Ramble On!
Six Months Around the World 'With Yer American Family
by
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When my wife began talking about taking the children around the world on an extended holiday, I gave the appropriate American-male-spouse response: "Hey, whatever you want to do, honey!" Or, like that lady in Miracle on 34th Street, "That would be Simply Charming!" Because I assumed - wrongly in retrospect - that she’d come to her senses soon enough. I mean, the idea of taking a year off from work and traveling, with kids, is a bit ridiculous, am I right? So I could simply agree and go on with my regularly-scheduled life, nodding in support on the outside but laughing on the inside at its silliness. Three years ago, the discussions started to get serious. All those affirming, half-hearted statements returned to haunt me. "Let’s go around the world for a year," Amy would suggest, with a determined tone. Or, she’d work on me philosophically: "What are the most important things you want to do in your life?" Hey, that’s easy, I countered: get a better car, a bigger house, 6 new guitars, some really nice patio furniture, PlayStation 2, you know, basically, some toys. Long trips are not on the list. A year is a long time to be away from my electric blanket, after all. And it would require a lot of money and endurance to maintain the relative comfort to which I’d been accustomed. Yes, I’m a weenie. And I’m OK with that. But the absurd idea of leaving my typical white-collar, downtown Chicago job for a while, plucking the kids (14-year-old daughter and 12-year-old twins) from their school-to-mall-to-baseball-to-band routine, and breaking out of the box had some allure. A long, foreign trip could make a dramatic educational impact on the kids, open their thinking in many new directions, and meanwhile build some huge shared memories on which tenet our family team has always been based ("T is for talking, E is for expectations, A is for, uh, acceptance, and M is for memories"). What we had been talking about so regularly, what was once a dream, started to build momentum. I was powerless to stop it. The bizarre plan solidified in the year before our departure. We settled on a six-month trip beginning January 2001, after much debate surrounding those twin demons Time and Money. We also focused on other important trivialities such as educational schedules and company leave-of-absence policies. And then the time came to put our hiking boots where our mouths were. Terrified, excited and purposeful, we concluded the planning, raised the money through the usual middle-class channels (read: get a new mortgage, drain the savings, play the Lotto), locked in a cheap world-wide travel itinerary with an airline ticket broker, and switched into escape mode.
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About the Book
Kerouac meets the Cleavers? This humorous, educational how-to journalizes a middle-class, middle-American family’s breakout from the preprogrammed baseball-and-dance-practice life. And it journalizes it with as many hyphens as possible. The five of them – dad, mom, a teenager, and pubescent twins – load their backpacks with bed-rolls, peanut butter, and allergy/asthma remedies, head out on the global highway, and describe the physical, social, and spiritual world around them. Through their adventures, they try to convey their unique American strengths and limitations, the precious and common idiosyncrasies of all people, and the ability of a family to become and remain friends. It is certainly a must-read for anyone with "Tauchman" in their name.
About the Author
Roger Tauchman is a caring nurturer who worships his wife Amy, supports their three children Alex (fifteen), Kevin (thirteen) and Lauren (thirteen), helps out in housework or community work when asked, and otherwise keeps to himself in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. By day he is an officer for a commercial lending company in Chicago and by night he is a legend in his own mind. Roger says his major accomplishments include marrying Amy, conceiving nice kids, rising above his slacker nature, achieving terminal mensch-hood, and clawing his way up to middle management. When he isn’t daydreaming about women, he drifts between competing in local running and cycling events (yeah, he once ran the Los Angeles Marathon and will constantly remind people about it), hacking up the local golf courses with friends, avoiding his large extended family, and playing a very mediocre rhythm guitar.