Travel anxiety takes many forms. We are packing for a two-week trip to China and three months at our cottage in Rhode Island. I am very familiar with the many forms of travel anxiety this week! One form is a manic energy for doing laundry, for packing pretzels and nuts into ziplock bags, and for watching whole seasons of Scandal on demand. The mirror image of this is a deep lethargy brought on by the long list of phone calls to make, including stopping two newspaper deliveries and checking in with our credit card security department so they won’t cancel the card upon seeing charges in two or three countries while we are in transit. The confusion of packing for Nanjing—sometimes referred to as one of the “little ovens” of China—along with cool nights in Rhode Island, and a wedding in New York has my head spinning. I’m packing tee shirts made in China to bring for our Chinese host’s new baby. I’m trying to guess what sandals I’ll want to wear on an evening a month from now.
My husband and I are book people. Before we both had Kindles and iPads, we packed three or four heavy paperback books to read and exchange. Now we shop the online store and load up the e-readers with books recommended by our friends and hope that we’ll always find an outlet (and our cords and adapters) when we need a charge to keep us supplied with our psycho-literary fix. The thought of being delayed somewhere without a book . . . that's anxiety!
I have a new four-wheeler suitcase. My old, bright red two-wheeler has been roughed around for six or seven years. I’ve been envying the four-wheelers for some time. These pieces of luggage seem to float along beside the travelers allowing a side approach for narrow passages (into bathroom stalls, for example) and easily gliding to a front-on stance facing the counter of the newsstand when purchasing Reese’s Pieces or The Atlantic Monthly before a flight. An ache in my shoulder and back from pulling my two-wheeler with an accessory backpack through airports hastened this upgrade.
My new suitcase has three shallow zippered compartments on its topside, a zippered main compartment, and one of those expansion zippers that increase the depth of the bag by another two inches. My back pack has three zippered compartments and a small front mesh pouch, also with a zipper. I’m not even counting the zippers on the insides of both bags, or the zippers in my wallet and cosmetics case, or the quart-size ziplock bag with my travel liquids. Let’s say, I have about a dozen or more zipped areas available for expressing my travel anxiety. And that’s not even counting my Eddie Bauer “SPORT” slacks with 4 zippered pockets. Travel anxiety? When asked, I will deny it. When observed, I will fake it. I love to travel, so why am I creating so much activity around the contents of all the little segmented compartments of my baggage?
My checking and rechecking of the stuff in all of these sections and partitions approaches an OCD symphony. Dollar bills for the water machine? Bandaids and tea bags? Slippers, pajamas, pens, pencils, paper? Phone charger, camera charger, extra batteries? Even at the airport, finally relaxing with a cup of hot tea, I’m unzipping, zipping, and checking little side pockets and pouches to find my travel notebook, Dramamine just in case, and the tiny card that has the codes for remote accessing my home phone voice mail. And this is all before entering the security line! After going through the strip search of airport security, there is no turning back and my anxiety muscles begin to flex for the new challenges ahead!
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