Welcome to the Gathering Pod, the audio version of my weekly gathering room broadcast. I'm Martha Beck.

It's so good to be with all of you. I just got back from South Africa. Okay, so yeah, I don't know when

somebody may be listening to this or watching it in the future.

And if so, right now at the moment you're hearing this, in the future of now, this is time traveling because I am talking to you now in your present, which is my future.

And all I have to say is at this time of recording, I just got back

from South Africa, where we went, my whole family went, except for Adam, who decided he wanted

to stay home. And that meant we took our two and a half year old, Lila. And you know how you set

things up? And I don't actually remember

deciding to take a 15-hour plane trip with a two and a half year old. We did it at some point.

And then as the trip grew nearer and nearer, we became more and more afraid. And we were

thinking, what? What, what were we thinking?

How could we have done this?

Like, please get us out, but the tickets were paid for and we were committed.

So we all got on that plane and let me tell you something.

I just, I look back at my fears and I laugh and I laugh because it was so much worse

than I expected.

Oh yeah, we were innocent when we thought it won't be that bad.

Oh, it was that bad.

She's in a, she's in a sporty tantrumy phase. That was one thing. But then, you know, took ill

just before, well, during our trip back. And yeah, that will be a tale. Check out Roe and me on

our bewildered podcast. If you want to hear the entire gruesome story, just know that

my fears about the trip with the toddler were not nearly as big as they should have been.

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