Saturday night

It's Saturday evening, mydaughter is having a friend for a sleepover, husband is DJing so I'm having a relatively stress free evening. I have to finish a translation but that's for later. Anyway I was surfing the internet and I found this traveller's site and it's fascinating. There is an article about the on-going debate between tourists and travellers, that I found very amusing. I'd love to be a traveller myself but so far I've only been a tourist. Getting to know other countries seems like a life's dream. The people mentioned in the site seem to leave their lives behind them so easily. Why is it that I am so constrained by family, job and money matters? Sometimes I wonder whether I did well to start a family: it's not that having a child hasn't given me otherwise unknown rewards. It has. But sometimes I keep wondering what I would have done if I hadn't.
Two years ago, while I was teaching in a school in a small town I met a Teacher, a philologist, appointed as a librarian, who was a really intellectual person. He has a deep love for books, a way to transmit knowledge and love for what he has read. He has spent all his life reading and travelling to places few people go like Jordan, Syria, cradles of ancient civilisations. Whenever I had a gap period I would go to the library and just give him a suggestion and he would start talking and I would just listen bedazzled. Don't take it wrong, the man was in his forties but looks fifty or something and is anything but goodlooking. Anyway one day I told him how I envied him the time he had available to himself to read and travel. And he replied he envied my life, my child, my having a partner to return to and the whole lot. It's kind of sad really how we people are never satisfied with what we have and always think that someone else is living the life we would like. At least I feel it all the time.
These days I don't envy the Teacher anymore, last year I had all the time of the world to satisfy my passion for books and loneliness (and traveling, come to think of it).
These days I envy my friend in Canada and she knows why. Anyway, at least she proves that there is life after 40! Especially sex life ;-)

The photo is Soufli at dawn.