When my dad travels, he travels logically and efficiently. He makes sure my sister has her charger, I have my headphones and my mother has her glasses. He always leaves two and a half hours — not counting the drive to the airport — for check-in and security. He wears whatever blazer he plans on bringing to our destination, so that it won’t wrinkle in his suitcase. He keeps all passports, boarding passes and any other tickets or itineraries in his briefcase carryon, to be distributed at security checkpoints or airport gates. The routine is always the same before we leave for any family vacation, and has even been immortalized in a physical checklist. As you might expect, travel almost always went smoothly with him leading the pack.
This summer, while traveling to Oxford for a study abroad program, to Edinburgh and Amsterdam on weekends and around Ireland alone for a week, I learned the hard way that rather than having adopted my dad’s travel compulsions, I had allowed myself to coast by and rely entirely on his organizational skills — and was therefore completely unprepared to fend for myself.
It began with a pervasive, unshakeable feeling that I had forgotten something important. I frantically unpacked my suitcase in front of the United Airlines check-in kiosk, unable to remember if I had packed the extra bottle of contact solution I made a special trip to CVS to pick up the day before — I had. Sitting on the plane, unable to feel my toes in the sandals I had worn for easy-on, easy-off access at security, I wondered if I remembered to bring socks — I hadn’t.
The misfortunes continued, escalated. A bed and breakfast in Killarney had recorded my reservation incorrectly, and I was informed that my room wouldn’t be ready for a few hours. My friends and I arrived at the coach station 10 minutes before the bus we had booked to take us from London to Amsterdam was scheduled to depart, and were unable to board because check in, which began two hours before, had already closed.
While I sat in the lobby of the B&B, charging my phone in an outlet from which I unplugged a lamp, I couldn’t help but remember a family vacation we had taken to Hawaii. When the receptionist told my dad our rooms were still not ready, we were upgraded and an army of bellhops carried our bags upstairs. Near tears in the London coach station, begging the attendant to please let us on the bus, I remembered traveling to Paris, and barely even realizing we had missed a connection in Munich because it had been handled so quickly.
Traveling with someone as experienced and calm in a crisis as my dad has always afforded me a certain kind of assurance that everything is just going to work out. More importantly, even when these crises do occur, they have never been something I have been expected to deal with myself. But if I am lucky enough to travel on my own in my future, I’m going to be the one responsible for asking for directions down the unpronounceable streets of Amsterdam, or dealing with the consequences when we get caught trying to sneak an extra person into our Airbnb.
Inevitably, there will be times in your life when you feel unprepared, whether they occur in line for airport security and realizing you didn’t bring any socks or walking into a lecture hall only to remember there was an assignment as you take your seat. While I may not be at a place in my life where I can develop my own travel checklist, I’m making the effort to adopt more of my dad’s habits that make life run more smoothly. Even if I just hear his voice in my head, asking if I have my glasses, my charger or my phone every time I leave my house, or my hostel, it’s a step in the right direction.
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