Starting to Seem Real

Since it is now less than a week the trip is suddenly is beginning to seem very real. I sat down and made my to-do list and shopping list last night. I wonder what it says about my personality that my to-do list contains at least two entries that start with 'make list of...' I guess that is the side effect of being a project manager for years. We like things that we can break down and plan.

There are all the obvious things, packing, paying bills before I leave and the other mundane things one does before a trip. And of course the really important things, like downloading a couple of books onto my iPod and making playlists for the plane. But the fun part is finishing up the book on the children of Henry VIII and reading the guidebooks and thinking about the things I am going to see.

When I was a teenager I read a series of books by Elswyth Thane that took a family from pre-Revolutionary war time in Williamsburg, VA through post WWII. There are 7 or 8 books and they take place in Williamsburg, in England and Germany primarily. While they were novels and focussed on the lives and interactions of the characters, they also provided a lot of well researched history, including parts on the Revolutionary War, US Civil War, Spanish American War, WWI and WWII, including the bombing of London. I don't know if they were good or not, but I really liked them, and they were a big contributing factor to my interest in history. For many years I have wanted to go to the places those books describe. A visit to Williamsburg a few years ago satisfied part of that longing. This trip is the next step in that journey.

I haven't been able to find any real information on my great-grandmother from Wales, so all I really know is that she was born in Glamorganshire, Wales and that she had my grandmother, who was the 12th of her children, in 1900. So my father and I were speculating and thought that she might have been born around 1865. But we don't have enough information to pin down exactly where, and her name is fairly common. There are several women with her name born in Glamorgan within about a 20 year span, any of whom could be the one we are seeking. Or perhaps we are on the wrong track. So we will visit Swansea and vicinity and imagine that she might have been there, and as the train goes through the heart of Glamorgan I will try to envision a young woman growing up. I look forward to being able to describe Wales to my father.

I think that it is now time to start chipping away at the to-do list....