Mapping the Gap

I awoke on January first in a duplex AirB&B in Liberty, Missouri.  First thought… “We’re low on coffee.” Second thought… “It’s below freezing outside.”  Third…”We’ll have to make do.”  Those last words sort of echoed in my mind.  Make do… make do… make do… They repeated with a fading resonance that seemed to hold a significance that needed to be heeded.  A shadow was cast over the coming months.  New Year’s Day does that to the mind.  A sense of broad perspective spreads illumination over our lives.  The winds of intentionality blow through the thoughts.  We reflect.  We see our lives and hear our thoughts more clearly.  We listen for a sense of direction.  We have an eye out for the magic in this new beginning.

“To make do.” After confirming that it is “make do” and not “make due,” I considered the meaning.  Cambridge Dictionary says this means “to manage to live without things that you would like to have.”  These seem odd words for a New Year’s reverberation.  In truth though, this expression is actually quite perfect for this particular New Years’ spirit.  2025 will, indeed, be a year of “making do” for my family.  This year is set to be a year of getting by on limited resources, proceeding in less-than-ideal circumstances, and adapting with whatever we have on hand.  This year will require adjustment, innovation, and regular resets of our expectations.  New normals, new sleeping arrangements, and repeatedly renewed routines of living are on the horizon.  This year will not at all be like the others. Not for this family of five. Not for this mother of three wilful boys, who, like most parents, knows that inconvenience is exponentially compounded by the discomfort of our children.

In 25 days, we are setting off on a Gap Year around the world.  We will spend ten to eleven months in destinations known and unknown in the spirit of claiming our limited days in this life and showing our kids what living can be like in the wide world.

Much “making do” is ahead.  We will be shopping for food where we can’t read the labels.  We will be guessing how the washing machines work.  We will not have the phone service we expect or WIFI speeds that satisfy.  We will have flights cancelled, seats moved, bags delayed, busses missed, and many uncomfortable rides.  We will not like the milk, the wine, the water, or the air.  We will be depending on the help of strangers, searching for lunch on empty stomachs, arriving in new cities at odd hours, and carrying our bags through the rain.  We will be attracting unwanted attention, breaking unknown norms, looking idiotic, comedic, self-righteous, and oblivious- perhaps all in one afternoon.  We will run out of underwear, find ourselves in inappropriate footwear, and probably offend with some flash of flesh. We will lie awake at night to the cacophony of who-knows-what foreign symphonies of life.  We will struggle to understand what we see, what we hear, and what we smell.  We will struggle to understand what we know or thought we did.  We will be breaking up fights, fielding endless requests, and trying to enjoy our amazing adventure amidst a ceaseless stream of grievances from little people pushed beyond their limits.  We will battle homesickness, dog-sickness, seasickness and simply being sick of one another.  We will navigate medical systems, subways systems, social systems, and systems of circular thinking.  We will likely hate some pillows, fall off some bikes, be sick in foreign toilets, and certainly find our coffee arrangements to be wanting.  Indeed, there will be a whole lot of “making do” in this fantastic ride ahead. While I am often drunk on the excitement of what is to come, I begin this new year stone cold sober to the challenge at hand.  

Of course, that’s a large part of the illusion of this Gap Year, a good point to get out of the way early.  I am keenly aware that I am embarking on the greatest challenge of my life and also that it is dressed up as a romantic, enviable holiday.  (Without children, this would be a different story.)  In the exquisite gift of this opportunity though, I cannot help but feel hyperaware of the trials ahead.  “Worldschooling” three wild boys being not the least of them.  Of course, this is actually the point: to discomfort zone a bit, to grow through tribulation, to push our family beyond what we are, to teach our children that life is to be claimed with boldness and gusto and that we are blessed to be able to do so.

So, with equal measures of humility, gratitude, ambition, and surrender, I resolve to become skilled in the Art of Making Do.  And perhaps even elevate to the Art of Making the Best.  This blog will tell the tale.  Welcome to Mapping the Gap, my reflections on a family gap year abroad.