Hopes, dreams, and aspirations, or Well-travelled is a relative term

My paternal grandfather was born in Pennsylvania, went to western Wisconsin when he left home, married a girl from the other side of the Mississippi River in Minnesota, and spent the rest of his life in Iowa.

My maternal grandfather was also born in Pennsylvania, travelled as far west as Minneapolis (Minnesota), as far south as Mount Vernon (Virginia), as far north as Montreal (Canada), and as far east as Old Orchard Beach, Maine, where he took his family on vacation every summer.

My dad grew up in Iowa, joined the Navy and saw the world, so to speak, from the deck of a Patrol Craft Escort ship, all the way from Greenland to the Panama Canal to Portland, Oregon. He went partway across the Atlantic and partway across the Pacific more than once but returned without ever reaching another continent. On being released from the Navy after World War II, he moved our family from New England to Texas, where he is buried.

I was born in Rhode Island and was raised in Texas. I have visited 38 of the 50 states in the United States. It is easier to tell you the states I have NOT visited: Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Alaska, and Hawaii. I have been to eight countries outside my own -- Canada, Mexico, Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands, England, Bermuda, and the Bahamas. Here's a newsflash: each person's life is unique, unlike any other person's.

Both of Mrs. RWP's parents were born in the country of Albania. Her father received some of his education in Italy. He came to the U.S. in 1917 and became a citizen of the U.S. in 1924. He went back to Albania in 1926 to marry his butcher's niece (it's a long story); she became a U.S. citizen in 1943. They spent their married lives in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Florida.

Mrs. RWP was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her family moved to North Carolina when she was 12. When she was in her twenties her father retired to Orlando, Florida. We met and married there. Our first child was born in Omaha, Nebraska, and our two younger children were born in Poughkeepsie, New York.

Let's take a short intermission here, during which you can enjoy the Beach Boys singing "I Get Around" (2:09).

Intermission is over. Our story resumes.

Our oldest son visited Toronto, Canada, as a teenager, worked in England for a while in his thirties, and took a university Jazz Band (he was its director) to Esterházy, Hungary in his forties. Before my son married his wife, she worked for several years for a cruise ship line and visited many, many places in the world -- Norway, Singapore, South Africa, Rio de Janeiro, Japan, Sydney, the Taj Mahal in India, the Great Wall of China, to name a few (the last two not aboard a ship, of course).

Our second son and his wife have visited Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras several times.

I don't think our daughter has been outside the United States. Oh, wait, she and her husband went on a cruise to Cancun, Mexico, on their tenth anniversary.

One of our grandsons spent five weeks in western Kenya when he was 18. Another grandson spent 11 weeks in southern Kenya (he could see Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania from his house) when he was 20. He has been to Alaska, Dubai, Mumbai, and just returned in May from a year-and-a-half stay in Uganda.

On his last trip home but one, my grandson's KLM flight from Entebbe to Amsterdam flew over South Sudan, Sudan, Egypt, the Mediterranean Sea, Greece, Albania, and several EU countries. Here is a screenshot my son made in Atlanta showing my grandson's whereabouts during his flight.

As it happens, his great-grandmother was from Fier and his great-grandfather was from Vlorë. A phenomenal coincidence or a "God wink"?

The point is that although we love one another and are family, we are individuals. We cannot live one another's lives. Each of us must live the life we have been given.

Have you ever thought about how different your life is from your parents' lives or from your children's lives?

When you do think about it, it is probably mindboggling.