s cute dog and noticing the birds that fly by. And before midafternoon, we’re all happy for a nap, complete with snuggly blankets and soft pillows.
We prefer matinees to late-evening movies. We like holding hands. We tend to babble and sometimes say things backwards. We get silly and laugh at our own jokes, even if we forget the punch line. We tell the same stories over and over again, and nobody seems to mind.
If we go out, our dance steps look fairly similar. Seven or seventy, you can’t always control which parts of your body jiggle. We know the Macarena, and we aren’t afraid to do it in public. Same with the Chicken Dance. We sing along, loudly, to our favorite songs.
By nightfall, we’re in danger of nodding off at inconvenient times. When we get back to the Airbnb, we enjoy finding a good rocking chair. If it’s on the balcony, we like to watch the stars come out.
We all need more snacks before bed. We appreciate a good night light. We take comfort in knowing the hall bathroom isn’t far away. We like falling asleep to old John Wayne movies and familiar episodes of Bluey. And like Olaf, we enjoy an inordinate number of warm hugs.
The next day, we rise early to do it all again. Really, there couldn’t be any better matched travel companions than grandparents and grandkids. And our similar lifestyle requirements leave the parents free to do their own thing.
Maybe it’s time to book that next travel adventure with your grandkids, before they get too old for Bluey and holding hands. It’s a match made in heaven.