The Postcard

In an effort to encourage her father, a lonely widower, to fulfill his life long dream of touring the world, Amelie kidnaps his prized garden gnome and sends him on some fantastic, imaginary adventures which she showcases in a series of postcards that she sends to his home. Amelie's "unusually active imagination" in this film coupled with her secret quest to help others achieve happiness was the inspiration for the Docta's Father's Day gift.

The Backstory: One evening about five years ago, while sipping drinks at a bar in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, the Docta and I fantasized about all the places we would travel together.

"Come on lets write 'em down," I said, flipping over a beer coaster and tipping back my glass. We scribbled down a list recording destinations under two simple headings: "The United States" and "The World."

"We'll check them off the list as we go, filling our passports with the beautiful alphabets of places that we explore," I told him.

"And when kids come along this will not stop us, we will carry them on our backs and hold their hands while we wait for the next train to roll in," the Docta proclaimed.

The Docta has always been my kind of traveler preferring the no itinerary, no map duck into the local hole in the wall kind of adventure. In Prague, we turned circles on the hunt to find a collection of houses inspired by Czech cubism architecture. On the island of Cozumel, he held my hand as the local doc stitched up the inch long slice in my finger, the casualty of trying to hack up a coconut with a half 0pen pen knife. I think we made this list, along with our romantic declaration that we would not let kids slow us down, without thinking about the logistics of such trips. Let's be realistic, part of what appeals to us about many of the places on this list is everything that is not kid friendly. Street vendors are not offering 2% organic milk and bland chicken on the menu. The hotels or hostels we like to frequent will always be buzzing with the chatter of crazy travelers who've just come back from a pub crawl. For this reason, our projected "to visit list" will remain on the fridge in its current state. No check for India whispering of papadums and tikka masala and we have yet to make our reservations for the "Orangutan River Safari" in Indonesia. So no check for you Indo. I know The Docta with his job hunt stresses and research challenges would love nothing more than to pack up our bags and get on a plane to escape for a little while but this is just not happening anytime soon (sigh).

And so instead, I sent the G off, our little traveling garden gnome, on a virutal field trip to scout out the top three places on the Docta's list because if you can't go to Indonesia than Indonesia must come to you.

The first postcard the Docta received in the mail is the G sampling fruit from the Hong Kong market. On the back of the card, the G describes his adventure on Temple street tasting the"lung gnan" or dragon eyes which apparently are a local favorite.

The second postcard that arrived features the G on a beautiful desloate Croatian beach. During my research for this postcard I discovered that many of the beaches along the Adriatic shoreline are very shallow and crystal clear, perfect for the G who loves to wade in to collect rocks and shells. I was hoping the Docta could imagine the two of us sitting in our beach chairs lapping up the salty waves.

I handed the third postcard, which features the G playing his guitar with a group of school kids in Indonesia, to the Docta on the car ride over to a brand new Indonesian restaurant that just opened up in the city. At dinner I took out a piece of paper and a pen and announced,
I

"I think we need to make a new travel list one that more realistically works with kids on our backs, how about the top 4 camping spots you've always wanted to visit with kids list?"
"I know its not Hong Kong" I told him, "But listen to the description in the book, "try Third beach during a storm, when your children can lean their full weight against the wind without falling and watch waves that have come all the way from Japan."

Wind kisses from Japan... sounds good to me.