Traveling Changes You. I FOUND OUT I was pregnant in an airport bathroom. We had been living in Angola, Africa, for five months, and the one thing I wanted during that time was ice cream. Oh, what I would’ve paid for a pint of Haagen Daas! When I landed in Dubai, a layover on my way to Amsterdam, I found it! In between Dior and duty free was an actual Haagen Daas ice cream shop. It was as if I had manifested it myself! However, as I awaited my turn, my body began to go against what my mind was longing for. And when I reached the counter, instead of ordering, I promptly emptied my stomach contents in the nearby trashcan. Twenty minutes later, after 10 years of marriage, I’d see a positive sign on a Clear Blue and Easy. You really can find anything in the Dubai airport. When I arrived in Amsterdam to meet my husband, I got to tell him he was going to be a father. It was Father’s Day 2011. Traveling changes you. There are places and moments that live in your heart forever. Paris is another example. I had always wanted to go to Paris. Daydreaming, I imagined buying couture, speaking French and being madly in love. While I got my fairytale, it was completely different. I was seven months pregnant, I ate chocolate croissants every day, and I bought the only thing that would fit—jewelry. In awe at the Eiffel Tower, I tearfully asked a lady in French, “Will you take my picture?” She laughed and replied with a Southern accent thicker than mine, “Oh, Darlin’, I don’t speak French!” She was from Oklahoma and took one of my favorite photos I have of myself expectant.
My travel tastes have always been a little more than adventurous. One favorite involved sleeping in a train car in the heart of Angola, Africa, and then vertically hiking a 344-foot waterfall. In February 2020, days before the shutdown, I was photographing the Aurora Borealis in the remote village of Wiseman, Alaska. Its population of 14 live off the land 60 miles north of the Arctic Circle. I’ve never been happier to be out at 2 a.m.—in -47º, with my eyelashes coated in ice. My son, now nine years old, gets to join some adventures. He loved sledding down the frozen Yukon River but wasn’t thrilled to use an outhouse. Now with Covid, travel is a different kind of adventure. Vaccinated and ready to run, my husband >>
by Candra George
May-June 2021 95
