For my parents, driving the 2,500 miles between Arizona and our hometown in Steuben County, New York took quite a while. With five children in the family, flying never was an option, nor was staying in Arizona. So we drove. We ate sandwiches in the car or had picnics along the way. Sometimes we traveled with a tent camper. Other times we stayed in hotels or slept in the car. We took that route more times than I remember because we really wanted to see cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents and friends.
Once we arrived, we clambered out of the car and immersed ourselves in catching up with folks. Because we had no Facebook, no emails or pictures on Instagram, we took lots of pictures, wrote many letters and hoped we would receive mail in return. Of course we wanted to see everyone.
But it was difficult to visit everyone across the county. Finally my mother said, “I have driven 2,000 miles across the country to see you, surely, you can drive 30 miles across the county to see us so we don’t have to spend all our visit driving from one house to another.”
She said it. She meant it. She went anyway – for a while.
I thought about that when I saw a Facebook conversation where the mother sighed, “I do miss my family. They live so far away.”
“Oh. Where do they live?”
“On the other side of the county,” the mother wrote. In other words, a 20 or 30 minute drive was too far for her.
Which leaves the question: How far is too far to travel?
I understand that traveling halfway around the world to visit loved ones can be a challenge and costly. The time spent on planes can be mind-numbing and uncomfortable. So I “get it” when the family does not go visit because it is too far. But how far is too far when loved ones fly back most of the way round the world and lands stateside again. Is a day of driving too much when long distance, loved ones cannot come any closer? Is a half a day or a couple hours of driving too far?
At what point do loved ones begin to say, “It is too far, too uncomfortable to be in the vehicle that long.”
How do I love thee? Not more than my hobby, according to some. “Can’t go see family, that is just too physically wearing,” others insist. I understand that. I spent one entire return trip with a backache that left me hobbling. No matter how I traveled home, I could not lay down and rest until I arrived home.
My empathy with their discomfort, however, disappeared when each talked about traveling as far, and further, in pursuit of their hobby.
Through the years that my parents lived out west while their siblings lived back East, I watched my mother reconsider fading friendships. The first big step came the year she trimmed her lengthy Christmas card list. Postage and greeting cards for a couple hundred people took a big bite out of the holiday budget. She went through her list of contacts and began deleting anyone who had not sent us a card.
She slowly found less time to cram in as many visits as she could with everyone when “back home.” We then had more time to enjoy the ones who made time to see and contact us.
How far is too far? How much do I love thee? Through the years, I have realized that answers depend on the intensity of individuals’ desire to sit and visit with a loved one.