Three weeks with my brother - Nicholas Sparks [3]
But here was the chance to do it all in one fell swoop, and ten minutes later—once the cacophony in the living room had died down as mysteriously as it had arisen—I was standing in the kitchen with my wife, the brochure open on the counter. I pointed out the highlights like a kid describing summer camp, and my wife, who has long since grown used to my flights of fancy, simply listened as I rambled on. When I finished, she nodded.
“Mmm . . .” she said.
“Is that a good mmm, or a bad mmm?”
“Neither. I’m just wondering why you’re showing me this. It’s not like we can go.”
“I know,” I said. “I just thought you might like to see it.”
My wife, who knows me better than anyone, knew there was more to it than that.
“Mmm,” she said.
Two days later, my wife and I were walking through the neighborhood. Our oldest sons were ahead of us, the other three kids were in strollers, when I brought the subject up again.
“I was thinking about that trip,” I said, oh-so-casually.
“What trip?”
“The one that goes around the world. The one in the brochure that I showed you.”
“Why?”
“Well . . .” I took a deep breath. “Would you like to go?”
She took a few steps before answering. “Of course I’d like to go,” she said. “It looks amazing, but it’s impossible. I can’t leave the kids for three weeks. What if something happened? There’s not a chance that we could get back in an emergency. How many flights even go to a place like Easter Island? Lexie and Savannah are still babies, and they need me. All of them need me . . .” She trailed off. “Maybe other mothers could go, but not me.”
I nodded. I already knew what her answer would be.
“Would you mind if I went?”
She looked over at me. I already traveled extensively for my work, doing book tours two to three months a year, and my trips were always hard on the family. Though I wasn’t always willing to dive headfirst into the chaos, I’m not completely worthless around the house. Cat has a schedule that frequently gets her out of the house—she has occasional breakfasts with friends, volunteers regularly at school, exercises at the gym, plays bunco with a group of ladies, and runs errands—and we both know she needs to get out of the house to keep from going crazy. In those moments I end up being solo dad. But when I’m gone, it becomes difficult, if not impossible, for her to do anything outside the house. This is not good for my wife’s state of mind.
In addition, our kids like having both of us around. When I’m gone, if you can imagine it, the chaos in the house multiplies, as if filling the void of my absence. Suffice it to say, my wife gets tired of my traveling. She understands it’s part of my job, but it doesn’t mean that she likes it.
Thus, my question was a fraught one.
“Is it really that important to you?” she finally asked.
“No,” I said honestly. “If you don’t want me to go, I won’t. But I’d like to.”
“And you’d go alone?”
I shook my head. “Actually, I was thinking about going with Micah,” I said, referring to my brother.
We walked in silence for a few moments before she caught my eye. “I think,” she said, “that would be a wonderful idea.”
After Cat and I returned from our walk—and still in a state of partial disbelief—I went to my office to call my brother in California.
I could hear the phone ringing, the sound more distant than that on a landline. Micah never answered his home phone; if I wanted to talk to him, I had to dial his cellular.
“Hey Nicky,” he chirped. “What’s going on?”
My brother has caller ID, and still tends to call me by my childhood name. I was, in fact, called Nicky until the fifth grade.
“I have something I think you’ll be interested in.”
“Do tell.”
“I got this brochure in the mail and . . . anyway, to make a long story short, I was wondering if you want to go with me on a trip around the world. In January.”
“What kind of trip?”
I spent the next few minutes describing the highlights, flipping through the brochure as I spoke. When I finished, he was quiet