I have this thing about making my travel section chronological, and I yet I am woefully behind.  To write my articles I go back and look through hundreds of pictures to refresh my memory.  I’m not sure why I’ve avoided that, although I can say with the only worldwide pandemic most of us have ever gone through, I just haven’t wanted to post knowing the majority of us could not visit one another abroad.  This is the second year my little family has embarked upon a road trip through the South.  We had airline tickets for each annual beach trip but our little one is still not vaccinated, and I have been hesitant.  Last summer one of the delights about driving came to us in the form of a darling little hermit crab named “Hermington.”  He hails from Orange Beach, Alabama, as that is where we acquired him.  I told my little one I highly doubted they would have let us bring him home on a plane.  This year we drove from Dallas to Baton Rouge and then on to Destin.  I joked with my husband we were “Destined for Destin” (also what I shoe polished on the back of our car) because the deposit we’d made on our resort before COVID hit said I’d missed their deadline to cancel by days … so it was captured money.  The only trips I ever got to take with my parents were road trips.  Even then, it was when I was an adult.  I cherish those vacations to San Antonio and Santa Fe because the three of us were all together.  I can remember riding in the back without a care in the world!  So I completely understand why my little one loves road trips.  Instead of the sterility of the airport, we were able to stop at local “stands” and there was not a soul there who was not kind.  By that I mean MY kind of kind … the looking you in the eyes; smiling; asking where you’re “from” kind.  Black, white, brown, whatever:  a Southerner always knows a fellow Southerner.  I’m sure the “y’all” gives it away.  Now that I have had the good fortune to travel abroad since marrying, I can tell you:  there are NO local women on the streets of Algiers.  Everyone on beaches in Spain, in my experience, may as well have been entirely naked … and some were.  The Brits are rather stiff when compared to Americans, in that you just don’t see people hugging.  I have always found the French to be LOVELY; but perhaps that is because I speak the language and sincerely try to engage with them.  This applies to French Muslims, French Africans, and “Native” French alike who are living there.  I have never found arrogance to be appealing and I disagree with the stereotype that Parisians are.  I believe the most earnest people I have ever encountered were in Guatemala.  Maybe it was the kinship I felt with Native American people, even though their customs were more heavily Catholic and much unknown to me.  If you check my travel section, I believe I have written a blog entitled, “The Eyes Have It.”  Alaska is still pretty darn remote, and I have been literally knocked down by big groups from other countries in New York, London, and Paris.  Generally I have very little personal space because I’m touchy … but being block-checked mercilessly, ruthlessly, and repetitively offends not only my person but my soul as well.  I understand cultural norms vary across the globe, but I wasn’t kidding last year when I said I’d finally found “my people.”  In the South folks actually take the time to TALK to you, and I gravitate toward their interest like a flower seeking the warmth of the sun.  Knowing we were driving again, our little girl wanted Hermington to have a companion.  I selected a somewhat plain-shelled little guy and didn’t tell her, but I got the STUFFING pinched out of me from some of the other hermit crabs.  This little critter though was just so affectionate.  My clever child immediately named him “Claude.”  He, like all other hermit crabs, has one prominent claw.  Hermit crabs have adapted to occupy empty mollusk shells to protect their fragile exoskeletons.  They grow; they evolve.  And then it struck me:  I had been judging a proverbial book by its cover; searching for one with just a perfect shell worthy of the ultimate, detailed Fibonacci sequence.  But it’s what’s inside that counts.  The American Romantic poet, critic, editor, and diplomat James Russell Lowell once said, “The mind can weave itself warmly in the cocoon of its own thoughts, and dwell a hermit anywhere.”  I was trying to be happy about this trip but I was still shocked that we’d gone all that way and I wound up with absolutely no seashells (uninhabited of course) and not even an ounce of sand.  Coming home I found myself tired, disappointed, and uncharacteristically unhappy.  While my husband was standing in line for “boudin balls” somewhere in Louisiana, I made friends with a woman there whose husband needed to drive to Dallas for cancer treatments every week.  That immediately humbled me.  I had forgotten the lessons my father always strived to instill in me:  to bloom where you’re planted and to always be thankful.  After speaking with her I resolved to be more like our newest little family member.  I need to think more about others, and, perhaps, to learn from Claude the value in coming out of my shell.