The Luck of the Draw

I was thinking about luck today. Not the leprechaun, pot of gold luck. More like the luck you make for yourself.

My literature professor was telling us how by the time he was fifteen, the farthest he had travelled was to Salt Lake City and he'd only been there twice. (Once had been with the Cub Scouts to go to the zoo and he got peed on by a liger. That has no other baring on the story, I just thought it was REALLY funny.) He was 28 before he got on an airplane.

By the time I was fifteen, I'd been to Germany and seen the remains of the Berlin Wall. I was spending every summer in L.A. with my aunt and seeing piles of excellent theatre while I was at it. By the time I was 22, I'd been to England three times, Scotland twice, France, Italy, and New York City. None of this was by chance.

The other day my dad told me the story of how my travels began. My A.P. European History class took a trip to Europe each year. My sophomore year Mr. Lane gave us the brochure for their next trip, a London "City-Stay" where they'd stay at a hotel in London and take day trips out to Stratford, Oxford, Stonehenge, Bath, etc. I got in the car that afternoon and lightly mentioned that they were doing this and what a cool idea it was. My dad asked me if I was interested and I mumbled something about money. I hear that it was my Grandmother that said something to the effect of, "We'll hock the family jewels if we need to, to make sure Kate gets to go!"

That was my first taste of the lengths to which my family would go for me. Each summer after that I remember working my butt off to earn the money for the subsequent trips. Paris during my junior year, England/Scotland during my senior year, and Italy after I graduated. The culminating trip was the trip to England and Scotland with my mom, my grandmother, and my aunt.

I wouldn't have gone in the first place if they hadn't said, "Yes, honey, you can do this and we'll do whatever we can to help." I guess that's the real luck, the family I got.

Those trips shaped who I am and made my life so much richer. I've seen the Mona Lisa and I've seen Versailles, but I've also seen the difference between life in former East Germany compared to the life in former West Germany. I've seen the beaches at Normandy and St. Peter's square in Rome. I've seen the Vatican museums, the British Museum, and all the German museums that absconded with relics from Egypt. It's been so much more than cultural literacy. It's the world I live in and I've experienced a little of it.

Here's to my trip to Gettysburg next summer!