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Member-only story
The Different Drummer
Learning To Fly
As we set sail for Alaska, the patience and kindness of total strangers helped my daughters soar to new heights and cross new frontiers.
– Tom Petty
Fresh off our wedding at Disneyland in 2008, I was ready to embark on the first adventure as a newly blended family. With Summer approaching I asked Nicole where we should go on vacation. She looked at me bewildered and replied: “Who is going to watch the kids?”
For my ex-wife and I, family vacations had been a regular occurrence. As transplanted New Yorkers it was important to us that our children maintained ties with family and old friends who still lived on the East Coast and this racked up a lot of airplane miles. Things were different for Nicole since she is a native Californian who was living just a few miles from her childhood home. A set of triplets, two of whom are on the severe end of the Autism Spectrum also meant the logistics of travel were more difficult for her.
“We’re taking them with us, “ I boldly answered.
That July 4th we embarked on our newly formed family’s first road trip. Joined by my parents we ventured to “Northern” California, visiting two theme parks, the Jelly Belly factory, and exploring San Francisco. Subsequent adventures pushed the distance that the girls traveled from home even further. Eventually, we braved a plane trip and they were able to see where I had grown up.
As Nicole’s Multiple Sclerosis has progressed, these trips have become more complicated. If getting a group of five adults and the accompanying luggage moving in the same direction was not difficult enough, we must now also add mobility devices into the mix. Fatigue also lurks as an enemy, especially on travel days when fixed schedules make it impossible to take a break to rest.
Adding to these difficulties are the challenges of traveling with two young…
