Front Porch: Traveling through life together, just not always side by side

This is about traveling solo, which I often do when I fly off to visit friends and family.

My husband and I travel together when we visit our son in Seattle or see his sister in Wenatchee and last year when we met up with our oldest son in Montreal (we were coming from Spokane and he was coming from Europe, so it was a good halfway spot for us all).

But I usually travel alone on other visits. Not that I travel that much, and certainly hardly at all by plane since the pandemic. But things are loosening up for us – travelwise, healthwise and otherwise – so it’s time to start living our best lives again, all things considered.

As these words appear in this newspaper, I should be in the San Francisco Bay area visiting my friend Sandy. She moved there from this neck of the woods after her husband died. We play Words With Friends daily, text often through the week, talk on the phone (the goal is weekly, but that doesn’t always work) and visit in person when we can pull that off.

It’s being pulled off at this very moment. I miss my friend … and, well, we’re not getting any younger.

And speaking of aging, travel isn’t getting any easier these days either. I try when possible to get direct flights to wherever I’m going, arrange for a wheelchair for transport between gates or from the gate to the airport exit at the larger airports in order to save my legs and not challenge my balance unduly. And I’ve learned to be a Lyft or Uber person for short visits in larger cities.

I still rent a car when and where needed and am not put off by traffic in metropolitan areas. (I learned to drive at age 14 on six-lane freeways in Miami.) Before COVID, I’d fly to Florida, rent a car and drive everywhere to visit friends and family.

I had always hoped that all my Florida folks would live within a 50-mile radius, but, no, not thinking about what’s convenient for me at all, they’ve scattered all over the state. It doesn’t matter what airport I land in (Miami, Tampa, Orlando, Jacksonville, West Palm Beach) – I get a car and start driving.

Florida is a fairly narrow state, but it’s darn long. Back when I started doing this, I’d lay a map across my knees while I drove (people keep moving from where I last left them!) and was happy to graduate to Google maps and other driving apps when those became available.

What is interesting to me is that I have some friends who kind of raise an eyebrow at my solo travel, when I have a perfectly good husband (and he is!) fit to travel with.

Truth of it is, since Bruce is still working, travel isn’t always convenient for him. In addition, for a lot of the places I go, it’s to meet up with family and friends he either doesn’t know or has met only a few times (Florida is not his native state). He calls it living-room hopping. Not his favorite thing.

He’s perfectly content hearing all about it without needing to experience it first-hand. He’s happy; I’m happy.

Our joke is that he’ll stay in Spokane earning the money that I’m spending on the road. Not a bad deal. We also call it breathing room, and if we were being touchy-feely about it, letting there be spaces in our togetherness.

We enjoy long weekends together on the Oregon Coast or several days at Priest Lake, Lake Chelan or even Las Vegas. And while we travel together to see our sons, not always.

One son has lived pretty much everywhere, so we’ve caught up with him a time or two when he was in Prague, Barcelona or elsewhere. Bruce went with him to Madagascar, without me. I stayed home and worked, which was fine with me. I met up with that same son in London for a week once while Bruce was in Spokane, earning. I’ve gone with our other son to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, just the two of us – but the first time he went was alone with Bruce.

Bruce and I are not permanently glued at the hip when we travel, though we’re delighted that we still have one another to be glued to. We just can’t understand why solo travel or other travel options seem to be such an alien idea to so many. And I have one cousin who, years back, inquired if all was well in our marriage. I don’t get it.

When we married 58 years ago, I had to buy our marriage license in Miami by myself because Uncle Sam had deposited Bruce at Fairchild Air Force Base, only to let him go long enough to travel across the country to get married (Bruce had to supply notarized documents so I could do this solo). I still maintain it’s the best $3 I ever spent.

You can love someone a whole bunch without having matching luggage.

Voices correspondent Stefanie Pettit can be reached by email at upwindsailor@comcast.net